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on the drive home from sydney yesterday, my father put on eminem's newest album. this was awesome news to a sleep-deprived & fatigued me, who has always associated eminem with her dad, putting him on whenever I needed to channel my inner white boy. per my father's description (the only one I'm interested in hearing btw), the album is about the current politically correct eminem fighting against slim shady, his alter-ego whose whole career was built off of speaking his mind. the album is a sort of prolonged rap battle against each other as they fight for control, even switching between their voices between verses (which I find SO AWESOME !!). I'm really enjoying the return-of-sorts to the 90s eminem, the version that I'm most familiar with; I couldn't really get into his newer work because it was, quite frankly, missing the nonsense & fun of his old songs.
the struggle of eminem between the version of himself that made life easier & the version of himself that actually lived has awakened something similar within me. as I sit here & write I struggle with my wording, because I've grown tired of my older, more meticulous style of storytelling, & I find it more meaningful & liberating to be direct. I correct my thought patterns more readily now, because what I thought was a 'better' way to think was actually limiting. there is something about catching more planes in the last 14 days than in your entire 17 years of life up until that point that causes a more raw version of yourself to emerge. when given the chance to shed the you that lived in the everyday, there is a new you who comes into your life & allows you to experience a better way of living.
my issue now is retaining this self as I return to the everyday. recollection must make way for presence; apathy must move over for sharpness.
it is unclear whether my motion sickness was caused by the flying or the reorganising of myself. there is an urge to stay away from this everyday to keep hold of my brilliance, though that is not possible. I suppose it is impossible to stop the new from becoming the familiar, whether in japan or australia. the only hope we have is to use that new to build a familiar with enough room to hold the brilliant. it is not enough anymore to be comfortable. comfortable let me tolerate people I found unagreeable, let me rot in my room & make myself sad, let me avoid the new experiences that would lead me to see my purpose. what room is there for comfortable, when it is the unfamiliar that brought me to japan in the first place?
I suppose it is easy to comment on such matters when brilliant still lingers & makes your head tingle. the truth is that the realisation that life could be something more than 'this' is not one that brings security. but that's what I want. within the ambiguity I've more room to learn what I really want. what would I have gotten from going to japan & getting everything I ever wanted? it is a good thing to keep wanting. wanting makes you brilliant, so long as you're willing to seize it & ride it to its fullest potential.
I thought I'd landed in a version of myself prior to leaving that could take me somewhere, but in actuality I'd not gone anywhere. what I thought my life should look like has never been at greater risk of being set alight, but that's what I want. I will empty out my spotify playlists & delete my pinterest boards to make way for what I didn't know I wanted. I will make a new youtube profile & only watch videos in japanese. losing sight of the limiting thoughts that you thought mattered to life (& I'm not sure what that means, but I want to leave it in) allows you to do as you truly wish; the things you'd have been too scared to wish for previously, out of fear of being 'wrong' somehow.
all of that said, my favourite song from the album is 'guilty conscience 2'. before I'd have given you all sorts of reasons why. now I'll just tell you that it was the song that I liked the most. & I'll be satisfied in saying just that.
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allt
i think your dad’s interpretation of the album is the one i have heard most commonly in reviews of the album (which i have not listened to because, in the circle of people i am usually around, it was mainly criticised sharply for the unnecessary amount of offensive things said about disabled people in the album (though, as i assume, as part of slim shady’s lines). eminem also has quite a history of misogynoir which i also, personally, cannot ignore. also, only “houdini” seems to have had success on my local radio stations, which are primarily focussed on playing whatever is in the uk top 40 charts and those are currently not dominated by any specific album (though, it is likely that i will be hearing a lot of sabrina carpenter’s new songs in the near future!)), but is indeed an incredibly interesting topic to center an album, or, generally, a work of art on. either way, i really love the fact that eminem, at least artistically and, somewhat, morally, is trying to develop himself (and this, i think, is evident that at least “houdini” received significant airplay on my area’s radio stations over the summer. i have been recently thinking about what factors usually come into play when it comes to prolonging a piece of media’s or musician’s relevancy and significant artistic development is, indeed, one i thought about, alongside a constant specific target audience (a musician relying on artistic trends and fads of the time at which they are releasing music are unlikely to outlive it when it comes to both mainstream and cult popularity (as intriguing as an artefact their music becomes of their time (especially if we are talking about nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music, which often had historical events as a topic (though, some later political music usually, strangely, maintains its status if it covers an issue broad enough to persist into the future: “come out, ye black and tans” charting in ireland and scotland in 2020 because of the irish government, for some reason, thinking it would be a good idea to honour the ric as part of generally honouring the irish civil war is a good example)! i have heard a lot of that through my current research on the spanish-american war for history))) or, generally, being written as something the creator themselves would enjoy (the youth are a difficult audience to target when one is not part of it, as well as the elderly, because what most people ignore is the fact that those are oppressed groups that, for this reason, usually remain within their own community because they truly understand them the most because they are, well, them! i feel musicians, filmmakers and artists should age alongside their ideas and emotions expressed in their art as their own experience in life and the demographics they are part of change because a surprisingly large number of people would resonate with them (the second “trainspotting” film comes to mind when i think of this, alongside marco masini’s “mid-life crisis song”, as i call it, from sanremo 2017)). either way, i am now rambling about something completely unrelated to this and i also have things to say about my own personal development!
developing in any way as a person (or, in generally, being the kindest, best person of themselves that one can be) always requires discomfort (and always has for me because, whenever i think of times i have had to develop as a person, the search engine of my mind brings back very different results, namely, the fact that i only really realised that i need to respect all people no matter what, even if the people i try to be friends at the time do not encourage that (at the age of ten, i was disgustingly mean against one of my friends, partly because the people i considered my friend group back then began shipping me with her) at the age of twelve and that i held questionable pacifist views, alongside “peace between the two sides”-esque views on every armed conflict and instance of colonialism until the age of fifteen). while, for me, this has meant becoming more educated, changing the way i think about certain things and caring less about what people think about me (the last point is something i have, so far, been unable to let go of. i hate attracting attention), which is also a form of exploring the new and integrating it into one’s daily life, for you, it is exploring new things, processing the newness of the experiences of your japan and embracing whatever you think is more liberating to you (though, my interpretations of the idea i have just went over kind of tie in with that, especially the last point, as well, i think) (speaking about writing style, while i had not really noticed that you had become more direct initially, this is very evident and is sending me into crisis over my own writing style: while many people enjoy how detailed my writing is, the fact that i always manage to go off on every tangent possible in joycean mega-sentences makes my writing rather inaccessible to many and i do not like that!) all in all, i wish you the greatest luck in that!
I respect that you've not listened to the album because eminem does not meet your standards for morality. it is important to have standards. considering the criteria you've been developing for retaining longevity as an artist (which I enjoyed reading about; specifically the noting that a reliance on trends does not build long-term success. it strangely reminds me of katy perry), I can confidently tell you that the album exhibits significant artistic development, & it is likely from this that the majority of my (& my dad's) enjoyment is derived. despite that, in circumstances similar to yours, I would imagine that the general public's only real exposure to it has been through 'houdini' (which, admittedly, I also quite enjoy listening to.)
the struggle between retaining the conscience of the self & finding acceptance from others, as you have thoughtfully spoken of, is an unending one. I value respecting & being kind to others, but in order to protect my sanity I respect my need to be intolerant of what I find unacceptable. this is also an unending struggle, as the same people we seek acceptance from are often more lenient of others' behaviour in order to find acceptance from them as well. exposure to the world in the absence of our usual influences (friends, schoolwork, family) allows us to see past these struggles & for meaningful change to the self (read: our perception) to be made. I got stuck in trying to find the 'perfect' way to think about things, but allowing my mind to be reformed in that degree of solitude freed it to naturally develop new ways of thinking.
similarly, I hope that your reconsidering of your writing style may originate from a natural shift in how you convey thought- change is best made when we are ready for it. I hope that the changing of my writing has not lead you to feel that change to yours is necessary.
by kitkatanddog; ; Report
mimo
cancel me?! gen z me bruh!?!!
mimo
cancel me?! gen z me bruh!?!!
the little interludes in his album were so cool
by kitkatanddog; ; Report