The Paradox of Pirate Retirement

There’s this essay by Dave Hickey entitled Farmers and Pirates. In it Hickey argues all of the human race can be divided into two groups, pirates or farmers. Both equally important but compelled by different forces, Farmers build fences and control territory. Pirates tear down fences and cross borders. There are good pirates and bad pirates, good farmers and bad farmers. They are very different kinds of creatures, and some pirates even recognize the importance of farmers…Farmers, on the other hand, always hate pirates. Reductive, sure, but the simplicity is appreciated when you’re trying to define the internal weather of a stupid human existence. The simplicity of his point also only strengthens his argument over time. It’s not a judgment, it’s just a fact, those are the groups.  As Hickey goes onto say, there are also farmers who struggle immensely because they don’t know they’re pirates (so imagine the internal strife) and …you should know who you are before you turn forty-five, buy an assault rifle and wipe out a nursing college.

Anyway what was the point?

Maybe it’s a new version of Starseeds , Pirates in drag. I just really know that I feel that unconscious joy, that stupid child’s smile, when I’m free and it’s an adventure. Happiness to me is rooted in a feeling of freedom, a rush and a push and the land is ours. This seems to coincide with that understanding he’s speaking of, nosce te ipsum. Know thyself. There’s a primal happiness that’s in you beneath the layers of trauma and conditioning. There’s that type of joy that grows with character, it’s formulaic, it’s a style and belongs to the culture, upbringing, and experiences of a time and place and then there’s just laughing the way cavemen did.

In my case that need for freedom whether physical or existential, is the headwaters from which a solid happiness flows. It is one of the defining characteristics in how we engage the world and our own lives. On the whole I would say there are many more people who don’t have the two so intermingled (freedom as a condition for happiness) the farmers Hickey speaks of. Their plans are realistic, reasonable. Their work is steady, cyclical, predictable. Remember “Farmers” like “Pirates” aren’t the literal interpretations just the archetypes and looking at it like that you can see what he mean. I’m partial to the pirate idea because it makes my decisions (good or bad) make more sense to me. It helps me stop over personalizing it all. Yet if everyone was a pirate we’d be a fucking mess. It’s reasonable to assume that society wouldn’t function at all if we all felt this way.

But if you do, you’re out of luck, married to the sea. The joy is in the motion, the risk and the experience. It’s what still has me carrying a skateboard on flights or in the front seat of my car (I like to touch the wheels on long drives). If what you’re chasing didn’t run to the roots of real joy you wouldn’t chase it. You’d walk away, many do, but some of us are stuck for life. Over time the scope of the things that inspire these feelings change, (“As you get older, the ground get’s colder”) but the desire to pursue them doesn’t go away.  It can be isolating, embarrassing at times if you let it. The grasshopper at the ants’ dinner party.

I remember being at my kid’s little league games and sometimes envying the dads who just seem to keep it simple. Buy a house, drive a truck, tend the lawn and talk a lot about nothing. No apparent existential crises and “joy” (contentment) springs from only socially acceptable activities and massive amounts of food and alcohol (this was the suburbs). Then again, after seeing how easily a number of these dads became radicalized the past four years, I’ll admit I might’ve misread the room. 

The real strength is not even envying those types, never questioning the love that make you feel every inch of your waning mortality. Learning to embrace what keeps you moving forward rather than over the edge. It’s all built into skateboarding culture too. The tribalism, the risk, adventure, freedom and lawlessness. It’s a very Neverland-esque (the “second star to the right” type not the sexual abuse type) existence but if it didn’t touch those roots of real joy you’d walk away. Many do, but some of us are stuck for life.

A few weeks ago before all this snow I saw a short snippet of video, Gino on a dead end street littered with DIY obstacles. I’d never seen this place before but it was clear the Manhattan skyline was in the distance, over the water and a under the overpass. I studied the footage till I could pick out enough recognizable landmarks. Then used Google Maps to locate potential bridges, narrow those down and Google Street View to finally confirm. 45 mins after seeing the video I was driving along the banks of East River. Into the lair of corrugated steel warehouses, sprawling cemeteries and beneath the tinker-toy lattice work of the overpass. Going to find it. I guess this is a part of what I mean by Pirates, not only still doing this type of shit but, doing this type of shit being still such a source of inspiration. Being vital.

There’s just an inherent spirit to a DIY spot. It’s magical realism sneaking into the borders of the sad, boring world and most don’t even notice it. Skateboarding is a sacred activity and it arose in the streets; that’s where its basic nature lies. Skaters explore all areas of a city in a way few others care to. Borders, boogie men, crime, cops, wars and foreign policies have all failed to stop them from going to places they want to go. They interact with the people (sometimes for better or for worse) in real time. Engaging the ignored, the abandoned and the overlooked both structurally and inter-personally, more than anyone else. In the 21st century these are really radical concepts.

DIY spots are a further manifestation of these feeling, that you are a part of your environment and can shape it, intentionally or unintentionally. People taking responsibility for a forgotten area of their community and creating a space for themselves through their own risk and effort. Rebar, concrete and the visible remains of the learning curve. Policing their own spaces and creating an alternative to the organized or destructive activities. DIY hideouts that exist in that grayish, duty free area, where you hope that city officials or the law, will turn a blind eye. But even if they did it wouldn’t stop anything. Pirates don’t worry about paperwork, permission or the penalties. They raid and they plunder, then move on.

Like Hickey writes about, there’s just an inability to not be like this. To not be drawn to trespass, ride a wooden toy, bushwhack deep into the woods, search out the wild and haunted places. It’s a control mechanism, like the black chord on jumper cables, it grounds all that electrical storm that’s constantly dancing inside. It’s a corner I’m painted in to and a lot of life these days is just learning to accept that and move on. You better because farmers hate pirates, especially aging ones. I can assure you there are people in my life who genuinely hate me for these impulses and these interests. I can link you to their Facebook accounts.

And in my defense, I tried for at least a decade to exist as a “farmer” and when it inevitably all came crashing down, one of my biggest takeaways was that I do not want to ever give that much of a fuck about the opinions and control games of other people again.

I just can’t walk into a crowded room and hand out personalized invitations for everyone in attendance to lay some claim over determining what about my interests and behaviors are acceptable or not. I can’t care anymore because it won’t change anything. As Hickey expounds, Never forget that one of the chief causes of personal unhappiness in the US of A, where farmer culture is almost hegemonic, is the denial of pirate identity, because farmers always know who’s a pirate. Pirates don’t always know who they are…Embrace your moment of self-awareness and get on with life. You are not the only pirate in the world, and remember this; pirates are born not made.

Please, let me die cold and alone in a remote cave somewhere in the wilds before I ever pull those clothes on again. Though to be honest, dying in a remote cave deep in the wilderness is kind of my aspiration anyway. Which is good because not only is acceptance never coming but neither is retirement. Hickey again, Herein resides the paradox of pirate retirement. You can’t do it Piracy is a genetic proclivity. You strap on your peg leg, don your eye patch, take a swig of rum and die at the helm or by the blade, or you end up destitute in Port Royale, sitting on the dock of the bay.

There’s been too much struggle and not enough moments of simple, stupid joy. Instead, let me comb the earths surface via Google Earth; slip into the waters of its streets via google Street View; navigate the labyrinths of waning empires via Google Maps. Let me sit on the sidewalk with my back against a chain-link fence, by the cloudy waters of the East River in the cold air of a January afternoon and eat a grilled cheese and tomato from the local bodega while watching the skaters wear down the hard edges of the illegal structures they created. In the streets that the world ignores.

Across from a ramshackle wall marked and tagged, like the outlaw flags of old. Fresh spray paint still wet and shimmering on a slab of corrugated steel: “Try”.