Fertile Shittiness
Brazenness and betrayal are rocket fuel for creativity
Mookie Spitz reflects on the paradoxical power of adversity and existential dread as catalysts for creativity. Sharing his colorful journey from nightclub manager to accidental father and executive to aspiring writer and musician — and eventually, an artist fueled by life’s harsh realities — Mookie illustrates how the “fertility of shittiness” can inspire profound artistic expression.
Drawing from personal anecdotes, philosophical musings, and cultural references from Virgil to Nietzsche, he argues passionately that true artistry emerges from struggle, betrayal, and the relentless human drive for purpose and recognition. An insightful exploration of the messy intersection between life’s hardships and creative brilliance, Mookie encourages his readers and listeners from all walks of life to embrace their challenges as the raw material of greatness.
Listen
Read
Right when the century flipped, 20th to the 21st, everyone freaking out about the Y2K bug, I retired after several years in the nightclub business.
I began at the tender age of 33, I believe, or 32, hauling ice out of the basement for the bartenders after quitting my corporate job, having enough of that nonsense, wanting a local job. I was dating a hairdresser, the hairdresser had a client who was the bar manager, one thing led to another, I got this crazy job, one thing led to another, barback, bartender, assistant manager, manager, managed one club, managed two. I’ll certainly be bloviating about these experiences, but suffice to say, around the turn of the century, having retired, I had about $80-90,000 in cash in a safe deposit box in nicely stacked $100 bills, 50 of them in a little rubber banded bunch packed into a drawer.
That was my equity after years of working in this wretched hive of scum and villainy. Pretty much loving every second of it, even when it was horrible, just because it was so intense, so weird, so kinetic. There I was, sitting back, not a care in the world, no lover, no family, no kids, no nothing. And I finally, at the tender age at that time of 37, realized that I had my chance. Ever since my early 20s, I understood my purpose. And that was to be a writer, to be a creative person, be a musician. I typed like a maniac, had hundreds of thousands of words already banged out. I was a musician. I played some pretty mean guitar and I was gonna write my novel and start my band and use that little nest egg that I had saved to float me for a year, maybe even stretch it into a couple years so I could be the artist that I knew I was, and just crank that content out. Finally, finally, after years and years of financially struggling, being distracted, I had a wide open playing field. I had the slack I needed to do it.
And every day for about a year I woke up, slugged that espresso, and hit that keyboard and hit that fretboard — and within an hour I was taking a walk, rollerblading, visiting people… Before I knew it, it was lunch. And before I’d even digested lunch, it was nap time. And then in the evening, who knows what I’d be doing, reading, visiting more people, wandering around Chicago, the city I loved. One month, two months, three months, four. I was detoxing from the bar life I said to myself. Next week I would rev my action up… One week passed, two weeks, a month, another month, next month would be the month where I would activate and self-actualize my artistic self.
Nothing.
And I couldn’t explain it to anyone, let alone myself. There I was comfortable, floating, not a care in the world, and nothing came out of me. I had no passion for what I was most deeply passionate about.
Now timing is everything in the arts, just like location is in real estate. But what begs the question of my own commitment being expressed in real work, real work, real output. was the realization that all those pressure points were removed.
Art is a fight. Art is a last breath in a dying world. Art is not trying to decide whether to take a nap or not. And in the bigger scheme of things, I was hardly living like a king and I had prioritized my existence to not travel the world with my little nest egg, not really indulge the many the many indulgences that I indulge, but to really focus and do my work — and nothing happened.
And nothing happened because I had not painted myself into the corner of my own existential dread. And because I was living large by being so small, I had no energy or inclination to really speak up, express my opinion, and express myself. I was a big bloated mass of lazy Mookie.
And now fast forward at the tender age of 60, after an accidental pregnancy and marriage and two kids and an adopted niece and a corporate saga back into offices, a career trajectory, chewing with my mouth closed, moving to different cities, flying all over the country, flying around the world, making money, getting shit done. I’ve come full circle in the sense that although I’m still working, I’m still billing those hours, I’m equally committed to this artistic figment of my own imagination.
Only this time, this time, I don’t have that equity. I’ve burned through a lot of it by busting ass on content, doing my art. The opportunity costs of that manic crazy focus over the last couple years at least compromising my business, my bottom line, my spreadsheet. But I am cranking this shit out: podcasts and video rants and a second book and blogs. I can’t shut the fuck up.
I think part of my frenzy is that realization that on the one hand I paid my daddy dues. I became the adult that I never imagine myself or wanted to ever become, check, and I’ve run out of money. Check, check.
So I feel like every day, every hour, every minute that I can rant on TikTok or rant on a podcast, every gigabyte of data that I upload through my router in my little rental apartment here in Orange County, California, with the goal of cracking my data limit of a terabyte and a quarter every month, that’s my metric of success. Every move I make, I feel like it could be my last or at least the corner has been painted into. Tick tock, tick tock. I might not be able to keep this up, so I keep it up.
I have both experience, like Jimi Hendrix said, I have all the hard work, those 10,000, those 100,000 hours that Gladwell talked about, and I have a sense of urgency, all of which I was lacking a quarter century ago when I had all the opportunities in the world but didn’t take myself up on them because I no longer had anything to say, and it wasn’t just burnout from years in a nightclub. It was losing my sense of purpose… And this is one hell of an intro, finally getting to Heaven — where according to David Byrne, nothing ever happens. And hell, which according to Virgil, everything does.
The essential point I wanna make, if I hadn’t made it already, is the fertility of shittiness — and this applies to not only the vicissitudes of one’s own fate, good and bad and left and right the roller coaster of life, but the general shittiness of other people who disappoint us, who compete against us who often don’t want us to succeed as our light may shine, it casts long shadows on those around us. Most people are lazy and jealous, mean-spirited, impatient, impulsive. And that, of course, is inclusive of myself. I’m no different, but it’s all a matter of point of view and vantage point. If you’re trying to make it, if you’re trying to do something, especially if it’s different, and it has a chance, however remote, of shaking shit up, people will try to fuck your shit up.
That, of course, is nothing new. But what I find fascinating, and worth ranting about, at least this afternoon, is the necessity, in a sense, of this kind of existential dread and angst. It’s that old funny saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
When people throw down, when people, rather than supporting you, encouraging you, partnering up with you, slam you, scheme against you, that hurts. Anyone would lie if they said or alleged or thought they felt that it didn’t make a difference. It does, of course it does. But what’s significant is not to take the hit and become weakened, but to take the many little cuts and occasional big punches in the face, and, like a Tai Chi master, absorb them smoothly and then with a gentle motion like the summer breeze turn and send it right back out into the world. But after it’s been processed, there’s a catharsis that’s going on, the fuel of art, is the fertility that’s inherent in shittiness. The flowers grow in the dung, the excrement of human behavior. And again, I’m not throwing stones in my own glass house. I’m not judging anyone in particular or the species in general, but I don’t think I need to go into too much elaboration or descriptive detail as to how generally shitty most human beings are.
Rather than state the obvious, all I’m trying to do is contextualize that negativity, that jealousy, into a useful, productive, highly energizing framework where that’s the stuff that dreams are made of. It’s the Maltese Falcon in its archetypal glory. We all endure this. Every myth, every legend, every religion relies on this essential truth, essentially as its foundation.
Consider original sin and guilt, the Old Testament and new. In the old one, God was a rampaging, vengeful motherfucker who not only acknowledged our original sin, in a sense, or at least our capacity to be lazy and betray Him and not listen to His commands, as if this omnipotent being had to be listened to from these apes on this tiny blue marble of a world. But anyway, the myth is all about the shittiness of humanity, pervasive throughout the Old Testament. And look at the New Testament with the updated mythology of God sacrificing his one and only son to what? To free us of this shittiness. To transcend.
But I’m not here to talk about religion or any of these myths or stories. I’m here to just acknowledge the obvious, but also transpose that into the belief that without that you have no art, you’ve got no storytelling. Watch a movie, read a book, see a play. The best drama and the most compelling stories are loaded with all the goodies, conceit, jealousy, duplicity, the backstabbing, heinous nature of most relationships.
Why is that interesting? Because shit happens. Good drama, great art is, as Nietzsche alleged, beyond good and evil. From his point of view, it was the blend of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the mind and the heart reason and passion, and they were constantly duking it out. Most significantly great drama is like morality itself, it’s beyond good and evil. The classic platonic view of absolute good being equated to beauty being equated to truth is bullshit. And Nietzsche’s genius was to call bullshit through the lens of art, because great philosophy is great art.
And in heaven nothing ever happens. In a perfect world of forms, there’s nothing interesting going on. It’s a snooze fest. And conversely, as I mentioned before, between Paradiso, Purgatorio and the Inferno, the Inferno is where all the action happens. It has the most vivid ecosystem, if you will. The stanzas are electrifying, while Paradiso is a big snoozefest and Purgatorio is a marbled mixture which is more banal than anything else because that’s the nature of Purgatory. It’s boring and just awful.
But in Hell, you’re oscillating between cringe and revulsion. You’re gasping for air and you’re getting fucked every move you make and at the very center of Hell are the traitors dwelling within an ice circle facing Satan himself. And that’s a compelling metaphor too. Worse than murder is betrayal. And that really cuts deep. And great drama, great art, and the fuel for doing these things, in a sense, churns and burns, with this sense that the world is betraying you.
Michael Lewis, the wonderful writer, he did books like Moneyball, several of his other books, including that one, have been made into movies. I just think he’s a terrific storyteller. His podcast is really good too. And he made an observation that I noticed recently that the greatest artists, the greatest movers and shakers, the hero story, which is self referentially the pinnacle of great drama, they all start out being ignored. Why? Because what they’re doing and what they’re saying runs so counter to the grain of everyone else’s sensibility. They’re bringing about and triggering revolution. Their worldview is new and fresh and exciting, but it’s also unbelievably destructive, and by its very nature is fueled by the crisis that everyone is in denial of. So what happens?
They’re ignored. The brightest of lights cast the longest shadows. If this person is right, if what they’re saying and doing is gonna radically alter our perception of the world, then de facto our perception of the world is wrong, and if we’re wrong we are fools and they are superior to us, and we do not want to give them any of our power so this individual the artist the transformer the revolutionary is not only isolated, but they feel betrayed. Here they are doing their best to bring society, to bring their fellow human new insights, new content, revelations that engender revolution to the betterment of all humankind. Drum roll please… go and fuck yourself.
As Douglas Adams captured in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where a scientist develops this new technology and is summarily murdered by his peers, and the explanation that’s given is the very succinct and completely accurate statement, “nobody likes a smartass”.
What’s awesome about this is that human shittiness puts these creative people up against the wall, the silence, the asphyxiating silence that is imposed upon them does two things. It assuages the jealousy and guilt, and self-consciousness of the public. And it also, by virtue of that abuse, energizes true artists, true talent to go above and beyond themselves. Because if they really mean it, and if their purpose is true purpose that becomes the purpose of their lives, then they’ll use that hatred and contempt and jealousy and, like that Tai Chi master, transform it into artistic gold. Boom, and either the public acknowledges it or they don’t. And either way, the artist has to do it anyway, because they got no choice because that’s who they are. It’s a positive feedback loop fed by human shittiness that nonetheless cranks out the good stuff. Whether or not that artist, that creator, that revolutionary is ever acknowledged, it doesn’t matter.
I think this cycle is beautiful and it’s the essence of drama. And I’m not saying I’m that guy, but I’m at the very least recognizing the foundational essential importance of this engine of creativity. And I liken it also to flirting with the Muse, where for years you might court her and she’s a fickle bitch and she’s going to ignore you. Finally, at your moment of greatest desperation, she puts out almost as if it’s a tease. You’re about to go down and she lets you go down. That is beautiful, too. And there’s a self-referential quality of the struggle being real.
The greatest writers aren’t just sitting there and moving symbols around like Jacques Derrida would have us believe. It’s a lived experience loaded with emotion. Map versus territory. The map could be notes or words or letters or whatever the fuck. But the territory is this struggle and it’s glorious, and its truth and power becomes evident in its counterfactual. You see this all the time where the early years of an artist, when they’re nobody trying to be somebody, are usually the best expressions of their work.
The origin story is the best kind of story. It’s tracking the hero from a carpenter to the son of God. It’s Tony Stark, asshole plutocrat genius to Tony Stark, asshole plutocrat genius with a heart. That delta is the story of the hero. And here you have a convergence between the hero and the protagonist who is actually the artist writing and telling the story. So that is the synergy between lived experience, between the drama that the artist is enduring within their own life, that dynamic tension, up against the wall ignored, slandered, disrespected, broke, fucked up — the protagonist who is up against one existential challenge after the other so that when it flips from despair and death to transcendent success and immortality that Delta could not possibly be more satisfying. Boo fucking yah.
And I think whether you’re Anthony Bourdain or Pee Wee Herman you feel some of this, you live some of this. The bass player Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I saw a meme clip of him on the social medias recently. He was being interviewed by somebody and he was saying that artists work non-stop. You’re living it. You’re breathing it. You’re always honing your skills. You’re telling one story after another. You are it, and it is you. Then the interviewer said, well, you know, you’re a rock star and not all rock stars think about things the way you do. And he said, well, the good ones do — and Flee is right. You can fake it until you make it and you can keep faking it, but you could fake it until you make it and then you gotta keep fighting it, or it was never really real to begin with, was it?
The protagonist of the book I’m gonna publish soon, my second published book, the first in a science fiction series, is a degenerate con man hustler. He’s like a living meme star. with almost no value, but what makes him resonate and rocket and I think act as a foundation for a hero story exactly like this is that he’s got the spark. He’s Prometheus, and he doesn’t even know it. And with that energy is the indefatigable spirit of someone who is despite, to spite, and in spite his own worst tendencies and habits, a creative dynamo because he’s got an insatiable hunger for more, for experience, for overcoming and conquering his own demons as the walls are closing in.
That is beautiful. Or as we used to say in Chicago, it’s byooteeful.
I hope you could relate to some of this rant in your own life. It doesn’t matter what you do, you’re a lawyer, you’re a doctor, you’re an accountant, you’re in marketing, you’re in advertising, you work in a factory, you’re a stay home mom, you’re a Bitcoin millionaire who bought at the right time, and held onto it long enough to roll around in your own shit, whomever you are, homeless and downtrodden or the king of your own castle, we can all relate to this struggle:
Within our hearts is this deep human need for purpose — a purpose fed by crisis and limitation, anxiety and the feeling of betrayal. Things have been taken away from us, and we need to recreate whatever we lost for ourselves, and then share it back with the world, if for no other reason than to perhaps be heard and remembered.
Thanks for reading and listening! More to come, especially as I’m in the homestretch of this next novel, which I’m sure to bloviate about and which I take so much pride in doing. I don’t even want to finish because it’s so fucking hard to do it, and at the same time so thrilling and satisfying.
#staytuned
