The story of Jeff, Bill, & Gary, who went into the hills, then came back, & told us about it

Well, Gary was probably just a liar.

Photo by Wilfried Santer on Unsplash

For most of human history, the world was very large and you couldn’t see it all. Not only that, but no one you knew had seen very much of it because you all lived in the same field. But one person from your field could go to a nearby field and chat with those people and come back and tell you about it. And someone from that field could go to the field beyond and come back and tell them about it and someone from that field could…so on and so on, and someone somewhere in some far-flung field would eventually say, “you know what? I’m going to go further. I’m going to leave the fields and go into the hills, where no one has ever been, and I’m going to observe shit and then come back and tell everyone about it, and I’m going to be the famous motherfucker who told everybody what is up in those hills.”

And they did. And it was good.

Most of these brave souls died alone in those hills, but some of them didn’t, and they would come back and tell everyone about what they saw. Some of these survivors were better at this job than others. For instance, some guy would come back and be like, “I saw a tree, and it went high toward the moon!” And people would ask, “How high?” And the guy would struggle and say, “i don’t know, like really high.” “Did it get to the moon, Jeff?” And Jeff would say, “no.” And everyone would roll their eyes and talk shit about Jeff behind his back. But then some other guy would come back and be like, “Trees! They’re wild! Very tall! Reach toward the moon!” “Yeah, Jeff already told us about these stupid tres. But he couldn’t tell us how tall they were, so we chopped him up and ate him. Can you tell us how tall the trees are, Bill?” And Bill, he said, “OK, you know how tall I am? Thirty of me, standing toe to shoulder.” And people went, “damn! That’s an image I can understand!” And Bill was a rock star. Women wanted him, and men wanted to be him. But tales of Bill’s discoveries were less impressive in the other fields where people didn’t know Bill and didn’t know how tall he was. So eventually, a request came through the fields that objective units of measurement be invented and used in further explorations.

Then Bill would go off into the hills and come back and say, “I saw a duck!” “What’s a duck?” “Well, I knew you’d ask that, so I can tell you that it’s a bit like a chicken but thinner, it’s this many inches wide and this many inches tall, and it has hard lips that extend beyond its mouth, and it spends a lot of time floating on the water, but not all of its time. It has feet.”

“Wow, Bill, this is big, Bigger than the trees.”

“Oh, you have no idea! I haven’t even told you about the quacking.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s what it sounds like. It talks but not like us. It makes a sound that sounds like a quack. Quack quack quack.”

Now people thought Bill was full of shit. Bill was high on his own supply.

“Bill, have you even been going into the hills? Is any of this true? Are you a liar? You know what we do to liars, Bill.”

Bill knew exactly what they did to liars, as Gary’s partially masticated carcass was still rotting in the sun. (Gary had come back from his own alleged adventure the week prior, telling tales of a tree so tall that it did go to the moon and that he climbed it and visited the moon, and the moon could talk and it said very nice things to Gary and told Gary to tell everyone in the fields that they should be Gary’s slaves.)

Gary thought people were gullible fools, and he paid the price.

“Look, Gary was a bad guy. I’m no Gary. I’ll prove it to you.”

So Bill went off into the hills once more and eventually came down with a duck.

“See? Just like a said!” And it was true. Quack quack.

And the duck was a rock star. Women wanted him, and the men wanted to be him. Bill didn’t like this, and, eventually, he murdered the duck, and that’s how jealousy was invented. But that’s a story for another time.

The point is, this is how it worked for thousands of years. There were many Jeffs, many Carls, many Bills, a couple of Garys, a few Todds, and one or two Kieths (the less said about them, the better).

You’d go off—well, not you; you’re a coward, but someone would go off into the unknown and observe things and then come back and tell people about it. They tried to bring ducks back if they could, but they couldn’t really bring back waterfalls, so a lot of it was just the honor system.

Eventually, everything in the observable world was cataloged and disseminated, and modernity began, and this job became much rarer and harder. You could be the first person to climb Everest, and, fine, well done. And you could go in search of El Dorado, and if you made it out of the Amazon alive, sure, nice try, glad you lived, but you didn’t find it, so fuck off.

By the time we got to the mid-20^th century, space is the only game in town. If you make it into the space program, that’s a ticker tape parade, but that’s a pretty hard gig to get.

Today, nobody gives one shit what Bill saw on his fun little hike. Bill needs to get a job and contribute to this economy in a meaningful way.

If Bill can’t do that, if he can’t make shoes or sell whistles, if he is totally wedded to this idiotic idea of making a life observing things, then he needs to put mustard on that hot dog. Bill needs to take his little notebook of ducks and trees and order those observations in a way that makes you think. Or makes you laugh! Or makes you cry! Or reminds you of your own humanity, or something. Point is: Bill is now working in the arts.

Competitive field, art. You want to make yourself stand out in this attention economy, you need to be creative, or you need to exercise editorial judgment, or you need to analyze real good, or alternatively, you need to analyze real bad; so bad that it’s a creative act in and of itself. Because the main thing you’re selling is a distraction from the in-between moments.

There are moments in life that are big and important and good, and there are moments in life that are big and important and bad, and then there are moments that are in between those moments, and those in-between moments are most of the moments, and you can suffer them alone, or you can suffer them with YouTube and, friend, they go down easier with YouTube. Or Spotify. Or a library card. Or Paramount+. Or Substack.

There aint nothing disreputable about this. Bill is an entertainer. He’s a whore who helps you get through the night. And that is fine and good and godbless. But no one is going to pay for no whore who just describes trees and ducks objectively.

I’ve seen ducks. I’ve seen trees. I’m not an idiot. Fuck off. Fuck you. Go home and play with your kids.

They will pay, however, for a whore who tells you that a duck is better than a horse. Every duck is better than any horse. Sounds ridiculous? The equine is a majestic creature that has worked in partnership with humankind for thousands of years! How could a duck be better than that? Let me tell you how. Actually, between you and me, I don’t tell the rubes this, but if you get close and let me whisper in your ear, I’ll tell you a secret: there is one horse that is better than any duck. It’s a special horse. Riding it is like flying. It will make you feel young again. You wouldn’t know about this horse. But I could tell you about it. I might, for a price.

Ducks and horses not your thing? Can I bend your ear for a minute about trees? They’re the solution to all of life’s problems. Too much? They’re actually the cause of most of life’s problems. Nothing? Fine. You’re clearly a sophisticated person, and I’m sorry for bringing the dogshit I sling to the mouth-breathers who usually walk by. Trees are just trees. The fact is, people’s appetite for nonsense about trees is a real problem for the world. Your impressive immunity to tree bullshit is, interestingly, an opportunity for me to offer you some meta bullshit of a different type.

Now, look around you. Take in all of your surroundings; the sights, the sounds, the smells, and perhaps most importantly, the sensation of being alive and present at this moment with me, here and now; observe it all and commit those observations to memory.

Because when you go back down the hill and into the field and tell everyone about how you discovered a sexless whorehouse called opinion journalism, they’re going to want some measurements.

¹

Or better yet, share this post the way Bill did that duck!

1. This kicker makes no sense since, obviously, everyone in the world knows that opinion journalism is like this, and it’s not a contrarian take at all lol. The inanity of this ending betrays the actual reality that this entire post was originally supposed to be the lede into an entirely different post—if I told you what I was intending to write about when I opened my laptop this afternoon, you wouldn’t believe me—but things got out of hand, and I just wanted to wrap it up and send it into the killing fields.

I also sort of slipped into a Southern accent toward the end. Hard to explain that one. Happy Saturday.