Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 167

“Ten years ago I was the subject of a documentary called ‘No...

“Ten years ago I was the subject of a documentary called ‘No Impact Man.’ It was about my attempt to live for an entire year with as little environmental impact as possible. My family rode bikes everywhere. We used no paper products. And the film got quite a lot of attention. I wasn’t used to the success. I’d written two history books before then. And they were good books, but they didn’t have much of a readership. Now all of the sudden I was being interviewed, and celebrated, and invited on Good Morning America. And then people started attacking me. Gawker wrote several articles calling me self-righteous, and an opportunist, and said I was imposing my values on my family. People said I didn’t care about the environment and only wanted to make money. And all the attention really caused a crisis for me. For the first time, I had a personhood that was completely different than my person. And that was exhausting. When someone called me a hero, I wanted to prove them right. When someone called me a devil, I wanted to prove them wrong. It took a lot of self-examination to realize that I was neither. There is a fullness to a person that is gigantic and nuanced and indefinable. It was equally impossible to be a hero or a devil. I couldn’t be contained by a single word.”

“I work as an investigator for the Legal Aid Society. We...

“I work as an investigator for the Legal Aid Society. We provide legal defense to people who can’t afford it. I studied law in college, but I’m learning that the system doesn’t match up to what we were taught. According to theory, the defendant should always have the advantage. Our clients are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof lies with the prosecutor. But that’s only in theory. In reality, the District Attorneys bend the rules of the system to gain maximum leverage. They don’t care about justice– well, I’m sure there are some that do– but the ones I’ve seen only care about winning. It’s an elected position, so they want to show voters that they are ‘tough on crime.’ And that requires higher incarceration rates. So they are incentivized to convict as many people as possible. One of their favorite weapons is to overcharge. They’ll charge a defendant with ten things. Nine of them would easily get thrown out in court, but the client just can’t risk it. So they’ll plead guilty to the one charge that even remotely applies to the case. We’re representing one client who passed out on the subway. It’s a simple public intoxication charge. But his beer bottle fell off his seat and broke, so they charged him with possession of a weapon. They know it’s ridiculous. But they know he’ll never go to trial with that charge on the table. So they’ll get their conviction. And that’s all that matters.”

“We can talk until my dog is done pooping.”

“We can talk until my dog is done pooping.”

“I’ve been out of art school for a couple years now. Eventually...

“I’ve been out of art school for a couple years now. Eventually I’d like to make a living as a fine artist. I try to challenge myself in a different way every day. I’m always trying different colors, or different materials, or different styles of drawing. It’s my way of leveling up. Right now I’m seeing if I can touch the paper only once with each mark, yet still create enough information to convey light and shade. The hope is that by challenging myself enough, I can eventually reach a level where I can challenge the art world.”

“I was a bartender.”“I was a drunk.”

“I was a bartender.”

“I was a drunk.”

“My father was a fascist. He was trained to be a terrorist in...

“My father was a fascist. He was trained to be a terrorist in Mussolini’s army. He was anti-everybody. The Irish were ‘micks,’ black people were ‘niggers,’ and Jewish people were ‘kikes.’ His main weapon was pain. He raped me, locked me in closets, beat me with broom handles. He sent me to the hospital many times. He’d threaten to blow my brains out in the middle of the street. I absorbed a lot of his emotional energy. Sometimes his voice still comes out of me. When I’m really angry, and cussing myself out, I sound just like him. It’s him inside me, speaking to me. But I didn’t become him. My grandfather saved me. My grandmother was a fascist like my father. She counted her rosary beads and condemned the world, but my grandfather was a simple man. He lived with us. He always told me: ‘Your father is a nut.’ He hugged me and kissed me. I swung between two extremes: the love of my grandfather and the hate of my father. My grandfather knew how to love. My father couldn’t love because he was too filled with terror. He didn’t have the tools to love. Once when I was fifteen, I walked over to my father and gave him a big hug. He kept his arms stiff by his side. I said ‘I love you Dad,’ and his body started trembling. There was a terrified child inside of him. He wanted to love. And he wanted to be loved. He just didn’t know how.”

“It was the summer between 8th and 9th grade. We were make-out...

“It was the summer between 8th and 9th grade. We were make-out buddies. Sometimes he’d talk to me during the day. Other times he wouldn’t. We were in his basement late one night, getting drunk, and he kept asking me if I wanted to do it. My heart was racing and I was terrified. I kept saying: ‘maybe,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘maybe.’ Then he said: ‘No more maybes. Let’s flip a coin.’ My stomach sank. After we finished, he said: ‘I think I heard my dad upstairs. You need to leave.’ I went home and filled up a whole page in my journal. I wrote in purple sharpie, over and over: ‘It didn’t happen.’ For the longest time I felt like it was my fault for feeling hurt. Like I was being overly sensitive. It took five years for me to realize that consent is not a coin flip.”

“I sliced the tendons in my finger while trying to cut away some...

“I sliced the tendons in my finger while trying to cut away some waterproofing. I’d taken a few pain pills before, but I’d never been handed hundreds of them. Eventually I was taking twenty pills a day. I was going through a divorce at the time so I was pretty unstable. Back then you could ‘doctor shop:’ run one prescription through insurance, pay cash for two more. After three years I went to a treatment center and they put me on something called Suboxone. It took me four years to get off that stuff. The withdrawals were terrible. It’s almost as bad as the pain pills. And get this—the same people making the pain pills are making Suboxone. They sell you drugs to get off their drugs. It’s all a money game. Listen, it was my choice to take the pills. I know it was my fault. But somebody out there made a lot of money off my weakness.”

“I volunteered to be a background actor for a friend’s film last...

“I volunteered to be a background actor for a friend’s film last night. We were supposed to be celebrating an engagement on a rooftop. There was a guy on set who was making drinks, and so you know, I was willing to make a sacrifice for art, so I had four pina coladas, two vodka cranberries, a few beers, and this one drink that was just rum and crushed up watermelons. I had a couple of those. Then afterwards we went to a comedy club because the tickets were free. All you had to do was buy a couple drinks. This probably makes me sound like an alcoholic but don’t worry I was hydrating. And you should have seen my friend. She was way more drunk than me. We didn’t end up getting home until 2:30 AM. I did have a voice in my head reminding me I have to wake up for work in the morning. I’m just really good at shushing that voice.”

“You’re encased in a disastrous matrix of fear and loathing. ...

“You’re encased in a disastrous matrix of fear and loathing. You’re just a function. You’re just a function of the universe. You think you’re free. You have no more freedom than a cell on your body. The universe isn’t a democracy. It’s a monarchy. You’re just a function. The closest you can get to freedom is anonymity. Fame is the worst prison of them all. Because then people have ideas about you and ideas about your life. And if you’re not what they expect then they will fuck you up. Kanye West is the biggest prisoner on this planet. Your only chance at freedom is to stay on the fringes like me. Burn all your bridges. Who cares? You’re all lying to each other. You all hate each other more than you love each other.“