How is this life? How is this even possible? How is this all there is?

Friday 6/20/25

The right title is often two words long. Plenty of times it isn't, but but that doesn't change that it often is. Rarely is the right two-word title "The (common noun)," contrary to what many MFA'ers think, but that's just because they can't think of anything else.

There needs to be a very special reason for it to be "The (common noun)," like with how that term is used in the prose. That usage has to reflect back on the title, like the title changes in retrospect--it hits in a different way because of the life taken on by the "definite article + common noun" construction/term with how it functions in the language, which is itself in service to story.

The language has to change the reader's initial understanding of what that term means from when the first saw it as the title. There must be this aspect of singularity. Not something that is one of a number. At the same time, that singularity can be extrapolated. You may have both singularity and a modeling.

"The Bird" is a perfect example of how a "The (common noun)" can work. You see the title in the first place before starting the story and you think, "Oh." You read the story and then the title becomes a matter of "Oh!!!!!!!!!!!!" Nearly every line in the story starts with the words, "The bird." Then, after the fact, we get these implied extensions to the title that are there but not there. It remains two words, but it's also not really just two words. And it has all of this symbolic extension while also remaining singular.

If there's a line in a story you can take out, you should take it out. If it doesn't have to be there because it is integral to the work, it shouldn't be there.

You can take out every single line in every single new story I see. A blank page has more value and artistic validity than any fiction that is now being produced.

Writing has become not about the work produced, but the group one belongs to and that writing is what allows a person to think of themselves a certain way. That is the endgame: Ego. "This thing makes me special. Different. This is my thing."

That's why there are people who have AI write their entire story or book. They're not even writing their writing. But they have this thing in hand, and that thing in hand allows them to be a part of a group, to call themselves something (no matter that they're as dead wrong as dead wrong can be). You then get millions and millions of people gumming up the reading works. Anyone can write a whole book today with their name on it, with AI.

People are terrible at reading. They can't tell the difference most of the time between second grade-level writing and Shakespeare-level writing. They will often think the second grade-level writing is better because it's more familiar to them and in line with their own skill set, or lack of any language skills or literacy.

Most people who just read the above paragraph won't have understood it. What they'll think is, "Come on, Colin, Shakespeare was from like forever ago, that wasn't even English basically."

But what did I say? Shakespeare-level writing. Not Shakespeare. That could be writing in what people think of as "modern English."

I'm aware of these things as I write. I don't think anyone else is or gives them a second thought. I don't think anyone who writes thinks about readers.

They'll go on Reddit and ask a question like, "Would you keep reading this?" and then post the start of their dreadful, dreadful, dreadful story, but they're not thinking about readers--they're thinking about themselves and being validated as this thing they pretend to be and praised.

It's the same as social media. "Would you give me likes for this stupid thing I'm saying? How about this thing I copy and pasted from someone else?"

It's about them to them. Readers only matter insofar as they help that person delude themselves and provide Dopamine hits. The same as a "like" that the "liker" doesn't mean. There's nothing less sincere in our society than a social media "like." It's usually just indicative of wanting to fuck someone, the stupidity that two people have in common, how boring something is, how shallow, how unfunny, how caveperson-ish, how lazy, how badly expressed.

What percentage of the time do you think people are saying anything they actually mean on social media? I'd estimate it's less than one percent of the time. And it's not even close to reaching one percent of the time.

Almost everything is said for approval. To get something. What do you get? It's not an actual something. A like, a follow, a compliment, someone thinking you're funny. People aren't funny. They're less funny than ever. They're just being artificial. Then, our society rewards these things and being this way.

Insists on these things being in place.

I'm going to put something on here about a press. I offered this press a Beatles book. The best Beatles writer in the world. With all of the career publications, radio appearances, features in the biggest mags, op-eds in the highest circulation newspapers. They insulted me, condescended to me. All they wanted to know was how many social media followers I had. That was what mattered to them. Not the quality of the work, not people knowing this work from this person, not the qualifications, which are absurdly extravagant.

How many Instagram and X followers do you have.

That's an adult saying this to me. Look at this fucking world.

This morning I read a post on Reddit from a teacher--I believe it was a junior college--saying that the kids didn't know how to write their address. Then, dozens of other teachers shared their examples, and even parents of people in their twenties saying their kids don't know how to write their address as adults. As people who are married. Who have kids. Or at least that was so in one case.

You have zombies. Not humans. Zombies. Where does this end, because it's really just getting started.

COVID meant nothing to me. I'm not fat. I take care of myself. Because I try. I put forth effort. The Monument was closed for years. I didn't not run stairs. I found other stairs. I am not stupid so I wore no mask. I became healthier. I as much if not more as I wrote before. I learned new things every day, as I do every day.

But apparently COVID was instrumental in turning us into zombies. Not as important as the phones and technology and AI, but very big. Parents can't parent. They're lousy at it. Look how stupid they are as adults. They're going to impart wisdom to a child?

They know nothing themselves. Usually they just bred because they had nothing else to do. No point to their lives. No purpose. People who say, "I had kids to leave a legacy" are people who can't do anything. Maybe they could--but they're not going to try. But orgasm in someone? Top achievement, chief. Wow. The legacy leaver.

You hear these end-of-the-school-year accounts of parents berating teachers to give their kid who got a B+ an A instead, because...why? College? What's the point? So the moron-zombie can go to college, have AI do the work, learn nothing--this person won't even be able to write their own address after graduation--and get a piece of paper? But they can say they have the paper. Just like someone who doesn't write a book that has their name on it can say they're a writer?

You know what happens when I hit "Create New Post" in this record and a blank entry comes up? I'm given three prompts now at the bottom. I have to "X" out of this. Those prompts--options, really--are as follows:

Generate Post

Get Post Ideas

Generate Post Outline

The first thing that it wants you to do is for you not to write the entry at all yourself. If I hit "Generate Post," AI comes up with and writes the entire thing. It would comb through earlier posts, and say what the fuck ever. Just puke stuff up, and then stick a finger in the puke and spread it around a bit differently. It's not food--it's stomach contents. Puke.

Who could tell with just about every other writer? In every other story? In every other book? In every Substack blog?

Who could even tell now that it was puke instead of food?

Because people sure as hell can't write. Almost everyone is borderline illiterate at best. How do people talk? What are they reliant on?

Group speak. They use the same words, same phrases. "This song slaps." "This goes hard." These are generalized commodities, these word groupings. No one talks like...them. There is no them. There are zombies. A congealed, mucous-y mass.

Some of those people used to be able to write their mailing address. But then they didn't have to. It was in their phone, their device. At most, they filled out a form. Name. Street. State. Zip. They know those things--they don't know how to write them on the front of an envelope. They put their apartment number below the whole thing, for instance. They don't know that they need to put the zip.

If you stop doing something, you won't be able to do it at all. You'll be like a baby who doesn't have that ability yet. Reading is like that. You become incapable of reading and understanding anything you read, no matter how simple it is. There is no simple for you. When people are like this, when almost everyone is like this, the worst shit gets elevated, hyped, pushed, consumed. Because it's all that people can handle. It's like eating without teeth. You can only eat the mush. Things have to be mush, or they have no chance.

What is the point? Why be alive? Why would anyone wish to be alive now? Why would you want to bring anyone into this world?

I think at this point it's just selfishness and emptiness. And I'll say that because what does it matter? Someone's going to do what to me? What can even be done at this juncture? They'll hate me? They already do because I'm not like them. In all of the ways I'm not. They'll not read anything? They weren't going to anyway. Not unless they were doing so for the wrong reasons, like enough other people were doing it that made them feel they should do it, too, because they can't think for themselves. And if that happens, it's not like it would have mattered anyway.

I can send "Friendship Bracelet" to fifteen people I know right now. Chances are, none of them are going to say anything. That's basically what happened. If I sent the exact same story to the exact same people and I was in a different situation--riches, fame, glory, blah blah blah--they all would have gone off with the heaping of praise.

Same exact work. And a work that all of them can understand. A work that's as close to idiot-proof as you can get. I'm not saying you get all of it or close to all of it, but you think you do, and what you do get is more than you get out of or with anything else in any medium in this world. It's that powerful. That relevant, relatable, infusing, overwhelming, beautiful.

I also saw on Reddit where someone said they were this huge Beatles fan for many years, and they had no idea, until Brian Wilson died, that Pet Sounds influenced the Beatles.

I can't compute how stupid people are. If you were trying to be dumb, I don't know how you could be dumber than they are.

Look, if you start getting into the Beatles because you heard a greatest hits collection, and you poked around--and let's pretend this was before the internet--for a few days to learn a little about them, you'd encounter that Pets Sounds stuff that first week. You couldn't miss it in your most basic, early information-gathering attempts unless you were attempting to miss it. Or there was some eye patch over the part of your brain that would allow you to see and understand this.

It is so fucking basic. (And the Pet Sounds thing isn't even the Pet Sounds thing like people who think they know thin it is. The biggest influence that Pet Sounds had on Sgt. Pepper was in McCartney's bass playing. Basically no one gets that. You don't think of Brian Wilson as this big bass player who would cause you to think about how you approached that instrument. The bass is perhaps the key sonic component of Pepper. The spirit of adventurousness that Pet Sounds represented was the bigger influence--call it inspiration--than its songwriting. The same goes for the Mothers of Invention's Freak Out, which may be more important to the Beatles making what became Sgt. Pepper.) It's barely a step above knowing it's Beatles and not Beetles. By the way--when I did that print feature for The Atlantic on the Beatles in 2013, they kept spelling it as "Beetles"--the fucking Atlantic---and I had to continuously fix it. There are mostly only morons. And when there are mostly only morons, nothing happens because something is intelligent or well done or substantial or of intrinsic value. Imbeciles require imbecility. You have to keep giving them more imbecility. Everything else goes right past them. They don't even know it's going past them. And when it does happen to hit them in the face? They don't like it. Because it doesn't blow. And that threatens them. Makes them feel inadequate. Which means resentment.

How is this life? How is this even possible? How is this all there is?

And if you have the internet? And you're a "huge" Beatles fan for years and years, and this is new to you? How is that possible? What level of stupidity is not attainable at this point? What is too stupid for us? What's something that people can't be so stupid that they don't know? Like if you were a beaver, the very least thing you know is that you bite into that tree. There's no beaver who is too stupid, beaver-wise, not to know this. I don't think there's anything with us. I don't think there's a case of "No, that's too low"--it's like infinite lowness as to where that bar is.

I don't think people care. I don't think they are going to do anything about it. I don't think they're going to grow, learn, or change at all. I don't think they can if they wanted to, and it would never occur to them to want to. They just want to do less. Think less. Live less. Be less sentient. Less human. Less connected. It's like being brain dead but hooked up to a machine so that you're technically alive. What are you going to do in that state? You can't even realize you're in that state.

I see it getting worse every week. I can actually see it.