To the Edge and Over
Tales from past the tipping point.
I don’t have time this week to write something Big, Noteworthy, Splash-Heavy, SEO-Friendly, Chart-Topping or Hook-And-Sinker-Worthy. (Let me be clear — that has never been the intention, nor has it ever been achieved.)
It can be a challenge to keep this going, especially when the non-existent fuel of “When’s the next issue of IMBOT coming out, bro?” fails to ignite the fire. Even if that were happening, it wouldn’t help. Because the fuel is the thing I’m chasing, not the … car?
Lately, I’ve been caught in something that feels like a Catch-22: I want to write this — do this, make that, see there — because I love doing it, but the more I love it, the worse I feel when I don’t make time for it, which makes it even harder to come back to. Obsession, in this case, has bent logic, defied reason and created friction where there should be joy.
I try not to lose sight. I’m chasing curiosity, sharpening my writing chops and sharing the process. That alone has taken me down some deeply satisfying rabbit holes. Sometimes I even find flow. When that happens, it hits better than any drug.
To actually do this — not just think it would be cool to do — feels like an achievement. The pessimist in me might call that loser talk. But in the flurry of living, it’s something, and something is better than nothing. (Goddamn it, you won’t believe this, but the loser in me just said, “You really sound like a loser now.” Smh.)
So in moments like this, I step back and remind myself that this matters. Saying it doesn’t diminishes the effort, and the effort is the whole point. But by the same token, it’s not rare or remarkable, but vanilla in the best way. It’s been done, in as many ways as there are people doing it. That’s reassuring. That this path can be one taken.
But even if it wasn’t — even if I was building a wizard staff to Mars or Benjamin Buttoning myself into fetal origins like that one de-aging billionaire — the point stands: We are capable of doing things.
When we dedicate ourselves to something — something that feels like an extension of us, something we can’t quite shake — we become relentless. Spellbound. Addicted. And the outcomes?
Greatness, sometimes. Other times, something far stranger, lonelier and harder to name.
So, a break, in a way, this week. To look at the lives of people who’ve obsessed all the way to the edge and, in some cases, toppled over. Not in mockery, but in curiosity — to understand what drives someone to follow a path only they can see. 🤖
He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable. (Washington Post)
“I firmly believe that by the time a person, man or woman, is 19, 20, 21, they know what they’re going to do with their life,” [Fritz] said. “And if you’re on that path and things are being done to your satisfaction, it’s easy to keep going to look for the next goal.”
…
In the 1980s, Fritz launched his project by blowing up the living room into a listening room, a 1,650-square-foot bump-out based on the same shoe box ratio, just under 2 to 1, that worked magic in concert halls from the Musikverein in Vienna to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The idea was that the acoustic waves would similarly roll off Fritz’s long, cement-filled walls and 17-foot-high, wood-paneled ceiling to bathe the listener in music.
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“Nobody wanted to come to our house, because he wanted to put them to work,” said his daughter Patty, 58. “I think we went camping twice, never took vacation. It was just work, work, work.”
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It was past 1 a.m. when Kurt, with a few drinks in him, told his father he was going to stay up later and listen to some more music. All the work he had put into building that stereo system — pouring concrete, painting the walls — now Kurt wanted to enjoy it.
But Fritz hit the off switch on the Krells. And Kurt delivered the words the two of them could never come back from.
“I need you to die slow, m-----f-----,” he told his father. “Die slow.”
…
It was February of 2022. Six years after he had finished his life’s project. Four years after he was told he only had so much longer to enjoy it.
Betsy, while helping him inventory his collection, had observed how her hard-charging dad had softened. He was able to share his regrets about his style of fathering. But he had no regrets about the hours, weeks and years that he had devoted to the world’s greatest stereo.
…
Kurt called and tried to talk to his father. Betsy urged him to take the call. Fritz refused. In the end, they never spoke. On April 21, 2022, Fritz died.
And then it fell to Betsy to try to fulfill her father’s last, greatest wish.
For a time, it looked like an old audiophile pal of her father’s would buy both the house and the system. But he and his wife changed their minds.
…
The total take for the million-dollar stereo system, including the speakers, the turntable, the dozens of other components from detached cones to the reel-to-reel decks? $156,800.
But perhaps that was always going to be its fate. Last summer, when pressed about the value of Ken Fritz’s life’s work, Staples had demurred.
The value, the auctioneer said, was whatever somebody else was willing to pay for it.
The BMW Addiction That Completely Destroyed This Man's Life
"Before we get to your car questions," my former next door neighbor, Terrance, said, "I need to tell you both something. My wife left me. My kids won't talk to me. I lost my job. I embezzled almost a half a million dollars because I'm addicted to BMWs, and have been hiding them all over the state. I'll probably be going to prison soon."
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He was also an avid fan of BMWs, particularly 2002s, the small coupes that helped establish the company's reputation for performance in the 1960s and '70s. He would often tell me how they were perfectly designed and engineered cars. He had a beautiful red one, a gold one, and a white one parked in his garage that he worked on frequently. His two kids had BMWs. Clearly, he knew at least something about German cars, so I figured maybe he could tell me if it would be easy to install a heater core.
I trotted over and knocked on his door. I remember that when he answered it, I immediately smelled alcohol, which struck me as a little strange. He asked me to give him a few minutes, and then he'd come over so we could talk.
About 10 minutes later, he knocked on the door. His face was flushed, and he didn't have his usual bright eyes and smile. I invited him in, and he sat down on the couch while my son played on the floor and my wife looked on.
And that's when he told us about his crime, about how he was going to lose his house and his family.
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"Nobody suspected this," Terrance said. "You talk about the white-picket fence. I lived a pretty responsible life. When my kids were growing up, I went to all their activities, was a scout leader for a lot of years, taught Sunday school for three-year-olds at church, and attended church every Sunday. So people look at the exterior and say, 'this guy's a pretty responsible person. He has this passion, or maybe it's an obsession, maybe it's a little out-of-bounds that he's spending all this time and effort on these cars. But he takes care of his other responsibilities. His family seems to be happy. He does a good job at work. He works hard as hell at work, he takes care of all his responsibilities there?'"
He added: "What's to suspect there's a problem?"
Terrance told me his wife knew about eight of the BMWs. In reality, he owned "exactly 50."
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"That car sat at a friend's house for the two and a half years I was in prison and at a halfway house. It was pristine when I put it away. But because it sat in a driveway, it's weathered. The paint is peeling on it. It's got door dings on it. It looks like it belongs in a junkyard."
But I remembered the station wagon from back when we were neighbors. Wasn't there something special about this station wagon, I asked him. Yes, he told me. "When it came out, it was the fastest station wagon in the world."
We went outside and took a look at the car, and I snapped a few pictures on my phone. It did not look like a car that belonged in a junkyard.
We stood next to each other like we used to. Just two guys looking at a car. "I've held onto my mistress," Terrance said.
He still had a BMW.
I Emptied My Retirement Account to Buy Basketball Cards. It Was Thrilling. It Nearly Ruined My Life
I am writing this in 2020, amidst the throes of a global quarantine, not having physically gone in to work for nearly a year. I’m also writing this so I can sell it for money that I will use to buy basketball cards. I share this because it feels like the truest—and most pathetic—thing I can say about my relationship to card collecting. I feel like I’m charging you, reader, a nickel to stare at a strangely-shaped hole in my skull. Eventually, I’ll come to understand this as a byproduct of the frothy mindwarp of quarantine, delirious from vitamin D deficiency and months of stewing in my own juices.
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I’m an alcoholic and an addict. Through a conspiracy of minor miracles, I haven’t drank or used in six years. In that time I’ve constantly groped toward other foils off which to bounce my obsessiveness.
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Two months ago, I emptied out my retirement account to pay for new basketball cards. Paige, the love of my life, separated our bank accounts.
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This going to sound like I’m making it up for the purposes of this essay but I’m not: for weeks I’ve been having this recurring dream where Giannis Antetokounmpo comes to my house (sometimes it’s not my house but one of the many apartments of my childhood, or one of my classrooms) to look at my basketball cards. Giannis ducks through doorways and I pull out box after box, showing him the highlights of my real-life collection—a 1972 Topps Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a 1997 signed Glenn Robinson booklet, a 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card. Giannis is deeply interested.
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I’m not finished with basketball cards yet. I still see myself as being in the twilight of it still being a hobby, before it becomes A Real Problem Demanding a Substantive Intervention. My brain is a little tyrant, a Hannibal Lector. I can’t leave it alone for two seconds in a room with a paperclip (or a basketball card) without the whole city going up in flames. Right now on eBay, there is a gorgeous signed Giannis rookie card with a patch of game-worn jersey in it.
I’ve been watching the auction for days, refreshing it, contemplating bidding. I stare at the picture on my screen, imagine it sitting on my desk, glowing in my hands. I dwell in that possibility.
It Was a Mystery in the Desert for 50 Years
“I’m a fool, alone, helplessly watching as they wait for me to die so they can turn my ranch into a gift shop and motel,” Heizer told me here this spring. At 77, in rapidly failing health, he is as pessimistic as ever. “This is a masterpiece, or close to it,” he said, “and I’m the only one who cares whether the thing is actually done.”
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There would be exhibitions from time to time, at MOCA in Los Angeles and the Whitney Museum of American Art, for example, but “City” became his life. He hired help. During winters, the road to the property would sometimes become impassable, and Heizer would be stuck in the trailer for weeks. A farmer lent him a paddle-wheel scraper, which kept breaking down. Friends occasionally came to his man-camp, mostly to keep him company. They drifted away. The art world moved on.
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[Heizer] habitually berates and bad-mouths most of them and others, so it’s striking how fiercely Heizer is loved by those closest to him. Years ago I met Bill Harmon, who traveled over 400 miles a week to pour concrete for some of the sculpture’s curbs. Harmon told me how Heizer would angrily rip up a 78-by-240-foot slab because it was off by a sixteenth of an inch.
I asked Harmon why he put up with it. His answer seemed like a definition of art.
“Mike is demanding,” he told me, “but I’ve worked in concrete all my life, and I’ve never had the time or money to do something to the best of my ability. Everything is hurry up. It’s about making money. That’s the American way.” On the other hand, Harmon said, Heizer asked him “to produce something that has more to do with accuracy than I’ve ever been allowed even to imagine. This here is my chance to do the best I can.”
Such a fun idea! Love this curation