One Day, I Say F*ck Fish

The movie Adaptation blends Charlie Kaufman’s unique writing style (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) with Spike Jonze’s characteristic direction style (Her, Where the Wild Things Are) to give us a pretty impressive finished work.

There’s a scene in the film that caught me off guard the first time I saw it. It’s when Chris Cooper is explaining to Meryl Streep about the transient nature of his intense, all-consuming passion.

I’m going to share the clip here in case you haven’t seen it and want to watch it. It’s powerful and hilarious, but it’s also irreverent—there are F-bombs necessarily included, which certainly don’t bother me, but everyone from my mom to the new Pope reads Goatfury Writes (one of those is real), so fair warning is hereby given.

Cooper plays John Laroche, an incredibly eccentric enthusiast with a very deep knowledge of Florida horticulture. In fact, his unique approach has made him one of the world’s leading experts in orchids growing in the Everglades, which sets up the conversation with Streep’s character, Susan Orlean—a real-life writer for the New Yorker who finds herself immersed in the illicit orchid trade.

Laroche explains a few intense, deep passions he’s experienced during his lifetime. He obsessed over turtles, ice-age fossils, and 19th century Dutch mirrors (see Mirror World October ‘88). Orlean then asks Laroche the question many viewers are thinking:

I guess I'd just like to know how you can detach from something that you've invested so much of your soul in. I mean, didn't you ever miss turtles? The only thing that made your 10-year-old life worth living.

Laroche then goes on to explain something about himself that, over time, I have come to realize is also true about myself. His response is worth quoting in full, even though it’s already in the video I shared:

Look, I'll tell you a story, all right? I once fell deeply, you know, profoundly in love with tropical fish. I had 60 goddamn fish-tanks in my house. I'd skin-dive just to find the right ones. Anisotremus virginicus, Holacanthus ciliaris, Chaetodon capistratus. You name it. Then one day I say, "Fuck fish." I renounce fish. I vow never to set foot in that ocean again. That's how much "fuck fish." That was 17 years ago, and I have never since stuck a toe in that ocean. And I love the ocean.

When I first heard these words 23 years ago, I was taken aback by how profound this shift was—but I didn’t see myself in them. I’m not really sure why, though.

Maybe I wasn’t old enough to have the perspective on my life I have today, so I never noticed how my passion for comic book collecting ran fiery hot… until one day it just kind of turned off. I briefly collected coins and stamps too, but comic books were the main place this fire burned for several years.

F*ck fish seems to be a recurring mantra. I’ll do something for 2 or 3 years with a deep, intense passion, and then I’ll move on. It’s not that I stop appreciating whatever the thing was, but now it’s time to move that intense focus onto something else.

Oh, and also: I can have more than one of these things burning at once, provided there’s some intersection. While I was collecting comic books, I was (not coincidentally) learning how to draw.

Here’s the thing, though: I get a thrill out of taking something as far as I can, fueled by that initial passion. As far as I can tell, there is only one source for that sort of premium rocket fuel that makes you do crazy things, and it is that initial burst of enthusiasm that comes with the idea that you might be able to master something.

Mastery is a loaded concept, but for me, it meant being good enough at something to contribute something unique to the world. I felt like I could draw comic book covers as well as anyone I knew, so it was time to try drawing characters from my head.

Punk rock music, similarly, drew me in with its rebellious (yet intelligent, empathetic, and egalitarian) energy and lyrics. For a few years, it was enough to go to the shows—this was everything for a couple of years. At some point, though, I wanted to be up on stage instead of just in the crowd, so I learned to play just well enough to start writing and playing songs.

I saw that I could spend the next 30 years and get really good at playing bass, or I could turn my intense passion somewhere else and learn a bunch of other things instead. One of those things was Judo, which I started in 1997. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu followed almost immediately, and while the two arts intersect, their separation gave me a much longer runway to mastery for each art.

After reaching that level of mastery in each art where I felt I could create new moves, I had something new to master: teaching and sharing these moves with students. Then, that passion could turn toward building a better gym and community, and so I’ve found ways to remain passionate about one thing for a longer period of time.

Actually, that’s not quite right: the passion goes where it wants to, and I seem to have no control over it.

That’s precisely why f*ck fish.

Anyway, I’m here writing and publishing for the 758th day in a row. I certainly feel as though I can communicate playfully and creatively now, so I have mastery in that one limited sense… but there’s so much more to figure out with communication and language, and besides, I’m nowhere near my 10,000 hours of writing here.

GF Writes has become a passion project, and that intense beam of focus is still shining intensely here. Let’s see where we can go together next.