Are you making content or are you creating art?

The defining human question that has endured time since the desert monks of Egypt.

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Subscribe at your own peril. Welcome.

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This is a piece of content.

I’m the one who’s packaged it. I know what it’s meant to taste like before it’s delivered. I know that it is designed to feed an audience rather than feed me. It is an ephemeral beating drum, calling for readers, before the unearthed dank brown soil of the Internet is tossed over it and it becomes an archived article Jumanji.

This is what I know about content, and what I feel about art.

Content is the latte-extra-expresso you slurped on the subway and shoved half-full into an overflowing trash bin.  
Art is grinding coffee beans into a shot glass and dumping them in your garden to get the soil buzzed.

Content is ramen in a cup. 
Art is rolling pasta in a flour-hazed sunlight-splashed kitchen with dough you made with your hands.

Content is a pixelated blur blaring pungent color in Times Square.
Art is the smell of warm trash that a cool rain has extracted from the street.  

Content is the crossword puzzle done in a hospital waiting room.
Art is the way the pencil sounded scratching under sterile light as the clock ticked and you lost the one you loved.

Content is the television with the news in the diner.
Art is the tired trucker in a Ford hat who ordered steaming peanut butter pancakes and ate them slow with a spoon.  

Art is the expression you screamed into the dark with no anticipation for response.
Content is bottling the scream for resale.

Ho-hold on. Hold on.

I snap my head up and look around the restaurant. Elegant diners drink wine in glimmering glasses in noir candlelight. Smooth jazz plays. I am scribbling on a napkin. Isn’t this pretentious? Anytime you’re creating something, you’re making art, right? Content is worthy of the world. Why don’t you stop judging?

I yell out:

“I’m not pretentious!” My head darts around like a little meerkat. Nobody is listening. “I’m not.”

I dunk my head back down…

Content is the candle you bought at Target.
Art is the crackle of the bonfire.

Content is throwing poppers on the Fourth of July.
Art is burying sticks of dynamite in the flowerpot.

Content is the mortgage bill on the table.
Art is the heady smell of gasoline as flames lick the night sky and you burn it all down for the insurance money and the neighbors are screaming and the dog is howling and the sirens are howling and the dog stopped howling because the ambulance guy gave the dog a treat but now you’re howling and the ambulance guy won’t give you a treat because—

Content is manufactured
Art is birthed
Content is paint and lacquer
Art is roots and earth

Content is telling the Internet you’re offended
Art is protests on bridges

Content is…content is…

“Sir? Sir, are you okay?”

I come out of the haze. I’m crying in the restaurant again. The clam chowder trembles with my tears. The jazz has stopped. Everybody watches.

“I…I’m sorry.” I stand up. “I was making content—I mean, writing art—well, what do you think?”

The waiter leans over the tablecloth and looks at the ink that has bled in with tears. The low hum of chatter returns. The jazz resumes. People go back to their meals. The waiter contemplates and says:

“That’s art, for sure. You have a gift.”

“Thank you.”

“Our restaurant’s marketing department is looking for a content writer. How would you like to write our menus?”

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I’m so glad you came along for this poetic battle. I promise, I didn’t really cry in a restaurant…or did I? If you’d like to support Stomp Roams, you can share, subscribe, or buy the author a summer cottage.

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