There is a narrative formula in journalism that consistently gives us bullshit cuteisms like « Marius Ways is always afraid ». It has more to do with « selling the story » by transforming daily practice into pseudo-myth. These are nothing but the same tautological tropes that have been repeated over and over for decades. I say pseudo because they only need to build you up into a myth for the length of the story itself. Tomorrow the same journalist will be writing about a banker, insolent youths, or the latest Internet fad. They’ll also have some insignificant comment, mole or stutter blown up into the major story « hook » for them, too.

I once gave a press conference in Pakistan that led to this hillarious headline : « An Artist’s Advice for the New Economy ». I love that one. Now I’m a frikkin’ economist! Oh, and they also said I live in « Aix-en-Provence, Paris, France » (I guess that’s supposed to be a suburb of Paris?). Damn journalists…

The frightening aspect of this trope is the feel-good impression of objectivity that it gives to the journalists themselves. The more you complain about journalists exaggerating the truth, the more they think they’ve nailed you precisely in your Achilles Heel.

Journalists are, in the most banal sense of the term, everyone’s enemy. They’re like pesky gnats that are useful onto to the exent that they keep living things from growing too big. Their goals are diametrically opposed to their subject, and that’s by design. Luckily neither you nor I are really in any position to be damaged by any of these silly games.

I suspect that, to the journalist, your work must be some sort of spectacular hocus-pocus — feeding off of the same Matrix-tinged awe and fear that many people have for contemporary machines. Hence the need to re-inject you into some recognizable humanist framework (man fears power of machine).

P.S. You should acutally make yourself a T-Shirt with his phrase, signed « Marius Wats is always afraid. — Konrad Lischka ».