If I Were a Muppet

This blog documents the lives I might have lived, had I been made of felt and confidence.

New identities added regularly.

— IF I WERE A MUPPET

I want to be comfortable in my own felt.

So maybe a challenge, as well as an opportunity to make a bit of cash.

Life drawing, they call it.

Which sounds dignified until you realise you’re lying naked under a lamp while seven strangers try to capture your existential slump in charcoal.

No photos. No giggling.

A noble rule, and yet somehow the giggling feels built into the furniture.

Still, there is courage in being observed.

Especially when the vase has more natural confidence than you do.

Artist. Everyone wants to be an artist.

But no one tells you how much of it is just standing around in the cold, begging strangers to acknowledge your little catastrophe.

You paint your face, suffer publicly, and call it a practice.

The city walks past with briefcases, hangovers, and better things to do.

Some whisper. Some pity. Some pretend not to see you at all.

Which is, of course, the highest form of critical response.

Still, one must create.

Even if the masterpiece is only a man in gloves slowly disappearing into his own hat.

A career is really just something to do all day.

I'd love to find something. It doesn't even have to be meaningful.

The same thing, day after day.

Stamp forms. Guard a gate. Count boxes. Watch a blinking light and write a report about it.

Nothing glamorous.

Just enough routine to stop me wondering what I ought to be doing instead.

The trouble is, every time I imagine a perfectly ordinary job,

I somehow end up standing in front of a wall, wearing the wrong uniform, in the wrong century,

wondering if lunch is still at noon.

O, let the Gods of Time allow me to go back in order to become a Greek philosopher.

Not one of the famous ones.

Not the fellow with a statue, a school, and a bust in every university library.

No, I'd be the man standing slightly off to the side, asking inconvenient questions until somebody handed me poison just to get some peace and quiet.

I'd spend my days arguing in the marketplace, pointing at clouds, and explaining why nobody actually knows anything.

Which, to be fair, would make me indistinguishable from a modern man on the internet.

I've always dreamt of the seven seas, and there's nothing more soothing than watching the waves.

Imagine joining the crew of a ship sailing towards unknown shores.

With my luck, I'd find myself part of a crew on some awful colonial mission, enjoying the view on my way to a genocidal misunderstanding.

History books would later describe it as "a complex encounter between cultures."

Meanwhile I'd be standing at the rail, thinking:

"Are we the villains?"

And nobody would answer, because the captain would be too busy naming a bay after himself.

Oh, imagine being

a working-class nobody

in some distant age,

when poverty

and lung disease

could still be viewed

with romanticism.

A Charles Dickens

sort of wretched life,

yet somehow

to be lived with pride.

Soot in the lungs,

filth in the fingernails,

and just enough misery

to make future generations

call it character.

The rich would pity you,

the novelists would adore you,

and everyone would agree

you had a certain grimy charm

right up until

you coughed yourself

into an early grave.

Still,

there’s something to be said

for a life so appalling

it eventually becomes

picturesque.

It would be nice

to work with people

sans the dreadful

everyday conversations.

No small talk.

No weekend plans.

No one asking

whether I’ve seen

the latest prestige drama.

Just a quiet room,

a clipboard,

and clients

who have finally learned

the value of stillness.

I’d be respectful,

of course.

But perhaps

slightly too pleased

about the working conditions.

There's always a life of crime.

Of course, it's probably not like in the movies.

An emotional Scorsese-directed voice-over accompanied by an early Rolling Stones song.

No slow-motion walk through Little Italy. No dramatic meeting in the back room of a social club.

Mostly paperwork, I'd imagine.

Tax forms. Parking tickets. Trying to remember which cousin isn't speaking to which cousin.

And every time somebody says,

"Forget about it."

they actually mean:

"Please remember this forever."

No, if I were a Muppet gangster,

I'd probably spend less time running the family business

and more time worrying whether the family business was disappointed in me.

Which is not exactly the stuff of legend.

But then again,

neither is witness protection.

And as far as hobbies go, I know one thing: vegetarians shouldn't hunt.

But there must be something I could do.

Birdwatching, perhaps.

Though every time I identify one, it turns out to be a plastic bag caught in a tree.

Woodworking seems dangerous. Gardening requires optimism.

Stamp collecting is really just paperwork with better publicity.

No, if I were a Muppet, I'd probably become a trophy hunter.

Not of animals.

Of awkward moments.

Which would explain why my own head is already on the wall.

Politics?

But there aren't really any personalities anymore. No big ideas. No ideals.

No grand visions of the future.

Just consultants explaining to other consultants why nothing can be done.

If I were a Muppet, I'd demand a summit.

Get the great powers together. Lock the doors. Remove the microphones.

Then spend three days arguing about where to order lunch.

History would record it as a modest improvement.

I'd like to do something to make the world a safer place.

But God only knows what sort of position they would give me.

Crossing guard, perhaps.

Or standing beside a large red button with a sign that reads:

"In case of emergency, ask someone else."

Maybe I'd end up testing seatbelts, crash barriers, and other people's patience.

A cautionary tale in a reflective vest.

I always wanted to be an artist,

but with my luck, I'd probably end up posing for some avant-garde genius early in his career,

so he could make all his mistakes without anyone noticing.

Years later, critics would call it a groundbreaking exploration of alienation, identity, and fractured modernity.

I'd still be standing there, wondering why my nose ended up triangular.

It's a bit like wanting to be Kafka and waking up a bug.

If I were a Muppet and got the chance to direct, I'd reinvent some dusty old genre.

A western, perhaps.

Not the usual sort. No heroic gunslingers. No clean-shaven sheriffs lecturing the townsfolk about justice.

No, mine would be about failure, bad timing, and people carrying far too much history across far too much desert.

The outlaws would quote philosophy. The horses would have union representation. And somewhere in the background, a tumbleweed would be quietly considering its place in the universe.

Critics would call it "uncommercial." Audiences would call it confusing.

I'd call it a masterpiece.

I wish I could turn my great fascination with space into a career.

If I were a Muppet, I'd be a full professor at some prestigious university.

The sort of fellow who accidentally misses lunch because he's busy explaining why photons experience no time and why that fact keeps him awake at night.

Students would arrive expecting equations.

They'd leave with equations, certainly.

But also with a growing suspicion that the universe is far stranger than any of us are equipped to handle.

I'd spend my days wandering between blackboards, drawing light cones and galaxies, trying to convince bewildered undergraduates

that we are all standing on a small wet rock, hurtling through darkness at absurd speed,

and that this is, somehow,

excellent news.

Why not join the armed forces? Fight for your beliefs, freedom, and all that jazz.

I’d be heroic like you couldn’t believe.

The sort of soldier they make recruitment commercials about. Walking slowly through smoke while orchestral music swells and somebody whispers about sacrifice.

But the truth of the matter is, I wouldn’t be afraid to die for all the wrong reasons.

Not patriotism. Not glory. Not even courage, really.

More likely some exhausted need to finally become useful for fifteen catastrophic minutes.

To disappear into history so completely that nobody could ask me afterwards whether I’d managed to make something of myself.

And that’s the dangerous thing.

Some people go to war because they love their country.

Others go because they’ve spent years quietly negotiating with themselves about whether they belong anywhere at all.

One would like to join a comedy troupe. But who’s funny these days!?

No, if I were a muppet I’d join the truly mad geniuses.

The ones smoking cigars through economic collapse, insulting dictators, seducing widows, gambling away the theatre budget, and escaping through the kitchen window before the police arrive.

Not comedians. Anarchists in evening wear.

Men who treated civilization like a hotel lobby that had clearly been overbooked.

And there I’d be, the obscure Scandinavian addition, standing slightly off to the side trying desperately to keep up with the velocity of American chaos.

A fifth Marx Brother nobody remembers.

The one who wandered into scenes looking vaguely intellectual, deeply tired, and accidentally set fire to the orchestra pit.