“It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an
inarticulate manner that they hurt one by their crude violence,
their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning,
their entire lack of style.”
Oscar Wilde
1. The Mediocrity of Evil
I just read a comment of blinding, transcendent mediocrity on a video about the opening ceremony at the Olympics. As though not reading from a cereal box that was thrown in a landfill 40 years ago, the commenter actually said that, "Freedom of expression is a thing. You have the freedom not to watch. Your feelings don't matter." It was clear that the commenter thought he was "turning the tables" on a "conservative audience," instead of embedding himself even deeper in the trenches of artistic, spiritual, and aesthetic mediocrity.
How boring.
I'm 50, have never known anybody who cared about anybody else's sexual preferences, and don't need to be told that homosexuality has been mainstream since "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy," at least. 20 years, at least. The LGB-who-cares-get-overyourselfalready crowd is so mainstream, pretending they're oppressed has actually become mainstream.
How boring.
I'd like to add a secular, aesthetic reason for maligning the opening ceremony of the Olympics this year, while taking nothing away from the other reasons to malign it. I'd like to malign it for reasons of being THE OBVIOUS PRODUCT OF A MEDIOCRE SPIRIT, which is as smug and artless as it is blasphemous and degenerate. Even if you're an atheist, you should have the brains to look at the opening ceremony this year and say, "This is among the most aesthetically-worthless displays of human ego I have ever seen." Allow me to encourage you down that path. Even if God is not at the end of it, good art should be. If nothing else.
This is a poster from a show in NYC an actor friend of mine put on based on my album All The Diamonds You Can Eat. It was a terrible show. It came from a good place, and had a lot of potential, but since my friend is both black and gay, he enjoys the privileges of existing in the hallowed air of low expectations that tells him he can't make a mistake.
He didn't deliver.
The mediocrity of evil is a double-edged sword. Not only does it elevate mediocrity above genuine talent, it also stifles talent, by enabling it to remain in the pits of mediocrity. My friend wasn't always a hack. He used to make an effort. I went to one of his plays in Chicago in the 90s and was genuinely impressed. His sexual orientation was never a secret, and it wasn't an obstacle to his success. But once Western culture started giving him participation trophies for being a homosexual black man, and not an actor, his work suffered tremendously.
The NY audience didn't do him any favors. Instead of maligning him for wasting an opportunity in a legitimate art establishment in New York City, something that used to be a world-class privilege, they held his hand like someone who was learning how to walk and asked him stupid, mediocre questions. I was surprised and appalled in equal parts. Did I fall into a wormhole? How did I end up in this retarded Kindergarten? Is there Prozac in the drinking water? Are these people actually taking that performance... seriously? Are you kidding?
Even though the play was based on my music, I was viscerally relieved when my friend didn't bring me to the attention of the audience. I wouldn't have been able to say anything "encouraging," other than "quit snorting heroin and get over yourself you utter buffoon." Which is what he needed to hear. I was only in town for a couple days.
I couldn't wait to get out of there.
New York City 2017
2. An Evil Disability
Children need to be encouraged. To discourage a child from pursuing an interest is to flush rolls of toilet paper down the plumbing of the soul, and dance on the fringes of emotional abuse. Adults, however, actually don't need to be encouraged to pursue an interest. If an adult can't muster the initiative to pursue an interest on their own, they're not interested, and can't do it.
An adult should be forced to run the gauntlet of any given trade, to endure boot camp for years if not decades, in a complete vacuum of financial, emotional, and circumstantial stability if possible, if for no other reason than to prove their dedication to their craft, to the point that their confidence actually comes off as arrogance to people for whom such confidence would actually be arrogant.
To encourage an adult down a path they haven't forged for themselves is to treat them like a child, and enable mediocrity. Mediocrity is actually a disability. Nobody is born with it. People get infected with it. The disability of mediocrity is nurtured like a deadly virus, and instead of encouraging children to pursue any number of diverse interests until something sticks, we mutilate their bodies, and encourage adults to act like children. In this way, the wicked and disabled discourage excellence in all its forms.
Mediocrity is an evil disability.
3. Your Band Sucks
For years, I had "Your Band Sucks" written on my guitar. I wouldn't do it again, but my joke at the time was, "If you wonder if it's about you, it's about you." I was trying to subconsciously discourage people from pursuing a path they had no business on. If you can't overcome discouragement, you will never break free from the debilitating mediocrity around you. If you are great at what you do, a sign like "Your Band Sucks" will infuriate you to a place of excellence the world desperately needs. "Your Band Sucks" should either anger you because it's right, or because it's wrong.
There should be no in-between.
Austin 2009, photo by Maurice
30 years ago, I wrote in my journal that I would never be a singer. I was terrible at it, and expressed my own doubts about my own abilities in my own journal. I now believe singing is the greatest gift bestowed on man by God. I am a singer 1000x over before I am a guitar player, and I was a "guitar player" for years.
I didn't need to be encouraged to sing, and in fact my own self-discouragement didn't even stop me. I had to do it. In spite of everything that said I couldn't.
Whatever interest or pursuit fits that bill for you, is what you really do. If you need anybody to tell you to do it, don't waste your time learning the first thing about it. Deep down, you don't even WANT to do it. Just do what you are going to do even if you don't think you can. There's no need to spend time looking for it. Like the "identity" you're expected to waste your youth trying to discover, your interests will find you.
Effortlessly.
4. Monster Island
Pablo Smog said, "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles mediocrity. My opinion is that universities don't stifle enough of it. There's many a transgender furry that could have been prevented by a good teacher." Flannery O'Connor borrowed this thought and applied it to the problems of her own time, a quaint epoch of objective intellectual standards and giant brains, back in the good old days when "furry" was an adjective. In fact she died 60 years ago today at the age of 39. Rest in peace if you can, Ms. O'Connor. Your kind is sorely missed.
Whether Flannery O'Connor plagiarized Pablo Smog before he was born or not, the power to raise your own standards lies entirely with you. You don't need anybody's help to dig your mind out of the gutter. If "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" was to gays what Nirvana was to punk, and if the woke agenda is to the West what National Socialism was to Weimar Germany, what's the cure?
From The Punk-Rock Soccer Matriarchy (and how to avoid it):
"It is time for the monsters on the edge of town to stay where they are. NOT to unite, but to celebrate their monster-ness, alone, in the woods, in the desert, out to sea, away from the incorporated cults, whether they be towns, groups of enslaved, unimaginative people who are religious about their politics, or stores at the mall with all the cool merch I like. The monsters need to be grateful for their exile, NOT as a juvenile, pained reaction to being “excluded from the scene” (which reaction is only natural, but harmful), but rather as a quiet, pro-active acceptance of their own individual identity, whatever it may be. Whether the cult is a bunch of jocks, punk-rockers, film-savvy hipsters, intimidatingly-attired rich kids, cheerleaders, rodeo clowns, or mutant carnival freaks,
The true monster must be glad to not be burdened with being forced to jump through the golden hoops of The Soccer Matriarchy, in all its terrible forms, and eat frozen beans in solitude, for years if necessary, until total immunity has been achieved
From the debilitating disease of the religion of community."
Which is not to say to never come down from the lofty, ridiculous heights of Monster Island. The purpose of the exile is not punishment, but rather, freedom. If the mob of gender-fluid soccer moms pressures you into mutilating your body so that you can become a cat, it is a matter of life and death to disengage. You don't have to stay gone (though, you might want to). But get gone until you are a legitimate cultural foreigner to people who are obsolete enough to believe themselves edgy for wallowing in the cultural peak achieved by a reality TV show from the 2000s.
I liked "Queer Eye" when it was on, but the zeitgeist has passed like a kidney stone through the bladder of time. Reject the crude violence, incoherence, absurd want of meaning, and total lack of style displayed by the inartistic tragedies of life that populate a Joey B. Toonz video, and embrace your individual, God-given excellence. It's okay if your standards don't start out at the top, just raise them slightly higher than you can reach. When you reach them, raise them again. The community won't help you. They're a bunch of jealous soccer moms who have lowered the bar to the point that rather than even trying to control themselves, they actually seek to control others. They believe strength is defined by indulging every appetite as immediately as possible, and that controlling you is an act of love, while self-control is hateful. They are dangerous religious zealots. Members of a death cult. They seek to achieve the heights of a rotten banana lying on the ground, while believing themselves to be royalty. There's a reason it doesn't resonate.
It is contrary to the excellence within the human soul.
"I'm a liar and a thief
I'm anemic royalty"
Nirvana
Self-awareness is a good thing. Embrace the cactus of reality and truth, learn what it is you really do, and do it better than everyone around you (who will be doing it at least as well as you). Stop prancing around demanding we celebrate your reheated, secondhand ideas. Give us something to applaud, or get off the stage.
Thanks for listening.
