An artful life sojourned through a cliché: a young kid from an Old Town once tried to make staging theaters out of the world yet failed because their economy was just too cruel. Later, after two decades, a friend asked: “what would you do if you can?” “Maybe theater; a dying art in this country. Too many mid-brow celebs take up their fame to the scene.” This kid had not kept up with any theatrical performance, only watching one or two when they were in the Capital for some years. College frustration followed by white collar depression, grungiest sexes, careerist climbing wage ladder, paying rent and parents’ debt: they forgot things. They became tired and lazy, disloyal to their interests, distracted by jealousy, moving away from the sparkle of the stage to the gloomy side of literature where words were consolation for relentless banality of nine-to-five jobs (yeah right five). They were impatient, rushed by the traffic years of making sure the stability of their life. They were a coward but daring enough to live in a downtown city, in a room not bigger than a king-size bed, in a one-way alley with a narrow turning corner where an amateur Toyota Innova driver may knock out a pedestrian or a siomay cart seller. Beckett’s short prose was more interesting for them now than his plays:

Here we are. Out we get. Step around. Thank you. You put on the light. Up we go. Out of step. Ran-dygasp of ruthilarity in honour of private joke. Here we are. There they are. Hello. Great to be here. Grand to be here. Same old Wohnung. Wonderful to be here. Prosit. God bless. Lav on the left. Won’t be a sec. Mind the bike. Mind the skis. Beschissenes Dasein beschissenes Dasein Augenblick bitte beschissenes Dasein Augenblickchen bitte beschissenes.

No one wants to hear or read some self-pity shits from a failed art enthusiast (not even an artist!) even when it is written in third-person. But a cliché can be furnished. Here it goes: artistic pursuit and its longing is boring and dull.

But the Capital is a place for artists and idols trying to harness mediocrity into elite—a city of experiments where visual art kids mark their portfolio. It’s a dying  urban smut where aspiring writers and painters make their first jump—book, brush, sex. Artists and literary writers are few; the rest is you don’t know who. This kid, they had lived in this Capital. They did not stay there long enough to be rooted, nor too short that they didn’t know anything. They embellished a life. A story of failing was comfortable, no one would be a hero.

When did it begin, therefore, their plot of artistic failure, an enticing origin of barely existent writer?

A predictable route in the west side Old Town evinced the humdrum adequacy of a millennial childhood. It was the late 1990s, and near a turning path under the bridge of a housing complex, one occasionally saw passing trains. The roundabout street was crowded, connecting multiple tracks to go outside the city. The Museum, a popular destination for primary school trips, was smelly and dark. The antique airport, small and okay, was loud with airplane jets roaming above type-21 houses, above an elder’s bedroom who was already losing her hearing. This part of the city was a military base too (they asked what the heck is “polisi militer,” even the military is policed?): helicopters, dangdut parties, salutes.

Childhood, or memories of childhood, as part of one’s journey of artistic learning (pedagogy, whatever) is a typical almost predictable beginning. Shall one make sense of the dumb shits happened in the neighborhood? Let’s try, they said.

Snakes and whatnot, some neighbor kids liked to make secret paths from the neighborhood to the airport. Biking in the late afternoon meant racing with trucks and moving containers; the streets are arterial roads. Kids played alongside the train rails, putting stones on the gauge, waiting for fire sparks. A curious kid with spectacle walked too close to a monkey cage owned by a shady guy; the monkey grabbed and broke his spectacle. Who did pet monkeys really? One neighbor used to open a small ding dong arcade game place, clinking coins and daily allowance. Mid-age men played pigeon race in the open field—whistling, flapping, cheering. In 1998, a seven-years-old girl threw a tantrum when her favorite show was suddenly cancelled due to the President’s announcement of his resignation. The kids did not talk about the Capital, nor even knew where politics and chaos happened. A father worried about his friend’s daughter who studied there. The next day, the kids went to school, nothing unusual. The new era had not arrived yet. And a tall Dalmatian chased short kids. The taller ones climbed a starfruit tree. A roller kid was dragged by a motorcycle, faster faster. A sporty boy, dreaming of becoming a policeman, stuck his feet down on the gutter. A list of dumb shits and they couldn’t even tease meanings out of it. 

Or perhaps, the spatial memories of a city where one grows up can offer an urbanist sensibility. Another trial.

The Old Town’s weather was already hell. The Wet Market at six am was sticky, sour, rancid, cheap, fulfilling. On vacation days, a mother tried to drag her daughter to come with her as a carrier; she knew where to go first: the coconut man. Be careful when you drive an old Honda during the rainy days. A father with his three kids once slipped there, fell on muddy scraps of veggies and soils. The white-and-red uniforms were dirty—they couldn’t be late for school. The Flooding Canal River looked so huge, shimmering out of the sunshine that blurred lights in the corner of a cracked helmet. We arrived on a tricky roundabout. Motorcycles coming from the north side had no patience. Where did you want to go? That street would lead you to the Christian primary school. Go straight to the east, reach the downtown of Monument, and stop at those Catholic schools. The legend whispered about a secret tunnel from one of the school buildings to the Ghosted Thousand Windows—that creepy colonial building. Heritage is just recent. It used to be a horror story.

If you can, stay away from the north part. Two siblings went there everyday to go to school, hanging out with choir and cheerleader friends. A red small city car could not go against the sea flood robbing the soil. The Old Town was already drowning; it was robbed. A language teacher sent his student to an essay competition about water. His student did not know shit about sea water; she could only write the importance of water for society, bringing a second prize home. No one celebrated, only her teacher and parents. Well, she could only think about nailing her fingers to play a bass guitar, occupying a small festival stage, playing anime songs, entertaining herself. Another girl picked up a guitar, strumming G-D-G chords.

An early experience of serious failure is also a pathway, no? Art historians now try to avoid the artistic biographies of male genius after more than a century telling his stories.

One tinkered with their own girlhood: “I was a mediocre and bored teen girl failing to join the used-to-be-all-boys high school and entered the opposite, the used-to-be-all-girls.” High school street was a place of stranger. That Jesuit school was her dream and she failed enrollment; so she fell into early symptoms of depression. It was the second half of 00s, her fellow schoolgirl  was suffered from bullying; another girl, hiding her suicidal thought out of severe grooming. Money, rich boys’ sport cars, first kiss, dry hump—nothing was worse than second rate high school experiences. Another student read erotic fictions during math class, overhearing a rumor about classmates having sex in a bathroom. Was it true or was it porn? Nothing exciting except internet, filtered cigarettes, and hours of following idol groups and anime and 3gp sex-tape leak, playing pop music at church and school with bunches of college guys. They convinced themselves that the whole world is okay, is gonna be alright, is not that bad.

Now, now, now it’s getting boring. Depression and trauma are not a tasteful meal to be consumed. We do not own all the time, don’t we? One has to move forward with memoir and autobiography, signifying only core memories of their life events. We try to make narratives out of life partly as a mode of survival but that’s also another narrative to justify our narcissistic needs. This is the business of self-making and -fashioning. This is a trial, always an error.