Why?
I wrote the following in a journal a while back. I'm pretty sure I was reading some physics and relativity books at the time, probably something by Brian Greene or Stephen Hawking. I read and still read Buddhist writings on the fleeting impermanence of reality and possession, and I have a thriving connection with the rich man, his caravan and the eye of a needle (or at least I thoroughly love the straight-faces with which the Mercedes Masses recite such parables). I attended Phish concerts and felt alienated by the crowd, mired in the stupidity of the ritual and saddened by drug-addled faces. But I still wanted to hear the music, and worse, I spent much of those shows thinking how great the tape of the live show would sound later, when I could actually hear what was going on. I exaggerate, of course; I thoroughly enjoyed the shows (boogied on reggae woman) and I'm as big of a fan of a luxury sedan as the next guy. But these skipping ideas of the transience of experience plagued me, and it got bad enough that I occasionally found myself debating the existential merits of the piece of pizza experience v. the lingering, quasi permanent effects of its caloric content. That's a bad place to be, FYI, standing in an intersection wondering whether you should eat lunch, whether pepperoni really means anything in the long run. ("Ahem," said the pig).
So then - that set the mood for the aforementioned following:
Temporality is killing me. Time; there it rings again. We're somewhere between rats with a pleasure lever, always wanting CHEESE NOW, or, to ramp up the sophistication, we're super memoir takers. Wanting to go to the show so future-me will have been there, remember he was there. An 'I'm seeing this now' intrinsically paired with a "Oh, I've seen that." It's terrifying that the cheese makes us fat; more terrifying that the memories fade so fast.
The cheese-fat thing may be a little over the top, but it pretty well captured the sentiment for me, that all these day-in day-out impermanent fleeting actions, up to and including meals, are what add up to life. Your unspeakably voluminous love for someone is the summation of individual, often flippant moments. It actually reminds me of calculus, that somehow a series of infinitesimally skinny blocks add up to an area. Thus spake the math nerd.
The why of this page: John Cusack once said "It's not what you're like, it's what you like." Actually, Nick Hornby wrote it and then John Cusack said it, because John Cusack is a big fat plagiarizer of speech, aka an actor. I don't agree with that sentiment; makes it seem like you could quantify any one of us with a series of ones and zeroes, as in DIET MOUNTAIN DEW = 1, ONIONS = 0, NEKO CASE = 1, LEPROSY = 0, etc. And I'll be dammed if I'm going to let someone contain me that way, though I'll concede that there are a whole lot of people out there who conceive of me as MALE & 18-39 = 1. So what I like is important, as is what I'm like, as is what I think, as is who I know, as is what I've written, created, what I've done, blah blah blah, you get the idea. Well, all those things are important in light of the fact that nothing is actually important, or rather everything is, or not, what have you, but we'll get into that later.
So welcome to NyetJones, a web site that toils in metaphysical obscurity on what is simultaneously the center and outskirts of cyberspace, depending who you ask. You can consider it to be for posterity, art for art's sake, a hilariously futile attempt to seize the sand-through-my-fingers memories, a stab at pre- or posthumous fame (depending on the timing of my death), an ego-driven try at recognition and validation, communication-with-loved-ones, a misguided and ultimately failed attempt at humor and/or enlightenment, or a plain-old plea for attention, a sad cry of cosmic loneliness, a look at how witty I think I am. You can consider it whatever you want to consider it. For me, it is what it is. And given my general stance on fleeting impermanence, that probably doesn't amount to much. Relatively speaking.
Why Nyet?
On a very simple level, I just can't walk around being a lunatic, fringe but ultimately completely inconsequential artist if my name is Nate Johnson. Don't get me wrong: I love my name Nathan, even though we're down to about two people that call me that now (my mom and the Department of Motor Vehicles as a collective), and I love the prophet connotations. I love being known as Nate, especially during those fleeting nineties when suddenly my (and I suspect, all Nates') nickname became "Nate Dogg" thanks in large part to the popularity of the video "Regulate" by Warren G and, yep, Nate Dogg (A song, incidentally, about cruising for skirts, shooting craps, starting fights, armed robbery, hookers, something like a drive-by, the East Side Motel, smoking marijuana every day, the important conclusion that rhythm is life and life is rhythm AND, of course, the exquisite rhyming of "Rolex" with "damn, what's next?"). And now people who grew up in the 90's can't help but ask me "where's the G-child?" whenever they hear my name is Nate. Likewise, Johnson is great, too, not only because it proudly displays my Swedish heritage, but also because despite the bawdy wit of a thousand days in locker rooms, no one has yet thought of a way to make fun of the last name "Johnson."
But, getting back to the point, for this purpose, Nate doesn't really work. One, there are a whole lot of Nate Johnsons out there (my high school football team had, I believe, 5 Nates, 1 Nat, and 2 Nate Johnsons), so if you google me or facebook me you are likely to think that I played basketball at Louisville or something. Two, there is the rather straightforward idea that this is a vague attempt at artistic rebirth, and so why not take up a cool pseudonym? Three, there's the Kierkegaardian idea that if I use a pseudonym, I can continuously write things under the pretense of "pseudonym as an artistic statement," meaning that you can't ever know if I really entirely agree with what I'm writing, because if *I* had meant it, wouldn't I have just signed it Nate? Four, it gives me a chance to write things like my favorite joke without ruining my squeaky clean reputation:
Q: What's black and white and red and can't walk through revolving doors?
A: A nun with a spear through her head!
Okay, that's not really my favorite joke; I'll post that later. But clearly Nate would never say such a ghastly thing in public, whereas Nyet would post it at DevoutCatholicToddlers.com. SO that dynamic is in the mix, too. Five, there's no way my full name would have fit in that 150 x 75 button at the top left, so you get the cheapo version. Sorry.
Nyet: Negation, nothingness, a defiant no, and all other kinds of sunny side of life connotations. Really what happened is that I used to have a Greek landlord who would in a high, shrill voice yell "Nyate, hello!" whenever she phoned our house. This happened to be around the time I was reading Master & Margarita, so the idea of sticking around St. Petersburg with Satan and a big black cat was appealing, and now I had the Russian moniker taboot. And then it got to be a behavioral thing: she would say "Nyet!" I would say "Hello," and next thing I knew, just like Sparkle, I had a name. So Nyet is good for me, I like the negative fun-poking at my own cynicism, and it sounds enough alike that I'm not really dropping my name. It probably would have been better if it sounded completely different from "Nort," but that's besides the point.
Jones: Clearly, it's a common name that's close to Johnson, so again I'm staying relatively true to my roots. It also allows me to keep the initials that I share with New Jersey, which when pronounced correctly ("injuh") will remind you of a ninja or a drunk Bostonian threatening to injure you. So that's nice. But really, it gives me the title Mr. Jones, which was all I was really going for, the Mr. Jones of "Ballad of a Thin Man" and later, "Yer Blues" fame. And the kicker is that the pseudonym actually means "Not Jones," which should keep the bevy of critics guessing down the road if I meant that I was confused, alienated, bewildered and overwhelmed , or if I'm the exact opposite, the only non Mr. Jones in the figurative room. And what did I intend by posting such an explicit explanation of such a mysterious name? What is with this crazy fringe artist guy anyways?
There you have it. Please, natch, make all checks payable to Nate Johnson.
Cause if I ain't dead already - girl, you know the reason why.
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