“I’ve lived here maybe two years. I moved out to Chicago about three years ago. I’m from New York, originally.”
What brought you to Chicago from New York?
“Someone I was dating at the time. We originally moved to the Gold Coast [neighborhood].”
Now that that relationship has ended, why Rogers Park?
“It was just a nice neighborhood. I wasn’t sure—a few people said some sketchy things about the area before I moved, but once I saw the place I’m living, I thought ‘Alright, whatever. I’m done with Brooklyn. It can’t be any worse.’ Brooklyn is an amazing place, but it’s a huge place so you never know what you’re going to get. If I can see what I can get and I don’t like it, I can just walk away.”
Rogers Park is often compared to Brooklyn in terms of diversity. Having lived both places, can you see any correlations or similarities?
“Not so much, but with what I’ve experienced, [Rogers Park] is a lot more suburban than even urban or even city. I like that about it. More shrubbery, more space. While it’s very young and festive and has a lot going on, it’s still enough space that I can be alone and with people—at the same exact time.”
Would you say that you’re a man of opposites, and are there other examples of that?
“I guess so. I’m demure on a day-to-day basis, but if there’s a party or something kinda crazy going on: whatever happens, happens. You only live once.”
Do you have a secret talent? Perhaps something that those in your demure day-to-day life don’t know about, but that others do?
“I’m not sure. I used to do impersonations. I kinda like making fun of things. I figure what’s better than imitating people, as both a way to flatter and humor at the same time? I used to do Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Is working in customer service something you’ve always done?
“I kinda fell into it while [being in Chicago]. I came here with the intention of going back [to New York]. I didn’t really come here to follow any job that would have me laying roots. Customer service is essentially the same as freelancing.”
When you were younger, what did you want to do when you grew up?
“A scientist. Biologist, chemist—things of that nature. I really like National Geographic, Discovery Channel…always trying to figure out what more humanity will add to the pool. I was always fascinated by that stuff.”
What’s the last thing that you learned?
“Recently, I’ve been on this weird sociology kick. I’ve been reading up on [Intelligence Quotient]; varying forms of research that has been done. My new consensus with I.Q. is that it isn’t racially tinged…if you live over here or if you’re this shade, your I.Q. will be in this range. It has to do more with your health, your general sense of well-being, how your society operates overall, and the relative ease you have to accomplish your general wants and needs.”
So that would be a ‘nurture over nature’ position, but you often hear of wunderkind exceptions who overcome the obstacles and are held up as inspiration. Based on your interests and reading, what’s the percentages on nurture versus nature as it relates to I.Q.?
“I would say to optimize nature before birth; you automatically create a new nature, where they’re static would be higher. But you’ve still got nurture to play a part…giving [infants] natural milk—[that’s] health and well being. Nature-wise, I think a lot of us hover around the 105 [I.Q.] range. Depends on whether you get encyclopedias or sticks as a kid. Depends on the balance.”
If there was a formula to a higher intelligence, don’t you think everyone would be clamoring to optimize it?
“There might very well be a formula, but because everyone thinks its a static base, based on a stereotype—your gender or your race, or whatever—it’s not being applied. If you look at Asians, they have a very specific diet, they have a very specific adherence to their culture, and they have a very specific family structure; and they’re ranked as one of the highest I.Q.s in the world. People of Jewish descent operate under the same belt. Close-knit families, very low variance in terms of health and well-being; a pretty static trajectory for life. It’s under every other belt that you may get a [widely] varying range, depending what’s going on in their country or their [part of the] world or whatever the case may be. Specifically, the two groups that are marked as the highest, have the least variables going on in their lives. If we were to look at it, you’d probably find exactly what you needed to make sure that everyone had a certain I.Q. level.”
For the sake of argument–
“Sure!”
Let’s say that those variables that are static, and perhaps enabling, could be interpreted as ‘boring.’ Which would you rather have for you personally; boring variables and a higher I.Q., or a life that’s less boring and more dynamic with greater variance, resulting in a lower I.Q.?
“I guess, more so—the varied.”
“I.Q. is a misnomer. All it is, is the ability to process things at a quicker rate with the best absolution using crazy variables. It’s really just speed thinking. People tend to be logical, but it always works in direct relation to where your balance in life is. If there is little balance, you’re going to see other things that aren’t related to the balance as potential problems. Your brain is going to work toward fixing them—further skewing you away from what would be considered normal. Because you’re already out of balance…you’re over-thinking [to compensate]. I imagine that’s the mental trajectory of all your best dictators.”
Do you have a credo or motto that you live by?
“Uh, I guess…everyone deserves the right to be happy, and just enjoy whatever days you have and make the most of it.”
If you could have an evening to converse and exchange ideas with two people, living or dead, who would it be?
“For one, Joseph Campbell. I’d love to pick his brain—to see what led him down his path—and just to bounce ideas off of his ideas of myths and stories and stuff. And I guess potentially, Hugh Hefner. Like, a younger Hugh Hefner. There’s so many areas of balance in life. While I can focus completely on thought and such, our minds force us into the sexual realm very early on. Everything goes into that weird flip, back-and-forth from there: if you don’t have enough sex, you can’t think. If you think too much, we might not be able to get sex again. I’d think there’s something to be said for the extreme, and I definitely have to emphasize the extreme abundance of Hugh Hefner’s life in terms of women and the celebrity that it brought, and the whole empire that he essentially created from that. I’d like to get a general view of what he sees the world as.”
What are you most proud of?
“That weird time that I ended up saving someone’s life? I was sixteen and extremely reckless. A guy was being attacked by another person in the middle of the day in a heavily populated area. This person was stomping on his head—on metal grates—so blood was coming out and all that good stuff. I saw it and [my] trigger reaction was to just throw myself in the fray. I just ran in there. The guy saw me, and for whatever reason—I don’t know why—seeing this sixteen year-old kid run at him caused him to stop what he was doing and he ran the other way. This guy was bleeding…luckily he was near this barbershop…took him upstairs, got some bandages to patch up his head while we called the cops. He was too disoriented to really talk. Sometimes I think…what if [the attacker] had acted the opposite way? Would I really have had any strength to back up this impulse move?”
You had an impact on that man’s life. Tell me about a time, place, or person who impacted you, making you who you are.
“One person in particular was one of my first bosses—back in New York. A really cool guy. He had a son that was a few years younger than me so he had the whole mentor thing going on. Being around him helped me when I wasn’t feeling as strong a connection with my own father. We played chess together and all that stuff. Mentally, it was nice to see someone I could relate to and I could always bounce ideas off of.”
It sounds like he was someone who was just there when you needed someone to be.
“Exactly. No powerful message.”
What do you aspire to?
“To be less of a vagrant. Not in terms of criminal activity or anything like that. I guess nomad would be a better term. In relation to having a career established. I came [to Chicago] with the idea that I was going to do the whole get-married-have-children thing. That fell out. Now, it’s ‘how do I orient myself?’ Not so much back to that, but where do I put myself from there. I’m thinking the sciences again, but—eh, we’ll see what happens.”
“When it comes to…socializing and how that both frames your viewpoint of the world and how you think the world is framed, based on your viewpoint; I think everyone in America should really get a grasp that the world is vastly bigger than racial relations within our country. So many people outside America really do hope that Americans will kinda get it together, because it’s a beautiful country, beautiful people. Amazing things can be gotten from within this country, but to see so many forms of communication—from media to [special interests] being used to try to tear Americans apart, it’s very much not the basis of how the country seems to have been formed.”