"The road to hell is fraught with pearl.
Shiny people going down."
Fraught With Pearl

This article is an afterthought to an afterthought, so I thought I'd use the title of a poem I refuse to write, "Suicide By Holding My Breath."  The gist of the poem would have been that I am full of faith in my fellow man, and love is all we need, and we're going to change the world with the power of positive affirmations, but instead of wasting my time on such childish, magical thinking, I've decided to commit "suicide, by holding my breath."

I'm never going to write it because, even though I think people in the West have gone soft with positivity, it doesn't mean hardcore negativity like that has any place either.  There's a difference in negativity and reality, just as there's a difference in positivity and reality.  The title is amusing, but there's no time to waste telling people I'm going to kill myself by waiting for them to.... what.  Become as good as me?  "Catch up," to my levels of understanding?  As though I wasn't on a learning curve myself?

So it's a pointless exercise that, at best, would only enable people to continue with any unrepentant misanthropy they may still be entertaining.  Which is useless.  Harmful, in fact.  If you want some late-period poems about life in a postmodern wasteland full of disenfranchised zombies, check out "Fraught With Pearl," "A Knife or An Eye," or "The Fire Will Burn Your Laughter Away."

"Suicide By Holding My Breath" is an opportunity to say that the recent murders of leftist Antifa members in Brooklyn and Philadelphia remind me of everything I left the U.S. to get away from.  While writing the article about them last night, I didn't know that the guy in Brooklyn considered himself the Chief Operating Officer of Antifa.  He certainly looked suspect, but I didn't come from a time or place in which people judged one another based on their outward appearance.  When the war in Ukraine broke out, my instant reaction was one of overwhelming sorrow for ALL OF THE DEAD, regardless of their nationality, or any other outward signifier.  While people were drawing lines in the sand based on politics, I drew my line in the sand based on who'd been killed that day.  Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians alike.

My initial reaction to the murder in Brooklyn was the same.  I thought the guy looked like the kind of guy you'd like to be your boss at a telemarketing job around the time of the invasion of Iraq.  Not exactly yesterday, but who knows.  I felt almost bad making the thumbnail for that article, in which he shares a prominent, symbolic position with sanctimonious Karens like Lt. Hauk and Josh Kruger.  It was the right image for the article, but when I published it, I had my doubts.

Then I saw this article in Information Liberation, and did an instant U-Turn.  Instantly, my sympathy dissolved under the corrosive acid weight of the smug, self-righteous assertion by the guy on the right that he is the "Chief Operating Officer" of Antifa.  Which is not to say those verses from Proverbs 24 no longer apply.  They do.  But man.  If there wasn't a more prominent warning to people sitting on the social justice fence, to climb back down onto the side of reason, gratitude, and respecting other people's rights, a warning to walk away from the self-righteous cult of murder victims whose fantastical policies are literally getting them killed in the streets,

I can't think of one.  Two murders in two days.  Of prominent Karens in the field.  Will they ever repent?  Shall I return to the U.S. in the hopes that roughly 50% of the population isn't going to have to LEARN THE SAME LESSON THE SAME WAY,

Or shall I commit suicide,

By holding my breath?

It is about 7pm Mexico Time, on Wednesday, October 4th.  It was 5 years ago tonight I played the first show of The Poor Man's Nick Cave Tour in Mexico City.  The purpose of the tour was to try to get Nick Cave's attention (I followed him around Latin America) and catapult myself beyond the reach of the smug, scenester gatekeepers that, I'm convinced, revel in keeping people down.  The tour was crowdfunded, and even though the ostensible purpose wasn't achieved, the tour was a success in ways I never imagined.  For one, it gave me a bug for Latin America that drove me back down here to stay.  I didn't see it coming, but on arrival in Mexico City, I instantly felt comfortable in my skin in ways I'd never experienced before.  The disenfranchisement and social conditioning in the States is such that I felt more comfortable as an obvious foreigner, than among "my own people" as a non-obvious foreigner.  Instantly.  Without looking for or expecting it.

Cuz "those people" have never accepted me.  In fact, the Lt. Hauks and Sgt. Major Dickersons, the jealous control freaks who believe themselves to be better than other people, have always made it clear that I wasn't welcome.  Because nobody can achieve Amy Winehouse levels of household-name independence, some self-righteous Antifa COO actually has the power to prevent independent artists from being heard.  I say this without bitterness, but if you're reading this, you're probably not "one of them," but you have outsourced the curation of your culture to "them," and I'm sorry, nobody cares what Ted Nugent thinks about anything.  People are still taking about Kanye West, for Pete's sake.  The one-hit wonder with a 20-year career, who is famous for nothing but saying stupid things that make people mad.

I'd live on tips in your parking lot for another 15 years, waiting for you to realize that you got the culture you paid for, and that Kanye West hasn't been replaced by the new Miles Davis, or Frank Zappa, or even Amy Winehouse, a task which shouldn't be any more difficult than sitting in an easy chair, and stop preaching down to me about not name-dropping Jesus in every song like all the fake Christian "content creators" who fall away from the faith they never had, once they've bilked you out of enough money to live comfortably for years,

But I've decided to commit suicide instead,

By holding my breath.

"I am not a Christian artist, I am an
artist who is a Christian."
Johnny Cash

I "gave  up" on it.  It's burnout, really.  I can't expand on that without risking sounding whiny.  I think I heard a rich man sing once, "It's better to burn out than fade away."  It occurs to me that he has no idea what he's talking about.  I don't mind.  It would aggravate me, but it isn't my problem anymore.  I held my breath to death, and now I'm in a land surrounded by people with whom I share exactly zero cultural or familial heritage.  It's surprisingly relaxing.  It breaks my heart to see the Titanic go down so hard, but they are getting what they asked for.  Proverbs 24 will never not apply.  And I think about what the Antifa COOs are throwing away, and how they feel right now, screaming in furious pain in the early hours of their appointed eternity of hellfire, and how great it could have been.  Their lives, the future, life in the greatest nation on earth.  How great it was.  But they will never listen.  And the warnings couldn't be clearer.

But they will never listen.  If I held my breath, waiting for America to repent,

I would suffocate to death.

The pic from the show in Mexico City, 5 years ago tonight.  I made it into a poster, apparently.  Tell yr friends.  I've met at least 100 people over the years who could have easily carried the burden of household-name independence.  Thanks to the cultural COOs who herd free individuals into "art community" gulags, where total compliance and "creative cooperation" with people bereft of artistic vision is demanded at all times, you've never heard of them either.  I've met at least 100.  True artists, poets, writers, painters, seekers.  If I've met 100, that means there are thousands.  Oliver Anthony is the exception that proves the rule.  Tell 'em.  "You got the culture you paid for.  If you're down with the freeload, enjoy the free download."

Unless, of course, you believe the sentiment is wasted

On a culture of cult members who are hanging themselves from their own party balloons,

And who build nests for the Vultures of Destruction,

Which are apparently coming home to roost.

I'm certainly not holding MY breath.

Thanks for listening.