ZEEBO GEEBO: an Introduction
the Touching Tips origin story
Hello. My name is ZEEBO GEEBO. I come from a long line of GEEBOS, but am only the second ZEEBO. I was named after my grandfather, who was a prominent supermarket flasher (may he rest in peace). Among my numerous talents, I'm an acute reader and accomplished writer, though you've probably never heard of me before. This is because, unlike these New York Times best-selling hacks who write only for money, I've spent the last ten years under a rock, dedicating myself to the craft, to the muse in order to become the world's greatest artist. It took patience and discipline, long days and longer nights, but all the difficulty was worth it. I have come out on the other side with complete mastery of the art form as well as an unshakable resolve to share my genius with the world, so that all may be graced with the chance to experience the splendorous heights and unparalleled majesty that true penmanship can achieve. I feel it is my duty and that to do otherwise would be nothing less than a crime.
As both a virtuoso and prodigy, I can write anything I can imagine, and my imagination is boundless, so that once I made the decision to come out from my rock and into the world, the problem was never a matter of what can I write but rather what should I write. It is a question all my contemporaries have asked themselves at one point—Homer, Tolstoy, Arendt, even Plato. Wanting to better understand how I should answer this question, I carefully studied their responses as a way of informing my own. It was very important that if I was to actualize my true potential in becoming the greatest artist of all time, that I should address the question in a much more accurate manner than my predecessors.
Even for a polyglot of my caliber, this was no easy feat. It required concerted effort and much pacing, but finally one day, while clipping my toenails, I had a breakthrough. Like all great thinkers, it was simple and prophetic. It was this: the thing my predecessors had in common was that despite their limitless capabilities they each still chose the subject of their work, none seemed to leave it up to chance or happenstance. In other words, each maintained agency over their answer. So, I thought to myself, what if this agency could be subverted? What if there was a work around, a way of answering the question without answering it? Well, I'm here to tell you that there is and that it's simple. The answer is this: instead of deciding, I would be told.
On the surface the difference may seem inconsequential, but, artistically, it is a tectonic shift in thinking. By divesting myself of agency, I was liberated from the shackles of my own immense mind. No longer would I travel its expansive though charted landscape, but instead thrust myself into the foreign and unknown, into the wild and unrefined ravines of another's thoughts like a great explorer marching through unmapped territory. Here, I need only concern myself with words and sentences, flow and tone. It was pure. It was perfect. Once I realized this was my solution and what the possibilities could be, I was immediately overcome by a sense of levity, as if a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. Of course, now that one question had been answered another took its place—who would I outsource my agency to?
Not being very social and having lived under a rock for the last ten years, my options were slim. Initially, I wanted to find someone of comparable intellect and skill, someone who had read the Classics as well as all the great religious texts, whose understanding of the world was grounded in both geopolitical and philosophical thinking; I wanted someone who wouldn't shy away from tough prompts or incorrigible outcomes; I wanted a creative partner.
With such a high bar, the initial search included such distinguished figures as DeLillo, Pynchon and Houellebecq. However, my inquiries went without response and I was forced to fallback on my second round picks—McCarthy, Moshfegh and Ellis. Unfortunately, they too ignored my requests, though surely not for incapability reasons, as a partnership with any of these fine writers would be nothing less than formidable. Likely their silence was due to prior engagements, unbreakable commitments. As a man of poise and distinction, I have only the utmost respect for their decisions.
Still needing a companion, I was forced to revise my criteria, lowering the bar so that my search area was broadened. Even with this approach, candidates were few and far between. I went through several cycles of this process, further lowering the bar until I finally arrived at the most basic and broad of requirements. Abandoning the need for someone who could read, I simply required that my counterpart's brain not have been completely melted, that the cerebral cortex could still occasionally process a new thought. This, I reasoned, would make my search exponentially easier, but even so it was no walk in the park. It took a few more weeks of networking events and unsolicited Dms before eventually finding a prospect. He was a friend of a friend of a lobotomized friend's cousin. His name was Austin James.
Although Austin was not the ideal candidate in many ways, he had a pulse and checked what boxes I had not yet dispensed with. Plus he could pronounce polysyllabic words and, perhaps more impressive for a man of his stature, even understand a few. I figured that at the very least it would make for an interesting experiment. With nothing to lose, I phoned him up and we met for a riveting evening of drinks and cigars. After a few beers and some mindless chatter, I got down to brass tacks and popped the question. He was flattered by the proposal and agreed to divest me of my agency on the condition that I do the same for him, as he'd apparently been struggling with his own writing and saw this as way out of his funk.
Flattered by his desire to mimic me, not only did I agree but, in my drunken stupor, I took it a step further and proposed we contextualize our writings in some way, umbrella them under a penpal-style project, so that our works would be in dialogue with each other. Naturally, Austin was thrilled, overcome by both gratitude and joy, so much so that to this day I have yet to see a more emphatic demeanor. We promptly shook hands and, like true gentlemen, consummated the deal with a shot of brown liquor. The last order of business was coming up with a name for our endeavor. However, this task proved more difficult than one would think.
For a while, we talked around it, discussing what kind of name we wanted. We agreed that it should be poignant and rememberable with a dash humor and a tasteful touch of femininity. Something catchy without being cheesy, referential but not obscene. Despite knowing exactly what we wanted, the name itself seemed inconceivable, a blurry mark against an otherwise detailed canvas. After more drinks and half a cigar, the conversation drifted away from the naming.
We talked about art, particularly great art. Michelangelo came up, particularly The Creation of Adam. I began waxing poetics about the genius of the brushstrokes and how they were not unlike my own sentences, when suddenly, as if by divine providence, the name came to me. The name was Touching Tips. It worked on multiple levels. On one it was a reference to Michelangelo's masterwork, to the reaching fingers between Adam and God. On another it was exemplary of what both Austin and I were trying to achieve with this project. Obviously, Austin was Adam, a mere mortal reaching towards greatness, in the pursuit of beauty and perfection, though doubtful to ever attain it. I, of course, was God reaching down from heaven to share my unparalleled genius with the material world, to bring light where before there had only been darkness. It was poetic. Austin agreed. And so began our indelible project, Touching Tips for all the world to see.
- ZG
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