There's a good ship on the eastern coast //
They call it the Black and Filthy Ghost //
it sailed for England -- sailed for Spain//
they say she'll never sail again//
but I seen her I did, just last night //
a flicker in the dark, in the deep old light //
I seen the big ship// a sailing down //
under the ocean without a sound //
Oh oh the black and filthy ghost //
the crew so wicked , more evil than most //
look at her sail so high and low //
sailing to the worlds we will never knowwww
The captain they call, "Big John Grey" //
he's killed a million men, he kills more every day ////
He carries a big blade, they say "the devils knife" //
And it aint for No king that he'll take a Life //
Ah the good captain, hear him scream and shout!! //
When the whales and the sharks are swimmin all about //
Good blue water, good black waves //
Throws the Kings men to watery graves
▼
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Internet piracy and poor folks....
It is beginning to seem as though it's pretty safe to say that the real "glory days" of Internet piracy are all but gone. I must say that I, personally, type this statement with a heavy heart . I am not really glad, I'll admit, that Internet piracy seems to have taken a serious blow. Not at all. I'm angry. I'm upset. I am grieving. And I think I have been grieving -albeit a bit in denial -for a number of years now. This is because, so far as I see it, Internet piracy has been in a bit of a danger zone for about 3 years or so. It is only now, however, that I am personally coming to complete terms with this. That I am admitting it....
When I was a kid, I can remember thinking that the Internet was altogether too fun, and too easy, to really last. As a dreadfully poor person whose sole possession basically was the Internet, all of the movies, tv shows, books, and songs I would "stea;" (along with friends of course) always seemed too good to be true. Oftentimes, when I would really stop and think about it, it would start to seem like I was living in some sort of surrealist dream, some type of "Big Rock Candy Mountains" style fantasy.
The Candy mountains of course, this is a reference to an old song from the Great Depression era, written from the perspective of a hobo who has finally found the paradise all beaten men dream of: A place where "cigarettes grow on trees", and where "the jails are made of tin, so you can walk right out, as soon as you are in..." The Internet very much seemed precisely like this place, for everything except food and drink, for essentially the entire duration of my childhood, my teenage years, and my very early 20s. The idea was sometimes discussed, around the proverbial text messaging campfire, that it all might one day slow down...but it didn't seem entirely possible. There was no way it could ever end entirely. There was no way!
But then, I don't remember precisely when, things started to get funkier bit by bit. The great pirate sites where everyone got the torrents from, for starters, started to drop like flies, and then you would hear that they were being "monitored". Torrents that you would once download and seed for others to download , all day long, started to seem dangerous, and frightening. "If I download this, will I...perhaps face real consequences?" became a question in the back of your head, that had never existed before.
Alas, in response to this fear of torrenting, many pirates fled to the high seas of "streaming". In my teenage years, streaming was basically impossible , as it would have taken too long . In 2013 or so, it became the thing. For a little while , at least, until then we one day woke up...and even streaming was sort of "finished". Sure, sure, I know...many people still stream, millions of them even, but it is a devilishly annoying way to watch movies, for one simple reason: It is sort of like eating junk food, or smoking. Why? Because all the streaming sites tend to be literally boiling over with viruses, malware, and dangerous diseases that your computer probably won't be able to handle for long. In my opinion, if someone were to regularly stream things off such sites, they can probably look forward to no longer having a functioning computer within a year, maybe two.
If you're poor, this is a problem: You don't have any $$$ to constantly buy new computers. So streaming becomes a pretty fastidious thing, too. Just like torrenting.
Hence it has basically become the case that, since I cannot stand the limited selection of Netflix, Amazon Prime, or any of the other countless packages, I'll confess: I have mostly fallen almost completely out of the television or movie watching game now. Without easy piracy, I'm not afraid to tell my reader, I lost almost immediate interest in all of it. Well, perhaps saying I lost interest is the wrong way to put it, since I'm still definitely interested in watching, but just too cheap and frugal to actually pursue it.
I therefore find that I seem to have automatically moved into a different section of media entirely: Instead of logging onto piracy sites where I fear my precious computer will be swamped by disease and virus (or tracked via torrents), I just use sites like YouTube , which still promise me free and easily accessible entertainment. All the old movies I used to watch, I now just watch clips of them there, from time to time, and as for new television shows, I basically just don't watch them at all. For the most part, my media diet is now limited almost entirely to free music videos, documentaries, and whatever random thing I can find on YouTube. Subscribing to specific channels that follow a similar model to HBO , where you pay monthly, has no allure for me, and I do not think it ever will, unless I were to become a literal multi-millonaire. I really now believe the only reason I ever followed anything at all was because it was "free". I didn't judge it as harshly back then. Now I judge it harshly. So harshly to the poinT I can't really enjoy watching it. So I won't, as I say. I'll instead just continue to watch these free music videos on YouTube, video blogs, etc...
Some people of course might wonder why I'm bothering to write this. What's the sense? Well I think the sense is that I want to help some people understand, perhaps, the "mindset" of a poor person like myself, which is as follows: The quality of the entertainment never seems to have made much of a difference to me. All that ever really mattered was a completely free way to pass my time with my one possession, the Internet, and that was the end. In other words, I have the feeling that the companies believe poor people will be willing to invest more money in higher entertainment, but I don't really believe it myself. I think what we poors instead tend to do is just lower our quality to whatever the cheap thing is. You arrive at the carnival, and you see one ride, that is clearly very good, charging $25 for a single entry, and then you see another ride that clearly isn't very good, but it's only $0.50 cents for unlimited access. Poor people will always, as an absolute rule, choose ride number 2. Always. And if there is a ride number 3 that opens, which is free, and no one even knows what it is, and it's half dilapidated, then poor people will choose that instead, as well. Poor people simply don't care about quality. They simply don't care.
For example, I love rock and roll, but since rap songs are constantly being made and published, each and every day, for nothing, on YouTube, I tend to just automatically gravitate to rap. If you put 10 rock songs in front of me, high quality songs, but they cost a buck, and then you gave me 200 rap songs for free, all low quality and awful, I'll probably just choose the 200 rap songs. I will do this because all that matters to me is being able to pass my time. Ultimately I don't care about quality. I can't afford to care.
In fact, this was even true years ago, when I used to smoke pot all the time: I never bought what we here in the ghetto used to often call "Suburban white boy weed". Suburban white boy weed was pretty high quality, expensive weed, and you often had to shell out $20 for just a single gram. When you're a heavy weedhead, a measly gram is usually gone in just a single heavy smoking session. Sure, you used to get very high, but the next day you'd wake up, and all you'd have left of your white boy weed was a very little bit. Therefore, I used to always spend $40 bucks or so on "Mexican dirt".
As my readre can imagine, the Mexican weed was of a seriously lower quality, but guess what? For $40, you were often able to buy a literal half ounce, or maybe more! I'd be able to smoke for two weeks, instead of one night. I didn't get as high as I would on the white boy weed; but who gives a shit? I was able to pass my time and feel relatively stoned for two weeks instead of a single night, before I had to start worrying about money again. And by the way, oftentimes, when the Mexican dirt connection would disappear (which often happened), I just wouldn't smoke at all. I'd quit and suffer, instead of buying high priced suburban weed, and I'd just wait for the drought to end.My senior year of high school, I actually bought a literal half pound of the Mexican dirt weed, when the school year began. I did this because I wanted to be absolutely positive I wouldn't run out of weed a single night of my senior year. Considering I had a half pound, you can bet I never did. I had weed in my closet baiscally until the Christmas of my college freshman year. This is to say that, even when I did have a lot of money, I would still avoid the high priced shit, to just buy the poor boy shit in serious bulk. Just like I'm saying with the rap songs. Quality made literally no difference to me, so long as I knew something cheaper, that helped me to pass my time, also existed.
Of course, wealthy people cry and cry about this, and say that things like Internet piracy "threaten to destroy" the media , and that we eventually won't have "any media available". My response as a poor person? I guess that's too bad, isn't it? Oh well...nothing will exist. Sad, I guess. No more TV shows or films of quality, no more albums of quality... it all won't exist, because pirates and Internet thieves have stolen and downloaded all of it, so that no one could make money. A real shame, isn't it? For the rich person , yea, I guess it is. For me and other poors? Not really, no. For the truth is that , before this stuff was possible to pirate, it didn't really exist for us anyways. Thats what no one seems to totally understand about this argument -- oftentimes even poor people themselves. For example, you start to discussing Internet music piracy, and many people seriously act like all these people stealing music online would have bought the albums in the first place.
The truth is that they never would have. 95% of them literally never would have participated. The only reason they began to participate was because it was free. If it had not been, they would have just found something else to do. They would literally sit there playin board games with their siblings, drawing on spare sheets of paper, doing anything, before buying it. Because they can't afford to buy it. Get it? I know for a fact that my musical tastes would be radically different, if it had not been for Internet piracy. This is just a simple and "harsh" truth.
As my reader also might be able to imagine, the very reason I am even writing this exact document...is because I am looking for a way to pass some of my time tonight, since I went to pirate something and found I couldn't. So I gave up and got aggravated and thought..let me pass my time another way instead tonight. There's no way I'm buying it. No way at all.
--- A poor
When I was a kid, I can remember thinking that the Internet was altogether too fun, and too easy, to really last. As a dreadfully poor person whose sole possession basically was the Internet, all of the movies, tv shows, books, and songs I would "stea;" (along with friends of course) always seemed too good to be true. Oftentimes, when I would really stop and think about it, it would start to seem like I was living in some sort of surrealist dream, some type of "Big Rock Candy Mountains" style fantasy.
The Candy mountains of course, this is a reference to an old song from the Great Depression era, written from the perspective of a hobo who has finally found the paradise all beaten men dream of: A place where "cigarettes grow on trees", and where "the jails are made of tin, so you can walk right out, as soon as you are in..." The Internet very much seemed precisely like this place, for everything except food and drink, for essentially the entire duration of my childhood, my teenage years, and my very early 20s. The idea was sometimes discussed, around the proverbial text messaging campfire, that it all might one day slow down...but it didn't seem entirely possible. There was no way it could ever end entirely. There was no way!
But then, I don't remember precisely when, things started to get funkier bit by bit. The great pirate sites where everyone got the torrents from, for starters, started to drop like flies, and then you would hear that they were being "monitored". Torrents that you would once download and seed for others to download , all day long, started to seem dangerous, and frightening. "If I download this, will I...perhaps face real consequences?" became a question in the back of your head, that had never existed before.
Alas, in response to this fear of torrenting, many pirates fled to the high seas of "streaming". In my teenage years, streaming was basically impossible , as it would have taken too long . In 2013 or so, it became the thing. For a little while , at least, until then we one day woke up...and even streaming was sort of "finished". Sure, sure, I know...many people still stream, millions of them even, but it is a devilishly annoying way to watch movies, for one simple reason: It is sort of like eating junk food, or smoking. Why? Because all the streaming sites tend to be literally boiling over with viruses, malware, and dangerous diseases that your computer probably won't be able to handle for long. In my opinion, if someone were to regularly stream things off such sites, they can probably look forward to no longer having a functioning computer within a year, maybe two.
If you're poor, this is a problem: You don't have any $$$ to constantly buy new computers. So streaming becomes a pretty fastidious thing, too. Just like torrenting.
Hence it has basically become the case that, since I cannot stand the limited selection of Netflix, Amazon Prime, or any of the other countless packages, I'll confess: I have mostly fallen almost completely out of the television or movie watching game now. Without easy piracy, I'm not afraid to tell my reader, I lost almost immediate interest in all of it. Well, perhaps saying I lost interest is the wrong way to put it, since I'm still definitely interested in watching, but just too cheap and frugal to actually pursue it.
I therefore find that I seem to have automatically moved into a different section of media entirely: Instead of logging onto piracy sites where I fear my precious computer will be swamped by disease and virus (or tracked via torrents), I just use sites like YouTube , which still promise me free and easily accessible entertainment. All the old movies I used to watch, I now just watch clips of them there, from time to time, and as for new television shows, I basically just don't watch them at all. For the most part, my media diet is now limited almost entirely to free music videos, documentaries, and whatever random thing I can find on YouTube. Subscribing to specific channels that follow a similar model to HBO , where you pay monthly, has no allure for me, and I do not think it ever will, unless I were to become a literal multi-millonaire. I really now believe the only reason I ever followed anything at all was because it was "free". I didn't judge it as harshly back then. Now I judge it harshly. So harshly to the poinT I can't really enjoy watching it. So I won't, as I say. I'll instead just continue to watch these free music videos on YouTube, video blogs, etc...
Some people of course might wonder why I'm bothering to write this. What's the sense? Well I think the sense is that I want to help some people understand, perhaps, the "mindset" of a poor person like myself, which is as follows: The quality of the entertainment never seems to have made much of a difference to me. All that ever really mattered was a completely free way to pass my time with my one possession, the Internet, and that was the end. In other words, I have the feeling that the companies believe poor people will be willing to invest more money in higher entertainment, but I don't really believe it myself. I think what we poors instead tend to do is just lower our quality to whatever the cheap thing is. You arrive at the carnival, and you see one ride, that is clearly very good, charging $25 for a single entry, and then you see another ride that clearly isn't very good, but it's only $0.50 cents for unlimited access. Poor people will always, as an absolute rule, choose ride number 2. Always. And if there is a ride number 3 that opens, which is free, and no one even knows what it is, and it's half dilapidated, then poor people will choose that instead, as well. Poor people simply don't care about quality. They simply don't care.
For example, I love rock and roll, but since rap songs are constantly being made and published, each and every day, for nothing, on YouTube, I tend to just automatically gravitate to rap. If you put 10 rock songs in front of me, high quality songs, but they cost a buck, and then you gave me 200 rap songs for free, all low quality and awful, I'll probably just choose the 200 rap songs. I will do this because all that matters to me is being able to pass my time. Ultimately I don't care about quality. I can't afford to care.
In fact, this was even true years ago, when I used to smoke pot all the time: I never bought what we here in the ghetto used to often call "Suburban white boy weed". Suburban white boy weed was pretty high quality, expensive weed, and you often had to shell out $20 for just a single gram. When you're a heavy weedhead, a measly gram is usually gone in just a single heavy smoking session. Sure, you used to get very high, but the next day you'd wake up, and all you'd have left of your white boy weed was a very little bit. Therefore, I used to always spend $40 bucks or so on "Mexican dirt".
As my readre can imagine, the Mexican weed was of a seriously lower quality, but guess what? For $40, you were often able to buy a literal half ounce, or maybe more! I'd be able to smoke for two weeks, instead of one night. I didn't get as high as I would on the white boy weed; but who gives a shit? I was able to pass my time and feel relatively stoned for two weeks instead of a single night, before I had to start worrying about money again. And by the way, oftentimes, when the Mexican dirt connection would disappear (which often happened), I just wouldn't smoke at all. I'd quit and suffer, instead of buying high priced suburban weed, and I'd just wait for the drought to end.My senior year of high school, I actually bought a literal half pound of the Mexican dirt weed, when the school year began. I did this because I wanted to be absolutely positive I wouldn't run out of weed a single night of my senior year. Considering I had a half pound, you can bet I never did. I had weed in my closet baiscally until the Christmas of my college freshman year. This is to say that, even when I did have a lot of money, I would still avoid the high priced shit, to just buy the poor boy shit in serious bulk. Just like I'm saying with the rap songs. Quality made literally no difference to me, so long as I knew something cheaper, that helped me to pass my time, also existed.
Of course, wealthy people cry and cry about this, and say that things like Internet piracy "threaten to destroy" the media , and that we eventually won't have "any media available". My response as a poor person? I guess that's too bad, isn't it? Oh well...nothing will exist. Sad, I guess. No more TV shows or films of quality, no more albums of quality... it all won't exist, because pirates and Internet thieves have stolen and downloaded all of it, so that no one could make money. A real shame, isn't it? For the rich person , yea, I guess it is. For me and other poors? Not really, no. For the truth is that , before this stuff was possible to pirate, it didn't really exist for us anyways. Thats what no one seems to totally understand about this argument -- oftentimes even poor people themselves. For example, you start to discussing Internet music piracy, and many people seriously act like all these people stealing music online would have bought the albums in the first place.
The truth is that they never would have. 95% of them literally never would have participated. The only reason they began to participate was because it was free. If it had not been, they would have just found something else to do. They would literally sit there playin board games with their siblings, drawing on spare sheets of paper, doing anything, before buying it. Because they can't afford to buy it. Get it? I know for a fact that my musical tastes would be radically different, if it had not been for Internet piracy. This is just a simple and "harsh" truth.
As my reader also might be able to imagine, the very reason I am even writing this exact document...is because I am looking for a way to pass some of my time tonight, since I went to pirate something and found I couldn't. So I gave up and got aggravated and thought..let me pass my time another way instead tonight. There's no way I'm buying it. No way at all.
--- A poor
Monday, November 27, 2017
Twitter still
My Twitter addiction is ongoing, friends, and I am beginning to think that whoever I am on there, is beginning to overtake my personality elsewhere. I don't quite know how to explain it; but it's as though there is some sort of big window, or maybe even an entire door, that is closing down on me, now that I'm a perpetual Twitter head. It's as though I am now in some sort of big house I was never really in before, and all the inhabitants of this house are beginning to leak into me. I am beginning to become one with their thoughts, and their tweets. I am even, in my head, starting to hear their voices. All of these types of people I was just never aware of before ....now becoming front and center. The main attraction....
Picking up voices, of course, is always a part of anyone's game-- but it is especially noticeable, I think, when someone is a writer. It can also be especially dangerous when someone is a writer, and this is why I keep stressing how "uncertain" I am, in regards to Twitter. It is like reading a very bad book, in some way, but I can't stop reading it and I just keep picking up more of the voices. These voices are inevitably going to leak into my scribblings. They may even eventually , I believe, kill my own voice. The death of my own voice isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course. Depends how you see it. It could actually be a good thing. It's not always a bad thing to lose your own voice , believe it or not...
For example, when I read a few Stephen King novels back to back, as I often did years ago, it usually quickly becomes the case that, when I next reach my keyboard, I start writing stuff that sounds a bit like King. Considering he's a best selling author, I don't always think this is such a bad or horrible thing. It can, however, still be annoying. Especially if you think his voice isn't really that entertaining yourself, and yet you're still "accidentally" picking it up anyways. That's really the whole key of it really: Sometimes you don't actively want to pick up the voice, it just happens. This is what I mean by why I'm so conflicted with Twitter: the more I use it, the more I become the person and the people I retweet and follow on there. I get sucked into their world, their book, their type of dialogue, their concerns, etc.
Oh well...it's not such a bad thing I guess. It's just weird!
Picking up voices, of course, is always a part of anyone's game-- but it is especially noticeable, I think, when someone is a writer. It can also be especially dangerous when someone is a writer, and this is why I keep stressing how "uncertain" I am, in regards to Twitter. It is like reading a very bad book, in some way, but I can't stop reading it and I just keep picking up more of the voices. These voices are inevitably going to leak into my scribblings. They may even eventually , I believe, kill my own voice. The death of my own voice isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course. Depends how you see it. It could actually be a good thing. It's not always a bad thing to lose your own voice , believe it or not...
For example, when I read a few Stephen King novels back to back, as I often did years ago, it usually quickly becomes the case that, when I next reach my keyboard, I start writing stuff that sounds a bit like King. Considering he's a best selling author, I don't always think this is such a bad or horrible thing. It can, however, still be annoying. Especially if you think his voice isn't really that entertaining yourself, and yet you're still "accidentally" picking it up anyways. That's really the whole key of it really: Sometimes you don't actively want to pick up the voice, it just happens. This is what I mean by why I'm so conflicted with Twitter: the more I use it, the more I become the person and the people I retweet and follow on there. I get sucked into their world, their book, their type of dialogue, their concerns, etc.
Oh well...it's not such a bad thing I guess. It's just weird!
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
My Twitter addiction spinning out of Control
I am a god damn hack as a writer!
It shouldn't be this easy to distract me! It really shouldn't. I should be able to wake up first thing on a Sunday morning and ... boom!! Nothing but net, baby. Nothing but 5,000 words promptly right off the bat. I shouldn't have to .... feel so sunken like I do. To feel so blocked, and clogged, and as though I just don't have any ammo anymore. I shouldn't have to feel so bloooooody addicted to Twitter , and to YouTube, and all the rest of this shit.
Yet I am, aren't I? Yes baby. Its sad but true. I have to ADMIT it now. The moment I break my addiction to one thing online, or on this insufferable iPhone, the next thing starts. In December 2016, for example, the big problem briefly became the old game EverQuest. I for some reason made a random return to it, and played every chance I could get for almost 2 months straight. My daily word count, as you can imagine, plummeted during this time.
Like, I went from writing 2-3000 words daily, if not far more, to suddenly just ...nothing. Totally blank. A word processor that, at days end, would have little more than 2 measly paragraphs in it. Maybe just two fucking sentences. "The wizard turned. He looked at the dog. The dog was...."
It was pathetic as hell. But then, a miracle occurred: My computer mouse broke out of no where, after I accidentally spilt water all over it, and I just never went out to get a new one, because it's shockingly comfortable to use a computer with no mouse ,believe it or not and...then EverQuest was done. I didn't need it anymore. I couldn't play it, in fact, even if I wanted to. It's such an old game that it actually can't run with Windows Mousekeys it turns out....
So then I was back again!! Inside my Notebooks. The months passed joyously, all the way from early February to literally the very beginning of the summer. I was on an absolute writing roll, at least the way I remember it. I felt accomplished; and I got a lot done every chance I could. I believe this blog shows some of the effects of that. Short stories, essays, the usual meandering attempts at novels, everything. I was secure in my steady daily word count! Yes!!!!!! (even, of course, if sometimes my word count was,I'll admit, just dirty sex stories...)
Then of course it happened again. The word count killa. Twitter. Yes. This was my first round of Twitter, in fact. I had been trying to follow my sweet Azealia Banks, the female rapper from Harlem, and by far the most controversial and political female rapper there has ever been, when I learned, via her Instagram, that she had started using Twitter again. Azealias Twitter usage is rather famous and I had done some readying on her "legendary" period on the platform (it eventually ended in her being banished permanently, on that account) so I knew I had to follow her this time. I had to try and make an attempt to actually, like, get Azealias attention. So , for the first time in my life, I made a Twitter. Azealia's fault. She drew me in. In fact, the handle of the account was even dedicated to her: "Azealia e' La Reina". Spanish for "Azealia is the Queen"....
Very quickly of course I came to see that Azealia could only keep me so occupied on there and I began to look around elsewhere. A favorite writer of mine, a science fiction guy called William Gibson, he runs a Twitter account too, so I started to follow him, and all the decidedly liberal shit he posts. Eventually I got caught up in "Threads" and conversations I had never even realized were occurring online . I became interested! As I said before in my post about Twitter, writing on there feels much different than writing on here, or in my lonely word processor. Writing on there feels like I might actually be read--like I'm writing for a magazine!! So I started to develop this dual interest between retweeting and discussing liberal politics, and then too also trying to maintain my now public love for Azealia, on my quasi fan account. At one point, I am proud to say, I actually even got a great deal of attention from Azealia, too. For example, we briefly discussed her desire to live in Maine one day , we discussed some Civil Rights history, gun control stuff, other rappers of course, she at one point visited my page and liked a photo of a book I took (the book was about polytheism), and then ...
Then I lost my mind, at some point, and decided I just had to log off. I could not take it anymore. First of all because I knew, the entire time, that Twitter was sucking tons of writing juices out of me (I was trying to write a story about a wizard), and secondly because it was making me really really upset with some of the arguments I was getting into on there. I wrote about one of them before a few months ago, the Colombian girl or whoever it was, from Washington Heights, that I got into a fight with over Madonna being a "cultural appropriator". I still feel my blood a'boiling when I think of that bitch. She sort of humiliated me at one point and then publicly made a scene of blocking me (when I really wasn't expecting it) and so then I knew .."its time to go, baby...its time to go..."
Later that day I promptly deleted my account and then waited, patiently somehow, until Twitter complete;ly deleted it a month later (since they have a waiting period in case you want to return). Oddly enough, I'll add, Azealia Banks also deleted her account not long after. Which I found kind of odd, and don't want to believe was at all connected to me deleting mine ... I mean she's sort of a star after all, but I dunno...it did seem, at times, like I was the only fan account she really had going for her ...(which made me sad). She has since restarted it two or three times, then deleted it again as recently as last week, but on her last restart I noticed she did post a new video for her song "Escapades" which is very good and I suggest you watch. (Part of the fun of summer 2017 was watching Azealia drop the demo for "Escapades" in real time on Twitter; as well as the finished release of "Chi Chi" which has no video).
ALAS!! Once I was logged off and the damn thang was completely deactivated, it was as my reader might guess: I was joyously back to writing a decent amount again, in my complete dark New Jersey attic solitude, back with no distractions, and I rode out the rest of the summer and the early fall of this 2017 with no Twitter and no EverQuest. The only thing that really threatened me was a 3 week period where my piano tried to resurrect itself and get attention to make YouTube videos; but I stabbed that pretty quick... to get back here...to the silent page.....the silent page where I am convinced, if I can just truly focus eventually, all my success will be found. Real deep and lasting success. Every word I write..essay, short story, or even just this... every word, I believe and have faith, brings me closer to that success. Yesterday I almost got something...1,148 words...a black femme rapper who gets sucked into a sort of Wizard of Oz type scenario...she met an elf sorceress named Magmorel.... 1,148 words...it was halfway decent...there was also a pirate involved...an idea that had bubbled up to me whilst in the shower and I rushed to write it ....
Yet ..yet...yet... as I say: The Twitter bug somehow jumped out at me again sometime around the middle of October now ,and it has gotten me pretty bad this time, just like last time. It has taken over my mind. I find myself entirely unable to disconnect around the clock. My brain is bleeding. All my precious thoughts get plugged in there, instead of here or elsewhere. I find myself obsessed with seeing who starts following me and who retweets me, who likes me, and who is actually kind enough to reply to me. I did a bunch of shit the first week I was on so, like I said another day on here, I have almost 2,000 followers. On the Azealia fan account I had a measly 120 or so. Now I got 2,000: I am in this SHIT!!! Also of course, beyond that, I find myself obsessed with just finding and learning about the truly strange people on there.
For example, the other day I wrote about how I was discovering that black girl from Atlanta, Georgia, the hair stylist. Well, I find I have tired of her now, the same way I had sort of tired of Azealia's account the other time in the summer, and now I have taken interest with a new character. It is another black girl of course (my reader can see I have a thang for 'em) and she is not from Atlanta but, supposedly, if she is to be believed, Florida. She says she lives right at the tip of it, in fact, and in one status she posted she wrote how her father was a "dreadlocked rasta from Kingston". I found this fascinating of course! As I have been doing my obsessing over Jamaica a good bit recently.
But ah, this girl...the "Queen of Ghana" she calls herself on there... she is truly fascinating, and very beautiful! Very, very beautiful. And she writes a great deal of very interesting stuff and a lot of it, too .. To the point where sometimes it can be hard to keep up. I log off the damn Twitter for one hour and when I return she has 6-7 new statuses for me to scroll through, many of them quite long. She says a lot of risque things, sort of like Azealia, that always bring a smile to my face. The other night for example, she spent 2 hours typing statuses giving "advice" to girls. Most of her advice revolved entirely around a handgun and how to use it when a man gets a little too aggressive. She said something along the lines of "...and if a man ever tries to really fuq with you and I mean, like, really, like he hits you, my advice is always...fuck it, shoot him."
This was shocking but fun to me: As a writer I am very attracted to people and characters who speak bluntly like this, especially in these public forums -- there's nothing better, even if the subject is risque as this. She then later wrote about how she has a daughter named Jaslene and the daughter is only 4 or 5 and she said how "...I don't ever let Jaslene outta my sight round here... i don't let her go play outside...if I go out there with her..y'all know I got the burner on me..tell y'all the truth, I even got it on me, in the room, when we are sleepin..." This of course created a very strange image in my mind, and I begin to really try to imagine what that scene must be like. It sounds dangerous, of course, to be sleeping in the same room as a young child with a gun on you but ... well, it is the way of this world is it not? Certainly the way of this country. Plus maybe she is just exaggerating the whole thing and it isn't even true eh? After all, in another post, she did say she still lives with her parents, and she mentioned how they work the late shift together or something like that ..... she said she was 24 years old. I guess she seems 24...
Ah! The Queen of Ghana. One wonders what made her choose that name in particular. One also can't help but wonder exactly what this intriguing Queen of Ghana thinks of me. As I said, I have liked a very wide number of her statuses (not many people seem to) and I have also been brave enough to reply to a number of them, at times with full paragraphs, in fact. She seems to often have a lot of questions she posts , for instance, about transgendered people. I am not "technically" transgendered myself, considering I am sitting here with no breasts, a penis and a full Jack Sparrow goatee; but I have the profile photo on Twitter as Azealia Banks right now, so who knew what this girl thought. I thus started to try and discuss trans people with her .... she didn't reallly seem too enthusiastic...I used my usual line about how it's all "just science ..and anothr invention we have to accept with time..." She came back with something about how "...a few months ago a tweet of mine went viral, with trans ppl, because I wrote how if they get to be called real women, then I want to be called a trans woman...and they flipped out on me..they went totally crazy.."
I told the Queen of Ghana that I personally take no offense if she wants to call herself a trans wioman; in fact "I find it complimentary that you would want to align yourself with the community in that manner." The Black Caribbean Queen ...she had no response to this ...none at all....for she was already eagerly writing about something else. Probably dicks. Oh, she does a lot of talking about dicks. From what I have come to learn of her these past few days , this woman despises men very much, but men have dicks ... and by God, she loves dicks. The girl from Georgia was sort of similar, she even had an intriguing phrase posted as her Twitter description: "I ain't even like men; I'm just programmed to fuck 'em." I love it! I really love it. Indeed the Queen of Ghana posts very interesting statuses revolving around the male phallus. Also she posts many about the female genitalia. Her descriptions about how wet or not wet her pussy gets are always particularlt fun for me. "Niggaz think they sooo hot , think they got real long dicks... ahahaa....these niggas aint made my pussy wet in years now. My pussy stay dry off these niggas for real. Its like these niggas done forgotten how to get a pussy wet or suttin..."
You see, however, dear reader? See what I mean? About how horrifically distracting this rotten thing is? I really can't stand it for this reason, because it's like a book of some kind that I'm reading, but then again, at the same time, it isn't a book. What the hell is it? It's Twitter. It's distracting. I cannot seem to control my usage ... but I feel ...I feel deeply compelled to keep trying to learn how to control my usage. I feel I have no choice. Literally everyone is on this thing. In fact, I was retweeted yesterday by another rapper "somewhat like" Azealia Banks, except a male whose quite older, Talib Kweli. He is very active on there as well, it seems, battling "trolls" for hours and hours on end. Beyond Talib, there is also Joyce Carol Oates, the old writer. She is on there just like William Gibson; both of them post constantly about Trump, liberals, gun control, healthcare, etc. I feel like I am supposed to become a part of all of this, if I want to one day succeed as an "American writer" ...I feel like, if I was courageous, I could even send the link of this blog straight to Joyce Carol Oates and she could read it and save me from starvation (if I was lucky and she "chose" me) and yet.... and yet .....like i said ....I can't really control my usage. At some point I always spin out of control. I talk about things I shouldn't talk about. I say embarassing shit that would make someone like JCO not want to choose me, eh?
Like when I start talking with someone like the Queen of Ghana, about dicks. Which, yes, I did that, just a few hours ago. She wrote about how she had a grandfather or something who was actually a Christian priest of some kind in Jamaica, and she said how she thought he probably "prayed to keep demons off of me...but they don't wanna leave....the demons make me want to suck dick..." I read this statement the Queen of Ghana posted in complete awe, and of course I immediately and I mean immediately replied that I have often felt exactly the same. For it is true! Just like her, I have often felt that my entire desire to be a gay queer, and to perhaps even be a trans, was all some sort of demon deep down inside me, trying to wrestle control of my soul...my body. So I wrote someething like "...my god..queen...its xactly how I feel, girl... the demons be my only friends ...they tryna force me to suck dicks... Im like yo cmon...they insist..." The Queen replied back promptly with "...well don't forget mami, the demons aint always bad, in fact sometimes demons is angels and so on y'know?"
Needless to say I am clicking back over to Twitter now to see if she has posted any new statuses.....
Shockingly, and sadly, she actually has not. It seems the Queen of Ghana has gone silent and now been silent for about 5 hours, so since around 10 PM last night (its 3 am now). The last post she made had to do with her baby girl and how she just wants her to grow up in a good, healthy place. Presumably she won't post anything else till tomorrow ... in the morning....when I'll eagerly begin to read it all again. I wonder if I will eventually tire of her like these others. I wonder who I might move onto next, to keep me occupied ,if anyone at all. I keep sort of expecting that eventually, if I just use Twitter enough, I might erase the desire I have ... and adjust to a normal, non addictive usage.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case. It seems like it might actually wind up being the exact opposite: the more I use, the more I will keep using. I honestly don't know how Joyce Carol and William Gibson use it so often and still get writing done, assuming they do. He is sometimes awake even at hours like these, up there in Canada where he lives, posting. Then again, those two were both born in the 40s...and their best work is preumably behind them.. I really do sometimes think about trying to desperately plead with one of them, in the comments under their statuses, to read my shit, read it oh PLEASE READ IT! But I never do it. I didn't even do that with Azealia Banks neither, and trust me I've written a lot of stuff in regards to Azealia. I have no courage though. I also am convinced that I would ruin something "special" about my self if I wer to reveal myself like that, to these people -- especially someone like her. For some reason I feel like I have to be "hidden" in the shadows at all times. Even when I go out walking the pitbull now, I always walk her in the shadows.... I cannot stand to be SEEN...I really hate it ...when we walk the main road and the street lights shine on me...I shake....
I do wonder though, I'll admit, about what it would be like to have some sort of "alliance" with an artist like Azealia or someone like her. Like, William Burroughs , back in the 50s, he teamed up with Jack Kerouac to collaborate on a book called And The Hippos Boiled In Their Tanks, and I have always thought that was just so cool. So imagine if I somehow , by some fucking lucky miraculous stretch, got someone like Azealia to collaborate with me on a book - chapter for chapter -- she writes one, I write one?? What the hell would the book even be about? Who knows-who cares! So long as I was collabing with Azealia man .. that'd be incredible. Of course it would never happen, me no think, for what reason would a bad rapper bitch like AB have to collaborate with an unknown, unpublished, totally obscure scribbler like me? I feel that releasing a novel would actually look bad for AB, considering that scene. Sad .. I dunno... why am I talking about this?
Time to log back onto Twitter and maybe start jacking off. I got a whole new bottle of KY Jelly here and .... well, to be honest ...I got a whole other secret account too.....
PORNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
----
It shouldn't be this easy to distract me! It really shouldn't. I should be able to wake up first thing on a Sunday morning and ... boom!! Nothing but net, baby. Nothing but 5,000 words promptly right off the bat. I shouldn't have to .... feel so sunken like I do. To feel so blocked, and clogged, and as though I just don't have any ammo anymore. I shouldn't have to feel so bloooooody addicted to Twitter , and to YouTube, and all the rest of this shit.
Yet I am, aren't I? Yes baby. Its sad but true. I have to ADMIT it now. The moment I break my addiction to one thing online, or on this insufferable iPhone, the next thing starts. In December 2016, for example, the big problem briefly became the old game EverQuest. I for some reason made a random return to it, and played every chance I could get for almost 2 months straight. My daily word count, as you can imagine, plummeted during this time.
Like, I went from writing 2-3000 words daily, if not far more, to suddenly just ...nothing. Totally blank. A word processor that, at days end, would have little more than 2 measly paragraphs in it. Maybe just two fucking sentences. "The wizard turned. He looked at the dog. The dog was...."
It was pathetic as hell. But then, a miracle occurred: My computer mouse broke out of no where, after I accidentally spilt water all over it, and I just never went out to get a new one, because it's shockingly comfortable to use a computer with no mouse ,believe it or not and...then EverQuest was done. I didn't need it anymore. I couldn't play it, in fact, even if I wanted to. It's such an old game that it actually can't run with Windows Mousekeys it turns out....
So then I was back again!! Inside my Notebooks. The months passed joyously, all the way from early February to literally the very beginning of the summer. I was on an absolute writing roll, at least the way I remember it. I felt accomplished; and I got a lot done every chance I could. I believe this blog shows some of the effects of that. Short stories, essays, the usual meandering attempts at novels, everything. I was secure in my steady daily word count! Yes!!!!!! (even, of course, if sometimes my word count was,I'll admit, just dirty sex stories...)
Then of course it happened again. The word count killa. Twitter. Yes. This was my first round of Twitter, in fact. I had been trying to follow my sweet Azealia Banks, the female rapper from Harlem, and by far the most controversial and political female rapper there has ever been, when I learned, via her Instagram, that she had started using Twitter again. Azealias Twitter usage is rather famous and I had done some readying on her "legendary" period on the platform (it eventually ended in her being banished permanently, on that account) so I knew I had to follow her this time. I had to try and make an attempt to actually, like, get Azealias attention. So , for the first time in my life, I made a Twitter. Azealia's fault. She drew me in. In fact, the handle of the account was even dedicated to her: "Azealia e' La Reina". Spanish for "Azealia is the Queen"....
Very quickly of course I came to see that Azealia could only keep me so occupied on there and I began to look around elsewhere. A favorite writer of mine, a science fiction guy called William Gibson, he runs a Twitter account too, so I started to follow him, and all the decidedly liberal shit he posts. Eventually I got caught up in "Threads" and conversations I had never even realized were occurring online . I became interested! As I said before in my post about Twitter, writing on there feels much different than writing on here, or in my lonely word processor. Writing on there feels like I might actually be read--like I'm writing for a magazine!! So I started to develop this dual interest between retweeting and discussing liberal politics, and then too also trying to maintain my now public love for Azealia, on my quasi fan account. At one point, I am proud to say, I actually even got a great deal of attention from Azealia, too. For example, we briefly discussed her desire to live in Maine one day , we discussed some Civil Rights history, gun control stuff, other rappers of course, she at one point visited my page and liked a photo of a book I took (the book was about polytheism), and then ...
Then I lost my mind, at some point, and decided I just had to log off. I could not take it anymore. First of all because I knew, the entire time, that Twitter was sucking tons of writing juices out of me (I was trying to write a story about a wizard), and secondly because it was making me really really upset with some of the arguments I was getting into on there. I wrote about one of them before a few months ago, the Colombian girl or whoever it was, from Washington Heights, that I got into a fight with over Madonna being a "cultural appropriator". I still feel my blood a'boiling when I think of that bitch. She sort of humiliated me at one point and then publicly made a scene of blocking me (when I really wasn't expecting it) and so then I knew .."its time to go, baby...its time to go..."
Later that day I promptly deleted my account and then waited, patiently somehow, until Twitter complete;ly deleted it a month later (since they have a waiting period in case you want to return). Oddly enough, I'll add, Azealia Banks also deleted her account not long after. Which I found kind of odd, and don't want to believe was at all connected to me deleting mine ... I mean she's sort of a star after all, but I dunno...it did seem, at times, like I was the only fan account she really had going for her ...(which made me sad). She has since restarted it two or three times, then deleted it again as recently as last week, but on her last restart I noticed she did post a new video for her song "Escapades" which is very good and I suggest you watch. (Part of the fun of summer 2017 was watching Azealia drop the demo for "Escapades" in real time on Twitter; as well as the finished release of "Chi Chi" which has no video).
ALAS!! Once I was logged off and the damn thang was completely deactivated, it was as my reader might guess: I was joyously back to writing a decent amount again, in my complete dark New Jersey attic solitude, back with no distractions, and I rode out the rest of the summer and the early fall of this 2017 with no Twitter and no EverQuest. The only thing that really threatened me was a 3 week period where my piano tried to resurrect itself and get attention to make YouTube videos; but I stabbed that pretty quick... to get back here...to the silent page.....the silent page where I am convinced, if I can just truly focus eventually, all my success will be found. Real deep and lasting success. Every word I write..essay, short story, or even just this... every word, I believe and have faith, brings me closer to that success. Yesterday I almost got something...1,148 words...a black femme rapper who gets sucked into a sort of Wizard of Oz type scenario...she met an elf sorceress named Magmorel.... 1,148 words...it was halfway decent...there was also a pirate involved...an idea that had bubbled up to me whilst in the shower and I rushed to write it ....
Yet ..yet...yet... as I say: The Twitter bug somehow jumped out at me again sometime around the middle of October now ,and it has gotten me pretty bad this time, just like last time. It has taken over my mind. I find myself entirely unable to disconnect around the clock. My brain is bleeding. All my precious thoughts get plugged in there, instead of here or elsewhere. I find myself obsessed with seeing who starts following me and who retweets me, who likes me, and who is actually kind enough to reply to me. I did a bunch of shit the first week I was on so, like I said another day on here, I have almost 2,000 followers. On the Azealia fan account I had a measly 120 or so. Now I got 2,000: I am in this SHIT!!! Also of course, beyond that, I find myself obsessed with just finding and learning about the truly strange people on there.
For example, the other day I wrote about how I was discovering that black girl from Atlanta, Georgia, the hair stylist. Well, I find I have tired of her now, the same way I had sort of tired of Azealia's account the other time in the summer, and now I have taken interest with a new character. It is another black girl of course (my reader can see I have a thang for 'em) and she is not from Atlanta but, supposedly, if she is to be believed, Florida. She says she lives right at the tip of it, in fact, and in one status she posted she wrote how her father was a "dreadlocked rasta from Kingston". I found this fascinating of course! As I have been doing my obsessing over Jamaica a good bit recently.
But ah, this girl...the "Queen of Ghana" she calls herself on there... she is truly fascinating, and very beautiful! Very, very beautiful. And she writes a great deal of very interesting stuff and a lot of it, too .. To the point where sometimes it can be hard to keep up. I log off the damn Twitter for one hour and when I return she has 6-7 new statuses for me to scroll through, many of them quite long. She says a lot of risque things, sort of like Azealia, that always bring a smile to my face. The other night for example, she spent 2 hours typing statuses giving "advice" to girls. Most of her advice revolved entirely around a handgun and how to use it when a man gets a little too aggressive. She said something along the lines of "...and if a man ever tries to really fuq with you and I mean, like, really, like he hits you, my advice is always...fuck it, shoot him."
This was shocking but fun to me: As a writer I am very attracted to people and characters who speak bluntly like this, especially in these public forums -- there's nothing better, even if the subject is risque as this. She then later wrote about how she has a daughter named Jaslene and the daughter is only 4 or 5 and she said how "...I don't ever let Jaslene outta my sight round here... i don't let her go play outside...if I go out there with her..y'all know I got the burner on me..tell y'all the truth, I even got it on me, in the room, when we are sleepin..." This of course created a very strange image in my mind, and I begin to really try to imagine what that scene must be like. It sounds dangerous, of course, to be sleeping in the same room as a young child with a gun on you but ... well, it is the way of this world is it not? Certainly the way of this country. Plus maybe she is just exaggerating the whole thing and it isn't even true eh? After all, in another post, she did say she still lives with her parents, and she mentioned how they work the late shift together or something like that ..... she said she was 24 years old. I guess she seems 24...
Ah! The Queen of Ghana. One wonders what made her choose that name in particular. One also can't help but wonder exactly what this intriguing Queen of Ghana thinks of me. As I said, I have liked a very wide number of her statuses (not many people seem to) and I have also been brave enough to reply to a number of them, at times with full paragraphs, in fact. She seems to often have a lot of questions she posts , for instance, about transgendered people. I am not "technically" transgendered myself, considering I am sitting here with no breasts, a penis and a full Jack Sparrow goatee; but I have the profile photo on Twitter as Azealia Banks right now, so who knew what this girl thought. I thus started to try and discuss trans people with her .... she didn't reallly seem too enthusiastic...I used my usual line about how it's all "just science ..and anothr invention we have to accept with time..." She came back with something about how "...a few months ago a tweet of mine went viral, with trans ppl, because I wrote how if they get to be called real women, then I want to be called a trans woman...and they flipped out on me..they went totally crazy.."
I told the Queen of Ghana that I personally take no offense if she wants to call herself a trans wioman; in fact "I find it complimentary that you would want to align yourself with the community in that manner." The Black Caribbean Queen ...she had no response to this ...none at all....for she was already eagerly writing about something else. Probably dicks. Oh, she does a lot of talking about dicks. From what I have come to learn of her these past few days , this woman despises men very much, but men have dicks ... and by God, she loves dicks. The girl from Georgia was sort of similar, she even had an intriguing phrase posted as her Twitter description: "I ain't even like men; I'm just programmed to fuck 'em." I love it! I really love it. Indeed the Queen of Ghana posts very interesting statuses revolving around the male phallus. Also she posts many about the female genitalia. Her descriptions about how wet or not wet her pussy gets are always particularlt fun for me. "Niggaz think they sooo hot , think they got real long dicks... ahahaa....these niggas aint made my pussy wet in years now. My pussy stay dry off these niggas for real. Its like these niggas done forgotten how to get a pussy wet or suttin..."
You see, however, dear reader? See what I mean? About how horrifically distracting this rotten thing is? I really can't stand it for this reason, because it's like a book of some kind that I'm reading, but then again, at the same time, it isn't a book. What the hell is it? It's Twitter. It's distracting. I cannot seem to control my usage ... but I feel ...I feel deeply compelled to keep trying to learn how to control my usage. I feel I have no choice. Literally everyone is on this thing. In fact, I was retweeted yesterday by another rapper "somewhat like" Azealia Banks, except a male whose quite older, Talib Kweli. He is very active on there as well, it seems, battling "trolls" for hours and hours on end. Beyond Talib, there is also Joyce Carol Oates, the old writer. She is on there just like William Gibson; both of them post constantly about Trump, liberals, gun control, healthcare, etc. I feel like I am supposed to become a part of all of this, if I want to one day succeed as an "American writer" ...I feel like, if I was courageous, I could even send the link of this blog straight to Joyce Carol Oates and she could read it and save me from starvation (if I was lucky and she "chose" me) and yet.... and yet .....like i said ....I can't really control my usage. At some point I always spin out of control. I talk about things I shouldn't talk about. I say embarassing shit that would make someone like JCO not want to choose me, eh?
Like when I start talking with someone like the Queen of Ghana, about dicks. Which, yes, I did that, just a few hours ago. She wrote about how she had a grandfather or something who was actually a Christian priest of some kind in Jamaica, and she said how she thought he probably "prayed to keep demons off of me...but they don't wanna leave....the demons make me want to suck dick..." I read this statement the Queen of Ghana posted in complete awe, and of course I immediately and I mean immediately replied that I have often felt exactly the same. For it is true! Just like her, I have often felt that my entire desire to be a gay queer, and to perhaps even be a trans, was all some sort of demon deep down inside me, trying to wrestle control of my soul...my body. So I wrote someething like "...my god..queen...its xactly how I feel, girl... the demons be my only friends ...they tryna force me to suck dicks... Im like yo cmon...they insist..." The Queen replied back promptly with "...well don't forget mami, the demons aint always bad, in fact sometimes demons is angels and so on y'know?"
Needless to say I am clicking back over to Twitter now to see if she has posted any new statuses.....
Shockingly, and sadly, she actually has not. It seems the Queen of Ghana has gone silent and now been silent for about 5 hours, so since around 10 PM last night (its 3 am now). The last post she made had to do with her baby girl and how she just wants her to grow up in a good, healthy place. Presumably she won't post anything else till tomorrow ... in the morning....when I'll eagerly begin to read it all again. I wonder if I will eventually tire of her like these others. I wonder who I might move onto next, to keep me occupied ,if anyone at all. I keep sort of expecting that eventually, if I just use Twitter enough, I might erase the desire I have ... and adjust to a normal, non addictive usage.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case. It seems like it might actually wind up being the exact opposite: the more I use, the more I will keep using. I honestly don't know how Joyce Carol and William Gibson use it so often and still get writing done, assuming they do. He is sometimes awake even at hours like these, up there in Canada where he lives, posting. Then again, those two were both born in the 40s...and their best work is preumably behind them.. I really do sometimes think about trying to desperately plead with one of them, in the comments under their statuses, to read my shit, read it oh PLEASE READ IT! But I never do it. I didn't even do that with Azealia Banks neither, and trust me I've written a lot of stuff in regards to Azealia. I have no courage though. I also am convinced that I would ruin something "special" about my self if I wer to reveal myself like that, to these people -- especially someone like her. For some reason I feel like I have to be "hidden" in the shadows at all times. Even when I go out walking the pitbull now, I always walk her in the shadows.... I cannot stand to be SEEN...I really hate it ...when we walk the main road and the street lights shine on me...I shake....
I do wonder though, I'll admit, about what it would be like to have some sort of "alliance" with an artist like Azealia or someone like her. Like, William Burroughs , back in the 50s, he teamed up with Jack Kerouac to collaborate on a book called And The Hippos Boiled In Their Tanks, and I have always thought that was just so cool. So imagine if I somehow , by some fucking lucky miraculous stretch, got someone like Azealia to collaborate with me on a book - chapter for chapter -- she writes one, I write one?? What the hell would the book even be about? Who knows-who cares! So long as I was collabing with Azealia man .. that'd be incredible. Of course it would never happen, me no think, for what reason would a bad rapper bitch like AB have to collaborate with an unknown, unpublished, totally obscure scribbler like me? I feel that releasing a novel would actually look bad for AB, considering that scene. Sad .. I dunno... why am I talking about this?
Time to log back onto Twitter and maybe start jacking off. I got a whole new bottle of KY Jelly here and .... well, to be honest ...I got a whole other secret account too.....
PORNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
----
Monday, November 20, 2017
Old interview - 2016-- Country music
You scribbled an article the other day where you said that you felt country music has basically become "next to worthlesss" due to the manner in which it has marginalized itself politically. In specific you were discussing some of the newer stars , like Musgraves and Lambert & Shelton et cetera. At points you were rather derogatory. Yet it's also obvious that you do have a real respect for the old country tradition. What gives here?
It's confusing, I know. (Laughs). Well, I think the thing that folks have to understand is that country music, you know, it's just like I said in my article: It's been incredibly marginalized and has actually almost been high jacked by people who don't care so much about music as they do politics. And this is really an enormous tragedy once you realize how integral country music is to uh...our country! I'm the last person to want to toss out all tradition and burn it; but I'm also the last person whose going to let these conmen steal a great genre of music, you know? They're frauds.
But who exactly? Do you want to say the current stars are frauds or-
I actually don't think it's the stars so much as it is the fans. This is in fact a pretty constant theme of my work now that everyone ought to pick up on: The stars are really just puppets that the fans are controlling, and what we are seeing when we look at modern country is that the fans , well...you know, they're apart of that insane conservative political base for the most part, and so what has happened now is that the musicians also have to be apart of that same base. I find this really intriguing because if you look at the history of country singing, the only reason it ever managed to reach the mainstream was really because of that outlaw ride it went on in, i guess, the early 70s. So the only reason anyone ever liked it was because it once upon a time went ANTI CONSERVATIVE. All of a sudden guys like Willie Nelson, Gram Parsons, Johnny Cash , Waylon Jennings -- these guys managed to clip a huge deal of the mainstream and it was really beautiful because they made people like me,up here in this murderous city, they made me feel like I was apart of the country. I gues it might sound old hat now , but listening to Johnny Cash and everything when I was growing up- it really made me feel like an "American". And not in a bad way, but in a good way. Johnny is beloved by Republicans and he even seems to have a Republican message he was sending too; but when you actually look into his personal politics, you'll see he never actually sided with one party or the other. He performed at San Quentin penitentiary for Christ sakes. Johnny Cash was for the beaten man and that message is well known, it comes through in all of his work- but when I listen to these new country artists, I don't see much of him there anymore. What I'm seeing now is extremism coming from that side. I think that, like every other music culture, country music also deteriorated in a colossal way....
In what sense though?
Well for a long time I was, I'll admit, really blind to it because I was only researching those historical figures and learning how to play their songs and I was never looking into the modern guys, but then recently I started to finally look into them in a huge way, and what I came to find was I ..I really did not like it at all. They weren't relatable. If I had never heard of Johnny Cash and I had only ever heard of someone like Toby Keith or Kenny Chesney, I'm very sorry to say, but I'm not sure I would have ever become even slightly interested in country music. I think I would have insulted the hell out of it just like everyone else in the city. I would have gone the rap route like the kids in the city wanted me to. I'd probsbly be rich right now! Son of a bitch Johnny Cash....
How did you find Cash in the first place?
It's a good question that a lot of people would think isn't worth asking but very much is. The thing that everyone forgets now about Cash is that he wasn't actually doing so well in the late 80s and middle 90s and he almost vanished from pop culture entirely, it seems, until he suddenly threw out this incredible Hail Mary pass (for his own career and memory) when he did the "Hurt" song. The story of Johnny doing that song , everyone knows, it's really a story all its own. For most kids I have met here in the city, if I show up somewhere with an acoustic guitar in hand and I say I like cowboy music, that's the very first song - and often only song- that they'll reference. "Hurt". Of course as everyone knows it isn't even actually a song that Cash wrote himself, but rather one that the fellow from Nine Inch Nails wrote. I find this intriguing because it goes to show that our modern pop culture interpretation of Cash is ....how should I put it ...we've largely forgotten who he actually was in his prime, I guess. This is ironic because typically, for all the other stars, it's exactly the opposite. Nobody really gives a hell about solo Paul McCartney or what he did with Wings, really, they love him for what he did with the Beatles in his prime and those are the songs they mainly want too- and yet when you look at Cash, if he were still alive now and touring , if there was a hologram going around of Johnny Cash right now, that holograms most requested song would undoubtedly be "Hurt".
And "Walk the Line", "Boy Named Sue", "Folsom Prison Blues".
That's true, absolutrly, all those songs come into play and they're all loved by people - but mostly for the modern audience the big song is "Hurt" and "Hurt" alone. Then too whne it comes to those 3 other tunes you mentioned, the interesting thing about them to me is that, while I'll agree they're incredible songs,I would also still say that I don't think they represent the Cash I love. The Cash I love, what I would consider the real Cash, he goes far beyond that sort of songeriting. To me the best stuff he did was the historical stuff, which is coincidentally all the stuff that no one even in the country music 101 community seems to remember these days. If you look at his album "Bitter Tears: Johnny Sings Ballads of the American Indian", from 1964, I think that's a literal artifact. I literally think it is a relic that needs to be preserved, that album needs to go into the Library of Congress & the Smithsonian--I honest to God think it is one of the greatest albums that anyone ever made, hands down- and I also think that new songwriters - no matter what genre they're from - I think they need to look at that album and examine it, because its not only the story of the "real" Johnny Cash, but it's also the "real" USA. That album is incredible....it's almost like a film soundtrack or something, every song is a character that Johnny is playing, it's some of his best songeriting - and yet when you look at this albums legacy, what do you see? Nothing. Nada. Nobody gives a hoot about it. It seems to have not influenced the modern songeriting community AT ALL. Nobody even knows he did those songs! You know why that album is so funny by the way?
Why's that?
Because, from an historical point of view, Johnny was actually one step ahead of the hip crowd when he wrote that album. Look at the date again: 1964. In 1964 Jimi Hendrix had not yet released a single album and Bob Dylan had only 2 albums to his name behind him, both acoustic. The hippie revolution still had yet to really begin when Cash released that album, and a major point of the hippies was that they brought the American Indian into view, after a half century of the American Indian being total forgotten, with their long hair and their beaded jackets and their peace pipes etc. Hippies brought a lot of attention to places like Wounded Knee and stuff. They were very into Natives. And yet there was Johnny Cash doing it in 1964, singing about Indians, basically before anybody. He was concerned about the Indian issue, even writing about it - creating American ART about it- before the hippies.
He really was and remains to be an extremely interesting figure for these kinds of reasons. Writing that album was a risk. It's nothing like regular country music if you listen to it. The songs on it are literally Indian songs, with that Indian drum beat and everything. It's extremely bizarre from a modern perspective. Look at the titles: "Vanishing Race", "Apache Tears", "White Girl". What on Earth was this you know? In 1964! Can you even imagine seeing a song from one of these new country artists about this now? A song sympathetic to minorities in the same sense as this one? Absolutely not. Because the World suffered a tragic split, you see, after the 70s hit...the War on Drugs began to rumble...and then this sort of political 2 step that Johnny was dancing, it became unfashionable. That's why he was sitting there in the 1990s almost totally forgotten in a way. Again, the only reason he came back to mind was because he threw out a Hail Mary pass with a song that an alternative rock band had written. And then too don't forget that Cash covered other "alternative" artists as well, in his old age. He played a Glen Danzig song, "Thirteen", he did a U2 song, "One", he did Tom Petty, I think he even at one point did a Bob Marley song. Yes, I just searched it out, he even played an acoustic version of Marleys "Redemption Song". That's incredible!
He was trying to break the chains of genre as an old man....in a way that the new country stars just don't really do, because they aren't at all sympathetic to anyone outside of the country world, in my opinion. They don't realize how odd they look, I don't think, to city eyes. It's sad because losing country music as a viable pop culture art form....I personally think it means losing a lot of other things as well. But it's honestly like the modern stars aren't even trying. It's like they don't even care to have a wider audience. They're content with Wal Mart shoppers. As though they don't mind being marginalized. It's very strange because the country stars are actually just as marginalized as the rap stars, maybe even more so. I don't know how to explain it. I think it's sad I guess. As an acoustic guitar player but even just as someone who loves listening to stories and writing them myself, it's very depressing for me. Again: I first became interested in Cash not because I wanted to be a cowboy in Louisville, but because he had good stories he told. He told me about history. He sang "The Battle of New Orleans", "Ghost Riders in the Sky", "Long Black Veil", "Banks of the Ohio." Where are these stories now? They're no where. The only stories country gives me now - they're all about a bunch of people in cut off shorts, drinking Budweiser, shopping at Wal-Mart and shooting Glocks and Desert Eagles at bottles of Coca Cola in their backyard. That's fine occasionally, modern stories are very important to tell, absolutrly- but - Jesus Christ- can these people ever come up with a character? I feel like that's what the whole new generation is not comprehending about the old stars. Johnny Cash was not at the Battle of New Orleans, he was not in the Civil War, he did not fight with Robert E. Lee, he wasn't there when Sitting Bull was killed at Wounded Knee and he did not help George Washington fight the American Revolution - but in his songs he played characters that were doing these things. Everyone these days you'll find, it's like they have no idea how to get out of their own personalities. Every song is about their own life. The black rappers have the exact same problem, I'm telling you . These songs all suck! They only write about how god awful life is in the modern day inner city of Baltimore or Oakland or something. All of their songs , if you look at them, it's as though nothing ever happened before the artist himself was born in 1990 or whatever. Johnny Cash had a whole other spin. He was actually an impersonator, in the same sense that Stephen King or Johnny Depp is an impersonator. But if you look at these people now, they've lost this, I swear to God they've lost it. All they play is themselves. They never sing about history. They never create a fictional plot. They never do jack diddly. The only modern day country song I ever find myself listening to on repeat is that one Braid Paisley sang called "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive". That was a great song. Turns out he didn't even write it. Patty Loveless did. I'm not surprised, since Brad Paisley never writes about history, almost as though he isn't allowed to or just doesn't know how to. And that's why Brad Paisley is not beloved by city folks or international folks or anyone outside of Nashville for that matter - because he's very belligerent , and he makes no secret of the fact that he's writing for one sort of person and one sort of person alone. I'm sorry but, in my opinion, that's just not what an artist is supposed to be. An artist is supposed to take on characters - even if they're characters he doesn't agree with. Take for instance Merle Haggard with the song "Okie from Muskogee", where he sings the famous Republican line "We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee, we don't take our trips on LSD / we don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street, cause we like living right, and living free..."
Well the very interesting thing about this song is that, when I went and looked into it and tried to summon up some answers as to why exactly Merle went ahead and wrote it ...what I came to find is that he, in his later days, started saying ...what else...that he wrote it as a character. He said he wrote it "with his fathers voice". You see what I mean don't you? Everyone grabbed that song and ran with it - I think Richard Nixon used it for a political campaign?- but in the end that song was not even totally Merle Haggard! He literally even sang it with Willie Nelson years later, Willie Nelson who is the king of the potheads. The song was just a character, it wasn't totally his voice; but it's like people can't grasp that. They always want their musicians now to be the character on stage and off. It's stupid and it's limiting the creativity. It's limiting it in the most horrific of ways. I always say it...but just imagine how boring it would be if Stephen King only wrote about his actual day to day life? Or if a major actor like Bruce Willis suddenly decided he would only actually play ...Bruce Willis? It would be good for about 10 minutes and then you'd be bored to tears! Bruce Willlis needs to transform into someone else to be interesting. George Clooney does. Johnny Depp does. They all do! Nobody wants that day to day stuff in movies or books - so why do they want it literaly around the clock in music now? I don't get it.
It's almost as though the movies and books became so over the top and inauthentic with the special effects that, as a result, music - and country music in particular - had to fill the void and become the 'authentic place'.
That's a good way to put it really and maybe it is indeed what happened because honestly when I look at it ...I can't really understand how it came to be like this. What you say though, that's probsbly the straight truth. Everything else in our culture went so over the top so we started protecting our music. Preserving it in this one "authentic" place. It's almost actually reminding me of that film with Kevin Costner about baseball now, Field of Dreams...when the James Earl Jones character goes on that beautiful rant about baseball and he says ...what does he say... "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again...." This line from Field of Dreams is fantastic & all but you know the problem is that uh..baseball is a game, it is not an ART! A game isn't supposed to change rapidly, a game needs rules and regulations and limits - otherwise it will lose its essence - but a musical art form, it will die if it follows these structures. An art form needs to be able to paint outside the lines if it wants to survive. But what we have done now is collapsed everything ...we don't allow anyone to play a "character", whether that character is historical, modern, or futuristic. We only want them to play themselves.
Do you think a female star like Miranda Lambert almost gets it the worst, this whole locked into 1 character thing you're pressing?
Absolutely. There's no doubt about this at all. Look at her songs, look at the songs her friends like Ashley Monroe or Carrie Underwood have written, look at them and you'll see it's far worse. Unbelievably worse. They're as locked into one character as could be. Men cannot listen to these songs. It's always one mask and nothing else. The girls might as well be wearing the Afghan face mask - yep! - I said it! I said It! Every song Miranda Lambert sings is about being ...Miranda Lambert. She never plays a character. It isn't her fault as a songwriter. I bet she could play 1000 characters. Don't ever think it's her fault as a songwriter, no way. I don't believe that for a second. It's the fault of the fans. Of the culture surrounding her, the culture she is trapped in. Her fans and her culture - it will not let her be anyone but that one character. I bet Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, Angaleena Presley, Kacey Musgraves...maybe even Carrie Underwood- whoever the big chick performers are - I bet any of them could, if they tried, write a character driven album such as the "Bitter Tears" one that i referenced from Johnny Cash, they might even be able to make a better one, a masterpiece - but guess what? It'll never happen in our own time period because their fans have them on lock. They're in a cage. They would lose everything if they took on something outside themselves. Miranda Lambert, according to this culture, she must never play anyone when she steps up to the microphone except herself. As I say, look at the titles, look at the lyrics, and you'll see it instantly. Always the same person. Always. And this is why no one "serious" wants to examine them as creators. I often feel like these artists are happy with the audience they have, I'm sure they are - but I also can't help but think that they'd like to have some more reach. Well the reason they don't have any reach, this is why. It's like I said before: They aren't even trying.
So what would your advice be?
(Laughs) my advice is very simple: They have to gradually start leaving the "personal" character behind and start dipping into other boxes , just like Cash did. In the article I wrote, I at one point referenced the famous "Highwayman" song that Cash, Kristofferson, and Nelson put together. If you look at the song it follows what I think is the best character driven scheme imaginable. In the first verse the singer is speaking as the highwayman with his pistol, in the next verse he's a dam builder, then he's a sailor ...and finally Johnny Cash himself
Comes in and sings the ultimate verse as a "starship pilot who shall fly across the universe divide..." This song is quintessential character songwriting, and new young songwriters ought to look at it ...obsess over it...examine it....again and again. This song proves just how many characters can exist in one song.
Would you like to see Miranda Lambert sing it?
Very much, yes, I would. I'd like to see her sing this and many other sorts of tunes. I think a big part of me actually has always dreamed of being the behind the scenes songwriter for these people in a way, but I never..I never found a way to do it I guess. I'm only 27 as I write this so I guess there's still time, but I'm very far from all of the places where this is happening you know..I've never seen Memphis or Nashville or Dallas or New Orleans or any of it... To me those cities are almost all as foreign as Cairo and Shanghai and Bangkok (laughs) but you know recently for some reason Miranda Lambert in particular has inspired me, because I am doing a lot of research recently on female icons in general and once you put her politics aside, I do find a lot to like about her. I could easily scribble a book about a character like her. But my Miranda would have a uh..she would eventually take a much different direction, I think.
She'd sell out and leave country behind and become like Taylor Swift.
No! I hate Taylor Swift- I'll say it! I don't like her at all. She's worse than all of the strict and rigid Nashville stars to me because she's ...she's like Cyrus, they're one in the same, they broke out of the Nashville mold, yes, but then they just went flying into another mold that's even worse. Forget them. Neither of those stars are examples of good songwriting either in my opinion. Miranda beats them easy. ...
(Interview ends)
It's confusing, I know. (Laughs). Well, I think the thing that folks have to understand is that country music, you know, it's just like I said in my article: It's been incredibly marginalized and has actually almost been high jacked by people who don't care so much about music as they do politics. And this is really an enormous tragedy once you realize how integral country music is to uh...our country! I'm the last person to want to toss out all tradition and burn it; but I'm also the last person whose going to let these conmen steal a great genre of music, you know? They're frauds.
But who exactly? Do you want to say the current stars are frauds or-
I actually don't think it's the stars so much as it is the fans. This is in fact a pretty constant theme of my work now that everyone ought to pick up on: The stars are really just puppets that the fans are controlling, and what we are seeing when we look at modern country is that the fans , well...you know, they're apart of that insane conservative political base for the most part, and so what has happened now is that the musicians also have to be apart of that same base. I find this really intriguing because if you look at the history of country singing, the only reason it ever managed to reach the mainstream was really because of that outlaw ride it went on in, i guess, the early 70s. So the only reason anyone ever liked it was because it once upon a time went ANTI CONSERVATIVE. All of a sudden guys like Willie Nelson, Gram Parsons, Johnny Cash , Waylon Jennings -- these guys managed to clip a huge deal of the mainstream and it was really beautiful because they made people like me,up here in this murderous city, they made me feel like I was apart of the country. I gues it might sound old hat now , but listening to Johnny Cash and everything when I was growing up- it really made me feel like an "American". And not in a bad way, but in a good way. Johnny is beloved by Republicans and he even seems to have a Republican message he was sending too; but when you actually look into his personal politics, you'll see he never actually sided with one party or the other. He performed at San Quentin penitentiary for Christ sakes. Johnny Cash was for the beaten man and that message is well known, it comes through in all of his work- but when I listen to these new country artists, I don't see much of him there anymore. What I'm seeing now is extremism coming from that side. I think that, like every other music culture, country music also deteriorated in a colossal way....
In what sense though?
Well for a long time I was, I'll admit, really blind to it because I was only researching those historical figures and learning how to play their songs and I was never looking into the modern guys, but then recently I started to finally look into them in a huge way, and what I came to find was I ..I really did not like it at all. They weren't relatable. If I had never heard of Johnny Cash and I had only ever heard of someone like Toby Keith or Kenny Chesney, I'm very sorry to say, but I'm not sure I would have ever become even slightly interested in country music. I think I would have insulted the hell out of it just like everyone else in the city. I would have gone the rap route like the kids in the city wanted me to. I'd probsbly be rich right now! Son of a bitch Johnny Cash....
How did you find Cash in the first place?
It's a good question that a lot of people would think isn't worth asking but very much is. The thing that everyone forgets now about Cash is that he wasn't actually doing so well in the late 80s and middle 90s and he almost vanished from pop culture entirely, it seems, until he suddenly threw out this incredible Hail Mary pass (for his own career and memory) when he did the "Hurt" song. The story of Johnny doing that song , everyone knows, it's really a story all its own. For most kids I have met here in the city, if I show up somewhere with an acoustic guitar in hand and I say I like cowboy music, that's the very first song - and often only song- that they'll reference. "Hurt". Of course as everyone knows it isn't even actually a song that Cash wrote himself, but rather one that the fellow from Nine Inch Nails wrote. I find this intriguing because it goes to show that our modern pop culture interpretation of Cash is ....how should I put it ...we've largely forgotten who he actually was in his prime, I guess. This is ironic because typically, for all the other stars, it's exactly the opposite. Nobody really gives a hell about solo Paul McCartney or what he did with Wings, really, they love him for what he did with the Beatles in his prime and those are the songs they mainly want too- and yet when you look at Cash, if he were still alive now and touring , if there was a hologram going around of Johnny Cash right now, that holograms most requested song would undoubtedly be "Hurt".
And "Walk the Line", "Boy Named Sue", "Folsom Prison Blues".
That's true, absolutrly, all those songs come into play and they're all loved by people - but mostly for the modern audience the big song is "Hurt" and "Hurt" alone. Then too whne it comes to those 3 other tunes you mentioned, the interesting thing about them to me is that, while I'll agree they're incredible songs,I would also still say that I don't think they represent the Cash I love. The Cash I love, what I would consider the real Cash, he goes far beyond that sort of songeriting. To me the best stuff he did was the historical stuff, which is coincidentally all the stuff that no one even in the country music 101 community seems to remember these days. If you look at his album "Bitter Tears: Johnny Sings Ballads of the American Indian", from 1964, I think that's a literal artifact. I literally think it is a relic that needs to be preserved, that album needs to go into the Library of Congress & the Smithsonian--I honest to God think it is one of the greatest albums that anyone ever made, hands down- and I also think that new songwriters - no matter what genre they're from - I think they need to look at that album and examine it, because its not only the story of the "real" Johnny Cash, but it's also the "real" USA. That album is incredible....it's almost like a film soundtrack or something, every song is a character that Johnny is playing, it's some of his best songeriting - and yet when you look at this albums legacy, what do you see? Nothing. Nada. Nobody gives a hoot about it. It seems to have not influenced the modern songeriting community AT ALL. Nobody even knows he did those songs! You know why that album is so funny by the way?
Why's that?
Because, from an historical point of view, Johnny was actually one step ahead of the hip crowd when he wrote that album. Look at the date again: 1964. In 1964 Jimi Hendrix had not yet released a single album and Bob Dylan had only 2 albums to his name behind him, both acoustic. The hippie revolution still had yet to really begin when Cash released that album, and a major point of the hippies was that they brought the American Indian into view, after a half century of the American Indian being total forgotten, with their long hair and their beaded jackets and their peace pipes etc. Hippies brought a lot of attention to places like Wounded Knee and stuff. They were very into Natives. And yet there was Johnny Cash doing it in 1964, singing about Indians, basically before anybody. He was concerned about the Indian issue, even writing about it - creating American ART about it- before the hippies.
He really was and remains to be an extremely interesting figure for these kinds of reasons. Writing that album was a risk. It's nothing like regular country music if you listen to it. The songs on it are literally Indian songs, with that Indian drum beat and everything. It's extremely bizarre from a modern perspective. Look at the titles: "Vanishing Race", "Apache Tears", "White Girl". What on Earth was this you know? In 1964! Can you even imagine seeing a song from one of these new country artists about this now? A song sympathetic to minorities in the same sense as this one? Absolutely not. Because the World suffered a tragic split, you see, after the 70s hit...the War on Drugs began to rumble...and then this sort of political 2 step that Johnny was dancing, it became unfashionable. That's why he was sitting there in the 1990s almost totally forgotten in a way. Again, the only reason he came back to mind was because he threw out a Hail Mary pass with a song that an alternative rock band had written. And then too don't forget that Cash covered other "alternative" artists as well, in his old age. He played a Glen Danzig song, "Thirteen", he did a U2 song, "One", he did Tom Petty, I think he even at one point did a Bob Marley song. Yes, I just searched it out, he even played an acoustic version of Marleys "Redemption Song". That's incredible!
He was trying to break the chains of genre as an old man....in a way that the new country stars just don't really do, because they aren't at all sympathetic to anyone outside of the country world, in my opinion. They don't realize how odd they look, I don't think, to city eyes. It's sad because losing country music as a viable pop culture art form....I personally think it means losing a lot of other things as well. But it's honestly like the modern stars aren't even trying. It's like they don't even care to have a wider audience. They're content with Wal Mart shoppers. As though they don't mind being marginalized. It's very strange because the country stars are actually just as marginalized as the rap stars, maybe even more so. I don't know how to explain it. I think it's sad I guess. As an acoustic guitar player but even just as someone who loves listening to stories and writing them myself, it's very depressing for me. Again: I first became interested in Cash not because I wanted to be a cowboy in Louisville, but because he had good stories he told. He told me about history. He sang "The Battle of New Orleans", "Ghost Riders in the Sky", "Long Black Veil", "Banks of the Ohio." Where are these stories now? They're no where. The only stories country gives me now - they're all about a bunch of people in cut off shorts, drinking Budweiser, shopping at Wal-Mart and shooting Glocks and Desert Eagles at bottles of Coca Cola in their backyard. That's fine occasionally, modern stories are very important to tell, absolutrly- but - Jesus Christ- can these people ever come up with a character? I feel like that's what the whole new generation is not comprehending about the old stars. Johnny Cash was not at the Battle of New Orleans, he was not in the Civil War, he did not fight with Robert E. Lee, he wasn't there when Sitting Bull was killed at Wounded Knee and he did not help George Washington fight the American Revolution - but in his songs he played characters that were doing these things. Everyone these days you'll find, it's like they have no idea how to get out of their own personalities. Every song is about their own life. The black rappers have the exact same problem, I'm telling you . These songs all suck! They only write about how god awful life is in the modern day inner city of Baltimore or Oakland or something. All of their songs , if you look at them, it's as though nothing ever happened before the artist himself was born in 1990 or whatever. Johnny Cash had a whole other spin. He was actually an impersonator, in the same sense that Stephen King or Johnny Depp is an impersonator. But if you look at these people now, they've lost this, I swear to God they've lost it. All they play is themselves. They never sing about history. They never create a fictional plot. They never do jack diddly. The only modern day country song I ever find myself listening to on repeat is that one Braid Paisley sang called "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive". That was a great song. Turns out he didn't even write it. Patty Loveless did. I'm not surprised, since Brad Paisley never writes about history, almost as though he isn't allowed to or just doesn't know how to. And that's why Brad Paisley is not beloved by city folks or international folks or anyone outside of Nashville for that matter - because he's very belligerent , and he makes no secret of the fact that he's writing for one sort of person and one sort of person alone. I'm sorry but, in my opinion, that's just not what an artist is supposed to be. An artist is supposed to take on characters - even if they're characters he doesn't agree with. Take for instance Merle Haggard with the song "Okie from Muskogee", where he sings the famous Republican line "We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee, we don't take our trips on LSD / we don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street, cause we like living right, and living free..."
Well the very interesting thing about this song is that, when I went and looked into it and tried to summon up some answers as to why exactly Merle went ahead and wrote it ...what I came to find is that he, in his later days, started saying ...what else...that he wrote it as a character. He said he wrote it "with his fathers voice". You see what I mean don't you? Everyone grabbed that song and ran with it - I think Richard Nixon used it for a political campaign?- but in the end that song was not even totally Merle Haggard! He literally even sang it with Willie Nelson years later, Willie Nelson who is the king of the potheads. The song was just a character, it wasn't totally his voice; but it's like people can't grasp that. They always want their musicians now to be the character on stage and off. It's stupid and it's limiting the creativity. It's limiting it in the most horrific of ways. I always say it...but just imagine how boring it would be if Stephen King only wrote about his actual day to day life? Or if a major actor like Bruce Willis suddenly decided he would only actually play ...Bruce Willis? It would be good for about 10 minutes and then you'd be bored to tears! Bruce Willlis needs to transform into someone else to be interesting. George Clooney does. Johnny Depp does. They all do! Nobody wants that day to day stuff in movies or books - so why do they want it literaly around the clock in music now? I don't get it.
It's almost as though the movies and books became so over the top and inauthentic with the special effects that, as a result, music - and country music in particular - had to fill the void and become the 'authentic place'.
That's a good way to put it really and maybe it is indeed what happened because honestly when I look at it ...I can't really understand how it came to be like this. What you say though, that's probsbly the straight truth. Everything else in our culture went so over the top so we started protecting our music. Preserving it in this one "authentic" place. It's almost actually reminding me of that film with Kevin Costner about baseball now, Field of Dreams...when the James Earl Jones character goes on that beautiful rant about baseball and he says ...what does he say... "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again...." This line from Field of Dreams is fantastic & all but you know the problem is that uh..baseball is a game, it is not an ART! A game isn't supposed to change rapidly, a game needs rules and regulations and limits - otherwise it will lose its essence - but a musical art form, it will die if it follows these structures. An art form needs to be able to paint outside the lines if it wants to survive. But what we have done now is collapsed everything ...we don't allow anyone to play a "character", whether that character is historical, modern, or futuristic. We only want them to play themselves.
Do you think a female star like Miranda Lambert almost gets it the worst, this whole locked into 1 character thing you're pressing?
Absolutely. There's no doubt about this at all. Look at her songs, look at the songs her friends like Ashley Monroe or Carrie Underwood have written, look at them and you'll see it's far worse. Unbelievably worse. They're as locked into one character as could be. Men cannot listen to these songs. It's always one mask and nothing else. The girls might as well be wearing the Afghan face mask - yep! - I said it! I said It! Every song Miranda Lambert sings is about being ...Miranda Lambert. She never plays a character. It isn't her fault as a songwriter. I bet she could play 1000 characters. Don't ever think it's her fault as a songwriter, no way. I don't believe that for a second. It's the fault of the fans. Of the culture surrounding her, the culture she is trapped in. Her fans and her culture - it will not let her be anyone but that one character. I bet Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, Angaleena Presley, Kacey Musgraves...maybe even Carrie Underwood- whoever the big chick performers are - I bet any of them could, if they tried, write a character driven album such as the "Bitter Tears" one that i referenced from Johnny Cash, they might even be able to make a better one, a masterpiece - but guess what? It'll never happen in our own time period because their fans have them on lock. They're in a cage. They would lose everything if they took on something outside themselves. Miranda Lambert, according to this culture, she must never play anyone when she steps up to the microphone except herself. As I say, look at the titles, look at the lyrics, and you'll see it instantly. Always the same person. Always. And this is why no one "serious" wants to examine them as creators. I often feel like these artists are happy with the audience they have, I'm sure they are - but I also can't help but think that they'd like to have some more reach. Well the reason they don't have any reach, this is why. It's like I said before: They aren't even trying.
So what would your advice be?
(Laughs) my advice is very simple: They have to gradually start leaving the "personal" character behind and start dipping into other boxes , just like Cash did. In the article I wrote, I at one point referenced the famous "Highwayman" song that Cash, Kristofferson, and Nelson put together. If you look at the song it follows what I think is the best character driven scheme imaginable. In the first verse the singer is speaking as the highwayman with his pistol, in the next verse he's a dam builder, then he's a sailor ...and finally Johnny Cash himself
Comes in and sings the ultimate verse as a "starship pilot who shall fly across the universe divide..." This song is quintessential character songwriting, and new young songwriters ought to look at it ...obsess over it...examine it....again and again. This song proves just how many characters can exist in one song.
Would you like to see Miranda Lambert sing it?
Very much, yes, I would. I'd like to see her sing this and many other sorts of tunes. I think a big part of me actually has always dreamed of being the behind the scenes songwriter for these people in a way, but I never..I never found a way to do it I guess. I'm only 27 as I write this so I guess there's still time, but I'm very far from all of the places where this is happening you know..I've never seen Memphis or Nashville or Dallas or New Orleans or any of it... To me those cities are almost all as foreign as Cairo and Shanghai and Bangkok (laughs) but you know recently for some reason Miranda Lambert in particular has inspired me, because I am doing a lot of research recently on female icons in general and once you put her politics aside, I do find a lot to like about her. I could easily scribble a book about a character like her. But my Miranda would have a uh..she would eventually take a much different direction, I think.
She'd sell out and leave country behind and become like Taylor Swift.
No! I hate Taylor Swift- I'll say it! I don't like her at all. She's worse than all of the strict and rigid Nashville stars to me because she's ...she's like Cyrus, they're one in the same, they broke out of the Nashville mold, yes, but then they just went flying into another mold that's even worse. Forget them. Neither of those stars are examples of good songwriting either in my opinion. Miranda beats them easy. ...
(Interview ends)
Saturday, November 18, 2017
in the Matrix as Rasheeda again
I am kind of in my Rasheeda and Trina mode again today, for whatever reason. I guess I can't really explain why; it all just sort of comes on randomly. A moment ago I just changed my Twitters default picture to one of Rasheeda, that I took from her Instagram. She looks very beautiful, sitting in a luxurious car, probably en route to a boutique I believe she runs in Atlanta.
She is wearing a light blue flannel and showing off her gleaming golden bracelet that sits on her wrist. Her hair is dark black and very straight. I absolutely adore the picture; and every time I look at it, I begin to salivate. As a boy I just don't know what the emotion really is --- I never really know . Do I admire Rasheeda and want her for my girl, do I feel heterosexual attraction to her --- or is it, instead, something else I feel? Like the fact that I think Rasheeda is the biggest boss bitch to ever live; and I am desperate to be her?
Admittedly I suppose it is a bit of both. Or at least I think I used to suppose that it was both. These days now I am not so sure. My basic guess is that it started out as attraction but at some point, eventually, wound up envy. It sort of reminds me of high school, actually, when I used to follow my then girlfriend Mariah into the clothing stores like Victorias' Secret and what not ...or of course the hair style stores. I can remember always feeling a pang of jealousy running up the cold back of my spine . In fact, I will tell you the truth: I think a lot of the arguments I got into with Mariah all, deep down, revolved around this deep envy I felt, for the beautiful things she was allowed to buy-- but I was not. I think sometimes all our arguments really went back to that deep down.
I can remember going with Mariah to shop for all sorts of girlie things, because she always wanted to shop and had no car, and I would drive her, and I would walk around in stores like that f'n TJ Maxx for hours (so it seemed) just watching her get all the clothes she wanted. Not to mention the purses. Shit. The purses. Every weekend Mariah bought a new purse. Literally every weekend , like clockwork. She would spend so much time shopping for purses at low end stores, in fact, that sometimes, we would have kids come meet us there, and I'd sell them weed right in the store. That was how often it seemed we were there. I can vividly remember doing weed deals with kids in the aisles where all the purses were..... LOL!
For some reason it is a memory that has not come to me in some time; but now I can recollect it as though it just happened yesterday, and not well over 8 long years ago. I used to just sort of stand there checking out purses as Mariah would check them herself, anxiously searching for the perfect one. She never, not a single time I don't think, would take my f'n suggestion. Often I would be bored, and aggravated, and pleading with her to hurry up. Often a small argument would begin. Probably I was usually stoned. But was I also sort of always wishing it was me who got to buy the purses instead? To wear on my arm.? To get back into my Audi and put on some Rasheeda songs and blast them as I cruised on the interstate back home? Calling my imaginary nigga .... "just got me a new fake Louis purse baby ... be ova in a minute...have a bomber blunt rolled.."
Back then it wuold have only been the year 2010 or so. Rasheeda was in the prime of her music making career then. "Certified Hot Chick" and "Boss Bitch Music" would have been her latest releases at that point. "Boss Bitch Music" is genius; I have danced to it whilst crossdressing a million times.
Neither Mariah nor myself had ever heard of Rasheeda though, not back then, because we are northerners and 'Sheeda is from Da Dirty South y'know.. We were instead usually listening to someone like Fergie, I shamefully admit now, or perhaps Lil Kim or Remy Ma. Remy Ma for some reason I always remember well from those days. I always recall how I first met her in the "Lean Back" video from Fat Joe. That sure was one good lookin' black woman. I don't suppose I ever could have imagined ,back then ...Mariah certainly couldn't have...that these days I would regularly watch Remy Ma's videos....like a fiend. Just two nights ago she and Kim released a new one "Wake me Up". I could have cried as I watched. Queens. Total mother f'n queens. People on Twitter were making fun of Kim's outfit; they think she looks bad now 'cause she got all that plastic surgery. Well to Hell with them? I thought she looked fabulous...especially with the black Versace gloves she was wearing, pulled up to her elbows. Shiiiiiit, bitch! What I would give to have those gloves and wear dem just like Kim....god dammmmnnnn byaaatchh......
Indeed the only thing that would have made the "Wake Me up" video any better would have been if a third verse and a third femme rapper had been added to it. Preferably Rasheeda. I can imagine Sheeda coming into that video so f'n easily. True queen . She would outshine both Remy and Kim EASY.
Alas, as I perhaps scribbled on this blog before, Rasheeda seems to have backed out of her music career. It makes me so sad. I never met a bigger queen myself. Neva.
When I really try to think about why 'Sheeda is the biggest queen I ever met, I think a lot of it probably goes back to the "southern heritage". There is something ironically feminine about the southern culture , and it is --- or at least seems --- very different to me, than the northern one. This is strange of course because, on the one hand, the South is causing all of these long standing political problems that, we are told, are a result of toxic masculinity; and yet, when you look at it, and at the characters from the South, they often seem to exaggerate femininity in a way that no one from the North ever does. For example, Trina is arguably even more "wildly feminine" than Rasheeda, as a femme rapper, and she, of course, is also from the South, albeit Florida and not Georgia. What exactly is going on down there, a Northerner is left to wonder? How is it the case that the South could b simultaneously producing these lunatic Republican men who obsessively claim to be the most masculine men of all time --whilst at the same time producing these unusually feminine type women -- and even gays? Don't forget, after all, that one of the first "queens" of all of music was from the South. His name was Little Richard. They say he created rock and roll. He says it too! And though many years have passed and he has definitely lost his mind ... (he has renounced being gay in the name of Jesus)...there is still no doubt, at all, that he is Rasheeda's long back connection. No doubt at all!
I don't know. I ought not think of these boring historical things eh? I ought instead try to just sit here and float away and imagine myself as Rasheeda again. The thought brngs me peace. On my deathbed I hope I will be having fantasies like this. Death won't be some heaven to me ...it will instead be me closing my eyes and suddenly being in Atlanta, with high heels on my feet, in some gorgeous dressing room with all my girls, my bitches, preparing for a night in the hottest new club that's just opened. I can imagine it now so easily: I'll be lying there on my death bed, choking and coughing up blood, my family all around me crying, and of course I will be petrified, because I'l lbe full y aware I'm dying, listening to the monitor with my heart beat -- and suddenly my eyes will start drooping, and when they close, I'll suddenly get a flash of my new self , as Rasheeda, or someone like Rasheeda, at least, in the mirror. I will be desperately confused, not sure what's going on. "Bra this can't be real theres no way... you can't be gettin' this lucky...bra there's no way its gonna actually happen for real..."
My eyes will open back up again in the hospital room, my family there holding my hands "...no no don't go no no.... Jimmy .. no ..stay with us ...Jesus christ he's gonna die! Someone help him!! He's not even 30! Someone -- anyone! Jimmy!!! GOD Help us!" I will try to mumble something, I'll be stoned on whatever meds they're giving to me...my eyes will droop again, closing.... I'll see her in the mirror again, looking straight me. She will be 19 years old. 18. My new age and my new beginning all over again.To do things the fuckin right way. To not get mercilessly destroyed by Mariah being a cunt to me, in the end, and robbing me, and shattering the windows in my Audi like she did. I'll be at peace here. No more memories of Mariah, no more memories of the North, no New York, no Providence, none of it. I'll be dressed in just a hot flaming bra diamond bra with big gold necklaces that say my name on them, just like Rasheeda has one that says her name. I'll have big dangling hoop earrings in my ear like Mariah used to wear and like I always wanted. One of my bitches will come and pop into my face, Alyce, pulling out a stick of lipstick to paint me up for the night. "Gracias bitcchhhh!" Behind us some insane new hot release from Nicki Minaj blasting. "....See I used to be the wife of a king...Back when I was smugglin' them things in the bing... Now that I'm a boss bitch... It's a win-win..."
The heart monitor suddnly goes flat. I have died indeed, so far as this miserable reality is concerned. I will not have to attend this miserable Thanksgiving next week, like I am dreading, to see these cousins I despise and wish I could knock out one by one. NO! No more Uncle Dan. No more never ending screaming and shouting at the holiday table about how much racist Uncle Dan loves his f'n Republicans and his Donald Trump and his big red truck he drives around miserably in. It will all be gone; I will be reborn and RENEWED...like someone who is just discovering the Fountain of Youth... I will be SHEEDA! Yess bitches yesss....both my girlies on either side of me...sweeping me down some long dark hallway of the newly opened Atlanta nightclub...bright lights flashing everywhere...you can hear the crowd screaming for me ... I see someone handing me off a big wine glass, I take it and drink it fast...then someone hands me something else...I drink that fast too....when I hear myself speak my heart skips a beat... "no it cant be... Jim could it really be? Have you actually been reborn just like you dreamed? Is God truly this kind? Goddess? Whoever it is who has done this and saved you? Could it be?" .
A moment later and I am on stage. A microphone in my hand. My bitches are behind me dancing and I can hear the DJ beginning to spin the record. Lyrics I don't even recall actually writing start to pour wildly like heavy ocean waves through my mind. Female rap lyrics of course. Lyrics about being a bad ass boss bitch...getting hot purses...driving in the hottest cars...partying at the hottest clubs... wearing da nicest hair....
My new life has BEGUN. BANG BANG BANG
She is wearing a light blue flannel and showing off her gleaming golden bracelet that sits on her wrist. Her hair is dark black and very straight. I absolutely adore the picture; and every time I look at it, I begin to salivate. As a boy I just don't know what the emotion really is --- I never really know . Do I admire Rasheeda and want her for my girl, do I feel heterosexual attraction to her --- or is it, instead, something else I feel? Like the fact that I think Rasheeda is the biggest boss bitch to ever live; and I am desperate to be her?
Admittedly I suppose it is a bit of both. Or at least I think I used to suppose that it was both. These days now I am not so sure. My basic guess is that it started out as attraction but at some point, eventually, wound up envy. It sort of reminds me of high school, actually, when I used to follow my then girlfriend Mariah into the clothing stores like Victorias' Secret and what not ...or of course the hair style stores. I can remember always feeling a pang of jealousy running up the cold back of my spine . In fact, I will tell you the truth: I think a lot of the arguments I got into with Mariah all, deep down, revolved around this deep envy I felt, for the beautiful things she was allowed to buy-- but I was not. I think sometimes all our arguments really went back to that deep down.
I can remember going with Mariah to shop for all sorts of girlie things, because she always wanted to shop and had no car, and I would drive her, and I would walk around in stores like that f'n TJ Maxx for hours (so it seemed) just watching her get all the clothes she wanted. Not to mention the purses. Shit. The purses. Every weekend Mariah bought a new purse. Literally every weekend , like clockwork. She would spend so much time shopping for purses at low end stores, in fact, that sometimes, we would have kids come meet us there, and I'd sell them weed right in the store. That was how often it seemed we were there. I can vividly remember doing weed deals with kids in the aisles where all the purses were..... LOL!
For some reason it is a memory that has not come to me in some time; but now I can recollect it as though it just happened yesterday, and not well over 8 long years ago. I used to just sort of stand there checking out purses as Mariah would check them herself, anxiously searching for the perfect one. She never, not a single time I don't think, would take my f'n suggestion. Often I would be bored, and aggravated, and pleading with her to hurry up. Often a small argument would begin. Probably I was usually stoned. But was I also sort of always wishing it was me who got to buy the purses instead? To wear on my arm.? To get back into my Audi and put on some Rasheeda songs and blast them as I cruised on the interstate back home? Calling my imaginary nigga .... "just got me a new fake Louis purse baby ... be ova in a minute...have a bomber blunt rolled.."
Back then it wuold have only been the year 2010 or so. Rasheeda was in the prime of her music making career then. "Certified Hot Chick" and "Boss Bitch Music" would have been her latest releases at that point. "Boss Bitch Music" is genius; I have danced to it whilst crossdressing a million times.
Neither Mariah nor myself had ever heard of Rasheeda though, not back then, because we are northerners and 'Sheeda is from Da Dirty South y'know.. We were instead usually listening to someone like Fergie, I shamefully admit now, or perhaps Lil Kim or Remy Ma. Remy Ma for some reason I always remember well from those days. I always recall how I first met her in the "Lean Back" video from Fat Joe. That sure was one good lookin' black woman. I don't suppose I ever could have imagined ,back then ...Mariah certainly couldn't have...that these days I would regularly watch Remy Ma's videos....like a fiend. Just two nights ago she and Kim released a new one "Wake me Up". I could have cried as I watched. Queens. Total mother f'n queens. People on Twitter were making fun of Kim's outfit; they think she looks bad now 'cause she got all that plastic surgery. Well to Hell with them? I thought she looked fabulous...especially with the black Versace gloves she was wearing, pulled up to her elbows. Shiiiiiit, bitch! What I would give to have those gloves and wear dem just like Kim....god dammmmnnnn byaaatchh......
Indeed the only thing that would have made the "Wake Me up" video any better would have been if a third verse and a third femme rapper had been added to it. Preferably Rasheeda. I can imagine Sheeda coming into that video so f'n easily. True queen . She would outshine both Remy and Kim EASY.
Who came to crank this bitch up like a new Lac (Lac)
It be that diva Rasheeda, so holla back (back)
We crackin on these niggas switch,
Hatin on them snitches (snitches)
When I really try to think about why 'Sheeda is the biggest queen I ever met, I think a lot of it probably goes back to the "southern heritage". There is something ironically feminine about the southern culture , and it is --- or at least seems --- very different to me, than the northern one. This is strange of course because, on the one hand, the South is causing all of these long standing political problems that, we are told, are a result of toxic masculinity; and yet, when you look at it, and at the characters from the South, they often seem to exaggerate femininity in a way that no one from the North ever does. For example, Trina is arguably even more "wildly feminine" than Rasheeda, as a femme rapper, and she, of course, is also from the South, albeit Florida and not Georgia. What exactly is going on down there, a Northerner is left to wonder? How is it the case that the South could b simultaneously producing these lunatic Republican men who obsessively claim to be the most masculine men of all time --whilst at the same time producing these unusually feminine type women -- and even gays? Don't forget, after all, that one of the first "queens" of all of music was from the South. His name was Little Richard. They say he created rock and roll. He says it too! And though many years have passed and he has definitely lost his mind ... (he has renounced being gay in the name of Jesus)...there is still no doubt, at all, that he is Rasheeda's long back connection. No doubt at all!
I don't know. I ought not think of these boring historical things eh? I ought instead try to just sit here and float away and imagine myself as Rasheeda again. The thought brngs me peace. On my deathbed I hope I will be having fantasies like this. Death won't be some heaven to me ...it will instead be me closing my eyes and suddenly being in Atlanta, with high heels on my feet, in some gorgeous dressing room with all my girls, my bitches, preparing for a night in the hottest new club that's just opened. I can imagine it now so easily: I'll be lying there on my death bed, choking and coughing up blood, my family all around me crying, and of course I will be petrified, because I'l lbe full y aware I'm dying, listening to the monitor with my heart beat -- and suddenly my eyes will start drooping, and when they close, I'll suddenly get a flash of my new self , as Rasheeda, or someone like Rasheeda, at least, in the mirror. I will be desperately confused, not sure what's going on. "Bra this can't be real theres no way... you can't be gettin' this lucky...bra there's no way its gonna actually happen for real..."
My eyes will open back up again in the hospital room, my family there holding my hands "...no no don't go no no.... Jimmy .. no ..stay with us ...Jesus christ he's gonna die! Someone help him!! He's not even 30! Someone -- anyone! Jimmy!!! GOD Help us!" I will try to mumble something, I'll be stoned on whatever meds they're giving to me...my eyes will droop again, closing.... I'll see her in the mirror again, looking straight me. She will be 19 years old. 18. My new age and my new beginning all over again.To do things the fuckin right way. To not get mercilessly destroyed by Mariah being a cunt to me, in the end, and robbing me, and shattering the windows in my Audi like she did. I'll be at peace here. No more memories of Mariah, no more memories of the North, no New York, no Providence, none of it. I'll be dressed in just a hot flaming bra diamond bra with big gold necklaces that say my name on them, just like Rasheeda has one that says her name. I'll have big dangling hoop earrings in my ear like Mariah used to wear and like I always wanted. One of my bitches will come and pop into my face, Alyce, pulling out a stick of lipstick to paint me up for the night. "Gracias bitcchhhh!" Behind us some insane new hot release from Nicki Minaj blasting. "....See I used to be the wife of a king...Back when I was smugglin' them things in the bing... Now that I'm a boss bitch... It's a win-win..."
The heart monitor suddnly goes flat. I have died indeed, so far as this miserable reality is concerned. I will not have to attend this miserable Thanksgiving next week, like I am dreading, to see these cousins I despise and wish I could knock out one by one. NO! No more Uncle Dan. No more never ending screaming and shouting at the holiday table about how much racist Uncle Dan loves his f'n Republicans and his Donald Trump and his big red truck he drives around miserably in. It will all be gone; I will be reborn and RENEWED...like someone who is just discovering the Fountain of Youth... I will be SHEEDA! Yess bitches yesss....both my girlies on either side of me...sweeping me down some long dark hallway of the newly opened Atlanta nightclub...bright lights flashing everywhere...you can hear the crowd screaming for me ... I see someone handing me off a big wine glass, I take it and drink it fast...then someone hands me something else...I drink that fast too....when I hear myself speak my heart skips a beat... "no it cant be... Jim could it really be? Have you actually been reborn just like you dreamed? Is God truly this kind? Goddess? Whoever it is who has done this and saved you? Could it be?" .
A moment later and I am on stage. A microphone in my hand. My bitches are behind me dancing and I can hear the DJ beginning to spin the record. Lyrics I don't even recall actually writing start to pour wildly like heavy ocean waves through my mind. Female rap lyrics of course. Lyrics about being a bad ass boss bitch...getting hot purses...driving in the hottest cars...partying at the hottest clubs... wearing da nicest hair....
My new life has BEGUN. BANG BANG BANG
Google me baby, I'm drivin' 'em crazy
Ya girl so fly you can call me amazin'
Boss chick, that's the motto
We set shit off, we don't follow
We no gargle, we no swallow
Brush lames out the way like they did on Apollo (Brush 'em off)
Goodbye, adios amigo
I ain't stuck up I got a Kanye ego
Gettin' to this money like my name was Nino
How you think I got all this Luis and Rio
I ain't just talk pimp, this what I stand fo
A independent chick who be stakin' them bank rolls
Friday, November 17, 2017
Russia, America, Provincialism, Republicans
I don't think most Europeans are fully aware of how "colorful" they seem, from an American perspective. What do I mean by "colorful" of course? It is simple: I mean to say that, generally speaking, even average Europeans -- i.e. not wealthy ones or highly educated ones -- seem to do a great deal of traveling and urban exploring, in comparison to even relatively wealthy and comfortable Americans.
In my experience talking and meeting Euros, I would say roughly 8/10 of them that I met, all seemed to have done what most people I know in the States would consider rather extensive traveling. Almost all of the Euros I met, even the ones I met in the European "countryside", all seemed like they had seen not just a wide handful of different cities -- but also different countries. European countries, yes yes, but still..different countries. And again ...these people were not wealthy. Some of them were, in fact, seemingly rather poor. They worked in little pharmacies, convenience stores, and pizza restauraunts. Most of them did not even have their own cars, and appeared to have no plans on ever getting one.
Now compare this to the average American who has not finished college and who has not managed to become "rich", by American standards. I honestly don't care what state you're in: I can practically guarantee you that 8/10 Americans you'll meet probably have only seen a few states besides the one they were born in, and more likely than not, especially if they are a white American, they are not living in an urban setting. In addition, what is even stranger to me is that, even when you do chance to meet a rich wealthy American who has had that "rare chance" to leave the country, it often seems like it has changed absolutely nothing about them. Somehow, they still seem rather provincial, convinced that America is the best, convinced that their life here is "superior", and they often all certainly seem to still be quite boring, in both mind and dress.
In fact, provincial is probably the best word that can be used to describe the vast majority of white Americans -- college educated or not. They all seem cut off and removed in some strange way. The dictionary defines this provincial word as meaning "...of or concerning the regions outside the capital city of a country, especially when regarded as unsophisticated or narrow-minded." I feel there is literally no better word to describe the vast majority of white Americans.
One basic conclusion I have come to over the years, for why I feel this way, goes something like this: A rich and educated person and a very provincial person, in my opinion, perhaps tend to have some odd similarities, when it comes to how they travel. Specifically, I believe that both of these groups tend to not really see the whole picture of wherever it is that they are traveling.
For example, an extremely provincial person that goes traveling often just sort of takes in stereotypes, and ignores the reality of the city they're in, and as for a rich traveler, they tend to perhaps think they are automatically "ABOVE" wherever it is that they are traveling-- so they don't think to take any real inspiration or advice from wherever they might be, either. They both ignore whatever it is that the place they are in is truly saying. They both see only a superficial, thin presentation.
A rich person, after all, or even a comfortable college educated person (for me that is defined as rich) tends to be coming from a position where they think their origin country is quite comfortable. It has made them rich. Therefore, I say again: When they go a'traveling, they tend to miss details of the culture they've flown to, in ironically just the same way a deeply provincial person --who is overly excited by simple stereotypes--also misses the finer details. As you can imagine, when rich Americans go traveling, they are looking for a vacation; they are not looking to consider the politics of where they are, or the social problems and how they change or don't change in compariosn to the States, etc....
In fact, the basic itinerary of the modern tourists, when you read about the sights most cruises etc show us, basically reveals this to us instantly. These people are only taking in the most basic areas of these cultures they are traveling into. They go to these places; but they do not go there seeking inspiration for how to effect this country. In other words, not only are most Americans literally trapped in America, unable to ever see or take real deep inspiration from another country, but even the Americans who do get out, often seem to come home with literally nothing to suggest. There is no sense that anyone anywhere else is doing anything differently, or better, or more advanced, than the way people here in America are doing it. If anything, it seems most American travelers are usually relieved to get back to their little Stateside provinces , after seeing the big cities of the outside world. They're relieved to get back to their suburban home, etcetc.
But now I want my reader to try and dwell for a moment on the way Europeans themselves tend to travel, and to take in other cities within Europe's varied countries, and I would also ask you to take into consideration just how much more frequently Europeans are able to travel, as well, in comparison to the American. Traveling in and throughout West Europe is so common, in fact, that most West Europeans probably don't even think to obsessively mention it or brag about it, in anywhere near the same way a rich or poor American would mention their own travels. When I spoke with Euros, I found this detail shocking: None of them are really all that impressed with any traveling one might chance to do in the Western world. This isn't because they find the places you can see in the West underwhelming or because they think the one country they live in is the best one -- it's rather because, chances are, they've already seen the places themselves, and they know 10 other friends who have also seen them. A European even as far as Naples in Italy's deep south can hop a train on the weekend to travel to Paris rather randomly. It isn't nearly as big of a deal for them as it is for us. In order to impress a Euro, you'd probably have to travel into the deepest regions of the world at this point. An American, on the other hand, will usually be "deeply impressed" just by a list of basic European cities. If you say you have seen Paris, Luxembourg, and Rome, you are insanely cultured by the American point of view. In fact, many Americans might even consider you insanely cultured if you have just spent 3 weeks in New York City.
Yet, even after all of this, what you'll notice, consistently, is that Americans still just don't ever want to totally admit that they are, indeed, usually very provincial. In my experience, talking to many Americans, I have found that the vast majority of them seem to want to "have their cake and eat it too" , when it comes to this subject. This means the following: The typical white American often wants to simultaneously be interpreted as a "simple down home person", whilst still being regarded as someone whose not provincial. In other words, the American will be very offended when you tell them they seem narrow minded and not well traveled, and yet 20 minutes later, they can't wait to explain to you how little they care to even contemplate living in some "massive" city like Paris or Rome etc. As my reader can imagine, this doesn't make any sense. One cannot be both provincial and well-traveled. You are either one or the other. One cannot be educated and uneducated. It just doesn't make any sense. Alas, for the modern white American, it somehow does. In their mind, this conundrum is totally possible; in fact, it is preferable. Americans never, ever want to believe that America is a "simple country" populated with fairly "simple people". For, they think, how can this possibly be? How can a world super power possibly be inhabited by simple folk?
This is where the big problem is happening. It's the entire dilemma. Americans , you see, again ,especially the white ones, are deeply unaware of their own inherent provincialism, because they think they're living in the most advanced and forward thinking country on the face of the Earth. It is a world super power, it has nuclear bombs, and its military is unable to be beaten. Therefore, the American tells himself, it is the center of the world --and how can the "center of the world" possibly be provincial, right? Except it is, and can be, very easily. Mostly because, even if the Americans have nuclear bombs , and a media empire, guess what? It still isn't really the center of the Western world. The average citizen, who does not live inside the TV, is still not able to see anything thats important about the Western world and western civilization.
What I personally find so interesting about this viewpoint, of course, is that the Americans of old, even up until the 1940s more or less, inherently understood this. They knew, for an absolute fact, that they were living in the outskirts of the Western world; in fact, it was the entire reason that they had come in the first place. The "original" Americans who came here, whether you are talking about the ones who began crossing the Atlantic in the days of the colonies,straight up to the ones who came in the early 1900s, purposely came here because it was not the center of the world. They were looking for things that only a provincial area can ever offer: Clean air, a lot of uninhabited land, a lot of work still yet to be done, no rich folks to harass them, and not a lot of people around, in general. Now, however, as the years have passed and America has grown and grown, this false interpretation has grown with it. This false idea that, when the USA won the Second World War, and when she came home and built interstates, a TV and nuclear bombs, she immediately switched to being the Western worlds "nucleus/heart" overnight. In fact, this idea is so strong by this point, that even Europeans sort of believe it.
The general idea goes something like this: After the war, Western Europe and all of its inhabitants sort of became "irrelevant". As a result of this, someone had to take up the position as the "gatekeeper" of all Western civilization -- and who better to do this than the Americans (and a bit the English) who had won the war?
And yet...no one would ever dare say this same stuff about Russia, would they? No one would ever dare say that the Russians suddenly became the gate keepers of all Western civilization, and did not the Russians also win the war, just like Americans? To paint the Russians as the new gatekeepers of Western civilization, just because they won a war and developed a nuclear arsenal, sounds absolutely ridiculous. We all know that Russians are rather provincial, simple, and yes, "Backwards". We know that Russians are not posh, too urbane, or too advanced--when it comes to anything except their weapons and their bombs. No one would ever dare try to say that Moscow or Saint Petersburg have become the new "Paris" etc. It sounds preposterous. But, you see, this is exactly what the Americans did and still do, when it comes to their own New York City and Los Angeles. These two cities , as wide apart from each other as could be, just suddenly burst into being the new "centers of the west", overnight, as a result of a war. This is ridiculous of course. It sounds asinine, once you actually sit down and read the history of the West from a Western European point of view--instead of "an American point of view" . American universities do not do this of course.....
In Russia, for example, they actually refer to everyone in West Europe, and the States, as being "westerners". This term is meant to signify that these people are from a different, far flung culture altogether. A culture that has some slight connection to their own, but also one that is far and out of reach, etc. Well, here is my opinion on it, when it comes to the States: If Russia is considered the "Far East", in relation to West Europe, then the United States ought to be considered the "Far West". Once you see it like this, you start to be able to make a whole lot more sense of the entire story of Western civilization, that somehow the poor,provincial Americans are still not really making -- even in their most "prized" institutions, so far as I can tell.See, in my opinion, the problem with Americans is not that they are provincial, like Russians also are, but rather that they are not totally aware of their provincialism. Again and again I go back to that same idea, I believe, because I essentially cannot think of anything more fastidious than talking to someone -- in this case, literally an entire nation of people -- who does not realize their true position and place in the story of Western civilization. It is, quite frankly, rather difficult to talk to most Americans about anything regarding history or politics, etc, because they always play that game I referenced before:They always want to be simultaneously "down home and simple" -- whilst at the same time then trying to profess that they are so advanced and cultured/worldly.
No where,of course, is this ridiculous game more pronounced, than when it comes to the Republicans , in the USA. The Republicans are a particularly absurdist political party because they are now obsessively claiming to "embody" the so-called' ethics' of Western civilization -- whilst knowing literally next to nothing about it. If the Republicans truly did prize Western civilization and her particular achievements, then they would be obsessed with urban centers, higher education, the arts, as well as science, for those things are - it could be argued - the literal hallmarks of Western civ. Alas, when we look into the "Republican way", what we tend to find is , literally, the exact opposite: Republicans seem to hate cities, they oppose making higher education more accessible to the public, they are completely despised by all artists, and scientists everywhere cannot stand them. The shocking truth about the Republican party is this: They are the representatives of that great big population of people who, "a long time ago", wandered too far from the heart of Western Civilization.
Republicans are not the representatives of the heart of Western Civ. They are the exact opposite. They are representing the far flung, desolate outskirts of Western civ. They are the public and political face of people who, now, are, in a sense, waiting to be civilized again. As the reader might be able to guess, many of these people -- being the descendants of folks who hated civilization in the first place and thus fled from it -- are not all that excited about the tentacles of civilization reaching out to grab them again. The very pronounced hatred that the Republicans have for "big government" and even their own cities, like New York City and LA, is really just a hatred for a civilized, rather "compact" world. Again: They like being on the outskirts, and in the quiet, tranquil provinces.They like being on "their own". Charity and healthcare and gun control laws be damned to the depths.Being on your own is more important--from this angle they take. Seeing fancy cities , seeing the Old World, having the ability to ride a train to Brussels instead of a pick-up truck to the "sticks", all of this be damned, in their view. They ain't impressed. Which, you know, them not being impressed by all of that "high culture" stuff is totally fine -- until you turn around and remember that they still want to be in charge of nuclear bombs and they still want to bully the whole wide world around with this literally massive military that they invested all of their money into. This is when it becomes a major problem.
Coincidentally, one very fascinating part of being alive in this particular time period, is that we now see how the rural "Far West" Republicans of America, have begun to take a shine -- finally -- to their rural Far East twins, way out there in Russia. It, in fact, is even beginning to appear as though they are forming a "Secret alliance" of some sort, one to the other. Many Americans in the big cities are utterly mortified by this, in just the same exact way that many Western Europeans are also mortified by it. The Democratic party, which represents the urbane area of the States, and is liberal, is absolutely shocked by this. How, they seem to wonder, is it possible that this alliance is being formed? How on Earth is this possible? Russia, they perhaps think, could not be any more different! Of course, we know that this isn't the truth. We know, in fact, that Americans, even if they're from "big New York", probably have more in common with Russians, than they do with West Europeans. Russians tend to not see much besides Russia, after all, when they travel. Russians tend to be pretty religious. Russians also tend to think their country, even in spite of its provincialism, is still somehow the greatest country of all time. Just like even many so caled "college educated" Americans, Russians tend to not really know Western European history that well. They also live in an intensely privatized academic world, like the Americans do as well. Many Russians can probbaly relate quite well with the American student debt crisis. This is something Western Europeans cannot relate with, at all, since higher education has no cost attached to it, at all....
Therefore, I can tell my reader that, personally, I have not been at all surprised by the so-called "Russia American" alliance that seems to have been forming lateyl, at all. If anything, I think it's all of this long story coming to its natural conclusion. Perhaps it is the case that Russia and America are now going to have to "unite" with one another, in order to move themselves --who knows how -- into no longer being as provincial and behind West Europe, as they currently are at this time. This is a whole other topic now of course that I've started with; but, in a sense, I have always found it somewhat shocking that these two countries weren't allied with one another, even right after the Second World War -- considering they fought on the same side. Am I a bit concerned and frightened about a Russian and American alliance and what it might mean for the world? Sort of. Maybe. But am I completely mortified by it and shocked? Absolutely not, because I have always been thinking of these two enormous, backwoods province countries as being very similar anyways.. I have never, at least for a long time, thought that Americans or Russians can even begin to compare to the intellectual and philosophical culture of West Europe. I don't care if they have produced televisions, nuclear bombs, kalashnikov rifles, and submarines. The people themselves are still not "cultured"; that's all that matters.
One day, of course, I have faith that they will be. They'll finally be just like the intellectual West Euros often are now, with their free education. But as of today, the Americans and the Russians are not that way.They are narrow minded, they are simple, and they are living on the outskirts of western civ. ---
the end
In my experience talking and meeting Euros, I would say roughly 8/10 of them that I met, all seemed to have done what most people I know in the States would consider rather extensive traveling. Almost all of the Euros I met, even the ones I met in the European "countryside", all seemed like they had seen not just a wide handful of different cities -- but also different countries. European countries, yes yes, but still..different countries. And again ...these people were not wealthy. Some of them were, in fact, seemingly rather poor. They worked in little pharmacies, convenience stores, and pizza restauraunts. Most of them did not even have their own cars, and appeared to have no plans on ever getting one.
Now compare this to the average American who has not finished college and who has not managed to become "rich", by American standards. I honestly don't care what state you're in: I can practically guarantee you that 8/10 Americans you'll meet probably have only seen a few states besides the one they were born in, and more likely than not, especially if they are a white American, they are not living in an urban setting. In addition, what is even stranger to me is that, even when you do chance to meet a rich wealthy American who has had that "rare chance" to leave the country, it often seems like it has changed absolutely nothing about them. Somehow, they still seem rather provincial, convinced that America is the best, convinced that their life here is "superior", and they often all certainly seem to still be quite boring, in both mind and dress.
In fact, provincial is probably the best word that can be used to describe the vast majority of white Americans -- college educated or not. They all seem cut off and removed in some strange way. The dictionary defines this provincial word as meaning "...of or concerning the regions outside the capital city of a country, especially when regarded as unsophisticated or narrow-minded." I feel there is literally no better word to describe the vast majority of white Americans.
One basic conclusion I have come to over the years, for why I feel this way, goes something like this: A rich and educated person and a very provincial person, in my opinion, perhaps tend to have some odd similarities, when it comes to how they travel. Specifically, I believe that both of these groups tend to not really see the whole picture of wherever it is that they are traveling.
For example, an extremely provincial person that goes traveling often just sort of takes in stereotypes, and ignores the reality of the city they're in, and as for a rich traveler, they tend to perhaps think they are automatically "ABOVE" wherever it is that they are traveling-- so they don't think to take any real inspiration or advice from wherever they might be, either. They both ignore whatever it is that the place they are in is truly saying. They both see only a superficial, thin presentation.
A rich person, after all, or even a comfortable college educated person (for me that is defined as rich) tends to be coming from a position where they think their origin country is quite comfortable. It has made them rich. Therefore, I say again: When they go a'traveling, they tend to miss details of the culture they've flown to, in ironically just the same way a deeply provincial person --who is overly excited by simple stereotypes--also misses the finer details. As you can imagine, when rich Americans go traveling, they are looking for a vacation; they are not looking to consider the politics of where they are, or the social problems and how they change or don't change in compariosn to the States, etc....
In fact, the basic itinerary of the modern tourists, when you read about the sights most cruises etc show us, basically reveals this to us instantly. These people are only taking in the most basic areas of these cultures they are traveling into. They go to these places; but they do not go there seeking inspiration for how to effect this country. In other words, not only are most Americans literally trapped in America, unable to ever see or take real deep inspiration from another country, but even the Americans who do get out, often seem to come home with literally nothing to suggest. There is no sense that anyone anywhere else is doing anything differently, or better, or more advanced, than the way people here in America are doing it. If anything, it seems most American travelers are usually relieved to get back to their little Stateside provinces , after seeing the big cities of the outside world. They're relieved to get back to their suburban home, etcetc.
But now I want my reader to try and dwell for a moment on the way Europeans themselves tend to travel, and to take in other cities within Europe's varied countries, and I would also ask you to take into consideration just how much more frequently Europeans are able to travel, as well, in comparison to the American. Traveling in and throughout West Europe is so common, in fact, that most West Europeans probably don't even think to obsessively mention it or brag about it, in anywhere near the same way a rich or poor American would mention their own travels. When I spoke with Euros, I found this detail shocking: None of them are really all that impressed with any traveling one might chance to do in the Western world. This isn't because they find the places you can see in the West underwhelming or because they think the one country they live in is the best one -- it's rather because, chances are, they've already seen the places themselves, and they know 10 other friends who have also seen them. A European even as far as Naples in Italy's deep south can hop a train on the weekend to travel to Paris rather randomly. It isn't nearly as big of a deal for them as it is for us. In order to impress a Euro, you'd probably have to travel into the deepest regions of the world at this point. An American, on the other hand, will usually be "deeply impressed" just by a list of basic European cities. If you say you have seen Paris, Luxembourg, and Rome, you are insanely cultured by the American point of view. In fact, many Americans might even consider you insanely cultured if you have just spent 3 weeks in New York City.
Yet, even after all of this, what you'll notice, consistently, is that Americans still just don't ever want to totally admit that they are, indeed, usually very provincial. In my experience, talking to many Americans, I have found that the vast majority of them seem to want to "have their cake and eat it too" , when it comes to this subject. This means the following: The typical white American often wants to simultaneously be interpreted as a "simple down home person", whilst still being regarded as someone whose not provincial. In other words, the American will be very offended when you tell them they seem narrow minded and not well traveled, and yet 20 minutes later, they can't wait to explain to you how little they care to even contemplate living in some "massive" city like Paris or Rome etc. As my reader can imagine, this doesn't make any sense. One cannot be both provincial and well-traveled. You are either one or the other. One cannot be educated and uneducated. It just doesn't make any sense. Alas, for the modern white American, it somehow does. In their mind, this conundrum is totally possible; in fact, it is preferable. Americans never, ever want to believe that America is a "simple country" populated with fairly "simple people". For, they think, how can this possibly be? How can a world super power possibly be inhabited by simple folk?
This is where the big problem is happening. It's the entire dilemma. Americans , you see, again ,especially the white ones, are deeply unaware of their own inherent provincialism, because they think they're living in the most advanced and forward thinking country on the face of the Earth. It is a world super power, it has nuclear bombs, and its military is unable to be beaten. Therefore, the American tells himself, it is the center of the world --and how can the "center of the world" possibly be provincial, right? Except it is, and can be, very easily. Mostly because, even if the Americans have nuclear bombs , and a media empire, guess what? It still isn't really the center of the Western world. The average citizen, who does not live inside the TV, is still not able to see anything thats important about the Western world and western civilization.
What I personally find so interesting about this viewpoint, of course, is that the Americans of old, even up until the 1940s more or less, inherently understood this. They knew, for an absolute fact, that they were living in the outskirts of the Western world; in fact, it was the entire reason that they had come in the first place. The "original" Americans who came here, whether you are talking about the ones who began crossing the Atlantic in the days of the colonies,straight up to the ones who came in the early 1900s, purposely came here because it was not the center of the world. They were looking for things that only a provincial area can ever offer: Clean air, a lot of uninhabited land, a lot of work still yet to be done, no rich folks to harass them, and not a lot of people around, in general. Now, however, as the years have passed and America has grown and grown, this false interpretation has grown with it. This false idea that, when the USA won the Second World War, and when she came home and built interstates, a TV and nuclear bombs, she immediately switched to being the Western worlds "nucleus/heart" overnight. In fact, this idea is so strong by this point, that even Europeans sort of believe it.
The general idea goes something like this: After the war, Western Europe and all of its inhabitants sort of became "irrelevant". As a result of this, someone had to take up the position as the "gatekeeper" of all Western civilization -- and who better to do this than the Americans (and a bit the English) who had won the war?
And yet...no one would ever dare say this same stuff about Russia, would they? No one would ever dare say that the Russians suddenly became the gate keepers of all Western civilization, and did not the Russians also win the war, just like Americans? To paint the Russians as the new gatekeepers of Western civilization, just because they won a war and developed a nuclear arsenal, sounds absolutely ridiculous. We all know that Russians are rather provincial, simple, and yes, "Backwards". We know that Russians are not posh, too urbane, or too advanced--when it comes to anything except their weapons and their bombs. No one would ever dare try to say that Moscow or Saint Petersburg have become the new "Paris" etc. It sounds preposterous. But, you see, this is exactly what the Americans did and still do, when it comes to their own New York City and Los Angeles. These two cities , as wide apart from each other as could be, just suddenly burst into being the new "centers of the west", overnight, as a result of a war. This is ridiculous of course. It sounds asinine, once you actually sit down and read the history of the West from a Western European point of view--instead of "an American point of view" . American universities do not do this of course.....
In Russia, for example, they actually refer to everyone in West Europe, and the States, as being "westerners". This term is meant to signify that these people are from a different, far flung culture altogether. A culture that has some slight connection to their own, but also one that is far and out of reach, etc. Well, here is my opinion on it, when it comes to the States: If Russia is considered the "Far East", in relation to West Europe, then the United States ought to be considered the "Far West". Once you see it like this, you start to be able to make a whole lot more sense of the entire story of Western civilization, that somehow the poor,provincial Americans are still not really making -- even in their most "prized" institutions, so far as I can tell.See, in my opinion, the problem with Americans is not that they are provincial, like Russians also are, but rather that they are not totally aware of their provincialism. Again and again I go back to that same idea, I believe, because I essentially cannot think of anything more fastidious than talking to someone -- in this case, literally an entire nation of people -- who does not realize their true position and place in the story of Western civilization. It is, quite frankly, rather difficult to talk to most Americans about anything regarding history or politics, etc, because they always play that game I referenced before:They always want to be simultaneously "down home and simple" -- whilst at the same time then trying to profess that they are so advanced and cultured/worldly.
No where,of course, is this ridiculous game more pronounced, than when it comes to the Republicans , in the USA. The Republicans are a particularly absurdist political party because they are now obsessively claiming to "embody" the so-called' ethics' of Western civilization -- whilst knowing literally next to nothing about it. If the Republicans truly did prize Western civilization and her particular achievements, then they would be obsessed with urban centers, higher education, the arts, as well as science, for those things are - it could be argued - the literal hallmarks of Western civ. Alas, when we look into the "Republican way", what we tend to find is , literally, the exact opposite: Republicans seem to hate cities, they oppose making higher education more accessible to the public, they are completely despised by all artists, and scientists everywhere cannot stand them. The shocking truth about the Republican party is this: They are the representatives of that great big population of people who, "a long time ago", wandered too far from the heart of Western Civilization.
Republicans are not the representatives of the heart of Western Civ. They are the exact opposite. They are representing the far flung, desolate outskirts of Western civ. They are the public and political face of people who, now, are, in a sense, waiting to be civilized again. As the reader might be able to guess, many of these people -- being the descendants of folks who hated civilization in the first place and thus fled from it -- are not all that excited about the tentacles of civilization reaching out to grab them again. The very pronounced hatred that the Republicans have for "big government" and even their own cities, like New York City and LA, is really just a hatred for a civilized, rather "compact" world. Again: They like being on the outskirts, and in the quiet, tranquil provinces.They like being on "their own". Charity and healthcare and gun control laws be damned to the depths.Being on your own is more important--from this angle they take. Seeing fancy cities , seeing the Old World, having the ability to ride a train to Brussels instead of a pick-up truck to the "sticks", all of this be damned, in their view. They ain't impressed. Which, you know, them not being impressed by all of that "high culture" stuff is totally fine -- until you turn around and remember that they still want to be in charge of nuclear bombs and they still want to bully the whole wide world around with this literally massive military that they invested all of their money into. This is when it becomes a major problem.
Coincidentally, one very fascinating part of being alive in this particular time period, is that we now see how the rural "Far West" Republicans of America, have begun to take a shine -- finally -- to their rural Far East twins, way out there in Russia. It, in fact, is even beginning to appear as though they are forming a "Secret alliance" of some sort, one to the other. Many Americans in the big cities are utterly mortified by this, in just the same exact way that many Western Europeans are also mortified by it. The Democratic party, which represents the urbane area of the States, and is liberal, is absolutely shocked by this. How, they seem to wonder, is it possible that this alliance is being formed? How on Earth is this possible? Russia, they perhaps think, could not be any more different! Of course, we know that this isn't the truth. We know, in fact, that Americans, even if they're from "big New York", probably have more in common with Russians, than they do with West Europeans. Russians tend to not see much besides Russia, after all, when they travel. Russians tend to be pretty religious. Russians also tend to think their country, even in spite of its provincialism, is still somehow the greatest country of all time. Just like even many so caled "college educated" Americans, Russians tend to not really know Western European history that well. They also live in an intensely privatized academic world, like the Americans do as well. Many Russians can probbaly relate quite well with the American student debt crisis. This is something Western Europeans cannot relate with, at all, since higher education has no cost attached to it, at all....
Therefore, I can tell my reader that, personally, I have not been at all surprised by the so-called "Russia American" alliance that seems to have been forming lateyl, at all. If anything, I think it's all of this long story coming to its natural conclusion. Perhaps it is the case that Russia and America are now going to have to "unite" with one another, in order to move themselves --who knows how -- into no longer being as provincial and behind West Europe, as they currently are at this time. This is a whole other topic now of course that I've started with; but, in a sense, I have always found it somewhat shocking that these two countries weren't allied with one another, even right after the Second World War -- considering they fought on the same side. Am I a bit concerned and frightened about a Russian and American alliance and what it might mean for the world? Sort of. Maybe. But am I completely mortified by it and shocked? Absolutely not, because I have always been thinking of these two enormous, backwoods province countries as being very similar anyways.. I have never, at least for a long time, thought that Americans or Russians can even begin to compare to the intellectual and philosophical culture of West Europe. I don't care if they have produced televisions, nuclear bombs, kalashnikov rifles, and submarines. The people themselves are still not "cultured"; that's all that matters.
One day, of course, I have faith that they will be. They'll finally be just like the intellectual West Euros often are now, with their free education. But as of today, the Americans and the Russians are not that way.They are narrow minded, they are simple, and they are living on the outskirts of western civ. ---
the end
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Time period pieces
I used to always think it was so fun to write stories that were set in the deep past, or in the fantasy past. Now I am not so sure anymore, and I have found it has become a bit "boring". It isn't bcause I don't like the more all-natural settings of the past, however ,that I find it boring, nor is it even because I yearn to discuss technology in my stories.
It is instead because I have found myself becoming very tired and even fed up with the way people were in the past. In short, I am very sick of how one dimensional characters in the past tend to be--and I find myself having a hard time trying to get around it. I want to create very colorful characters. Is that even possible if I am creating stories that are set in the deep past? I sometimes am not so sure anymore. I suppose the only way to do it is to use a "creative license"; but even doing that is harder than you think. As I am writing, I can always sort of "sense" what my reader might find ridiculous or not.
For example, let's say I want to do something like create a group of very gay pirates in the year 1650, at the very beginning of the Golden Age of Piracy. For the most part, we all know that nothing like this really existed back then -- open gays probably would have been hanged in reality, back then -- but, for the sake of a story, that's what we want to work with. Not only that, but we also want to make it so that there are plenty of very feminine women in the crew too. They know how to fight and use their cutlasses and shoot their flintlocks; but they're all very feminine and sexy. Just like women from our own time, in this post- feminist revolution time period.
Well, the first and most important question immediately becomes: How do we explain the presence of these characters, in that deep and dark 1650s past? How did they ever come to find each other? Why are they not all being hanged, like they would have been in that time in reality? Personally, I find it very hard to imagine a reader being able to read a story with such characters as those , without immediately calling "bullshit!" and obsessing over those stupid questions. I think modern readers, in fact, are very rude when it comes to the manner in which they'll let writers use or not use imagination. A writer has to be very careful how he goes about doing it. Readers these days are like elementary school teachers in a Catholic school: They can't wait to shatter the bones in your writing hand with a ruler for some perceived wrongdoing.
Once something is too obviously anachronistic , readers and audiences back away, and fast. In fact, there is almost a sort of "cult of authenticity" that I have found exists around many of our most cherished stories and their respective time periods. On some level, audiences understand that all these stories are always "fake" in some way or other; but they also don't like details being inserted that are blatantly fake. THis is especially the case when that "one little detail" only pops up in one part of the story. The pirates all existing in a 1650's time period, that is otherwise totally the same as it was in reality, save for them all being cross dressers and queers and women, is a perfect example of this problem. The rude reader will usually not be willing to suspend his imagination to accept this. He will become all sorts of caught up on explaining to everyone how this was not at all possible in the real 1650s, etcetc. My response.. "yes we all know that asshole, now shut the fuck up about it." He does not shut up of course. In fact, this rude reader controls all the publishing houses. This cunt is completely in control. Somebody should blow his head off; alas he is inaccessibly locked away in his Ivory Tower....
Gay pirates not being allowed is only one of many problems, however. Another one that I have --at least when it comes to period pieces--is this rule on the dialogue, and how these morons all insist that it has to be and sound "like it's from the 1650s". Do I find old time speech romantic like everyone else? Sure I do, and I love it when it is there. I was just watching The Bounty last night, all over again, which features tons of authentic 1700s dialogue. But ultimately I don't really give a shit for if it is there or not. Usually all I care about is just the story and its outline and the appearance of the time period.That's IT!
The dialogue, to me, does not and should not be obsessively tied to period in each and every film, which is the case now in our current cultural atmosphere. One cannot make a film set in the 1600s with people using a style of English like we speak now, and get away with it, because we are told its "ridiculous". Why though? Why? Again ,for me, this is not a problem. It's just one detail, and it actually doesn't make the story any harder to believe for me. I think our current rule on this "language must correlate to period" thing is mostly put in place, you see, for one reason in particular: It helps keep poor folks, who are not masters of language, from attempting to make films set anywhere but in their own time. If you look at who period films are popular for right now, you'll see that it tends to be very rich people and "respectable actors" are the only ones who do them. So you always get the Cate Blanchetts and the Kenneth Branaghs and these sorts doing them. Poor actors , or actors who represent a poor pocket of society, don't approach the stuff. I say fuck this to hell and back. Let the poors in. Let them talk in "regular" or slightly switched up dialogue. Who cares? Let these time periods breathe for the modern audiences. Let the jokes in the films be told in dialogue the modern audiences can easily understand. Use modern slang. Let pirates say homie and nigga and "this song is fire dude!" and things like this. It can stll be the 1650s and the beginning of the Golden Age of Piracy --- it just has a special twist.
---NOTES
It is instead because I have found myself becoming very tired and even fed up with the way people were in the past. In short, I am very sick of how one dimensional characters in the past tend to be--and I find myself having a hard time trying to get around it. I want to create very colorful characters. Is that even possible if I am creating stories that are set in the deep past? I sometimes am not so sure anymore. I suppose the only way to do it is to use a "creative license"; but even doing that is harder than you think. As I am writing, I can always sort of "sense" what my reader might find ridiculous or not.
For example, let's say I want to do something like create a group of very gay pirates in the year 1650, at the very beginning of the Golden Age of Piracy. For the most part, we all know that nothing like this really existed back then -- open gays probably would have been hanged in reality, back then -- but, for the sake of a story, that's what we want to work with. Not only that, but we also want to make it so that there are plenty of very feminine women in the crew too. They know how to fight and use their cutlasses and shoot their flintlocks; but they're all very feminine and sexy. Just like women from our own time, in this post- feminist revolution time period.
Well, the first and most important question immediately becomes: How do we explain the presence of these characters, in that deep and dark 1650s past? How did they ever come to find each other? Why are they not all being hanged, like they would have been in that time in reality? Personally, I find it very hard to imagine a reader being able to read a story with such characters as those , without immediately calling "bullshit!" and obsessing over those stupid questions. I think modern readers, in fact, are very rude when it comes to the manner in which they'll let writers use or not use imagination. A writer has to be very careful how he goes about doing it. Readers these days are like elementary school teachers in a Catholic school: They can't wait to shatter the bones in your writing hand with a ruler for some perceived wrongdoing.
Once something is too obviously anachronistic , readers and audiences back away, and fast. In fact, there is almost a sort of "cult of authenticity" that I have found exists around many of our most cherished stories and their respective time periods. On some level, audiences understand that all these stories are always "fake" in some way or other; but they also don't like details being inserted that are blatantly fake. THis is especially the case when that "one little detail" only pops up in one part of the story. The pirates all existing in a 1650's time period, that is otherwise totally the same as it was in reality, save for them all being cross dressers and queers and women, is a perfect example of this problem. The rude reader will usually not be willing to suspend his imagination to accept this. He will become all sorts of caught up on explaining to everyone how this was not at all possible in the real 1650s, etcetc. My response.. "yes we all know that asshole, now shut the fuck up about it." He does not shut up of course. In fact, this rude reader controls all the publishing houses. This cunt is completely in control. Somebody should blow his head off; alas he is inaccessibly locked away in his Ivory Tower....
Gay pirates not being allowed is only one of many problems, however. Another one that I have --at least when it comes to period pieces--is this rule on the dialogue, and how these morons all insist that it has to be and sound "like it's from the 1650s". Do I find old time speech romantic like everyone else? Sure I do, and I love it when it is there. I was just watching The Bounty last night, all over again, which features tons of authentic 1700s dialogue. But ultimately I don't really give a shit for if it is there or not. Usually all I care about is just the story and its outline and the appearance of the time period.That's IT!
The dialogue, to me, does not and should not be obsessively tied to period in each and every film, which is the case now in our current cultural atmosphere. One cannot make a film set in the 1600s with people using a style of English like we speak now, and get away with it, because we are told its "ridiculous". Why though? Why? Again ,for me, this is not a problem. It's just one detail, and it actually doesn't make the story any harder to believe for me. I think our current rule on this "language must correlate to period" thing is mostly put in place, you see, for one reason in particular: It helps keep poor folks, who are not masters of language, from attempting to make films set anywhere but in their own time. If you look at who period films are popular for right now, you'll see that it tends to be very rich people and "respectable actors" are the only ones who do them. So you always get the Cate Blanchetts and the Kenneth Branaghs and these sorts doing them. Poor actors , or actors who represent a poor pocket of society, don't approach the stuff. I say fuck this to hell and back. Let the poors in. Let them talk in "regular" or slightly switched up dialogue. Who cares? Let these time periods breathe for the modern audiences. Let the jokes in the films be told in dialogue the modern audiences can easily understand. Use modern slang. Let pirates say homie and nigga and "this song is fire dude!" and things like this. It can stll be the 1650s and the beginning of the Golden Age of Piracy --- it just has a special twist.
---NOTES
Tricks and photos
I think the reason I am so obsessed with making fake photos of myself as a woman is because it's sort of like playing with dolls-- but as an adult. It is also sort of like giving birth to a real human being, except I'm doing it inside a "fake" photograph. I swear, I have been frequently downloading pictures that women post publicly on the Internet, and cutting out their face and inserting my own, for about 2 years now, and it never gets old.
Every new photo I create is just as fun and intriguing --- like going to Toys R'Us as a kid and coming home with a new doll or action figure. I am convinced that, by creating these photos with my face on their body , I am at least getting somewhat close to the rush they must feel when they themselves look at the pictures. You would probably be surprised how real some of them look. In fact, some of them are photoshopped so nicely that I have sent them to friends, and then later told them they aren't real photos, and my friends don't believe me. "There's no way the person in this photo isn't real..and there's also no way it's you....looks nothing like you."
Of course it looks nothing like me! It is me with the lips and the jaw of some random woman from San Antonio, Texas. It is me with the breasts and the body of some Puerto Rican woman from Florida. It is "me" lying naked on a bed about to get some sex action. Yet ... it is also not me. At first anyways. It definitely isn't me at first, but sometimes after a few months, it starts to get weird. I have written of this before but, you know how sometimes you look back at real old photos and you forgot you ever took them? Or maybe someone took it of you when you didn't realize, and you look at it and say "oh shit, I vaguely remember that day?" That is sort of what it is like to look at these old photos I have made of myself now, with my head perfectly photoshopped onto a beautiful womans body. I wrote this down before once because it's so unusual, but sometimes I look at the pics and I get a little jolt. "Wait a second , is that me? Was it me? Is my memory just fucked up? Have I been accidentally turned into a man? Am I a female to male trans who was never told?" I look in the mirror checking for scars under my former 'breasts". "Did someone rip them off me?"
I think I am starting to grow increasingly uncertain myself that all of these pictures hve merely been "edited" and "doctored". They seem to look that much more real after time has passed, I have noticed. For example, some of them I remember creating better than others, and often the ones I remember creating most of all are the ones that I think don't look "real" enough. The ones that are obvious fakes and almost look creepy, when I first make them, because you can see that my lips are too big for the head, or that my eyes are too high up on the forehead, or that the jaw is not shaded like it ought to be - due to the light. Initially, when I make these and then save them, just to save them, these are always such obvious fakes and I hate looking at them, I really hate it. Sometimes, though, after 10 months go by and I look back, suddenly they look real. I just lie there on my bed staring at them on the iPhone, and I can remember that "when I made this there were definitely flaws..." but now those flaws don't seem to be there. It just looks like me, with my face painted in wondrous cosmetics, with a beautiful body,wrapped in a beautifully expensive dress. I am at some enormously rich looking party, holding a glass of wine I could never really afford, wearing $2500 high heels. It looks real. Completely real. It doesn'tl ook doctored. I get almost a little shaken. Are these images of some alternative universe I am living in being sent to me? Are these images of some past life? Photos taken inside my dreams? What are they?
One has to imagine the trick of modern life, and how much of it now revolves around photography and keeping "records" with photos. People these days are basically the photos they are able to make. If you go to France and have a vacation, you get the memories to yourself -- but all the rest of us get are just a bunch of photos that tell us you were there. So , from an outsiders perspective, the traveler becomes more of an interesting person just based on phtos alone. Well, imagine how absurd that all sounds once you realize how easily doctored photos can be? Why, you can start doctoring photos tomorrow and you can make the shits on your Facebook believe that you've seen every country on Earth -- assuming you're able to edit well enough. You can make them believe you've worn the greatest and mst expensive suits, ridden in the most expensive cars! You can even trick them into believing you are meeting people you are not really meeting. Presumably people they can't themselves confirm one way or another. "Ah, look...here I am with Billie Joe Armstrong...ran into him in NYC! Imagine?" How can anyone confirm this? It's just a brief photo. Billie Joe himself, a famous celebrity who probably takes thousands of photos, might not even be able teo remember he took it or not! Imagine?
And this is why I say that looking back at these edited photos of myself with the body of a woman -- often pornographic photos -- are so absolutely bizarre. These photos are basically just as "Real" as the photos of myself that I hardly remember taking , years ago, at places like Disney Land and the shopping mall and random house parties. I don't remember the photos from Disney Land...nor do I remember "taking' these photos. They are just here, in my personal album, when I wake up. They just appear to be traces of some past I have been living. I don't know why they're there, and like I say, I'm sometimes beginning to believe they are, or, I should say, were, the reality. I was a woman at some pint, it's clear enough to see, in fact I was a fairly popular porn star , but something happened. Maybe a wizard cast a spell and I got cursed. I keep waking up as a man now. Damn't. It's inexplicable but its what is happening. All the wizards have left me with are the PHOTOS to remember the glorious past life they stole from me. The series of past lives, in fact...
I am looking at one now that I just made four nights ago. I am wearing a red tank top with a backwards American flag on it and I have a bright pink pistol tattoo facing downwards on my waist. My hair is long and blonde. I am wearing a short black skirt very high above my knees with red fishnet stockings. Behind me there is a very extravagant looking leather sofa and many big paintings hanging on the wall. A strong muscular man's hand is reaching, about to grab my leg. The photo looks totally real. My face has been cut into the photo perfectly....can't tell it's a fake at all. You especially can't tell if I decide to run the image through a Photoshop filter , like if I make it black or white. Looks completely real. It is my whole face, too, my lips, my nose, my eyes, my earrings, etc. It is me. In fact, it feels more like me than this next picture here, with my so-called "real body"....
One wonders what the future of this all might be. Could one day a problem I guess, cause folks will be making fake pictures of people doing real bad things -- and how on Earth can they really be authenticated? In fact, to take it all a step further, and to tie it in with my new favorite topic, robotics, one imagines that the machines will be able to make these photos for us, automatically, in the way that I am now just forced to do manually. It's very easy to imagine a program that will take your face and put it on the body of your choice --for a photo -- with no easily discernible flaws at all. You will probably be able to do it with thousands upon thousands of photos at once, too, so you will be surprised. I can imagine this will be used for enjoyment, just like I am using it now, by way of my own hand. A woman, or someone that is beginning to want to identify as a woman, will be searching for dresses to wear, wondering which she will look best in. She will insert a photo of her face to the computer, the computer will take it and automatically put her face & head onto a thousand different photos of models in dresses. The woman will sort through these photos just like you or I now sort through "real" Facebook photos, or old photo albums. And them too of course, it won't stop there. Why should it? The machine will also help you to see yourself in all the different places you can only dream of seeing. Perhaps it will even make fake videos. "Computer, make a video of me kicking around a soccer ball in Kingston, Jamaica...I want to have dreadlocks and big double d breasts...wearing a pink tshirt with Lauryn Hills face on it... make me look happy..." The computer will start to work its magic, and it will ask you what song, if any, you want to play as background music for your little video. "Play 'Lost Ones' by Lauryn Hill. Thanks, computer."
To your friends, this video will basically be a complete representation of you, just like a real video of you is to them now. How on earth will they know it is not something that really happened for you or really took place in their memory? Who cares? All that matter is it is there on video, and seems real. Isn't that enough?
Every new photo I create is just as fun and intriguing --- like going to Toys R'Us as a kid and coming home with a new doll or action figure. I am convinced that, by creating these photos with my face on their body , I am at least getting somewhat close to the rush they must feel when they themselves look at the pictures. You would probably be surprised how real some of them look. In fact, some of them are photoshopped so nicely that I have sent them to friends, and then later told them they aren't real photos, and my friends don't believe me. "There's no way the person in this photo isn't real..and there's also no way it's you....looks nothing like you."
Of course it looks nothing like me! It is me with the lips and the jaw of some random woman from San Antonio, Texas. It is me with the breasts and the body of some Puerto Rican woman from Florida. It is "me" lying naked on a bed about to get some sex action. Yet ... it is also not me. At first anyways. It definitely isn't me at first, but sometimes after a few months, it starts to get weird. I have written of this before but, you know how sometimes you look back at real old photos and you forgot you ever took them? Or maybe someone took it of you when you didn't realize, and you look at it and say "oh shit, I vaguely remember that day?" That is sort of what it is like to look at these old photos I have made of myself now, with my head perfectly photoshopped onto a beautiful womans body. I wrote this down before once because it's so unusual, but sometimes I look at the pics and I get a little jolt. "Wait a second , is that me? Was it me? Is my memory just fucked up? Have I been accidentally turned into a man? Am I a female to male trans who was never told?" I look in the mirror checking for scars under my former 'breasts". "Did someone rip them off me?"
I think I am starting to grow increasingly uncertain myself that all of these pictures hve merely been "edited" and "doctored". They seem to look that much more real after time has passed, I have noticed. For example, some of them I remember creating better than others, and often the ones I remember creating most of all are the ones that I think don't look "real" enough. The ones that are obvious fakes and almost look creepy, when I first make them, because you can see that my lips are too big for the head, or that my eyes are too high up on the forehead, or that the jaw is not shaded like it ought to be - due to the light. Initially, when I make these and then save them, just to save them, these are always such obvious fakes and I hate looking at them, I really hate it. Sometimes, though, after 10 months go by and I look back, suddenly they look real. I just lie there on my bed staring at them on the iPhone, and I can remember that "when I made this there were definitely flaws..." but now those flaws don't seem to be there. It just looks like me, with my face painted in wondrous cosmetics, with a beautiful body,wrapped in a beautifully expensive dress. I am at some enormously rich looking party, holding a glass of wine I could never really afford, wearing $2500 high heels. It looks real. Completely real. It doesn'tl ook doctored. I get almost a little shaken. Are these images of some alternative universe I am living in being sent to me? Are these images of some past life? Photos taken inside my dreams? What are they?
One has to imagine the trick of modern life, and how much of it now revolves around photography and keeping "records" with photos. People these days are basically the photos they are able to make. If you go to France and have a vacation, you get the memories to yourself -- but all the rest of us get are just a bunch of photos that tell us you were there. So , from an outsiders perspective, the traveler becomes more of an interesting person just based on phtos alone. Well, imagine how absurd that all sounds once you realize how easily doctored photos can be? Why, you can start doctoring photos tomorrow and you can make the shits on your Facebook believe that you've seen every country on Earth -- assuming you're able to edit well enough. You can make them believe you've worn the greatest and mst expensive suits, ridden in the most expensive cars! You can even trick them into believing you are meeting people you are not really meeting. Presumably people they can't themselves confirm one way or another. "Ah, look...here I am with Billie Joe Armstrong...ran into him in NYC! Imagine?" How can anyone confirm this? It's just a brief photo. Billie Joe himself, a famous celebrity who probably takes thousands of photos, might not even be able teo remember he took it or not! Imagine?
And this is why I say that looking back at these edited photos of myself with the body of a woman -- often pornographic photos -- are so absolutely bizarre. These photos are basically just as "Real" as the photos of myself that I hardly remember taking , years ago, at places like Disney Land and the shopping mall and random house parties. I don't remember the photos from Disney Land...nor do I remember "taking' these photos. They are just here, in my personal album, when I wake up. They just appear to be traces of some past I have been living. I don't know why they're there, and like I say, I'm sometimes beginning to believe they are, or, I should say, were, the reality. I was a woman at some pint, it's clear enough to see, in fact I was a fairly popular porn star , but something happened. Maybe a wizard cast a spell and I got cursed. I keep waking up as a man now. Damn't. It's inexplicable but its what is happening. All the wizards have left me with are the PHOTOS to remember the glorious past life they stole from me. The series of past lives, in fact...
I am looking at one now that I just made four nights ago. I am wearing a red tank top with a backwards American flag on it and I have a bright pink pistol tattoo facing downwards on my waist. My hair is long and blonde. I am wearing a short black skirt very high above my knees with red fishnet stockings. Behind me there is a very extravagant looking leather sofa and many big paintings hanging on the wall. A strong muscular man's hand is reaching, about to grab my leg. The photo looks totally real. My face has been cut into the photo perfectly....can't tell it's a fake at all. You especially can't tell if I decide to run the image through a Photoshop filter , like if I make it black or white. Looks completely real. It is my whole face, too, my lips, my nose, my eyes, my earrings, etc. It is me. In fact, it feels more like me than this next picture here, with my so-called "real body"....
One wonders what the future of this all might be. Could one day a problem I guess, cause folks will be making fake pictures of people doing real bad things -- and how on Earth can they really be authenticated? In fact, to take it all a step further, and to tie it in with my new favorite topic, robotics, one imagines that the machines will be able to make these photos for us, automatically, in the way that I am now just forced to do manually. It's very easy to imagine a program that will take your face and put it on the body of your choice --for a photo -- with no easily discernible flaws at all. You will probably be able to do it with thousands upon thousands of photos at once, too, so you will be surprised. I can imagine this will be used for enjoyment, just like I am using it now, by way of my own hand. A woman, or someone that is beginning to want to identify as a woman, will be searching for dresses to wear, wondering which she will look best in. She will insert a photo of her face to the computer, the computer will take it and automatically put her face & head onto a thousand different photos of models in dresses. The woman will sort through these photos just like you or I now sort through "real" Facebook photos, or old photo albums. And them too of course, it won't stop there. Why should it? The machine will also help you to see yourself in all the different places you can only dream of seeing. Perhaps it will even make fake videos. "Computer, make a video of me kicking around a soccer ball in Kingston, Jamaica...I want to have dreadlocks and big double d breasts...wearing a pink tshirt with Lauryn Hills face on it... make me look happy..." The computer will start to work its magic, and it will ask you what song, if any, you want to play as background music for your little video. "Play 'Lost Ones' by Lauryn Hill. Thanks, computer."
To your friends, this video will basically be a complete representation of you, just like a real video of you is to them now. How on earth will they know it is not something that really happened for you or really took place in their memory? Who cares? All that matter is it is there on video, and seems real. Isn't that enough?