On Cultural Detritus (II)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about mass produced poetry of the kind you see floating like plastic rubbish in a poverty stricken body of water near Indonesia. Floating in the feeds, Pinterest, instagram, etc. I don't think I was too harsh, but I don't think I was absolutely, completely honest. In writing it I was. Then I thought about it as few days later. I thought about how many poems by L. Leav and Nayyriah Waheed (in particular) I've saved. Plenty. Here are some of my favorites:

I cannot say that I think this poetry is bad or good. It is helpful. It has helped me, as I've written before, though I've since neglected intentionally following these authors on social media or feeling that I need to read their books. 

My personal reasons why: I pick and choose what I agree with or don't. This one works today, this one doesn't, but it might another day. This one is because so and so has been aggravating me, this one because I feel gross, this one because it sounds nice. This one because I'm in a good mood. When there happens to be a constant, it is most of the time a cliche. Only rarely do you find a gem. 

But never the entirety - 

But when I like an author, when I truly like, even love, an author, artist, philosopher, writer, musician, or theorist (a creator, as it were) I know my liking of it is authentic when I like that creator's entire body of work. It has nothing to do with agreement, it has to do with pleasure, entertainment (surely), quality, style, intent, authenticity (perhaps this is subjective), and that dizzying sinking feeling when you are experiencing a piece of work (by reading or looking or whatever) that hits you in the gut, then moves up your chest and you feel like you can't breathe then you are again and you're sitting but you get weak in the knees and then all of a sudden you're just absolutely positive that your brain has delightfully fried, neurons firing and making the world seem all aglow. The chandelier above your head is literally sparkling with renewed electricity, you're seeing through the director's eyes, the camera's lens, and you're able to adjust the settings just so to make everything look enchanted. Then everything becomes lusty and desirous. And you don't even know who the hell is behind that piece of work. And that desire wasn't even the initial feeling at all. So you go back. And think and try to comprehend. The point is you go back. And take in e v e r y t h i n g and gnaw it from the inside out. 

That story is for another post.

From my last post on this subject, this subject of mass produced poetry: What worries me is when an individual sifting through social media can find just the right saying to piss someone particular off, or give their flawed argument power, or read something to instill a false sense of confidence within themselves. And this stuff isn't used sparingly. It's a constant flow of this, never encouraging deep thinking or thought at all. 

Further, it is a momentary fix, a band-aid without the Neosporin, a cigarette for the addict, that fourth cup of coffee you really don't need but it's become a habit. 

Let me go on to say - 

When I write here, when I write anywhere, when anyone writes anything anywhere - don't forget that there is a person behind that piece of work. That the piece of work is part of a large body of work and it is fixed within that frame. Think of Heidegger and his slow coming to facism. Think of Dr. Seuss and only finding out later of his racist cartoons, written prior to his children's books. Think of how people and ideas change, how they transform over time and circumstance. I think a lot of people tend to forget this, which is part of the reason I wanted to give a follow-up post regarding the prior. 

That this poetic detritus is not good, not bad. But helpful - to some of us - all the same. 

I'm also writing because there is another type of cultural detritus, if you will, that I've been drawn to since I was a child. I've written about two rap artists before - Eminem and Yelawolf in particular - whose music I love listening to and who I've felt increasingly more guilty about liking as I've gotten older.

But then I saw a tweet by one of my old professors:

 And hell fucking yes. Thanks for giving me the OK to not give a s*&^ about liking the music I grew up with, coming back to it later, and still liking it for its anger and for its representation of a very specific class set and for its (I believe unconscious/subsconcious) themes of mental illness. I also hope not to use the term guilty pleasure ever again (see above).

An example of my shame from a few years back, which I posted on Facebook:

This is my kind of cultural detritus. My next move now is to be able to write about it, to be able to break it apart and speak something relevant about it. 

I'm sure you know Black Metal, and that a lot of iterations of black metal seem to be an ongoing search for a hunter/gatherer and/or primitive "race" of people disconnected from historical context - a context which tends to point out their colonial identifiers. I wanted to show you this, because I think prior to black metal's explosion there was a different iteration of this desire, namely:

I know, I know but Black Metal is a little less. A little less or a little more something.

Don't forget to take your vitamins. 

- F