Root

THE TEETH welcome you to their blog.

This blog is now over two years old. Once this sentence is finished, THE TEETH will have blogged about one word a month. And now THE TEETH have increased their productivity by nearly fifty percent! This is what ya call progress.

This was supposed to be the place where THE TEETH shared their thoughts on things that interest them, like economics and education, but apparently THE TEETH don’t have those. What it wouldn’t be, THE TEETH promised themselves, is a purge, an obsessive, masturbatory documentation of THE TEETH’s own raveling and unraveling.

This is going to be a purge, obsessive and masturbatory.

This is where THE TEETH will sift through their metaphorical shit to find the figurative gold ring they swallowed a long time ago. No? No good? Sorry. Teeth without tongues have a hard time being tasteful.

This will be, the idea is now, an unflinching look at whatever issue concerns THE TEETH at a given time: lifelong decay or something that strikes a momentary nerve, whatever. Why now, and why in this way? Well, for one thing, THE TEETH can’t afford a dentist. (We’re talking psychological dentists here. You understand that this whole dental thing is, like, a metaphor we’re trying to work with, right?) And anyway, THE TEETH don’t really care for dentists. THE TEETH think maybe writing about these things in this way—imposing a little space between author and words, words and audience—might help them write more regularly. Submitting to the scrutiny of an imagined audience spares THE TEETH the pain and inefficiency of submitting to their own. And, unless THE TEETH have a change of heart, the audience will remain strictly imaginary.

But of course the audience is imagined, right? Whether it’s a letter or a novel, your audience is never anything better than half-invented. So this way we have an imaginary author addressing an imaginary audience.

An outline! A plan of work and preview of things to come:

1. THE TEETH’s love life.THE TEETH have this sense that romantic connection isn’t supposed to be a central part of one’s life. That might have been imbibed from the generally young, progressive, ambitious, intellectually and politically engaged crowd THE TEETH run with. That might be a reaction against the contradictory and, at any rate, generally fucked up views American culture has on sex and love and independence. That might be a reaction against THE TEETH’s mother periodically, unconvincingly nonchalantly asking whether they’ve met any nice girls lately, or whining about how she just wants to live long enough to see grandchildren. Be all that as it may, THE TEETH’s love life takes up a lot of their mental real estate, and they can’t help feeling that romantic connection—a euphemism THE TEETH use to refer to a whole muddle of feelings and relationships and significations—is important to them, and something worth thinking through.
2. American culture. THE TEETH are uncomfortable glibly referring to “American culture” and what “it” wants or believes. So maybe there will be something or other here that doesn’t have to do with THE TEETH’s own personal hangups, after all.
3. Direction and meaning. THE TEETH have been around for a while, and they don’t really know what to make of it all. THE TEETH will be talking about that. Is that too broad?

Naturally, THE TEETH imagine that these things are very interesting. They’re pretty sure no one else is writing about this kind of thing on the internet, anyway.