Something that inspires the accusation of being a “poet” and encourages cultists to give you a little extra attention in the recruitment square: a lack of clarity. It’s important to lack clarity. It’s important not to lack clarity. You want to be clear and transparent or faithful and dogged. You also want to be multivariate and adroit, or impartial and spontaneous. You want something, you want nothing. You don’t know.
I am walking around, traveling a little on my own, and I say it’s because I’m trying to find some clarity. I tell people, it’s pretty muddy in my head right now. Lots of thoughts, which distract me from what I’m sure I’ll find is a very compelling spiritual argument for some path I need to find that was predestined for me thousands of years ago.
I know, and you know, that that’s not how this world works. When I get out of this, I know what I’ll learn, and it’s probably that I just need to find a job.
Youtuber CJ the X in his video The Kronk Effect describes how a sometimes “bad” motivation to make art should actually be encouraged so the art gets made. Perhaps you want to make the art to spite your father or to make content for money or to draw humiliating caricatures of your political enemies. Perhaps that is a “lower evolutionary truth,” a less respectable calling to do what you do. But it gets the art done. And while you do it, you keep asking yourself for a better reason to do it, and one day, your “unconscious” will answer with something cooler and more profound. “Art will save the world” or “the children are the future” or whatever.
Here’s a three minute thirty second story that feels kind of like that, a little bit.
I’m told it’s not okay to be an asshole, but if being an impotent little asshole for a while can make a good guy out of me one day, I suppose that’s alright.
I remember journalists and other people telling me all the time, “you don’t do this to make money,” except I know you do. And to be known. And to be cruel. But in the end, when the really good stuff comes out, did it matter what was in the heart of those people as they reported and fact checked and got creative with sound? I mean, what are we, Catholics?
Still, I can’t very well go on knowing what’s in my heart… and what’s not in my heart.
I’ve been obsessed with the Chainsaw Man franchise, which you could say pokes a bit of fun at the “I want” of most shonen manga protagonists. There are some good ones out there, like “I want to save the world”, “I want revenge”, “I want to be famous”, “I want revolution”. Chainsaw Man’s protagonist Denji has had a few “I wants” that were… compelling, but ultimately catastrophically disappointing when fulfilled, like “I want to try toast with lots of different jams on it” and “I want to touch a boob”. People around him try to fill him with other “I wants” so he’ll keep on living and eventually do their bidding. It’s also very sad and catastrophic for him to be used that way. Still, he’ll hang on to these shitty little “I want”s anyway, and I think he’s a good boy for doing that. The current one is “I want to have sex with someone maybe one day when I’m older”. That dream is getting him through a lot right now.
It’s pretty insulting, though, when people look down on him for having these supposedly cheap “I wants”. He gets defensive: what’s wrong with my dream? You think yours is better?
I think I’d like something like that. That’s clarity. It’s saying: right now, I unabashedly want this. It’s probably true that it’ll disappoint me… or I’ll want something different later… or maybe some part of me actually wants this for some more profound reason, and I’m ignoring it. Who cares? Fight me. I’m a good boy, I’m still going, I’m doing what I need to do to go on.