Polish people are the scariest thing David Lynch has ever came up with
Digging yourself out from your grave
My algorithm spits video’s on so called modern magic at my face almost everyday now. It starts with a cat eyed girl warning us about the power of the spell, to use it wisely, only if we’re truly ready to find the love of our life’s. This spell won’t change anyone’s destiny, so it’s safe. Repeat the spell 5 times everyday at twilight to see your life change forever: “I am love. My heart and body are flowing with love. I am ready to recieve love from the world. I am love.” Sigh. Sigh on my part. Modern magic isn’t spells, it’s just saying and thus hearing nice things about yourself. Modern magic is repeating positive things about ourselves until we finally belive them. Bring back voodoo dolls and curses girls, bring back potions and healing through natural medicine. But I understand how we got here, if all of us live life’s that are lacking in affection, we need to self soothe (the way a kitten would suck on it’s paw if it’s abandoned by it’s mother). We self soothe by filling out the gaps in our personal Maslow’s pyramid of needs. However, the older I get, the more I disagree with the socially accepted theory that the lack of affection that stems from our childhood is the main/only cause for these gaps. I believe that it is the present adult experience that creates those craters in our pyramid. Sure, if your foundation of the affection pillar is strong, the ax hits that you’ll get during your adult life might not cut as deep - but it’s still and ax to your column. It doesn’t hurt any less. It doesn’t chip of your column any less. You’ll have to patch those slits, and in this modern, hyper-individualistic culture, it’s difficult to rely on others to heal you. The term hyper-individualistic is so overdone, in my hearts of hearts I believe it started with the “no-homo” culture. It’s as if affection has become so spares, that friends are afraid to share any compliments to each other, as it would suggest romantic interest. It’s the false idea that men and women can’t be friends, because both are predator, is prevalent that it skews their perception of friendships. Romantic interest isn’t, at it’s core, a threat. Unfortunately, deep down I know that this misconception stems from true crime murder cases that involved a stalker who’s feelings were not reciprocated, murderers with anger issues taking revenge on the object of their affection. Unreciprocated romantic interest poses a physical or emotional threat, or emotional manipulation with the one sided conversation “I’m going to kill myself, now that you’ve rejected me, my life is pointless. I don’t want to live life if you’re not by my side”. There is often a legitimate threat to being an object of affection, an object of obsession. These real case scenarios have trickled down to group consciousness, staining any potential healthy interpersonal interactions. As any expression of affection could be misread as a threat, that action of the expression has become more and more scarce. What’s frightening is that the lack of affection has past friendships, and is staining new potential relationships. The idea of being cool and normal manifests itself by not expressing interest, affection as that would be a threat to the other person - it would make them uncomfortable, scared. Haven’t you notice that there’s a bigger chance that you’ll find someone to have sex with then to hear someone say how much you mean to them? We all want to hear how important we are to another person, especially if they mean a lot to us too. Yet, maybe through internal insecurities, we’re afraid to say it as we believe that the other person won’t say it back to us. And that’s how we end back at this self-soothing through throwing spells, through speaking affirmations to gain self confidence, heal our limiting insecurities. The reason I know it’s real is because if hold your hands at your heart and repeat “I love you” to yourself until you actually hear it, will provoke a strong emotional reaction that will showcase itself as a violent sob. Because we don’t hear it often, I believe that us speaking it out loud creates a vibration which hits our ribcage, and cures us. I hate how we all have to self soothe. How human interactions no longer give us the crucial resource of reassurance, love and trust. They do, they do, real friendships do, that’s why I wonder why it’s the romantic connections that got so muddy. Until you experience love you’ll never be able to understand it, but you will one day, you will, for more than a day. I have to, I have to, I’m not leaving this life before I have it. I’m committing to the bit.
Talking about affection made me nausous, getting a toothace over here. Too sweet. Fuck that actually, maybe showing emotions is sappy and unproductive. You know what, I would like to take a year out of my life and dedicate it to being a bad person. I want to just be manipulative, wrong-doing, purposefully hurting others, have people trust me just so I can use them, milk them dry and then leave them without a drop of empathy. I also want to use people for their bodies. Everyone is doing it, I want to be on that wave. Also, if everyone is doing it, if everyone is thinking about someone else rather then the person they’re actually having sex with, maybe I actually won’t be causing any harm if I do the same. Call it body doubling, call it parallel the way we’re just masturbating with each other <3. If emotional connection is unattainable, then maybe I shouldn’t worry about trying to be a good person. I also want to not give a fuck. If everything is so ingenuine, why don’t I also be ingenuine. I’ve met a few new people recently that admitted to loving a little cat-mouse play, and that they love to be the mouse. So it’s never about the actual person, it’s about someone doing all the work and giving you attention, while you treat them like shit. Okay. So are we all walking around still being in love with our first crush from high school? And just dating other people to daydream about doing those things with your first love, with the one that got away? It’s just a bit ridiculous that the world is divided into people that are good at receiving affection, but bad at showing it, and people that are good at giving affection, but bad at receiving it. The latter person suffers from feeling unloved (because they trained their partner to never express their love and affection as it showed time and time that hearing it makes them uncomfortable) (but the suffering still persists, because there is a deep need to feel loved, and this wall that they’ve put around themselves makes them blame their partner for not climbing over it). The first person also has to suffer when the closed off person is not letting their feelings be reciprocated, it almost sounds isolating, getting the courage to say your true feelings and the person you love cringing at it. What an awful way to live. I’m also starting to hate the idea that “we should all just go to therapy”. I remember reading a Wikipedia article about how in the recent years “we” (and I’m no longer sure who that we is, society? Big pharma? Communists? Le Corbusier?) have put the blame on the individual instead of putting the blame on the system. It’s the individual that needs to change, by going to therapy, and not the system that needs to change. Isn’t it obvious that there might be something bigger going in here, if every person you know has been in therapy in some point of their lives. A lot of us still are. Somehow modern society has isolated us from the group struggle and forced us to take responsibility to everything that affects us, by learning how to regulate our emotional responses. Don’t you think it reads as a pacifying scheme? If we pump everyone with mood stabilizers, people on the outskirts of the mental horrors will become less dangerous (we must prevent riots). I’m not anti medication, I am the least anti-medication person out there because they do save lives, they saved mine, but maybe, just maybe, if general insanity and paranoia turned to the streets instead of being internalised, we could’ve been having another violent French revolution. Violence bad. Violence bad, I know. Violence bad and I would’ve been killed, Thousands would’ve been killed. But people wouldn’t be able to stay at home any longer if there was a medication/help resources shortage. Maybe suicide would rank as the most common cause of death with the intensity and weight of responsibilities modern life demands. If I could, I would fall into the trap of rejecting society. I’m glad I was forced to go out into the world, but if I didn’t have to run away from home, if I didn’t have to financially support myself, I would also smoke weed and avoid any feelings, any thoughts. The amount of lonely people that voluntarily ejected themselves from reality is a symptom of this sudden high standard you need to be to even enter society. There’s a tall bouncer in front of the doors to adulthood. The standards for working habits, personality traits, beauty/handsomeness, fucking volunteering hours, years of experience, follower count, how hot your friends are, how rich are your parents, how rich are you are, oh… you don’t? have a high yielding savings account yet? Yea my dad set it up for me when I had my first summer job in middle school… oh, wait you don’t have a dad? Wow, oh my god I’m so sorry, you know, I find people like you to be such an inspiration, haha damn I have no idea how you do it. Yea I just bring my clothes to my parents whenever I need to wash them, I feel like dry cleaners are soooo expensive, I can’t imagine living so far away from your parents the way you do. No wonder we all become unironically suicidal at the age of 17, the age we are forced to go into the real world, of which we feel so unworthy. I remember being suicidal at 17 cuz I knew that when I grow up, people will realise that I’m actually mentally ill, that it wasn’t just me being a hormonal teenager, but it’s just who I am. I was so scared of people realizing that I’m a failure unable to bear the weight of everyday tasks, I considered taking my life away because I was so scared of the inevitable rejection from society (from my parents, my family, my classmates, my coworkers, my teachers, my bosses). The standards are so high, young people are having a panic attacks comparing themselves to happy people 30 years older then them, but they don’t see the absurdity of their situation. This peculiar crumbling anxiety has paralyzed us from appreciating other aspects of life, truly staining our perception of the our own value, our worthiness. God, that’s why we so deeply need close friendships, we need connections, we need a community, we need someone to love that will love us back, we need someone to tell us that we are worthy because we mean so much to them. I can’t believe Hobby Lobby was right the whole time, “Love will save us all” my ass. Shut up man. Stupid.
Hobby Lobby is to me what Inland Empire is to David Green (he’s the CEO of Hobby Lobby, you should’ve known that). In the span of it’s three hours, it has become my new comfort movie. I think it’s a good moment to introduce a list of my comfort media to this little corner of mine. Art, which I define by ones conscious, honest, creative expression has been such a saving grace for me my entire life. I feel like my suicidal episodes have been brought up a in this post, so to cheer you up, my dear reader, I will calm you down by saying that what kept me alive, was the idea that I won’t have access to movies once if I’m dead. I will calm you down by letting you know that I never killed myself and I really don’t want to. I can’t wait to live and grow old, to see life unfold. Even when it’s tough I’m so happy to be here, and I get happier and happier each year. Back when I was a teenager, I talked myself out of death by thinking about all the movies that already exist that I haven’t watched yet, and all the movies that will come in the future that I won’t be able to experience. The same with music, the same with continents, the same with bodies of water. What’s also beautiful, is my that my friend who will stay anonymous, also talked themselves out of suicide at a young age by thinking about never experiencing life as who they want to be. I had similar thoughts - I never experienced life as a happy person. As a sad 17 year old with no hope for the future, I cried thinking that I’ve never been in a relationship, I’ve never loved and been loved back, I’ve never had anyone touch me in a gentle way, and these missing experiences motivated me to keep living. I told myself and my sick brain that I’ll do it, sure I’ll kill myself one day the way you want me too, but let me reach a point where I’m happy okay? I’ll kill myself when I’m happy, I thought. I’m not in that place anymore, I broke that deal cuz these voices that manipulated me were never real. When they disappeared, so did the contract. I still look back and I find those moments beautiful, there is so much hope in nature, in art, hope within ourselves that is not depended on other people. Even at the darkest moment, there are things to latch on to, I promise. Even if there’s at least one movie that you’ve always wanted to watch, latch on to it. Gently, step by step follow the red string of similar movies recommendations, until you dig yourself out of your grave. It’s out there, it’s out there, that art that you need has already been created. So here’s my list of inspiring movies and media that make the horrors of living worth it: the HBO show “Angels in America”, Murakami’s “Kafka by the Shore”, Wes Andersons “Darjeeling Limited”, the HBO show “The New Pope”, Arca’s song “Time”, Air’s song “Left Bank”, Nai Palm’s song “Homebody”, The Kink’s “Waterloo Sunset”, Dean Blunt’s “100”, Sorrentino’s “The great Beauty”, Fellini’s “ 8 1/2” , Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers left alive”, The silly HBO show “Sex and the city”, Yuasas’ series “Tatami Universe”, Bjork’s album “Vespertine”, Miyazaki’s “My neighbour Totoro”, the Czech movie “Valerie and her week of wonders”, Disney’s 1951 “Alice in Wonderland”, Spike Jone’s “Being John Malkovich”, Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World”, that James Franco documentary about Saturday Night live that’s uploaded in full on Youtube, that one Amy Sedaris interview with David Letterman “Amy Sedaris takes Dave on a tour of new york at 4am”, that silly comedy “Meet the fockers”, any Fran Lebowitz interview from the 80’s and 90’s, Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Bruno”, Kaufman’s “Synechdoche New York”, Herzog’s “Grizzly man”, Scorsese’s “After Hours”, Otomo’s “Akira”, Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”, Fosse’s “All that Jazz”, and the previously mentioned “Inland Empire”. I hope you’ll pick one thing at random and it will inspire you to keep living, that you’ll resonate with the hidden beauty that’s in every single one of those pieces. I feel like this post was a bit heavy, so I wanted to leave you with some pretty thing’s at the end. I’m not sorry about being scary, it’s a big part of me that I carry around wherever I go.