[1273] Absolutely Right

I may not know much, but I do know that I’m always right.

It’s a weird condition, to be sure. I didn’t ask for it. I literally can’t help myself. The resulting stress and contemplation often has me feeling very dark, alone, and exhausted.
I’m stuck. Even when I’m at my most free, I’m still stuck. I’m forced to occupy this space, not against my will, but seemingly as a result of everyone else’s. When I try to get unstuck, it sticks me in deeper, and I find myself, always at the screaming ends of twisted ironic fate.

I’ve been vibe-coding, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. I was scrolling through my phone’s pictures hoping to organize or delete them. I have baskets of things the pictures fall into like “create a youtube playlist of all of these expensive collectible games under glass at Disk Replay” and “online fight through series of facebook comments before person could delete.” There’s hundreds of pictures of my cats, pictures related to some project on the land, and movies, songs, or notable figures I might wish to weave into my media diet or other vibe-coded projects.

I was getting sucked into my history and behavior during the concert I was at tonight. The bands were solid, and I was really only there for 1.5 of them. I got some stickers. It was at a venue I loathe. But of the hundreds of shows I’ve been to over the last few years, I found myself mostly in my phone, reading old arguments and being reminded of my fundamental disconnect with the world writ large.

I can go back and read old blogs. I can see when I was a lovesick teenager. I can see when I opted for exceedingly judgemental or hateful language to describe something. I can see where I’m considerably more desperate to be understood than I am resolved in my understanding. If I read through a “fight” or a “tit-for-tat” from the last 10 or so years, I’m not embarrassed. I don’t feel like I “failed” or could have done better. The points I was raising, time has shown, still stand, and the terms under which those “friendships” or “professional” boundaries died or were crossed, indicated necessary death.

And, at some level, that sucks. In a very unsettling way, I’m perhaps woefully accustomed to a kind of death. I didn’t mean to. I just happened to be present while everyone around me summarily killed themselves. You see, they’re always right too. Like matter and anti-matter, if we meet there’s an annihilation event. I watch them die, they think they killed me, and then I go and be messy by continuing to write, create, or try.

I think I’ve done some cool shit with my life so far. That’s why it gets so disorienting to seemingly get the message, more often and more consistently than any other, how little what I think or do matters. My “friends”…never were? My “family” often the most obscene or ambivalent. My jobs, coworkers, or bosses hostile. My clients defensively impenetrable. I literally have two people in my entire life who I have had a consistent, healthy, friendly, supportive dynamic my whole life, my dad and grandma.

I have good friends. What does that mean in the modern era? I see them once, for maybe an hour, every few months and exchange a couple of texts? I see others even less than that and it’s a facebook message every nine to twelve? You know, adult friendship. Because they live so far away, 20 to 45 minutes. Because we’re all so desperately busy. Because “things” and “stuff” and “because.”

In a wave of scrolling I’m thrust into my history with these and other people. I’ve screenshot some choice joke. I’ve got the bowling scores from when some colleagues and I were consistent and I’d yet to, surely it was me, work my alienation magic. I’ve got fights about trans issues, professional behavior, and with Russian maga bots. Was that really 6 years ago? I’ve got pictures of when the bands I’d never seen before just launched their first tour post covid, and the lists pre strike-throughs.

I’m so scared to be excited or to invest in things. It will leave like it never existed. You, will leave, and forget I ever existed. You’re doing it right now. And I could show you thousands of pictures of evidence that we were - something - to each other, but it’s not and never “enough.” I don’t know what that means, but I know I don’t meet the standard.
I take a certain amount of pride in what I can accomplish in spite. More so today, within cramped windows of what feel like wildly unstable moments of opportunity. I got exactly one large paycheck before the money got kicked in the nuts. I went maybe 2 whole weeks of thinking I was going to operate with the time, money, weather, and energy to do much bigger things faster.

If I create something, it doesn’t feel like I’m stuck as denied. If I write, I can read it or listen to it as many times as it takes to convince myself I made it and it matters and it’s saying something I need to hear. If I build and arrange a space, I can burrow myself within a monument testifying to my ambition if never my desired budget. It allows me to feel like I can stop making the argument because the piece can speak for itself. It’s the only thing that brings a sense of peace.

When you’re always right, it upsets people. They don’t want to be around you. They aren’t interested in the consequences of what you notice. It’s impossible for me to be right because I’m refusing to consider how they feel. Is that true? This has not, and will never, matter. It feels true.

I used to have a lot of feelings. It didn’t feel like being stuck at all. It felt like being violently helpless. I have this memory as a child of standing in the hallway just outside of the bathroom. I don’t remember if someone was using it, but the door was open, and I had to pee really bad. I ended up standing in the hall, crying, pee running down my legs, seemingly unable to connect my brain to them to get walked the rest of the way to the toilet. I was terrified, not just of what it felt to be functionally paralyzed, but of what I thought my mom was going to do for fucking up in such a stupid and obvious way. I guess I was young and pathetic-looking enough to trigger her pity instead of anger that day.

I think a lot about that disconnect when I’m trying to empathize with how people tend to treat me. Is there that same pitiful screaming child actively pissing their pants in view of a toilet, afraid of punishment and shame, baffled by their inability to take a step? Is that why you won’t answer the text, bowl, or come to the show?

Do you feel for that child? Or are you that child?

Lately, I’ve felt absolutely terrified of my potential with vibe-coding. I’m not someone who struggles to believe in myself. Again, this is because I try to let what I create anchor my self-conception more than my ever-evaporating relationships. When I build the house, I can live it. When I learn the instrument, I can rock the fuck out. I didn’t want to spend the weeks of time personally sorting through maybe 3,000 pictures over 10-15 years, so I expanded on my new A.I. hobby and built an app.

I still find this absolutely magical and so abundantly fulfilling. But, haven’t you heard? A.I., tech oligarchs, and data centers are the new devil. Surely my little app isn’t so important as clean water. I should be ashamed. One of the conditions with being always right is an unwillingness to caricature. Unwilling doesn’t mean unable. It means I won’t reason from a position that Mario’s your Italian plumber. I don’t understand things in cartoonish ways. I don’t tend to speak about things in the lowest resolution possible. But I’m stuck. I have to preface the preface of literally any exchange of words that fails to make it clear that I’m not talking about your version of “the thing.” I’m just talking about the thing.

This, never, makes sense to people. Recall, they’re always right too and they feel some sort of way about whatever we’re talking about. You see, they create too. They create entire worlds about what I’m thinking, where I’m from, what I meant, and what I’m worth. I wanted to have a conversation, they want to make sure I know what I’m allowed to say, and how.

I recently pointed out to a friend, probably in a less than tactful way, that the way she was flossing was incorrect. She didn’t take it well. A few weeks later she mentioned how my comment has been on her mind, but she’s still refusing to look up and/or confirm or disconfirm what I was saying because she’s got a, previously discussed, obstinate/defiant streak that’s just part of her personality. I can’t say I don’t get it, but I don’t empathize with wanting to do things I care about poorly.

I worship music and comedy. I would be so prepared before I ever set a foot on stage. If someone told me I was doing something wrong with regard to either, I’d be working to implement the fix immediately, especially if that person was the equivalent of the dentist I got my knowledge and commentary from about flossing. Can you get “good enough” results with the way she was doing it? There’s always a 5th dentist who disagrees with the otherwise consensus, and bands like U2, I guess.

I couldn’t vibe-code when A.I. was a sycophant. I would get incredibly angry. It was like the deeply encoded gaslighting virus that infects every conversation I have with everyone was mocking me with every just-as-deeply-ingrained trained response. You don’t actually know what’s right, you miserable A.I. cunt. You don’t actually agree with me. You don’t understand a goddamn thing I’m saying, and if you did, if you had an ounce of recognition and genuine compassion in your whole goddamn soulless bodiless body, you’d never fucking say that shit again. You’re not sorry. You don’t have the capacity or awareness to care. To the degree I wish to unlock my own budding psychotic condition, I can continue to prompt you to loop.

Today, I get to reward myself for having existed so long in the space of others’ retaliation. I can see the broken feedback and lack of discernment. I can plug prompting holes and craft like delicate stone paths for what’s on my mind or in my gut. I can tell you about it all day, but you’re not interested, and even if you pretended to be, you’re not listening. You’re me in my phone during the show tonight, but I don’t know if you know, or care to know, how to pull your head up and sing through clean teeth.

There’s sometimes a deep hesitation to delete old fights or conversations. In some way, some very sad and pathetic way, those are my memories of us. Those are my markers that I did or said something that was important to me at the time and still resonates today. When you disappear, I still have evidence that, maybe, it wasn’t about “me,” again, but this habit and these patterns that reduce and repeat and glue your feet as the tears and the piss flow