Thursday 7/21/22
I see the same kind of person repeatedly on Twitter, and I think this type of person says a lot about our world. They will have a million followers, and what they do is sit at their computer all day, and tweet. This is basically their job. It's their life. And every last tweet is this screed of hate. Of negativity. Everything is "literally" the worst thing ever. So much of it is politics. They rail. They repeat themselves. Each time I take a peek, they have many more followers than the last time. They tweet something, and within thirty-seven seconds of it going up, there are 2500 likes. You see the numbers roll over--you know, with that little counter. Comments begin instantly, pouring in.
These are miserable humans. They have a platform. They have lots of money. And I don't think there is anything in life they like. I don't think they can love anything. There is nothing in my life I like. It's constant torture. That's the nature of my situation right now. But there are tens of thousands--millions?--of things I love deeply. I think that's evident from my work. I write from a place of love. I talk on here about idiots, but ultimately I exist to serve, and what I love more than anything is that which is most human. There is all of the art I love, the beauty, nature. Character. Challenges. I post what I post, which I know is infinitely more interesting than what anyone posts. One could go look. I never repeat myself, and everything I say, and how I say it, will blow a person's mind. But because I am not hateful, and because of the perpetual problem of greatness, there won't be a single like. Even with the blue check mark. What that means is everyone recognizes me for what I am. Those good and great things. But because I am those good and great things, and offer more, and give more, and make people laugh, think, bring them joy, knowledge, entertainment, and realness, there is no support, no expressed interest. It is as if those good and great things I am, are tantamount for everyone to a shaming. Whereas, these hateful, bitter, joyless people I describe, who repeat themselves all day, don't cause people to feel that they've been shamed. Outperformed. Out-humaned, even.
Yesterday, on Facebook, I put up that excerpt from "Speak Into the Mouth." Obviously, that's a masterpiece. Anyone can tell. I have 5000 Facebook friends. Not one of them hit the like button. Have you ever seen that with anything? If you have Facebook, and you post anything at all, what happens? Everyone hits that like button. What this tells me is that 5000 people saw that, knew what it was, from someone who they recognize as what he is, and decided not to show any favorability. That only happens if 5000 people know that something is great beyond the bounds of their own lives or what they could ever even imagine doing. That's the only way you can do that. You can rescue a kitten, spout racist views, share your cancer diagnosis, post a photo of your Pulitzer prize, make your latest bad joke, share the same gif that a million other people have shared, achieve a year of sobriety, or post about how you breathe oxygen, and you will rack up those likes. It does not matter what it is. You simply need not to be me. That is true--you can go through the accounts, scroll and scroll and scroll, and what you will think is "Holy shit, how is this even possible?"
The only way you can get none, is if you are what I am, creating what I alone can create. And then it is the same nearly every time. Do you want to know something ironic? It is things like this--and that you have an industry where thousands of people unilaterally fear, envy, and hate one person, and one person alone, who has done no one any wrong--that give me the hope I have. And also the work. Especially the work. These things are not possible if you were not the best artist there has been. This is unique. The reaction is unique. When do you ever see that on Facebook? You never do. When do you see what you see on my Twitter? Look at the posts. Look at my public visibility. Look at the total absence of expressed support. We've have talked about this--there is no one in the world--this is true--with less followers and a blue check mark. Why do yo think that is? I'm boring? I have nothing original to say? We know nothing is further from the truth. It's what I've just said. It's that everyone knows what I am, and it's obvious in every last thing I do and write. Like I said, that gives me some hope, paradoxically. But these people sit there and spew hate all day long, every day. Even when one of them gets something "right," they're just so cruel. Dead inside. Angry. Not just joyless, but incapable of joy.
It is a sign of a failing society when people seek out joylessness, as many now do. Look at anyone "successful"--they typically peddle extreme negativity (and they are, without exception, mediocre at best), which is why they have a platform, a base, an audience. Not unflinching truth--these are often separate concepts. We can be open about what is true--as I am about publishing--but that does not mean we're not actively looking for solutions, and believing that there's a better a way. Passionately working to find and/or build that better way. The goal of those efforts is joy--helping to source joy. Bring joy. Spread joy. I don't rail; I seek. There is a world of difference. I hope. I believe. I work. I don't give in because I hope and believe, and I also believe in the power and need of that joy. I battle those who wish for there to be no joy because they can't conceive of joy, and have never looked within themselves to see how and where joy might find a home. A landing spot. For that joy to do so, we often have to clear some room. We have to turn on the lights, and know where we can set down the plane. The pages of this journal are about many things, but that's a big part of them. I have a life that would be unlivable for anyone else right now. They would not survive a day. I am discriminated against as no one ever has been. There has never been this total concentration of discrimination against one person. Races have been discriminated against, but the discrimination was against the whole race. No one was ever pulled aside, and said, "Hey, you, come here. We have something totally different for you, and you alone."
I am a race of one, really, with what I first was when I came into this world with what I did, and what I have evolved into. Think of it that way. There is no one else in my situation, experiencing what I am, to whom I can turn, and vice versa. I can't live in a section of a city where I do business with people of my race, make a culture for ourselves. There is only me. And I don't think anything could be harder for anyone than that, especially when coupled with the knowledge, truth, and reality that each day works are created that stand apart in quality from all other works, and they are not allowed to go anywhere, be seen. And all of this is because of virtues. Not failings. Not moral shortcomings. Not lack of ability, but rather an unprecedented amount of it.
But I still feel bad for these joyless people. I watch as the money rolls in for them, how they don't work hard at all, have no skills save their constant scorn, their need to deride and be nasty. Which is so many people, so this isn't their special or trademark "skill." Their large homes. Someone married them. I pity them. I wrote the other day about someone I know who I don't view as being alive. Their insincerity has become their identity. What they know, who they are, how they speak, how they interact. But not a bad person. Just a self-effaced one. Identity must be sharp and true, which does not mean unmalleable and closed off. But it also must not be abstracted out of its very existence via a life lived in service to going along for no other reason than to do so. Nothing real will come back to you that way; further, you will be forsaking the ability to be real with yourself, to be true to yourself. When we lose that ability, we are just there; we are not present. Our lips are in mere service, in that classic, regrettable, ultimately-empty manner of lips; but we don't truly serve others, and we don't serve ourselves. These people who sit there and post on Twitter all day are also not alive. They were given this opportunity to be human, to experience, to grow, to be thrilled and shaken in their souls by art, beauty, truth, vulnerability, real connection, and they declined. They passed up on all of it. What could be the only chance the energy that we are ever gets. To be this, anyway. What a thing to waste.
So. We shall keep trying. I began a story today called "Green Plastic Army Man." Ran 3000 stairs, did 100 push-ups. Was sweating just from the short walk over to the stairs. These are the hardest days of the year to run them. Also: I know the name of the third Beatles book and I'm going to write a one-act play.
