I wonder if I will ever stop trying to find myself in the culture I consume. I also wonder if the culture I consume is as much of a mirror as I think it is - does it have anything to do with me? Does it reflect me? And by reflect I mean does it tell you something about who I am, what matters to me, what I stand for? 

Kanye West recently released his album Donda. As a reformed Kanye West fan, I’ve tried to find the words to describe the dull yet pulsing ache I feel when I think about his music and the impact that he has had on my life, whether I like it or not. I’ve issued a blanket mute to anyone I see posting that they are listening to his album…an album which I don’t need to listen to to know that it isn’t good. But more than the quality of the music itself, I don’t need to listen to the album because I don’t need to support his public alignment with accused and convicted rapists and sexual deviants, homophobes, anti-Semites, and misogynists. I have several problematic faves, but I don’t have 1 hour and 48 minutes to find out if anything on Donda is worth seeing past the list of collaborators, and the glaring lack of women in an album dedicated to his late mother. I don’t know the answer, I don’t want to know, and I don’t want to care.

Maybe that is the name for that dull, pulsing ache. Care. But not in the sense of, I care for you. In the sense of somehow this affects me with clear undertones of I wish it didn’t.  Like seeing an embarrassing photo of yourself from years ago. Or like this week, I got a request from someone who asked about Fly Art prints. Toni and I have only spoken publicly (lol) about the slow death of Fly Art once and it is as simple as the two of us not being interested in the project anymore and also as complex as my (I can’t speak for Toni) relationship to the music and artists that I love and follow. 

I have loved rap music for a finite amount of time. I think it came about as a result of having dabbled in dance, and also my appreciation for a good fucking beat. I admired the brashness with which a rapper could admit their (though it was often his) faults while also boasting of their success. As a very self-conscious yet vaguely confident (in the right context!) person, I saw myself reflected in the tricky balance between humility and the skill of embodying my own self. I promise! I am! So self-conscious. Rap, and by extension hip-hop fed my soul. When I first moved to Sydney, I attended a Yeezus show in total nosebleed seats. Kanye played the intro to Runaway twice after asking who in the audience was hearing it live for the first time. It was one of the best concerts I had ever been to. I still chase this same feeling: the distance from the stage bridged through shared, mutual adoration. 

I leaned on Fly Art as part of my personality until the proverbial reed broke. I thought it made me cool and influential. I loved the attention so much. And it was fucking fun! Until we tried to make money off of it (We succeeded though) and it became a job. It was no longer fun, more than a cool hobby that made me feel cool and popular. And I just stopped listening to hip-hop. My taste in music changed, and it seemed that every rapper I admired was on a mission to remind me they were straight cishet men doing straight cishet men things, including:

• Denying the existence of slavery, supporting one of the actual worst presidents of the United States, which is saying something considering they’re all fucking hacks (Kanye West)
• Appearing to have groomed young women…and giving R FUCKING KELLY A WRITING CREDIT IN 2021 (Drake)
• Threatening to boycott Spotify if they didn’t return the music of someone who abused their partner (Kendrick Lamar for xxxtentacion, weird tbh)
• Fighting with women who were trying to encourage the general public to read??? (J. Cole, in an odd bid against literacy)
• Featuring Chris Brown (unfortunately too many to name)

In summary, just a lot of stuff that left a bad taste in my mouth and left me questioning what I had signed up for. What my support meant. Worse, what did my profiting off of the work of black artists say about me across the ugly ugly backdrop of gender-based violence, systemic racism and police brutality? The slow death of Fly Art was really just the same story over and over again: people change and they indeed realise things. They do not condone misogyny and misinformation, which I strive to do. I also cannot stand albums longer than 16 tracks. Who even has the time?

That isn’t to say I don’t listen to any rap or hip-hop music at all. There is still a lot of it on rotation!!! But I can’t think of anything more exhausting than seeing Donda on my feed multiple times. I don’t have to listen to the album. I cannot believe how hard I stanned this man. Part of my disgust and anger is definitely directed towards me. There is an endless bowl of shame in there. I often call myself a “reformed Kanye West fan” because there is so much of his music that I love. And I resent him so deeply now because the more he continues to do *gestures vaguely* whatever this is, the more poisoned the well feels. 

I understand that it is possible to like problematic people and to support artists or people in general who aren’t perfect. It is inevitable that everyone has fucked up at least once in their life. It feels like I’m reliving a cycle of disappointment that I feel for myself when I make a mistake or when I am unkind. Ha, maybe the point isn’t to find yourself in what’s out there, but to find it (speak to the manager) within. Maybe I just feel envious of people who are able to separate the art from the artist? 

On the other hand, fuck that. There is a line. In a world that is rapidly taking away a woman’s right to her own body, where we are constantly in a deluge of violence of all sorts from men in power, I cannot believe that people I know are still listening to Kanye West! Openly!!!! Is any gesture of support worth the pain inflicted by the men I mentioned above? There will eventually be a time when I stop drinking from this bowl of shame, alienation and just straight up anger, but at the very least I know my answer. I want people to know that this shit doesn’t sit right with me, because how else can we demand for something better? That’ll be enough. It has to be enough. 

i’m compiling the different things i’ve written around the internet into one place. i’m currently locked out of my old livejournal, and i don’t have the heart to make a new one. 

There’s something to be said about the level of neglect that we grow accustomed to. The level of pain we can stomach before it oozes out of us or explodes like a grenade. I read somewhere that laughter is what happens when your body cannot contain the joy you feel. But what about anger? What about pain? A friend of mine eats a whole cake in one sitting and I wonder: where does it all go? I scroll endlessly through Twitter, Instagram, the news, Youtube, hours upon hours of my time before looking up and wondering where it all went.

Of course, it’s not just my time. It’s also my energy spent. Some days I wake up after an appropriate amount of rest (Though for a millennial, is there anything other than tired?) completely exhausted. Not just sleepy from having woken up, but a sinking feeling in the top of my eyelids that compels them to close. When I’m extra tired, I get this weird metallic taste in my mouth and my body just doesn’t seem to hold any water. I drink two litres of water in one go and my throat will still scream of thirst. I unlock my phone and scroll and scroll and scroll and absorb the information, the grief, the trauma and the pain like a sponge. It’s no wonder my body cannot contain water, when there is no room for it.

I once told my counsellor that I don’t ever want to be known as someone who didn’t care, especially about the things that move the world and bring pain to so many people. I use this as a driver to learn and in most cases, unlearn the false ways of the world. His response was that caring does not mean I have to feel angry or sad all the time. He also said that many people probably aren’t thinking of me that way or at all, even. The past few weeks I have reneged on my usual diet of information and discomfort to allow myself a little space to breathe. I couldn’t cope with the onslaught of death and despair that COVID-19 brought into my home (didn’t even stop at the doorstep to knock!) and felt like the shell of a shade of a portion of myself. I needed to protect myself. I wanted to stop feeling so fucking sad all the time.

There’s an episode of the Bobo & Flex Show wherein the hosts discuss the question: “Would you rather be sad or angry all the time?” Naturally my response was anger. I would just rather be angry. Anger feels like a driving force towards action, a reaction to things unjust and cruel. However, that anger has given way to just an intense feeling of despair as of late, and I fear that the space I had given myself over the past few weeks has dulled my capacity to feel any drive towards change. Sure, I’ve exhaled a bit and accepted uncertainty, but was that selfish of me to want that? Am I any less empathetic or caring than I was previously, when I consumed and absorbed All Things Bad, because I thought it made me a better person?

What I have learned over the past week is that the unrelenting pace of cruelty and evil in this world never stops. I joke that I have a separate stomach for bread, do I have another body for grief? I grit my teeth, clench my knuckles, blink back my tears, exhale deeply. Where does it all go? It goes anywhere and everywhere. My last reference for you is something plucked from Death of The Endless: everyone knows everything but pretend that they do not to make life tolerable. The world has always been bad; the only difference is that now we can see it clearly, without end. I don’t know whether I’d rather be sad or angry all the time; I only know that I want to care. I suppose that is the only thing that makes life tolerable.