Tao Lin J.P. MORGAN SUPPORTS THE ARTS!

Dear Tao Lin’s friends,

My name is Kevin Chen. I am an investment banker at J.P. Morgan. A few weeks ago, on Easter, pressured by co-workers who kept working really hard all the time, because they were on drugs, I was utilizing the website search.twitter.com to locate insider information regarding APP, when I saw that a person named Tao Lin had “unloaded” his APP, at a price of 3.42. I did two hours of DD on “Tao Lin” and uncovered that he was a poet, that he was a concert pianist, and that he attended NYU, my alma mater. I looked closely at his profile photo: ..HE WAS IN ONE OF MY WRITING CLASSES!.. I remembered it suddenly because I had such a passion for writing novels when I was in college, a passion that has died, along with my relationship with my ex-girlfriend and many of my relatives in Hong Kong. My ex-girlfriend encouraged me to write. But my parents got angry at me when they saw on my schedule, when they broke into my room one time, that I was in a writing class. I was enrolled NYU’s business school at that time. I was a junior with a girlfriend that smoked marijuana.

I didn’t understand Tao Lin’s stories about growing up in Florida and petting giant squid but I still read most of his submissions. In class I was loud and critical, and said Tao Lin was “too postmodern” though I secretly admired Tao, because I liked his fashion sense, something I’ve always neglected in myself, because one time I wore a plaid shirt and my professor looked at me and then looked down and scratched his temple.

I thought Tao Lin was weird, but I understood where he was coming from, because he looked scared a lot of the time. One time I saw him running into the bathroom to hide from our fellow classmates.

Then a lot of unspeakable things happened. My ex-girlfriend didn’t have any money. She said I needed to write a novel with a plot and characters named “Sam Ashville” or “John Nautica” where nuclear weapons are exchanged without drama. She said I needed to end each chapter with a “cliff hanger,” and have people do drugs recklessly, but also remain productive. I got a literary agent, and he said I needed to describe more things. I had a nervous breakdown. My parents got angry at me. My ex-girlfriend left me.

I focused all my troubles into studying economics. Today I am an investment banker at J.P. Morgan. I make 160k a year. When I saw on Missbehave Magazine’s website that Tao Lin was selling his MySpace account I added the eBay listing to my watch list.

I thought about giving this account back to Tao Lin, because I support the arts. But then I thought about J.P. Morgan, how I see artistic people throwing bricks into windows of banks, how someone I went to middle school with wrote “die yuppie scum” on my parent’s garage door with chalk. And I decided to do this: ..MAKE THIS MYSPACE PAGE INTO A MEMORIAL FOREVER TO INDICATE J.P. MORGAN’S SUPPORT OF THE ARTS!...

Sincerely, Kevin Chen

P.S. I don't know how to use MySpace well so I was not able to make this memorial as I saw it in my head. If anyone can help me make this page better for banks, bankers, businessmen and women everywhere please message me or comment on this page. Together we can build this memorial into something lasting, and help artists and bankers connect, because we're all just scared, and we should help each other feel safer in the world.