I’m involved in a theater project that’s still in early development, which means we sit around and talk a lot. It’s awesome. Something came up last night that I found really interesting, and I wanted to hear what you guys thought.
I was describing how I’ve loved to break stuff since I was a kid. A friend and I once spent an evening happily bludgeoning an old stereo his mom had given us, reducing it to a pile of plastic shards and punctured speaker cones. I also brought up the ultimate in breaking stuff, the sort of holy grail of destruction: dropping a piano from a great height.
When I mentioned this, one of the other guys in the room got really excited too, and said he’d love to hear and see that as well. But one of the women looked at us like we were crazy. She not only had no desire to hear what a dropped piano would sound like, she thought we were a little weird for wanting to. In her mind it would be a waste of a good piano that, no matter how broken it was, someone would want to play. I thought her reaction was interesting, and want to hear yours, too.
But I’m not interested in just “boys and girls are different, news at 11” comments. I want to hear how you guys and gals think about destroying things. Do you ever fantasize about breaking stuff? DO you break stuff? When? Where? Alternatively, if you DON’T like to break stuff, how do you feel when you hear that some of us DO?
Alternatively, if you DON’T like to break stuff, how do you feel when you hear that some of us DO?
I don’t feel anything. It strikes me as utterly bizarre, but more-or-less harmless. Same thing when guys talk about jets, cars, or crap like that. As long as you’re breaking your own shit… shrug. Have at it.
Once as a fundraiser for our theatre, for a dollar we gave people at whack at an old Toyota with a sledge hammer. It was really fun. I’d also like to see a piano dropped from a great height. But in general I try not to break stuff.
I broke a hideously ugly and large glass lamp with a baseball bat once - on the urging of a friend who saw I was agitated. It was his lamp and in his basement. It was extremely cathartic.
My theory is that we like to change our surroundings. It makes us feel powerful. The best way to do that is to create, but creation is hard. So destruction is what some people do instead.
I love to break things, though I rarely have the opportunity. I also like to take things apart, which feels sort of like the mini version of breaking things.
My friend and I came across a huge box of dishes on our way home from a club. It had a “FREE” sign on it but most were already chipped or broken. We took it upon ourselves to haul the box into an alley and bust the shit out of everything in it. It felt really, really good. Momentary guilt led me to put as much as possible back in the box so no one would step on it, but other than that, super fun.
I enjoy taking mechanical stuff apart to see how it works and I’m not always successful in putting it back together again but destruction for the sake of destruction doesn’t do much for me.
Is it a grand, dropped straight down, so the legs will splinter? Or is it an upright, dropped at a slight angle, so it’ll tumble a little through the air, and then land on a corner?
If you’re going to do that, I’d say don’t go the extremely stupid, human wrecking ball method. Get a giant plastic or plexiglass sheet, or a wire screen, and perform behind it like Gallagher’s shop teachin’ cousin, Gallagher III. Plexiglass is more expensive, but it’ll look funnier when you lick it.
When I’ve had a really bad day I usually go down to the closest liquidator and buy say 4 glass cups/vases/wine glasses for $5 and just hurl them into dumpsters.
I got lucky recently though, they had a sale on fountains which were absolute crap but had nice water pumps in them. I got like a dozen for $6 and let me tell you clay breaks satisfactorily well. And I was able to make a nice custom water fountain for my parents garden from all the water pumps I pulled from them.
I don’t ever break anything where it can cause a danger to people/cars/ or animals or where I’ll need to clean the stuff up. So basically those large metal trash bins or the local waste transfer station. Oh I love that place, the guy doesn’t really care about what you do to the appliances as long as you don’t take em so you can take a baseball bat to em and it feels so good.
That said I only indulge my destructive impulse once a year or so, basically because I only get that frustrated once a year.
