These are just some rough thoughts on the addiction side to the game… I’ll hopefully be updating this in a timely fashion...
Many get into graffiti at a time of their life when they aren't fully "matured" yet, you know teenage issues... hate the world, hate your environment, self whatever. You might be very insecure about yourself, not sure "who you are". You may feel isolated, lonely, weak... (When you are getting up you sure as hell don't feel that way, at least I don't. You feel like you have control over the whole fucking world for however long it takes for you to catch that tag or do a throwup. It's like "BAM" what you gonna do!??!) So when you start writing, all those things sort of dissappear, at least when you do it. It's like "man there I am!! That's my shit!!! Fuck you world!!!" it gives you sort of an answer to your cries in the dark. You ARE somebody, cuz there's your ill shit on the wall. And the RUSH! Shit, am I gonna get caught?? Is a cop gonna roll up? Are there undercovers hiding somewhere? Camera I didn't scope out??? Is a crazy hero gonna get all in your face?? All the things going through your head. The sounds of the cans, the smell of that fresh wet rusto... All these little sensory things add to the adrenaline, hell this may even be an addicition in and of itself-before you never experienced a 'rush' so intense and real as this... no sex, drug, sport can really give it to you(or so i've heard. I sure as hell haven't experiened anything quite like bombing)so hell maybe it isn’t entirely out of the question that you can get addicted to just the ‘rush’ or ‘high’.
The “rush” aspect in and of itself is what does many writers in for good. Before it, they had shit… just some bored kid floating through high school… floating through their dead end job at 7-11… All of a sudden there’s this primal thing you’re given-bombing is a lot like predator/prey, with the writer being the predator.(or are they?) And, bombing is a lot like a dog marking their territory, because that’s what you’re doing. Marking something and saying “this is mine, this is me, I was here”. So I think graffiti plays on a lot of these natural human instincts and triggers and what have you.
In my experience, graffiti was this untimate thing that gave me an escape from basically all the shit in my life. Insecurity? Gone-you’re a vandal who “doesn’t give a fuck” now! Ego? Huge. Graffiti is a huge ego-trip no matter how you dress up the art or craft of it… it’s all about YOU. YOUR name, and people seeing it. You putting it wherever you want. And you get off on people seeing it, dealing with it.
Even after having some runins with the law, and I tell myself “this is it. I’m done. Can’t keep worrying about cops etc” I still continue to look at walls and think of how I would take the spot, where I would place a tag… Whenever I have some writing utensil handy it’s basically second nature to start writing all over it, messing around with styles until it just becomes a bunch of scribble. This leads me to think that this shit seriously does become a part of you, when you are ‘active’ and when you ‘stop’. When you are active even more so… it sort of dictated my whole outlook on a lot of things and even simple stuff like how I would speak and simple mannerisms. No matter what I seem to tell my mind, it doesn’t fucking go away.
Many writers have said things a long the lines of graff being a game, a sport. This is true-it is a game, but nobody wins(not to sound like some mid 90s anti weed ad or some shit), but really no matter how hard you bomb, you will only be on top for so long, and even then who are you on top of? Other miserable people like yourself? Believe it or not, the average joe doesn’t give a shit! You may think having a whole neighborhood covered is a good strategic way to constantly be in the face of joe public, but to what end? So they can say “they gotta take care of that graffiti shit here… I see that tagger DICKERONER all over…”or some yuppie art student takes a pic of your shit because they think it’s rad and edgy and they post it on their livejournal.
back to the point though… It’s a one way street. The addiction tricks your mind into thinking those problems are suddenly remedied when you do it, (but you are totally aware they aren’t) because your mind becomes so addicted to it, it will trick itself into believing otherwise so it can still get its fix! Kinda how drug addicts will lie and steal from close family and friends, just to get a quick fix or whatever. It prevents you from really dealing with your problems like a mature adult. Because most writers get addicted when they are young, or at least emotionally and mentally immature-the addiction sort of freezes the state they are in when they start. And I dunno about you, but the vast majority of writers aren’t exactly the happiest people. Why would you waste your time, writing bullshit on walls if everything in your life was A-O-K? Your got problems and graff is a way to deal with them, right? Ok… so maybe it isn’t the WORST thing-but it’s still illegal. And it’s not like weed where you can be like “LEGALIZE IT”, anybody with a brain would realize the implications of ‘legal graffiti’ and it simply would not work, would not fit in with our society.
Realize this… a lot of your masters(cops) could give a fuck about some paint on a wall… of course there are plently of exceptions. Unless they are apart of your cities vandal squad though, writers aren’t exactly at the top of their list of “to catch”. Vandal Squads are another story… And to me, the resources used for these operations obviously would suit the greater good of the planet in some other way. Murderers, rapists, etc. Writers have been saying this for years too, obviously.
Graffiti didn’t really exist before the 70s and 80s, (ok, it did obviously people carved BOB + JENNIFER into trees and that sort of trite shit) in the way the ‘culture’ exists today, with it being all about your name and these fairly specific ways to do it tags/throws/pieces etc… People started feeling isolated more-especially in the bigger cities, obviously. The economic side of things was a huge factor, but not the deal breaker. There were still “Kids of privilege” who wrote, and even played key roles in the movement. Which confirms the fact that it is largely a psychological “illness.”
So what I’m saying is… you should be aware of all these things… especially those of you inclined to basically dedicate your whole life to this.
OK this was retardedly sloppy… Like I said I’ll be cleaning this up a lot. Give me feedback.
