ABOUT

Well, so there's this Salesman, right? And he's pretty good at what he does. Been carrying around big briefcases since he was 8. Practicing his elevator pitches since he was 6. Smoking big cigars since he was 4. His only tangible flaw is that he has never sold anything and doesn't know how to sell things.

So he adopts a game plan which takes that weakness into account. He's not a Salesman - they have to deal with far too many uncertainties. No, he's an Internet Guy. Just an ordinary guy whose mundane talents and friendly demeanor resonate with a lot of people and make them treat him as infallible authority, which will eventually let him sell things to people who won't say no. He also never has to directly engage with them or treat them as his equals, which keeps his spirits lifted.

So he practices being an Internet Guy for a while, which mostly consists of jotting down plans to make things, knowing that the money will flow in as soon as he does. Why rush it? He has all the time in the world. He also tends to the projects of elder Internet Guys in hopes they'll show him where their shared giant money pile is buried, just in case.

Eventually, he decides to put things into action. He starts making his own media - formulaic, precise, and guaranteed to stay fresh for hours. Then he starts making soundtracks for his media. Then he starts making liner notes for his soundtracks. After all that work is done - not hard work, but certainly enough work that one must admit much work was done - he builds an Internet website to catalogue his media, soundtracks, and liner notes, and starts herding his captive audience of acquaintances he made in various media-oriented bulletin board systems (a brilliant scheme - if they like media, they must like more media).

Unfortunately, the initial turnout is just a couple people. This is also the only turnout, since he would never be reduced to begging for recognition. In this moment of darkness, he wonders if he'll ever find meaning in his lifestyle.

This ethical dilemma is averted when he opens his mailbox and finds that the United States government has recognized him for his rugged, unexceptional American exceptionalism, and would like him to bring this letter to the nearest reward-claiming counter. He does so, and after a licensed meritometer closely analyzes his wrist (as this is where the merit is stored), he is declared fit to receive a thousand-dollar paycheck every day for the rest of his life, later increased to ten-thousand due to inflation. "Sorry for the inconvenience, sir," the secretary tells him as he turns to leave.

Then, on April 16th, 2035, he gets in his Tesla and directs it to Buffalo Wild Wings, as both an ironic indulgence and as evidence that he's just like you. However, he does not notice when a strange glitch kicks in that diverts his course several hundred miles straight into the world's deepest chasm. In his final moments, he realizes something went wrong and considers filing a bug report, but decides instead to just wait until it's fixed.

He was a noteworthy man. We have assembled a postmodern dance troupe in his remembrance. We will stand doing nothing, and occasionally hide behind a curtain.

"I have something to show you," he said. He took me by the arm and dragged me out of bed, face-down, across carpeted floor, hardwood, and a hundred yards of concrete, before letting go. He pointed to a small jar with a picture frame beside it, leaning against a building.

"I've stuck my art in the commons with a tip jar. The economics work out. A month from now, I'll be able to afford an advertising agency."

I asked him to explain. He asked me to give it a good think and see if I could come up with the answer for myself. I couldn't, and he knew that.

"Here's the trick," he said. "Let's say that someone sees my art, and decides to tell 4 of their friends about it. That's 5 people who know about my art. Then let's say those 4 friends each tell 4 of their own friends. Now there's 16 more people who know about my art, for a total of 21. And if those 16 people all tell 4 of their friends, then 64 more people will know about my art, for a total of 85. You can see it just keeps growing. And many of them are going to want to tip this interesting artist they've heard of."

"Are you sure every person who hears about your art is going to tell 4 people about it? Much less 4 unique people."

He raised his eyebrows. "Okay. Let's say they just tell 2 people. That's still exponential growth. And I'm sure you've heard how powerful that is."

"I think most people will pass it without saying anything."

"That's true," he said. "Most people aren't used to the kind of experimentalism that defines my work. But certainly there are enough people that... you know."

There was an odd expression on his face for a few moments.

Some cicadas buzzed.

I squinted at his art. It was a monochrome cubist sketch of a woman.

"Maybe you should get a bigger frame for your art. People would have to come up quite close to see it."

"And play the same game as everyone else? I think not," he retorted. "There's a reason most artists get zero recognition whatsoever. I demonstrate a certain restraint and subtlety that today's frantic bustlers have forgotten."

"Are you calling people on the street 'frantic bustlers', or are you calling other artists that?"

"I'm just saying, I offer an uncommon good, and people flock to that. If everyone else takes notice and decides to do what I do, sure, alright, I've started an art movement. No big deal."

A man walked up to us and asked me if I was alright.

"He's alright," the Salesman interjected. "He just took a nasty fall this morning." I kept silent.

The man gave him a suspicious look and walked away.

"See that?" he said, pointing at the man. "He didn't even comment on my art. People don't notice anything around them nowadays. It's absurd any of us are still alive."

"Why did you drag me across the floor like that?" I asked him.

He twitched his shoulders. "I just used a canonical method to get someone else from point A to point B in a timely manner. It would have been more efficient and less painful if you'd just stood up."

The Art of Noise (variably Art of Noise, AoN, The Art Noise, or Of Art: The Noise) were a group of forgotten pioneers of electronic music, spearheaded by eccentric Messianic figure Trevor Horn and intellectual/music journalist Paul Morley, as well as (technically, as was the case with many bands signed to their label Zang Tumb Tuum around the same time) the people who actually made the music.

Legend has it that, in 1983, Horn protege J. J. Jeczalik put a drum riff recorded by ABC drummer David Palmer into his Fairlight CMI sampler and chopped it up into its constituent parts, creating drum samples he could trigger at will. Indeed, this would mark the first use of a sampler in popular music. Samplers had been around since 1979, but most musicians mistook them for decorative centerpieces rather than instruments, and would simply set them out in the main hall to wow dinner guests.

(Peter Gabriel is commonly regarded as one of the first users of the Fairlight, earlier than 1983, but this stems from a misunderstanding from an interview given in 1980. Gabriel later clarified that he used the Fairlight as a percussion instrument, striking the machine with various types of large sticks to create sounds that were inserted into his compositions for texture. "I thought the keys were painted on," he said.)

Jeczalik later took this drum experiment of his, added cut-up vocals from The Clash manager Bernie Rhodes, and fleshed it out into The Art of Noise's debut single, "Beat Box". Being the first use of a sampler in popular music, Beat Box single-handedly dragged the primitive world of electronic music into one of robots and intergalactic settler colonies.

Trevor Horn sensed that his new song had touched on something big, and quickly went to the patent office to file for the use of a sampler in popular music, ensuring a certain level of quality would have to be met before popular music entailing the use of a sampler could be allowed on air. Unfortunately, the appeals process was just too long and the clerk just too finicky, that as soon as he looked outside, the musical sphere was already filled with songs doing exactly what Beat Box did -- but with vulgar "woos" and "yeahs" where Beat Box's sensible "bums" and "dohs" belonged. He had brought fire from the gods, intending it to be used for worship candles, and saw it instead used for blunts.

It's not fair. Directly under the online news article that is music, The Art of Noise had landed a resounding "FIRST!". But instead of sorting from oldest to newest, the cultural gestalt sorted comments by most popular.

"Their jobs just don't matter to them the way mine does to me, you know?" he says, pouring a glass of carbonated water. "I mean, this place is paid for by someone else, so I don't rely on my job or anything, but going by what my own two eyes have seen, I care more about art than people who need to. It's absurd."

He sets down his glass on what looks like a CD.

"Is that some kind of novelty coaster?" I ask.

He chortles. "Do I look like the kind of person who would buy a novelty coaster?" He lifts the glass and slips out the CD, giving me a clear view.

"Learn Japanese in a week," he says, underlining it with his finger. "And boy, what a week that'll be. I'll be able to commune in the same language as the nation that snatched a monumental opportunity and proved to the world that video games weren't a fad."

"Uh-"

He shushes me. "No, in fact, the 'rise' of computer games at the same time did not stand up to what the NES introduced to the world. Do you see game developers go on panels to talk about the influence of Boulder Dash? Huh? Is anyone entranced by the genius design of Jet Set Willy?"

"If you haven't listened to your language-lesson CD yet, why are you putting drinks on it?"

"It'll work when I need it." He sets the CD back on the counter, the glass shortly following.

"Hm."

"Hmmm," he mimes.

I take a breath as I try to formulate what I'm about to say.

"So, your angle is that people are going to like you for how mundane you are, right?"

He takes a sip of sparkling water and grimaces a little. "Yep. You look at all these personalities with their gimmicks and their slogans and their looks, and then there's me: just an average, laid-back guy, making art anyone could make if they had the conviction. I could be anyone."

"And you consider the way you act to be mundane?"

"Of course. Yeah. Everyone does this. Well, no. No, actually, nobody does this. But it's fine, because nobody's going to see me like this - I curate my public image a little bit, not like those wannabe celebrities, just to make it clear that-"

He stops cold. He gets up and runs around the apartment, closing every window blind.

"Sorry," he says. "One of those is part of a 'watch a normal person 24/7' exhibit. I forget which."

Before I can respond, he starts digging through the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen. "I would just mark it from the inside so I don't forget, but that would break the immersion too much. It's like bestowing a zoo animal with knowledge that they're in a zoo. Now where is it..."

"Ah!" He pulls out a tiny device with an LED from the top shelf of a cabinet. "Here it is."

I look at it in bafflement. "What is that? Is this place bugged?"

"Well, yes, but by me. Just so I don't miss any memorable turns of phrase I come up with. Or you, I guess." He takes his glass of seltzer and smashes the recording device.