[1046] Tee'd Off

I keep missing something when I write. I always used to write in order to feel better. I needed it to get my stomach settled or to get my head to stop hurting. When it became clear I was just always going to be an “on” person, a kind of regulating mechanism. I used to find useful bits of insight. I hadn’t really landed on as many pieces as I needed to shape and grow confident in my identity. If anything, today, I’m hard-pressed to tell you what I haven’t asked and answered about myself. The only thing “new” is my propensity to hyper-focus on doing a handful of new things every few months or years.

Take something simple, like band shirts. I’ve been buying a lot of them. I bought a heat press and 10 blank black t-shirts. I’ve spent what I easily consider “obscene” amounts of money on them so far. Until this shift into, basically collecting, band shirts was kicked off during Riot Fest last year, I reflexively balked at the $30-$40 price tags and completely ignored every table. Now? The shirts have come to mean something more. They stand for a “style” choice I almost never make for myself. They signify I’m supporting an artist directly who I’ve almost certainly been stealing their music their entire career. People have been noticing the shirts and complimenting me or saying they like a band. They’re more comfortable and fit correctly unlike the random shit I’ve bought from American Eagle or Goodwill. A mostly black wardrobe means you don’t have to think about visible sweat stains.

But I’m also feeling “fuck you” every time I buy one. Fuck you universe who says this should constitute more debt or something seemingly unreasonable. Fuck you teenage me who didn’t have the presence of mind to budget for shirts that would be vintage and extra cool today. Fuck you overpriced monopoly Ticketmaster which makes the whole spectacle of even seeing an artist expensive as fuck, so why not double it and at least take home more than a memory? I want all the shirts in the same way I wanted to obsessively write down animal names, collect Pokemon cards, or approach 50 different tasks at once in developing the land. I’m manufacturing meaning in a sea of otherwise ambivalence.

You know what shirt I absolutely don’t want? Your stupid brand, fest, or infinite lineup. I don’t support Rockville or Wonderoad or Bonnaroo or any of the way-too-many festival names as though they haven’t almost become parodies. If anything, going to so many shows has made me deeply appreciate the 400 person venue and the different palpable energy of a room verses the expanse of “festival types.” I’ve never had a concert touch what Steaksauce Mustache did at The Hi-Fi, but Anxious, and Knuckle Puck both earned t-shirt buys with their energy in the same room. Legacy bands like Earth, Wind, and Fire don’t need me buying shirts, but I’d slap a sticker on my speaker and testify to their unique power and energy across a stadium forever. I also bought a sticker printer.

I need shows and shirts and time-consuming activities like reading or watching everything because the alternative is darkness. The alternative is thinking, endlessly, about how often things get fucked, how hopeless they feel, how alone I generally am, or some narrative about how I still might not be doing “enough” in spite of any benchmark achieved. I need a story of indulgence and largess not because I’m blind and greedy, but because it’s what I’ve been working towards. I’ve arguably jumped the gun in overburdening the credit cards, but also, to this day, I’m in no more debt that I could have comfortably paid off had I not gotten fucked on the house flip. I can’t take the double whammy of not having anything to show for the time, effort, and investment. So I’m going to carry on like I invested in “the universe” and now that fucker needs to pay dividends.

It’s hard to get a handle on how angry I really am. I don’t do a lot of angry things. I don’t yell. I’ve even managed to dial back being particularly cunty in the road-rage vein. I’ve never just gotten used to or okay about the shit storm that is our politics or capitalist environment. If I ruminate on that stuff, “little’ things start to nag deeper; perhaps a proudly ignorant and defiant client or an entitled cunt baffled by the dynamics of a rock concert pit. I get angry that people praise and compliment me. I get angry at the idea of paying for glasses as my over-used contacts scratch my eyes. I get anxious about what I’m wholly prepared to say to the person who, for reasons I cannot grasp, thinks to treat me like I don’t exist or won’t react to them touching me or dictating something they have no business speaking to. I never know if it’s really appropriate to crack. I don’t have to. I don’t want to discover how much I needed to by surprise.

The amount of people who have asked me, ”Well, then, is he really your friend?“ when I’ve described the circumstances around the kid being in my friend’s care and the speeding and gun pull is getting high enough to mention in a blog. I’ve never made excuses for that series of circumstances and wouldn’t play along with the logic I couldn’t see. It’s also an undeniable crisis I still wish we could be rid of. I don’t know what to make of getting blown off. I can’t tell you the next time I won’t get angry at the words, ”I’m sorry.“ It feels as though my safety net is under attack. I’ve literally auditioned another friend for being the one to call in an emergency. I don’t think I have much of any real responsibility towards the situation but to keep speaking to it as honestly as I see it.

I’m not ungrateful, but I’ll stray. - not quite Tegan and Sara

There’s a version or mode of me that has every book I own read, an instrument practiced at least 30 minutes a day, and every video game beaten in the next 6 months. And then what? When I’m feeling lost for what to do, I start to vibe and feel gratified at the prospect of hunkering down like the world’s most accomplished introvert/nerd. I get home, dick around online, put on the next show, and retreat to the meandering middling task-handling for work or chores or needing to eat. Can’t retreat when you’re in Chicago next week. Can’t pretend you’ll know your focus or energy on your next in-office day. You’ll totally forget Secret Invasion came out or get a surprise perfect day for working outside. Best play things in stride, no?

When I played guitar 10 hours a day for months, I was becoming what I felt was a decent musician. When I read every single thing I could find, watched every lecture, and wrote extensively on a topic, I was confident I could earn my PhD or obliterate the ”lazy“ and ”ignorant“ person who couldn’t be bothered to learn anything before they spoke on it. When I decided the land was the place to live, I sacrificed fucking everything by way of comfort and self-respect, sleeping in my car, on a couch, and working non-stop at as many as 3 jobs at a time. I’m not meant for whatever it is you want to call what I’m doing. The average person sees 3.2 live shows a year. If that’s true for you from 15 to 55, you’ll get to 128. I beat that by 1 tonight between now and last year.

I’m growing increasingly fond of having a handler and being pointed in a direction. James Bond is an employee. I don’t need a mythical daddy, but I do need a sponsor or benefactor or nominally malicious overlord. I can function better when I’m housed within something. I keep working my job. I got through school. I’ve never been fired. I can memorize the rulebook. I can learn the language of your field. I could be something if you’d just give me a chance.

[938] Big Boy

It’s hard to tell precisely where I’m at right now. A couple days ago, I thought I might write the familiar stuck phrases in my head, tired, cliche, endlessly wrapping nonetheless, curious if I might actually spit out a mild insight or find a moment’s peace. That long moment subsided, and I decided to keep reorienting and cleaning my house. Yesterday, I felt my familiar boost of energy as the night carried on, cleaned more, cooked, and decided to buy every missing power tool one might need to run a professional woodworking shop.

Now, to be sure, I’m not a professional woodworker. The whole thing was put on a credit card. I will be pretty tightly squeezing the equipment into my freshly cleaned and organized garage-esc space. What was I thinking?

I made the decision to do so over 6 or so hours. I would add things to my cart, then go back to organizing. I would think about things that I’ve searched dozens of times, consult with my project board, and catch mental whiffs of frustrating passages read or videos watched where the person attempting to help or teach casually mentions the thing they use that I don’t have.

I’m a person who, as little as 4 years ago, habitually eschewed debt. If I didn’t have the cash, I didn’t even bother entertaining the idea that I could have something. What if it got repossessed!? What of all my friends being extremely stressed out and feeling stuck in miserable jobs because of the interest and their student loans? Debt felt like an irrational gamble predicated on impulsivity and a lack of wisdom.

I got a credit card, and then another, and then 2 more. I always kept them paid off. My limits were raised. My credit score became “excellent.” My home was not bought outright. My truck I threw on my highest limit card at the time. All have continued to be paid off, and I’ve only had to deal with interest in amounts I’ve most often been able to pay with reward points back.

It’s hard to ignore what people go into debt for. I know plenty who are still paying off their degree 10 years later. It didn’t get them a job that would pay “enough.” My car loan made me absolutely miserable. The truck I loved having, using, and paying down. The car loan has me still thinking I subconsciously decided to crash it and get the insurance to cover it (which it did). My house I worked myself to death for, getting desperate enough to ask acquaintances and all-but-estranged family members for a short-term $2000 loan so I might take a day off. Wedding rings, 30-year mortgages, major medical debt rack up the practically infinite bill. My stupid stepping-on-shit cat cost me $100 yesterday too.

I try to make investments in myself. I bought tools. I bought a means of turning the wood I have that’s in danger of rotting into smooth and straight pieces I can use for more than crooked “aesthetic negotiations.” I spent less on those tools than I did my truck, and they will enable me to practice building things, nearly anything I could dream of, while I’m up all night pacing and wondering how I’m so discontented despite access to so much of the world.

It hit me, not now, but after I clicked to complete the order. Just like every blog, I need to feel like I’m representing, working, or creating what’s “pressing” in the moment. I was watching “Get Back,” the new Beatles documentary, and it was immensely gratifying to see them create songs like I create songs, or blogs, or poems, or improvised structures that inevitably blow over in the wind. The act of creation, of being present, of watching something manifest that represents what you are, can do, or were thinking is my drug. It’s my perpetual reason. It’s what tempers my frustration, doubt, or pure hatred for everything that seemingly stands in the way of my flowing and extracting from any given moment. In this way, plans are either a treat or torturous. My brain started flowing, expecting, dreaming. How much rises to wake you up.

I think it’s pretty easy to forget that you have to practice what you wish to be. It’s not enough for me to own my stabbin’ cabin in the middle of nowhere, I have to exercise it. When I tell you I can pay my bills a year in advance with a month or two of a Mc-paycheck, what does that mean? How do I exercise that sentiment? I’m probably not running to work for a fast-food joint to show you how I’m basking in the glory. I’m exercising it by betting on myself and making an investment on what my mind gets up to with the tools in front of me and excuses removed.

I’m constantly oscillating between what distinguishes an “excuse” from a “reason.” I’ve built a room extension with wood that hasn’t seen a jointer and planer. It stands, it doesn’t seem keen to be about to blow over, but it’s certainly what I refer to as a “negotiated” space. I got a room, but a room built by an amateur with twisty wood. It functions as intended, and I’m probably more prone to criticizing it more harshly than it deserves. Regardless, the next room can be square, level, plumb, and true, using wood that cost me nothing but gas and time.

As well, I’m not working. It feels like a ridiculous thing to say, because of course over the last few months I’ve been renovating my buddy’s house so we can flip it. I built more of my fence, then picked it up when that section blew over. I’ve hauled trash and cleaned up both our properties. I’ve spent 150 hours attempting to get through the intransigent cuntiness of DCS “leadership” in trying to become a service provider. I’ve spent as many hours writing proposals, listening to tutorials, and navigating rounds and rounds of phone calls. It doesn’t pay well, quick, or at all, but it’s work.

I try really hard to keep my focus on the things I can actually do and control. I know DCS is akin to a timeless Greek godly entity merrily ass-fucking its way through anyone bothering to carry a hole. “Fuck fuck fuck away!” it bleats. As such, when I create a burnout loop attempting to contemplate why “power” “always” “seems” to be concentrated among the worst possible people with the worst intentions, senses of self-respect or esteem, and who would literally let people die through perpetually chosen negligence…who am I helping? How does that help me learn or create wood pieces singularly worth what I paid for the tools to create them? When does that prompt me to unclench my jaw, make some more phone calls, or hand out fliers and cards with our services?

When I deign to give advice, while there is a lot of merely listening and motivational interviewing, it’s to accept the nature of the beast and attempt to account for its many details. Most people don’t know what it really means to be addicted, especially the addicts. They might know pain in deeply personal and cascading ways, but they don’t understand how to turn it into anything else. I know people don’t care about my pain, not least of which because they’re people with their own. I learned how to create blogs. I learned how to marry my coping mechanism dying to be represented and heard into a work ethic humbled enough to spend hours scrubbing bathrooms and patient enough to juke and quiet screams and tears.

What’s the nature of the beast? To blindly fuck you independent of your feelings, intentions, or good works. Does a few grand sound like the biggest gamble when the game you’re playing in life broadly is trying to kill you with the snow on the road and mutating virus? If I have to work in a factory for 3 months, will I barely recall what it felt or smelled like as with every other gig? Who’s betting on me not finding private counseling patients when every provider in the area is perpetually closed for bookings? Who thinks we don’t have grants to pursue, deals to cut, and remote options to explore? Why reduce my life and effort to something meager and mild that begs for the mercy of abject pieces of shit?

I got a better idea of how to repay your debts and practice what it means to exist as a function of those debts. Speak to what has been afforded to you. If you can’t spend your money on something that is just going to produce interest and dividends by default, give yourself the tools and the chance to work them. I’ve made 30-odd scrap runs, helped people move, transported wholly unsafe lengths of wood, pulled hundreds of saplings, and loved every minute my truck enabled me to move and make the world. My house has allowed me to incubate the counseling business, experiment and learn in building, and house the dozen projects and futures I’m watching and betting on in any given moment.

If getting older has taught me anything, you aren’t doing anything alone. You’re ambivalent, complicit, or actively engaged in any given moment. Perhaps that’s where I find the real depth of my sadness. I know it’s not just one dumb cunt in a leadership role at DCS. I know it’s not just a singularly malicious billionaire or supervillain. It takes a village to perpetuate the assumptions. Ignorance, and justifications for life “as it is.” We accidentally stumble into solidarity for Black lives or unionization. We’re surprised at the chance to witness justice or accountability. We wake up every day betting the world will look like it did yesterday, and we’ll do everything in our power to deny our role in why it does. We’ll ask, “Who can blame me?” because life does suck, and you are poor, monetarily and of spirit.

I blame you. I blame you like I blame myself when I clench my jaw after handing the keys over to my most irrational and excuse-making feelings to drive me into walls I can’t scale alone. I’m always singing from a catalog of familiar songs. Are they building me up and prompting an enthusiastic recitation, or resonating like overplayed torture?

There’s still a world where I just sell everything and attempt to gain residency and higher degrees in another country. There’s still a world where a new variant comes raging back. The stock market still needs to crash. What if Gamestop actually does go into the millions? In the meantime, I’ll have the tools, a wood-burning stove, and debt I might pay off primarily with plasma or the sale of my Pokemon cards. Whichever choice I can land on that doesn’t catastrophize my circumstances or lock me and my jaw into an illusion of “stuck.” Maybe I just need a reminder shroom trip of how loose things really are. Maybe I need to go back to being the kid who went door to door to shovel snow and mow lawns. Those guys always seem to drive the biggest trucks.

[874] Mind's Eyesight

When I was kid, my dad told me about his beer can collection. When he went to college, my grandpa, while cleaning out the attic, found and threw the cans away. My dad said my grandpa thought it was trash, and didn't realize that classic or out-of-business brands of cans would be worth thousands. Even after attempting to tell my grandpa this, he didn't believe him or understand. He came from Yugoslavia and worked on a farm. Trash is trash. You work hard, you make enough to live.

I started collecting Pokemon cards with my dad's story constantly in my head as a kid. I double-cased them, arranged them in importance of perceived value. I didn't fall for the shady trader who ran the card store in town who offered to trade an array of cards for my holographic Blastoise; I had the price guide as well. I wanted to build my little investment just like my dad's beer cans. I got older and had the same impulse when the first run of Marvel Legends came out. I never opened the boxes. I bought entire sets when they were $20 a piece.

Both some of my cards (including a prized Charizard), and all of my Marvel figures have been stolen. My foresight disappeared in an instant to the hands of children who were invited to my dad's house while I was in college, and either meth heads or scammy builders when I was trying to get set up out here.

In my experience, to invest in yourself is a rare character trait. No doubt it's easy to understand how heart-breaking and precarious attempting to protect something like toys or cards for decades can be. There's also no guarantee that what you choose to invest in is going to become as popular as Marvel and Pokemon (though, even in 5th grade, I knew Pokemon was what to go with over Digimon).

When I was 16, I tried to start my own “business” with a friend who knew how to build computers. The idea was to drive to Tiger Direct, get parts really cheap, and sell gaming computers. The internet was less robust, so we found out the hard way that the inventory wasn't exactly lending itself to be worthy of the hour+ drive. The idea failed pretty quickly. I then proceeded to work 2 jobs, practically 3 with band, and continued to do well in school. I dreamed of college as the chance to take my, at the time, insatiable desire to read about religion and science, and let me turn it into something worthwhile. After being immediately humbled by my naivety about what college is, I turned to trying to profit from throwing parties you might see in the movies.

To invest in something is to have an eye on the future. It's the clearest indication that you're trying to control the future. I think it says considerably more about your present. I think it tells you about your genuine morals or values. If you are unable or unwilling to invest, it comes with a predictable set of ethics. You seek the shortcuts. You want the momentary wins and are subjected to the tumultuous whims of your feelings or latest influences. This is where the “conservative” impulse that strikes many people as they age kicks in. They can more easily see what has retained value and why in the midst of constant change or chaos.

I've asked, and continue to ask, people to invest in themselves and me. If you can't extract an extraordinary dollar amount, then I want you to feel the impact of the effort or knowledge. The knowledge that my start-up coffee shop could gross $2000-$3000 a month with all of the constraints and difficulties is extremely important to me. That there's an extra room I built attached to my house, for all of its negotiations, is the exact same kind of extremely important knowledge. When I think I'm too fat or lazy, I walk by a mountain of bricks or ¼ acre of tilled soil.

You can't see it at first, but it is impractical to live under the idea that you can always rely on the paycheck, the benevolence of the powers currently in charge, or what's most familiar. Modernity has done everything in its power to put us into little boxes of what to expect from ourselves. Advertising told us what the future would be. Consumer trends dictated your diet. You consider your relative worth in terms of '”minimum wage” and “benefits.” An endless cycle of call-and-response means you can only find protest and disobedience as the means of redressing grievance instead of infiltration, preservation, or iteration.

The people I hold in the highest regard are the ones who respond to the metaphorical theft of their plans for the future with the reiteration and celebration of the means in which they are going to pursue it anyway. This doesn't mean you have to be deliberately naive about the practical constraints. It doesn't mean you are more or less likely to get anything like what you were after. It simply indicates that your mind is oriented towards what is possible. You're not defeated by default.

When I write, my habit is to shit on people for not acknowledging how defeated they are. You'd be deliberately missing the point if you think I'm upset about not having enough money, not running my little empire, or not finding enough “on the level” people willing to indulge my every fantasy. I see the spark of the divine in so few people, I think it is a catastrophic moral and intellectual failure for those people not feel the guilt or shame that I might associate with the impulse to improve. We still can choose, every moment, to acknowledge all we've been given, either in material resources, or in each other, and explore what that can turn into. Or, we can stay lodged in our asses, hoping the waves of change leave us undisturbed at the bottom.

On my “day off,” I'm about to head on another scrap run. I cut my fingers deep while working on the room extension yesterday. I maintain my “practical” job that barely rewards my ability to play by rules and brings me zero mental peace, even if the value of it might be argued by a client or supervisor. I'd have to construe a very long karmic chain of quasi-bullshit to conjure how it speaks to improving me or my circumstances baring practical throwaway statements about money. I'm never “off,” and I work to keep myself reminded of that. I require a dozen occupations to thrive, leverage, and balance. You do too.

If I came across a post for extremely cheap living circumstances, and all that was being asked of me was to use your tools to tear apart washing machines and list them on Ebay, I'd be sure it was a scam. What the ever-loving fuck would that even mean? You don't want rent? You're not trying to fuck me? You don't want me to stay hush about your meth operation? People don't “get it,” because there's nothing to get. There's no subtext and no secret. It's just a deliberate and methodical practice in service to an ideal of future circumstances. It's physically and verbally practicing respect for that work. We've been given the world and feel miserable because we didn't have to work for it. We didn't have to see behind the scenes or feel the ache of every shovel full of dirt under the convenience store.

No one takes me up on it, besides a few friends and the support we've received from our respective parents because culturally we're defeated. We don't have the language, practice, or habits that lend themselves to actually believing in ourselves. We don't know how much we already have and how much we can do without. We don't have an eye on the future, because we abandoned the responsibility of what it takes to maintain the system. We chose, continue to choose, unsustainable ideas about what's convenient. We choose the “comfort” of what's familiar and “reliable.” We're not choosing to respect what we're made of. We're not choosing to challenge and work with the best parts of what we see in each other. We're left with constant last-minute and desperate attempts to patch holes in a submarine that's been shot through. We're literally contending with fascism.

I'm not saying you absolutely have to move out here, sacrifice your worldly possessions, secretly hate everything about your life and how it's oriented, or that I have the best or most thought out plan for engaging with it all. I am saying that I find it incredibly suspect that one could take from the constant cultural refrains and diagnose the problem as a measure of *too much* respect and understanding in the nature of our problems. I'm saying the hostility and resentment for my offer is a telling sickness. If you think you need to spend more, work more hours, fight the thoughts a post like this plants in your head, or hit a donate button, you're not doing the real work. You don't recognize, you don't respect, and you're giving the future away.

[601] Show and Tell and Tell and Tell

I’m hoping this wraps up what’s apparently been a muse-induced spat of writing the last few days as I’m in danger of falling victim to the problem I’m aiming to speak about. I’m attempting to communicate, right? I’m trying to turn impressions and vagaries and electrical and chemical impulses into lines you can read, walk, or snort. You don’t start reading me and think I set out to repeat the same words over and over repeat the same words over and over repeat the same words over and over and expect you to sit there on autopilot for several pages. You’re gonna perk up if I use certain trigger words that may speak to a pain or emotionality I’m doing a terrible time explaining like a proper robot.

Every single utterance or move we make is an attempt. You cry in all directions until someone figures out if it’s not time to wipe your ass or feed you, there’s something deeper going on that requires the insight of a doctor or seasoned childcare veteran. You extend your arm to shake hello, wave goodbye, or say, “Hey, I’m a douchebag on a bicycle about to cut you off, I dare you to run me over!” Big or small budget films relay your small-town sensibilities or a complex array of thoughts regarding timeless philosophical constructs. Your many professional consultants contributed their lines towards an authentic dialogue.

Then we make it weird. We claim “meta-narratives.” We talk of “subversion.” We “appropriate” and “genre-bend” until enough people are so confused or elated new princes get a papier-mâché crown of the thousand and one “with-it” gospel pages and apologetic trite.

In ignoring our basic humanity and capacity to communicate, we invent ever-”complex” narratives striving for a personal identity. Is anyone really capable of dressing “post-grunge?” Why hide behind “camp” when you’re just feeling silly unless you couldn’t figure out your confusing feelings towards John Waters. Instead of learning how to act isn’t there more dignity in hyper-attention to detail in your local theater production and wafting condescension towards those who simply can’t appreciate your steampunk take on Bye Bye Birdie?

For me the most jarring is in dealing with comedy. I hate apologetics for comedy shows that don’t seem to make anyone laugh. As if “comedy” is this supernal demon hanging in the air that we aficionados can just recognize because a famous enough name has appeared, so bask. I can certainly appreciate different styles of comedy and respect when and why certain jokes or topics don’t hit everywhere all the time. But to ignore whether anyone’s laughing? Even anti-comedy seeks out the ironic smirk or to be creative in how dead you can really make a joke.

To that end, I ask the same things of every piece of music I listen to, every article or book I read, and of every show or movie I watch. Do you have a message? If not, why the fuck am I engaging with you? Do you have a metric by which to judge whether it got translated? Comedy, therefore, is simple. Did you laugh? Did the audience? No? IT’S NOT FUCKING COMEDY. It’s not about mass appeal so much as it is about some form of a+b=c, not someone leaning on the A on a keyboard for an hour and claiming to “subvert” music.

We live in such a diverse pool of implacably bizarre and random people, you will always find an audience. So will the Nazis. Do the Nazi’s have a point? Are they maybe just lazy and stupid and it’s a really long and boring road to discuss how sexually appealing you find their uniforms to be? The worst movie in the world may well in fact be directed by a Nazi, for a Nazi, and no doubt there will be some film historian who notes how this “little known gem goes wholly unnoticed by the mainstream” for its capacity and willingness to brave the judgment of uncritical minds too weak to wrestle with the Nazi that lies within all of us. You know, because the message certainly isn’t about the irrational eradication of a minority population, it’s to make pansy moviegoers squirm…

This is part of the reason I heavily try to emphasize I’m speaking to YOU. Me, to his friends and people who seem to not go out of their way to run rampant with what I’m saying. I’m not trying to get you to “interpret” whether or not I’m suicidal when I decide to take up the topic at length. You should know by the end or I’ve done a terrible job. That’s not to say everything I talk about is always straight-forward or easy to follow, just like I rarely dig up the specific meaning of lyrics or care to go to Comic Con and bug a writer about whether some character is a strict representation of some Freudian concept. But it does mean that if you have a question or seek to challenge something, I’m obligated to get more specific, find better words, or concede I was talking out of my ass and didn’t notice.

That stems from a personal responsibility towards seeking out and hopefully discovering “truth.” The truth in the moment. The truth of my perspective or feeling. The truth as it’s been dictated by forces before us. As many layers as seem interesting and relevant. The all-consuming Truth that allows for the endless ditches we can dig to bury our opinions and lines of connection tying our experiences together into the fabric of “culture.”

As such, it becomes something of a contradiction, or simply non-starter of a sentiment, when you “seek subversion.” Subversion is handed to you. Dress like a “weirdo.” Talk like me. Opt for honesty. You didn’t invent black because everything around you seems blindingly white.

It feels very foreign to me the idea that I am acting like me when I write or speak. When people describe me, that’s all they do. They just say, “He just is so explicit!” Nothing follows. Not condemnation. Not support. “He’s just so himself all the time, can’t he just be normal?” Again, not disbelieving in my ability to order coffee without a Kafka-esc comment or attend a performance proving unable to allow the attention to get away from me. But something important is translating and it’s making them uncomfortable. Though, I sincerely doubt I’ll be paid the fawning deference of altering their consciousness and subverting their conceptions of themselves.

In the search through media and mediums, if the exercise isn’t about finding ways to identify parts of yourself or frame things explicitly not to do with you, what are you doing? Lamely dragging your ass into a faux subculture that absolves you of a real identity. Watch out nostalgia addicted Pokemon playing gamer nerds trading in the meme economy looking for every excuse to work in a reference to Rick and Morty. But even they’ll take a backseat to the people who put up real money to wax poetic about their “different eyes” regarding the countless pieces of art they’ve consumed.

I make it a point of pride to reorient and explain away as much as I can when I get an “overwhelming” feeling. I’ve watched my reasoning degrade into what may as well have been literal shit I futzed about with in the yard. As a society, it’s how we feel about each other and the things we engage with the world that is our shining light. It’s the feeling of justice, not the DNA results. It’s the impassioned speech! that dictates your moves, not that you should have left the building when they introduced themselves as a “Neofascist with communist leanings.” They aren’t interesting, just convoluted and confused.

It’s in the glory glory hallelujah of Feeling that we constantly pretend to get the message. I feel the Lord wants me to become...I feel the LOVE for my...I feel the hatred from so and so....I believe in our cause because otherwise I’d feel hopeless, and if you feel hopeless, well, no one really knows, but it’s bad, trust me. We felt our way over a cliff in the election. We’re feeling around in the dark for the next Enlightenment. We’re terrified of ever truly feeling anything real again because we feel we’ll only be able to cope as well as the endless queue of our depressed and anxious friends and everywhere we look is someone trying to betray or deny JUST HOW FULL OF FEELS I REALLY AM!

And the cure, so simply, is to pull your head out of your feeling-laden ass. Actually attempt to communicate. Stop acting like you’re part of a brand management company hoping to keep your friends and family buying. You know I literally give zero fucks if you decide I’m no longer worth your time. That’s important to me. That’s called mutual recognition and respect. And you know it because I almost can’t help myself from reminding you every time I get bug up my ass about how widely we’re failing as a society kissing the ass of the loudest feelers. Every time we apologize for shitty translations and wasted opportunities. Every time we’re silently riding the ignorant populist wave that carries the wrong asks for our attention.

It would feel less dramatic for me if people were at least honest about it. I’ll probably make reference to it until the day I die, but reading how the creators of Lost were like, “Yeah, we just did shit at random” was such a stark point of betrayal to all of the useless dialogue and speculation and fervor that show stirred up. As an audience you have a responsibility to at least try and respectfully listen, but on both sides of the equation it was idiots throwing shit on a wall and reading the hidden messages. All but condemning the idea of effective deliberate communication reducing the medium to rattling cages.

Whatever my message may be at any one time, it’s not for the people who can’t laugh or who can’t be patient or who can’t concern themselves with details. That’s why I speak to YOU. That’s why I make jokes and comments I’ve seen you laugh at. Whatever piece of me you take into the rest of your worlds, I can’t translate for them. When I build up my business ends or research tools, it’s for people who can appreciate them, not for ten thousand upvotes on /r/dataisbeautiful or to be distributed freely to any twat with an ignorant agenda I’ve just helped make more efficient. I like YOU, not how I feel about you. Because it’s mostly endless frustration you’re not throwing your lives away to help me make a field in the middle of nowhere the coolest place to live ever, and devoting yourselves to blogs once a week so I can even pretend to know who you even are anymore.

[519] Mortal Criti-sin

I'm trying to recall the last time I heard someone criticize something in colloquial conversation that didn't reduce to a cliché. It strikes me that the backlash I receive for not describing things in generally positive ways might be comprised of several screwed up forces in tandem. Like threads on a rope that snap together to whip me into submission.

Consider Pokemon Go. It seems like it is on its way to taking over the world. Jokes about getting outside for the first time in whenever. Screen shots of who's got the most and where they found them abound. For every article that's abused the relentless capacity for “millenials” to feel “nostalgic,” this app seems to have screwed right into the heart of it. I certainly don't blame people for having fun or connecting with people. I'm unable to shake how this feels like a culmination of perpetual infantilism.

I liked Pokemon as much as the next guy. Then I started to grow up. I don't want this to be overstated as I don't draw stark lines in the sand about acceptable ways to kill time, have fun, or whatever. Collect Pokemon, stamps, jerk off all day, I don't give a shit. I care that we only seem to find enthusiasm for “stupid” things like apps or get arm-chair “outraged” by things like shootings and racism. Our emotional perspective seems trapped, stunted, and ignorant.

What if we put as much time and emotional energy into learning about the world as we did wandering the neighborhood to catch Pokemon? Let me put it to you like this. Time is the most valuable thing. I have watched more movies and television than anyone I've ever met, and am a couple hundred levels from beating the main story of Candy Crush. I know how to waste time. I don't call what I do any more or less worthy of my time but for it's capacity to distract me or keep me entertained. But I couldn't do any of those things unless I thought I could offer a salient opinion about my place in my country or our collective responsibility to the world. I get guilt stricken. I feel lazy and dishonest. I honestly don't know if other people do, and frankly doubt it.

I fear we abuse apps and “nostalgia” like we abuse alcohol or drugs. One is arguably better if you had to choose, but what provokes the abuse and, perhaps overstated enthusiasm, I think is the same mechanism. The mad dash away from coping and dealing with larger problems. These are late 20's people who can't afford shit, aren't fucking, and have been under the unrelenting heal of debt and corrupted social services, if the news is to be believed, so why not Pokemon? It rings like the modern peasant farmers who at least get to get wasted at the end of the day.

Your 20's seems to have become this new tender age. People react so poorly to my critical statements because subconsciously their whole life has been under review and doubt and problems. They're just now maybe glancing at an opportunity to look like an adult and achieve things they dreamed about as kids. And here I come shitting even more. The stark contrast between why I seem to get along with adults verses kids is simple. Kids just wanna have fun and I'm a meanie. Adults have grown resolved to hear it all and move with or work past without much fuss.

While I was working out the details of emotional struggles and the lack of wisdom in relationships, people were doubling down on those feelings and believing in the future 10 years later. While I was giving myself headaches learning every angle of choose-your-topic, school was stressful enough for them or, “what's the point?” of driving yourself insane about things you can't fix. Add the backdrop of financial insecurity onto the undeveloped disposition of a batch of children, it's not a secret why anything remotely not ironic or critical on a site like reddit gets shit on to oblivion. It doesn't matter if you have a point, no one has developed the capacity to see it.

This is also different from a pretentious thing. Like, you can make convoluted crazy “points” about anything, drawing from your disparate experiences that...well they certainly seem to make sense to you. I'm talking about a kind of ignorance that has old white people saying Black Lives Matter is overreacting and need to take more responsibility for themselves. Any black person, as well as any reasonable person, would not look at someone in police custody ending up in a coma and say, “He should have worn a seat belt” like the dude wasn't kicked the shit out of. You can see the rates of incarceration, read histories worth of racially targeted legislation, and just be generally awake and honest and land on the side of sympathy.

I look down on those people. The ones who have no reason to pretend about something simple, but choose to anyway. Impersonal hive-mind children on an internet forum? Not my target audience. The same mechanism of defensive fear for conceding that the world ain't roses? I think it stems from the same kind of insecurities. The world can be described accurately in a way that transcends your opinion. There's degrees and levels to consider if you're going to act like your approach is relatively wise. If we persist under a cultural lunge to suppress and escape, well, Hitler 2 is actually a presidential candidate.

So I'm willing to double down. I'm willing to write 10 blogs contemplating why you would think it's me who's “negative.” The negativity stems from your avoidance and reluctance. It stems from your inability or unwillingness to respect your time or capacity to change something. Me talking about it isn't the problem, and never will be. You making me the enemy instead of yourself will always be. By choosing to react to the suffering of institutional guilt instead of motivating yourself from a personal one, you ensure we'll drive right over the edge of a cliff while I insist it’s not worth trying to catch the Onyx at the bottom.

[485] You Read Me?

What’s left after you’ve given every concession? How can anything progress when every attempt at challenging a point of view is met with a tangled mess of derision and posturing? If you’re concerned about communicating, how fine does the line between what needs to be said, and what may translate to their level, have to be drawn?

Say I provide an exhaustive list of everything I’ve ever done wrong concerning writing or communicating. I grant I often come across blunt, mean, or rough. I concede that rambling drunk is rather disjointed and violently weird. I appreciate that my experience or knowledge about something can go over some heads. I’m deeply aware that many people are simply pretending to care and trying to look passable. I’m often prompted to unpack a superficially confusing metaphor. I know I get provoked and derail conversations in a cut off my nose to spite my face fashion.

What if you spend so much time conceding that you never manage to say anything?

One of the reasons I like data is that by itself it isn’t emotional. It cuts both ways though. You’ll respond to a starving child ad with a mini biography in a way you won’t to “x amount of civilians killed in airstrike.” At their base, the same cold message is attempting to get out. People are needlessly suffering or dying. One plays on guilt to provoke you to help. One gets regarded as a matter-of-fact sentiment about seemingly necessary and endless conflict.

Something that persistently bugs me are true and honest attempts at saying something which must be couched in a greater absurdity. “That Kendrick Lamar Grammy performance was powerful,” says every rich white person the next day after over-reading the room. You attend the party of millionaires patting each other on the back for working in an incidentally infectious industry to get deeply moved by the powerful statement regarding black lives and society. Praise be they have Saint Kendrick to absolve them of their day to day by giving them something real to talk about in sound bites for a few days.

And think about all the messages that supports. It suggests an audience, an, is important regardless of how they’ll treat the work. It’s a symbiotic pursuit of legitimacy and value. If he performed it on the street, then we might get a pass thinking this one is a little overzealous for his cause. But for the value and tradition of celebrity he gets due regard. It teaches us to seek out the same stages quick to usher him off for the next award category. It suggests this is the most popular, the most effective, and the source of the most legitimate value one could aspire to. Because it owns the cameras.

I think it’s pertinent at this point to think of the irony of Youtube. I’m still in an uncomfortable place when I see how turning the camera on yourself and going about your day can garner millions of followers. I view entertainment, generally, as a form of escape. I view it as escape first, genuine appreciation second, if that ever happens. That millions of people want to see what you eat, what you’re packing for vacation, or what you’re wearing truly scares the shit out of me. I don’t think it’s a discussion about tastes and preferences. I think it speaks to what’s fundamentally going to constitute being human.

When you have the lens, you’re showing people what they’re not. They’re not popular for their quirks or jokes. They’re not getting endorsement deals. They’re not able to forget about and ignore the haters. They’re not going on your vacation or dancing in your music video or have 5 friends to make gay jokes while streaming a Pokemon game. You’re granting licence to that escape. And that, in and of itself, I don’t think is the problem.

What gets to me is the conversation that follows in trying to justify it all. “Hey, people are choosing to watch me or pay for my book.” “I’m providing content.” “People are opening up and sharing with me in a way they can’t with anyone else.” “I’m just doing me, what’s wrong with that?” We live in a world where turning on your webcam and being loud or obnoxious gets referred to as “content” with the same attitude and bravado a network executive might refer to a million dollar investment in a TV show. The equating and all-inclusive message, “what matters is that they’re watching.”

We remain blind to reciprocity. We remain ignorant of history. We stop stunted as the noises and funny pictures curtail exploration and follow-up.

Our mediums are evolving and overlapping and accelerating in their capacity for message transmission. We still barely know how to talk to each other.

I think we don’t know how to talk to each other because we don’t talk to ourselves. We don’t ask and truly consider just how big racial issues are. We don’t think what happens to the person talking to the Youtube star about their depression 2 weeks later. We don’t ask who’s pulling strings behind what’s allowed for a “mainstream audience.” And nothing about what we’re watching is going to suggest that we do.

Here I’d like to move over to what happens if and when we do manage to talk.

Consider our classic education system. I remember the boring quasi-discussions in philosophy classes as most pretended to understand the material. The challenge is to talk long enough to get a participation grade, not necessarily say anything of value.

Or think about when someone is brave, it literally takes bravery in our culture to speak if that isn’t sobering enough, but opens their mouth nonetheless to question something. If comment sections are to be believed, they’re immediately attacked or inanely questioned for their motives or capacity. Did they have a legitimate question? That was never a question the masses were willing to entertain before they went in.

Ideally, you find someone presumably knowledgeable and enthusiastic to talk. Now you have to navigate personality and style. This 1/100 shot at something mutually helpful and informative becomes a high stakes game regarding legitimacy as neither of you chose to engage because you think you’re wrong. As far as my experience goes, I think I’m only wrong with almost helpless words to barely scratch at what I mean, but I’m rarely met with mutual deference to humility.

Ding! Fight’s on.You make an analogy that’s a one to one wording of something they’ve said. They immediately tell you to drop your analogy and it doesn’t connect with them but refrain from addressing why you used it. What makes the analogy wrong? They don’t like it. Why did you think to employ it the way you did? Oh come now, they’ve moved so far onto what they insist needs to be said, why are we still asking?

They employ “what everyone knows” regarding how a particular institution is really supposed to operate, and pepper that explanation with aspects they assure you they don’t like, but are the reality nonetheless. You concede that such an explanation goes down easy or is what we classically entertain as a function of our cultural narrative. Attempting to move beyond that and describe forces that betray convention now serves as a jab to pull them away from their comfort zone.

Now time to duck the incoming hay-maker. You see, anything can have any number of things that shape it, so aren’t you just being too philosophical and nonspecific and therefore basically wrong with nothing meaningful to say about the real world?

Here you’re sort of stuck. You’re under the impression that this person was willing to talk. When you quote back to them their language trying to better understand, you’re denied. When you try to enlarge the scope, not dismiss the circumstances or details, but allow for context, you’re dismissed. You’re pressed to meet them at their level, which to you feels like it often isn’t saying enough or enough accurately, or “agree to disagree” about points you don’t think were ever even established.

This is just what happens when it goes “well.” Ignore what happens when you’re rushed or trying to be “polite.” Ignore underlying emotions that provoke any number of conflicting responses and contradictions. Ignore the inherent difficulty at arriving at the proper words or unpacking an analogy before regarding it as summarily useless. Forget how quickly small becomes big or that nothing exists in a vacuum. Consider yourself lucky if you’re not forced to navigate condescension, name calling, and numerous left-field assertions attempting to turn the duel into a battle royale.

It’s in holding an idea and following it that matters. Just saying it means nothing. “Just do it” is an empty slogan. You have to acknowledge your agency, for all of its dramatic pitfalls, before you can obtain the capacity to acknowledge where someone else is coming from. The suffocating superficiality of our lives that swarms around the popular, familiar, or addicting seems at the heart of miscommunication.

Ego gets in the way. Insecurity turns you deaf and blind. Selfishness begets denial and excuses. You would like to pretend you’re not one of us. You think you didn’t come from a place of more consequence than your reported cleaned up short-cutted biography would have us believe. Your explanations must resonate absolute while our infantile babbling should refrain from offending.

Whatever you want to call it, however you believe you feel about it, whatever you think you know, just remember, you’re wrong. When you refuse to accept and pursue how wrong, you’re not just bound to repeat history, but rob people of the chance to better understand and shape their own. If you don’t learn what needs to be said as opposed to what’s popular or keeps people “happy,” you reduce yourself to an empty talking box of “content” to be digested like excess carbs on an overflowing dessert tray.

It’s not wrong to indulge. It’s not wrong to escape. It’s not flatly meaningless to create anything. It’s wrong to ignore consequences. It’s wrong to deny responsibility. It’s wrong to pretend like you shape the environment and it doesn’t shape you.