And All The Joy Within You Dies


Ladies and gentlemen, pals and haters, I have, as they say, good news and bad news. Truthfully, the bad news is that I’m not certain which is which. I’m very au courant in that regard. As such, I will simply report, and allow you to decide. I won’t waste your time here with nebulous designations like “good” and “bad”. Please, read on.

All of us, in some small way, struggle to understand ourselves, and our place in the world. Often this struggle lasts a lifetime, and billions before us struggled to their graves, unfulfilled. For some, the struggle is too great, and they give up. They give in. They allow the light within their souls to dim, and gutter. They settle for marking time, until time runs out.

Time will always run out. For you, for me, and for the most powerful people in our world. Time is running out as you read these words. That’s if you even exist; I have to presume that these words are being read, or risk losing all motivation to continue typing them. I have to invent you, the reader. I invent your passions, your goals and your lifestyle.

I invent the desire for my work to be read. Even if it only happens after I am long gone, and all these articles have been published in printed form, so that they will not suffer the caprices of deleterious self-appointed authorities who toil tirelessly inventing new social grievances with the intent of destroying art and literature. After all; files can be deleted. Books must be burned. One is considerably easier and more convenient than the other.

At present, one can go weeks or even months without hearing a single measure of music that includes musical instruments played with passion and skill. “Rap” music, so highly prized by such an astronomical percentage of Americans, requires literally nothing more than expensive software, a microphone, and an obnoxious asshole imitating the cadence of the last obnoxious asshole who reaped a fortune. Regardless of your opinions, skin color, or social status, the rap music to which you listen is wholly devoid of any musical proficiency. The sole intention in creating it is big money. By blasting it at deafening volume in your ears or vehicle, you become a pawn of talentless scammers who would laugh in your face if they even cared enough to glance at it. Rap music is shit. Rap music is for unsupervised children and imbeciles who flunked out of grade school. Take a good look at the current crop of rappers that infest our world with noise pollution. If they appear intelligent to you, someone probably helps you put your underpants on in the morning.

People nowadays are so foolish and brainwashed that they’ll point to rap music from thirty years ago as the apex of the genre. Well guess what; all of it used samples bought from labels that featured actual musicians playing actual musical instruments. Rappers like Dr. Dre got so tired of paying labels that he hired musicians to replicate the songs he wished to sample. Which admittedly is pretty magnanimous, as well as savvy; real musicians were paid for their skills. That’s a marked improvement over some label cashing in on players who died in poverty a long time ago.

Who the fuck told you rap music was anything but worthless? Kids? Your kids? Yourself, when you were a kid? Was it your desire to be a child again, or was it the dreaded “FOMO” that made you think this garbage was worth your time and money? You forsook the wisdom and refinement of your adulthood in a vain attempt to appear “hip” and “with it”, like an execrable “Rappin’ Granny”. Do you realize the mental gymnastics you’ve performed to make yourself like that awful shit? Who are you trying to impress? Where are you trying to fit in? A middle-school basketball court?

Show me any contemporary chart-topping rapper, and I’ll show you someone who licks their hands after shitting. For Christ’s sake; everyone lost their minds thinking Kanye West was insane for his comments about Jewfolk, and I’m like, did you motherfuckers forget that the dumbass not only married the most flagrant, cock-gobbling whore in human history, but had a kid with the very same loathsome porpoise?

That’s the style of music that inspires you? That’s the music you play around your friends and family? The equivalent of an inbred hillbilly junk-hawking auctioneer, only with the latest Mac PowerBook? That makes you feel stylish and urbane? That makes you consider yourself a sophisticated adult of refined artistic tastes?

Because to me, it sure sounds like something you’d outgrow once you were old enough to know better.

When rock music took the world by storm, millions of men and women were inspired to pick up a guitar and learn to play. Their minds expanded and grew as they worked out how to form melodies and strum chords. Their innate passions inflamed as they grew more proficient on their chosen instrument, and their children witnessed the stoking of these passions, absorbing it into their own growing minds. Before long the children began to play, creating new forms, challenging the skills of their predecessors.

When rap music took over literally everything from TV shows to tampon commercials, millions of people were inspired to make fast money doing something that looked like anyone could do it. Suddenly nine out of ten kids were affecting a toxic attitude and endlessly running their mouths at top volume. Since every rapper becomes a millionaire superstar overnight apparently, this was all socially justified, up to and including degrading and abusing women, which became a hallmark of the genre. And since rap music and violent crime are basically peanut butter and jelly, an entire generation of parents (and then some) cowered in abject fear of their offspring.

Because the mainstream media has declared rap music the absolute pinnacle of negro accomplishment, it cannot be held to the same criteria as all other musical forms. To criticize rap music is to criticize black people and the black experience in America itself. It’s more important than blues, or jazz, because those things are unappealing to children and are therefore unprofitable/worthless. By the media’s definition, all black Americans love rap music; it’s their national anthem. To dislike rap music would be “racist”.

“Racism”, regardless of its origin, is based in envy. We hate what we envy. Most adults who see people thriving in ways they themselves cannot, choose to envy those people. Thus, we have the most appalling white-trash teenage “wiggers”, who despise all browner-hued persons with a searing passion while dressing up like black ball players and rappers, and who spend every paycheck on expensive material things they perceive associated with “black culture”. We have legions of perfectly normal black women who choose to violently rage upon their white sisters, simply because white women naturally possess their perception of “good hair”, seemingly without even trying. We have morons of every color and shape who declare anything requiring effort as “racist”. Even breathing.

One race sees in another race something natural that they either can’t attain, or have to struggle and/or buy. That’s all it is. And it doesn’t even have to be about race. It can be gender, age, or simply capability. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Do you honestly think I can’t tell when someone hates me because they envy what I do, or because (they think) I get paid to do it?

Do you honestly believe that most of the world can already do what they want, but they’ve resorted to sabotage and destruction just to hedge their bets?

Really? What color is the sky in your world?

Look around you. Where exactly do you see positive artistic expression of any kind? Where do you see craftsmanship? Where in this century do you see media for any purpose other than telling you what to think and relieving you of your earnings?

I mean, movies have fared better than most. I just watched There Will Be Blood for the fifth time in like a week. S. Craig Zahler and Jeremy Saulnier both have made films that demonstrate unique artistic perspective and drive. Nicolas Winding Refn and Lars von Trier hit some real dingers more often than not. The Coen brothers are always pretty reliable. Maybe if your friends weren’t a bunch of halfwits, you’d have realized that Scorsese’s The Irishman is one of his finest offerings.

But there’s a canyon of difference between making a great film, and continuing a franchise. One requires passion, and the other requires position.

Passion gave us the original Star Wars. Position gave us a black Little Mermaid and told us we were bad people for having any issue with it.

Passion gave us Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who began composing symphonies at the age of two. Position gave us American Idol.

Passion gave us Raiders of the Lost Ark. Position is giving us an upcoming movie where all of Indiana Jones’s history will be appropriated and nullified, because “girl power” or something.

Passion gave us Back To The Future, the 1990 Dick Tracy film, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Foresight on behalf of the passionate has made it difficult, if not impossible, for position to sully the legacy of those movies.

You will find more passion in a mound of fresh dog waste than any rap music created in the past twenty years. Unless, of course, you include the passion to make as much money as the previous obnoxious asshole. Rappers and humility go together like sweet tea and ground glass.

Here’s how I can tell if you’re brainwashed by the media or not. Did you get mad when I trashed rap music? Did you think I was “racist” for doing it? Then you’re brainwashed.

I enjoy a lot of music that “normal people” can’t stand. I don’t care when they insult it, or insult me for enjoying it. Whether they like it or don’t means literally nothing to me. Why is that?

Thousands of times in my life, other people have played music for me that I hated. I’ll try to be polite at first, and say that I’d rather hear something else, but inevitably, they persist, because subconsciously they only want to “trump” my perceived authority on the matter. Thus begins a battle of wills, until I finally confess that I hate their music, and of course, they take offense. Why is that?

Because they don’t have the first fucking clue why they like something, and they can’t admit to themselves that they only like it because other people do, and they just want to be accepted like other people are. So of course, it’s personal. They confuse this with passion, because the only passionate artists they know are characters in movies, and so their stupid little heart breaks. A bloo bloo bloo.

Let’s say I’m enjoying Dillinger Escape Plan’s 2002 masterpiece Irony Is A Dead Scene, and someone present hates on it. Does their opinion change the fact that Mike Patton has a six-octave vocal range? Does their statement change the fact that the EP closes with a lovingly analog interpretation of Aphex Twin’s classic electro-terror “Come To Daddy”, or that Ben Weinman’s guitar playing is astonishing throughout? Ditto for every other member of the band?


Come on, silly. Of course it doesn’t. That’s why it doesn’t bother me if the music is insulted or despised. That’s why I don’t take offense.

That’s why people who enjoy rap music do take offense why I criticize it, because it doesn’t stand up to criticism. On the other hand, blues does, jazz does (no matter how much it bothers you), and for hundreds of years, classical music has. That’s why the typical rapper has the staying power of warm milk. It’s the same as all those discounted hair-metal cassettes you used to find in stores; any and all passion is devoted towards just edging out the previous success. Nothing more. It’s important because the media tells you it’s important, and in less than six weeks, they’ll tell you something else. They manufacture not just supply, but demand. The odds are good that you’ve known no other form of “music industry” in your entire life. You like what they tell you to like.

If any of you wonder where the avant-garde disappeared to, now you know. Why make music that no one will hear, right? Why practice on a musical instrument, or pay your dues through struggle and hard work? Some kid with a laptop and a cheap microphone is getting a million views on YouTube as we speak. Lord knows, getting a million people to look at something is the same as using talent and skill to create fine art that endures. Only a fool would attempt an endeavor with no precedent in easy money. Life’s too short to write books nobody will read, especially if you’re not alive to be encouraged by the action. Inspiration only comes from the realization that you can do something that made somebody else a big pile of money.

Right?

That’s what truly inspires and enlivens the human spirit, right? The opportunity to make a shitload of cash?

You might have noticed that my output this year has slowed to a trickle, and that my weekly serial comic strip Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding has (pun intended) ceased altogether, after over 470 pages. Lest you think this is all caused by a fatal lack of inspiration, it is instead the result of resorting to manual labor for a paycheck, after being nearly a month late on rent. I awaken early in the morning and patiently await the return of sensation to my hands and arms, while doing my best to convince myself that the condition is only temporary, and not indicative of something terminal. Then I go to another town and work long hours assisting a carpenter friend in the construction of a patio, or a deck, on some wealthy person’s house. A house; something I will most likely neither own nor live in for the rest of my days on this earth. I have no other options.

This week, after learning of the latest malfeasance committed by the degenerate, lying frauds who run (and are currently destroying) this country, something about incarcerating innocent citizens who were apparently the “wrong kind” of protesters (i.e., ones who don’t burn down cities and murder for “BLM”), I had a psychotic episode. A reminder of why I try everything in my power to hold on to a career as an artist, and not work some pointless 9-to-5 where such an outburst would see me lawfully punished. A fleeting terrible moment where, were I armed, a bloody trail of dead bodies would inevitably result.

After years if not decades of analysis, the culprit currently appears to be schizotypal personality disorder. In an hilarious irony, one of the primary symptoms is a disbelief in disorders, something I have expressed upon this very website. Thanks to the media’s brainwashing of the public, suffering such a malady is only seen by said public as a humiliating weakness to be exploited. If I sought to mutilate myself into becoming an ersatz girl, rather than forge my own religious dogma and artistic animus, I would be the current-day media’s torchbearer and champion. Alas, in my obvious mental illness, I only wish to own a house, a car, and to fuck a woman with whom I am in love inside of either, while being permitted to follow my own unique creative impulses.

That’s it. That’s all I want. And all at once I realized that no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I create, the odds of it happening are practically zero. And very little of that is my own fault. It’s by design, to crush people like me, forever. To wipe our efforts from the slate of history. Up is down, black is white, and I’m a sick deviant for wanting things my parents enjoyed.

I offer you this information about my mental state so that you can use it as an excuse, a glib method of dismissal for all the things I’ve ever said, drawn or written that upset you. I’ve made it easy; you can just write me off as crazy. You can rest easy knowing that all I ever did was make things harder on myself than was necessary. You won’t have to fear that you ever identified with a “crazy person”, or agreed with one.

You never have to worry about that fatal, searing realization that you’ve not only been misled, you welcomed it. You wanted to be brainwashed. You asked for it.

Anything to stave off that terrible finality, when all the joy within you dies.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Thousand Listen Club