I know my ego. Where it’s been. What it has possibly sowed in the minds of others in my younger, more impetuous years. And where it is now. Problem is, it is one of billions. And it feels as though all try to claw each other down in order to alpha, feel really good, playing it off as keeping others honest.
I don’t consider myself toxic, but I can’t speak for anyone else’s interpretation of my being. And I can’t shake the shiver that people these days will not believe I’m being honest as possible with them (however optimistic or pessimistic my view, satirical or serious) because we have become so cynical of what honesty really is, myself included.
I know ‘News’, our delivered update of events is hyperbolic and exaggerated and blown out of proportion most of the time, and should be consumed with a salt lick within reach, but sometimes it’s really as crazy out there as it looks and sounds through the machine of television and the internet.
I tend to think everyone professes and opines, subtly or directly, to have the answers for me and everyone else who doesn’t quite see it their way. Yet I know I need to find answers on my own for them to really stick (understood, not regurgitate someone else’s opinion which has meticulously drawn out so eloquently)(self-deprecation too dry?)
I find some people want to take credit for what you’ve become, good or bad, or what you’ve done.
“Ah, so and so would never be blank if it weren’t for me”
If I think you’re a _____ fuck, I won’t say it to you, I’ll say it to someone I consider a confidante.
If you think I’m a ______ fuck, you won’t say it to me, you’ll say it to your confidante.
That’s how it works. Unless, of course, one finds themselves without such a rock.
It sucks and is glorious simultaneously to have something brought to your attention and laid out so well and concisely, such as Duncan Trussell interviewing his mother on the Midnight Gospel, and to get poignantly touched by it. Two strangers hashing shit out. To think I had certain things right all along, but built a tough scale-cloak over it to combat the shitty behaviour I felt I needed to defend against in order to survive. Alpha-syndrome, Dog Eat Dog, Eye for an Eye standard operating bullish shit of ego.
I was sheltered in the formative years of my life. It's only now I understand it was not out of fear, but out of hope. A Hope I have been dismissive towards and called a weak point of view. A Hope that I would never be sullied by the darkly shaded facets of existence. Yet here we are.
I know what I am. What I have been. And semi-sure of what others think of me. It takes time and guidance, absolutely. We all begin as clean slates. And as much as it’s the path others put you on, it’s the paths you find yourself that are most important. Not necessarily untrodden or mapped ones, either. They may be worn but they can still feel new to you. Biggest problem we have today, I think, is that too many people find a path, and instead of finishing the journey, they run back to where they found the entrance and start calling others over. Standing for who know how long, leading other wanderers in, taking credit for pathfinding when perhaps the person persuaded or cajoled or forced in may have eventually found it themselves anyway. That may defeat the purpose of enlightenment, I don’t know. But I like to think the best way to go about alerting others would be to place a light of some sort at the entrance which will beckon the curious, be it for good or ill, and be of their choice.
And I wonder if I come off as one of these gatekeeping, maître d’, bouncer assholes with my writing. Publishing the pity-party pieces I do because I need to. If I don’t, the monsters of paler and darker ruminated and supposed upon realities don’t get out, and here is where I can leave them and move on. To meet more, no doubt. But support them all at once? Collected and curated and filed nicely in order of appearance? No way.
We all have monsters. I believe that. I have faith in that truth. Just not so much as to presume specifics or share. We know who we really get along with. We know who we put up with. We know who’s extraneous. We know who’s superfluous. We know who we love, and who we despise. We just don’t always say it. It causes problems. It incites drama. It draws lines in the sand. It begets enemies and odd stares. It forms allegiances (solid and unbreakable, or strained and frail).
There are only so many stories between us that when one person says something, and another has something similar to say about it, the original speaker might believe the second speaker is mimicking- playing to the tune in order to fit in. That’s when otherwise really good relationships become strained, and cease to exist. All because everyone wants to stand out on top, be the shaman of the group, or whatever. Doesn't always go as so, but, really...
That’s why we want to help ourselves and those we care for, maybe help others, but never receive help from others. Because goddamn it, ‘I am strong enough to go it alone’, if need be.
If I hear or read something I found weird and interesting information, and I repeat it amongst friends for discourse, I don’t say it because I subscribe to the idea 100%, nor have I adopted it as THE way I think now. But that doesn’t stop someone else from thinking I do. I can’t control that. And what’s to stop that someone from telling others that IS what I believe, no room for correction, clarification, or context.
And if we don’t see those people for a while, who’s to say they don’t allow us the benefit of growing out of it. And we become forever tethered to a perception from a certain place in time we definitely-maybe don't occupy any longer.
I stop myself short from saying things, these days, because I know most are trying to get a reaction out of me, out of everyone come to think about it. They think it’s funny to manipulate me into a mood. Fool me once… and all that. I'm well aware of my excitability. (Zevon provides me solace from that label)
I can’t change the past and I can’t form the future. I can’t change the minds of others. I can only service my own.
There are many maladies of personality in this shared landscape of reality we all try to till and grow sustenance from. And of course I want to see corruption brought to its knees. The heinous and the vile punished. The people to rise in revolution and take back control from oppressors. But what can One do whom needs evermore to work on themselves. One whom very well may have run back to the entrance of the path found, urging others down it, while never finishing the journey they embarked on, intent on finishing it but never completing.
I don’t intend this to incite. I don’t intend to make people want to kick the chair out from underneath themselves. I especially don’t want to make people think about slapping the horse's ass on what's back I might sit in their minds. But I must publish this in order to get on with Life.
Lots of this has been inspired by listening to a clip of Duncan Trussell and Joe Rogan speak about ‘Turning Off Anxiety’, uploaded to youtube by a channel named After Skool.
Here’s a hard-admit for me. Something that happened a couple days ago. I was watching another After Skool video for George Carlin talking about how "...people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation...” Now, I might get shit for printing that without permission, but it’s pertinent to my hard-admit. In, The Policy, I wrote a line that companies “want you smart enough to do what they need, and stupid enough not to say anything about it”
Editors didn’t call me on it. Proofreaders didn’t call me on it. Friends and strangers didn’t call me on it. So, did anyone really read it? Did they simply not notice it or make the correlation? Or do they sit back and say nothing, watching to see if I strut pretentious as though I made it up myself? I don’t know, but it needed to be addressed.
And does that delegitimize everything else in the book? I’m not sure. All I can say is I’m not a member of that particular jury.
Now, I’m not sure if anyone reads this stuff. The daily views tracker on here has been weird for a while and I don’t care to complain about it or enquire as to why it changed. It used to have fluctuations of numbers, but now it’s more like code 1 0 0 0 1 but with some 2s and 3s in there every so often. Anyway, people may not read this. I don’t promote it. It is a site in a 40 billion cubic squared graveyard of other sites. Tiny. I know, but it gives me a place to create.
I didn’t consciously steal that line and rearrange it. Believe it or not. But I have definitely seen ‘Life Is Worth Losing’. And I took a lot of Carlin’s words to heart back in the day. They changed me. He, I consider one of my many unconventional teachers. When I had watched it, I can’t be sure. A good wager would be around the time it was released and maybe once after that. But I’m sure a good amount of time past between my initial writing, and all the bloody rewrites I did, and watching ‘Life Is Worth Losing”. To the best of my knowledge, anyways.
Now, regardless of the verdict, I’ve got to move on. Keep writing. It is my therapy. For I both love and hate it. I love it because it helps me breath deep and feel cathartic. I hate it, because I constantly wonder what else I’ve subconsciously lifted and rearranged and put my name beneath it, calling it mine. That is why I must completely disconnect for a long while. It won’t be because I’m depressed, or extremely misanthropic and anti social, it’s because I listen to others too intently, and I need to sort my own, older, voice out before I put anything more to print.
I accept that we are now in the most inspiration-sodden century of mankind's existence on this planet, the third place-setting from the main seat in our solar system.
While this is extremely personal of a reveal, it’s the way I need to end this part of the story. I’ve explored anger, paranoia, melancholic beauty, narcissism, delusion, fear, salvation, grace, helplessness, terror, love and faith, depression, happiness, loss, gain, angst, mania, oppression, obsession, repression, and many others of the myriad more emotions. Some convoluted, some concise. Some were written under varying degrees of influence, some from as clear a mind as I can have. Writing is almost always a story for me. A way to convey. It’s not always good, and very rarely great, but do it I must, and stand by and not erase things I might not agree with now, years removed from the state I was once in. I hope this serves as something for others, if not for a guide of slight insanity then as an example of struggle with the concept of inspiration, and how hard it is trying to carry forth and make modern the lessons from those who I consider teachers. I will be trying again. One last time before I move on and leave my dream whittled down in a corner from whence it first spawned: My Head.
Part of this exercise is to show how anything on the internet can be read by anyone and interpreted by them without inquiring as to the nature and origin of the works. Be they rants, incoherent ramblings, rhetoric, manifesto, or art.
It is not easy, publishing some things, but it is how I tackle the great conundrums of our existence. If I have enraged you, be at ease. If I have made you laugh, keep on laughing. If I have made you sad and worried, seek solace. But in the end, all it is is words. I can't count on them making you feel as they do me.
I am not good at compartmentalizing. If something bothers me. I talk about it. I’m a word-knife spitting scatterhead.
<Histrionics unintentional, but I'm aware how it sounds.>
If opinions are like assholes, and everyone has got one, then what of the sycophants and plagiaristic regurgitators? Do they expel from someone else’s hole, not having one of their own? Or even have to wipe? That’s it. People don’t want to wipe up after themselves. It’s a chore. Yeesh.
Thanks for your time, anyone whom may be reading this. Be well. May 2021 bring us clarity.
THE END (for now)