Tony describes how a teacher accused him of plagiarizing an essay about Orpheus with no evidence. The accusation made him reject Western literature entirely and eventually move to Japan, where he found Japanese authors instead. It shaped how he approaches storytelling and his distrust of performed intellectualism.
Oh, actually, somebody who works here said this happened to them. But.
This scene where the teacher.
Thinks that you plagiarized.
Yeah.
So you say, I'm not lying. And the teacher says, I will not tolerate plagiarism in my class. And you said, but I wrote it. It's mine. I didn't. And the teacher says, it's disrespectful to me and your classmates to cheat like this.
Yeah. I think.
That lady almost derailed my life a little bit, because when I was younger, I was really impulsive and I was really stubborn. And that interaction with her completely shifted the way that I treat storytelling, in the way that I treat stories. Because, remember, part of the reason I moved to Japan was because I was like, Japanese authors make the stuff that I like. Prior to that experience with her, I was a huge Greek mythology person. I love Greek mythology so much. And Orpheus specifically was my guy. Like, I love that story. I love that character. I love that archetype. And.
In that part of the book, in the book itself, I believe that the prompt is that I have to write about someone who's like a hero to me.
But in real life, when I did that assignment, the assignment was about, like, you could pick a character from Greek mythology. And I wrote about Orpheus and how he was sad and processing his sadness through his music and art creation and how I was sad and trying to process what I was experiencing at the time through art. It was a very open thing for.
Me and vulnerable, in a sense.
Yes, extremely.
I felt like I was putting myself in jeopardy. I was really putting myself out there, especially because no one had really read my writing before. I used to fill up compositions, spiral notebooks my parents asked to read, and I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, don't read. Don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look. And this lady was one of the first people that I actually let read something that I wrote. And she read it and didn't think that I wrote it. Like, bro, come on. What? Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT didn't even exist. Like, I couldn't. It's not like I could type in a prompt and get a paper like that, even if it did. Yeah.
She had no evidence that I had cheated on anything, but she so deeply believed that I had. Which to me, the unspoken message that was communicated was, I don't think that you are capable of creating what I just read. She had an idea in her head about acceptable sources of excellence, and I didn't fit that mold. And when that happened, my rebellion, like the way that I processed that pain was I was like, I don't want to be near anything European. I don't care. I don't want to be near anything European. I don't want anything Roman, I don't want anything Greek. I don't want Shakespeare. I don't want any of it. And not specifically because it's European, but because it is put up on a pedestal as academic and intellectual. My way of, like getting back at my teacher was I am going to divorce myself from everything that you consider as the archetypical idea of what it means to be smart. And I'm going to be smart anyway. Without your stuff, without your references, without your idioms, without your Romeo and Juliet, without your classics, without your canon. I am going to be smart, smarter than everybody else, and I'm not using any of your stuff to do it. And I held onto that for a really, really long time. There was a point in time where I didn't even want to read that much because I was like, most people that are in the literature are really self important and just use it as an excuse to look down on people. I'm going to go find my intelligence somewhere else. And what a mistake that was for me to step away from so much. But that moment was like really pivotal for me. Crazy part. I don't remember that lady's name. People ask me, they're like, do you know where she is now? I'm like, I don't even remember her name. I'm not going to lie to you. But I did go on a journey as a, as a result of. Of of that doubt.
I mean, I asked you this question earlier about the week before this came out. But in a sense, when you're young like that and you, I mean, whether it's conscious or not, you are vulnerable. And you put that on paper and there's a difference. When you're vulnerable and it's just a conversation in your mind, but when you actually put it on paper and then somebody judges it and then they judge it in a way you didn't expect.
That almost gives you like a ptsd in a sense is like you stepped on a landmine. You didn't expect to be exactly in that place. Like there shouldn't be a landmine in a, you know, on a playground or whatever. And that's the, you know, the hard thing about being an artist. Yeah. Sometimes is you have to deal. It was she, you know, in a sense, she's not even the target of the thing that you're doing.
Right.
But she's in a position of authority. So do you, in a sense.
Come away from that with a little bit of a disdain for authority?
I think that for me, it wasn't the same for authority because, remember, my mom was a principal, so I have examples of.
See, I'm trying to project my distinct authority on you.
Well, it's what I'm saying. It's like I might have had a disdain, but my dad wouldn't let that ride for a while.
My mom was not a princess.
What'd you say to your mama? No.
I think that for me.
The disdain wasn't for authority. It was a disdain for performed intellectualism is the way that I would describe it. To me, what I took away from that situation and even today and stuff that I encounter in my everyday life is very often it is not about what you say or what you do or what you make. It's about how the person engaging with you feels about what you did or what you made. So the content of the paper. Thank you. Didn't inherently matter. What mattered was, how do I feel about Tony? Because if I felt that Tony was smart, I would look at this paper and I go, wow, what a great paper. But I don't think Tony's smart. So when I look at this paper and I see a smart paper, I'm like, incongruent. Something must have went wrong. Something must be off. He must have cheated. Because I don't feel that Tony is smart. Even though I'm sitting in the front of class and I'm not talking and I'm taking my notes, I'm not being disruptive. I'm performing intellect in the way that you told me I'm supposed to. I'm doing what the good kids do. But despite that performance and me masking you still don't think I fit that criteria.
