Burn Out

[Actual email exchange b/w Drew and Prof]

Dear [Professor],
I'm in class just now, and I'm the only one. I've been here for about 15 minutes. I've triple checked the syllabus and don't see anything about meeting someplace else. I haven't missed a class but don't remember you saying anything about class being canceled or being moved to another room.
I'm in [Building X, Room Y]. Is that right? Am I missing something?
I'm going to wait another 5 minutes or so and then leave if  no one else shows. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. Please get back to me as soon as you can.
Regards,
Drew

Hi Drew,
Our class does not meet today.
[Professor].

Day 39?: This must be what it feel like to be disco; historically relevant and necessary, yet relegated to the unforgiving nether realm where culture saves all it loves to hate. We know it's there but we don't care to attend to it. We watch it wane and rot like that's it's point, like that's what it was made for, a parchment left yellowing in the sun embellished with instructions written in a language we've long forgotten how to read. It's old and faded and, therefore, forgivable. It's battered by design. It's a bicycle pump for a bike that was stolen from us. It's a pattern that's fallen out of use. It's a conversation piece who's story we've forgotten. We trade on the presumed intention of the thing. 

We'd tell us more but we'd only confuse us.

It is complex. It is interesting. It is expanding at all angles before our eyes, collapsing with a sigh and dissolving into a statue for everyone to smash. It is ugly and useless on purpose, ironically gauche and intentionally obtuse. It trades on its lack of function. That's what makes it so important. 

You wouldn't understand. 

We blink and sip our lattes, yawing that we've seen this all before, done better, probably in the 80's, probably by some French guy, bisexual, died ironically, requested that his body be made into low quality vegetable matter pressed into rectangles and sold as energy bars to middle class housewives. He was the hidden sub-divided backbeat your parents had sex to. He was elusive. He was bias-neutral. 

He was 100 % cage free.

We should be thanking him. We should be thanking me.

I am the object that once housed the objects you so desire, the creator's dusty storage bin, satan's cubby hole. There's nothing in me just now, but you imagine what might have been and wonder at its absence. 

It's my emptiness that makes me interesting. I am not trapped by content or definitions. I am capricious and whimsical and paralyzingly boring, a labyrinthine poem written in a secret language comprised entirely of middle fingers and mouth-farts. I am highly complex. I am expressed potential. I am a revelation.

You're curious because I matter.You wouldn't understand.

You return to your playthings, your soiled teenaged bodice, your filthy man-pants. The hem has come unstitched. Buttons are missing. It smells like Grandma's inappropriately white wedding gown but we still wrap ourselves in it when we drunk and feeling nostalgic. We summon the relics to prove we know they exist, which is the only reason we have not to use them. The dress was only white because it wasn't supposed to be. 

Concentrate. You're not getting it. 

I am pointing at footprints I have yet to make. It is high art. It is passé. It is instantaneous. It's hiding in plain sight. You've missed it. 

You would. 

Pay attention. It's right behind you. 

Everything is catching on fire, including the tinderbox. That is the point. That is its purpose. That is my purpose. 

Now, if you'll please excuse me...