Why the fuck would anyone bother to write anything down while the ocean is on fire? Why bother creating art while diabolical oligarchs transmogrify society into an oxytocin-less dystopia where scores of unremarkable apartment complexes are joylessly wrapped in razor wire? Why paint a portrait of the mind while psychiatrists are pumping out antipsychotic-popping zombies like an apocalyptic virus? Why put shows together in lonely cities that are more myth than home to all the hopeful non-locals looking to change their lives? Why pack yourself into a sardine can populated with anxious and depressed denizens paying a million dollars in rent to stare into their phone most of the time? Why take your Lexapro in the morning just to listlessly wander the city streets at night? Why bear witness to the concrete sprawl that secretes advertisements that propagate themselves mindlessly ad infinitum? Why make music when apps like Spotify are systematically stealing dollars from recording artists to soundtrack multitudinous commutes to back-breaking and soul-crushing jobs? Why seek admiration via almost obligatory online networks of mutuals on all manner of social media—a medium which is more hypnotic than television ever was? Why try to stay slim by avoiding seeking solace in the sugar-and-fat-induced dopamine reward? Why not just live off of McDonald's? Why not develop an eating disorder? Why not be apathetic towards engaging with an ever-evolving cluster of neural networks that are spying on you constantly? Why tolerate being ceaselessly manipulated into feeling craving and desire by greedy corporations every second you're conscious? Why carry on as if nothing's wrong while there are artificial intelligences constantly learning the most efficient method to make you hate yourself in a particular way that will influence you to buy a specific product? Why not just give up in light of all that awful knowledge? Why traverse the long, depressingly garbage-ridden highways to the 7th layer of Los Angeles and beyond? Why carry on as skid rows grow like moss all around the country? Why ignore more and more makeshift cities made of tents, tarp, and cardboard boxes? Why try to shrug it off when there's an ostentatious fraud every few digital millimeters and all of them have apostles that they're trying to hock products to? I've been there, at least somewhat. Do you think I wanna sell a fucking t-shirt? Not fucking really. I'm a social media comedian, a writer, and an artist—not a conman. Conperson, sorry. What sucks cock for all of us is that capitalism punishes any element of its system not following its whims by putting our quality of life up for auction. Why play deaf, dumb, and blind to the white nuclear families of suburbia while they hide their money and power behind security guards, large automatic gates, and monoculture yards that are leeched of minerals and soaked in dangerous toxins? Why casually shrug off Astroturf like it hasn't completely lost the plot? Why be nonchalant about this abhorrent plastic grass brought to you by the folks on the West coast who’re wheezing and coughing up tree embers and whatnot? Why endure being born in a country that fucking Times Square is the heart of? Why disregard all the neon signs flashing nonsense? Why persist just to witness piggish plutocrats piloting society into producing a polluted parking garage of a planet for us all to be imprisoned on? Why sit here in disgust and wait for it all to rot while you watch all this unsustainable bullshit pop off for the sake of profit—which is an imaginary fucking concept! We made it all up! I don't understand what is so hard for these goddamn troglodytes to understand about having compassion for one another. It blows my fucking mind. Rich clowns mime progress while they're running from how they feel inside all day long—claiming it's about chasing success all the while—but they never feel satisfied once they meet their next deadline. The goalpost for contentment always gets moved back behind the next object of their mind’s desire. Why wouldn't you just commit suicide the minute you realized you were born and raised in a kingdom of lies? Especially since it all goes to serve a bunch of self-important idiot princes who play chess with human lives. Why take it as par for the course that ridiculous and useless people rise to the top of the shitpile? Why crack a single smile while celebrities and influencers are primarily using their platforms to take everyone's fucking money and profit from their time? Why go about any of the business of your daily life? The fucking demons roam free, my guy. I'm talking about completely unchecked goblin power. Why would anyone put up with all this? You almost have to be on OxyContin to tolerate it. Why do the dishes or throw away garbage when becomes effortless to understand Ted Kaczynski's perspective sociologically? Why am I, as a peaceful person, sympathizing with the Unabomber? America must be pretty goddamn awful as an imperial superpower if the opinion of a mad bomber in a cabin on a mountain is starting to make sense at all. Let's get to the bottom of it. Why exist? Why have a slowly decaying body? Why remain steadfast in the face of my challenges instead of swallowing a bottle of Tylenol?
As far as suicide is concerned: Let's just establish that’s always an option. This is a weird dimension we find ourselves in, and it insists that it's made of love while appearing quite violent. There's a disturbingly large amount of scenarios an organism can fall into that make death seem rather preferable to being alive. I've revisited the sensation of praying for a merciful death many times—particularly in periods of incredible stress. I’m currently just throwing all the energy I can muster into meditation and mindfulness to cope with existence. I'm not a monk or anything; I'm still addicted to social media. I still act like a lascivious fuck-fiend; I also smoke weed—and periodically have problems with binge eating—but I’m effectively making the existential bet that I'll achieve Enlightenment before I’ve been on Earth so long that my mind starts to succumb to the onslaught of my army of neuroses. The frightening awe of being alive is that anyone honest with themselves ain't positive what the alternative is actually like phenomenologically; We can speculate all we want, but the best any of us can do is make an educated guess about what death is like until our time’s up. Science be damned, there are still plenty of grand mysteries that were here long before we blinked into consciousness left for us to ponder. Death and the Afterlife are pretty far up on the list of those enigmatic topics. The universe is always more wonderous than we suspect; I reckon it's partially because to be cognizant of it all the time would make it impossible to function normally. You only get one chance to experience how remarkable existence is from the perspective of this body. That's worth taking into consideration before checking out early, in my personal opinion. That being said, sometimes all it takes is a single argument with the wrong person and within seconds I'll be like, "So it's just bullshit like this for the rest of my time here, huh? If this is life, I don't fucking want it." But then I have a little snack and I'm fine for the most part.
As far as writing goes, perhaps it's just as plain as doing the Things That Must be Done to Function, even if only Somewhat. Mentally conjuring the prospect of being alive while not retaining the ability to alchemize my grief, sorrow, and anxieties—often accompanied by panic attacks if left unaddressed—into rhyme, rhythm and printed syntax is a simple way for me to coax the existential dread out of an afternoon. The dread is the dead-eyed kind with a flat affect it picked up as a side effect of its Seroquel dosage shooting up through the roof. The idea of not writing just seems unnatural to the point it's uncomfortable to ruminate upon, and there are already enough of those bullshit topics oscillating around my skull like a harmful thoughtform typhoon. All I have to do to spiral right now is accidentally watch a bit of the news. One needs to draw the wherewithal to weather these brutal waves of terror from something strong and constitutive. Surviving human life for any appreciable length of time requires a kind of awareness that render you stoic in the face of hardship. How that is accomplished is different for everyone, obviously. But in my case, the activity I engage in most often that garners that Spartan response out of me is stringing sentences together to reconstitute my stream of consciousness.
And taking hits of marijuana.