1. Will You Still Love Me 2. Buy One Get One Free 3. Today 4. I Laugh With Mirth 5. HIM 6. Brain 7. I'm Dead, I Think? 1. Will You Still Love Me Will you still love me when I can no longer remember your name Will you still love me even when I can no longer see you again Will you still love me even if it causes you pain Tell me please Today I smile Today you smile But can you say that today will always stay? Will you still love me when I no longer can smile Will you still love me when I can no longer sand on my own Will you still love me when I force you alone Today everything is perfect Today I am happy But can you say that today will never break away. I hope you will Now your smile is fading Now my life is darning Will you still love me when I'm gone Will you still love me? 2. Buy One Get One Free Four arms are better than one Two heads will reign supreme I am two in one Listen to the beat of my hearts I am you and you are me Sale on me Half price and get the depression for free Two for one I'm a bargain Buy one get one free I’m consolidated and liquidated I'm subpar on clearance More than one mind More than one time Don't break up me and me Sale on me Half price and get the depression for free Two for one I'm a bargain Buy one get one free Maybe one day (one day) I'll be free From this cage One day (one day) I'll be just me Plan as my eyes can see Sale on me Half price and get the depression for free Two for one I'm a bargain Buy one get one free 3. Today Today I woke up and I found I was not the same For some strange reason I had gone insane The hands on my arms had switched And I soon found myself somewhere I did not know But for me I did know where I was Why is it that I don't want to hear your voice until you speak I don't miss you until the sun goes away Why is it I'm okay with you being so far away Why is if that at night I feel like you are here with me Why is it I don't feel you until the light leaves When you are my sun I woke up this morning And I found my head was on backward Somehow it had found its way to be completely wrong And why, oh why, was my ribs burning from anger this morning Why, oh why I have nothing sacred I shout it to the sky's Why is it I feel bland so fast How can I be so warm yet I am freezing cold Why is it I feel this way today When I woke up my feet were backward My legs bend all the wrong ways I was able to do literally everything but what was right. So tell me why 4. I Laugh With Mirth A war wages between us all Between roping our flesh Or taking a fall There is no way to stop this madness When you're falling through time and space Why, I could have had this When the acidic screeching of harpies is all I have to credit And when the putrid stench of failure is all I've made Is it safe to say all is well Perhaps it would be me who killed the king I took his rings and crown And pretended to be him as I danced around Three feet off the ground It would be funny to think I miss it Being the ruler of filth A war can never be won Not when both sides are being fought by the same man How could he see the opposing so clearly Why it's simple His javelin dripped in his own crimson vitality Yet he is that one to cause such fatality What a pitiful soul he is When the flaming fury of God’s wrath is all I have to hold And the blood sodden rages of lost souls is all I own Is it safe to say all is well Perhaps once upon a time there was somebody he cared for But the life drained from him It left him cold And I stole his riches And I stole his curs Nobody can bring me back I'll be driving the black hers To the graveyard of the filth we once ruled over The sight of the battles that took all the lives Of the men who burned bright as the nebula I will always see them And so shall you 5. HIM They all love HIM more than me I wish I could be as alluring as HE I'd love to triad places with HIM But I often forget that I could never be And I often forget I'm unloved I know why HIS cold charms win But by god my heart needs some care I know I'll never make it out of this but by the gods I want to be free of HIM If I can't have what HE has 6. Brain I don't know where I'm going I could tell you who I am but I have too many faces I can't tell you who I was Every time I got shot down I got back up but when I stood I found there were more copies of me I split and no we don't seem to fit back together All my problems stem from one thing It's a funny little bit about me Part of my brain seems to be missing And you can tell me I'm all lies But I find it hard to make up the part where I simply am not human No I'm not a robot but maybe I should be If there was a way to glue me back together I would hope to it But screw it I came out not screaming and crying but ready to start dying 7. I'm Dead, I Think? I don't think you ever saw your own face in the mirror
I don't think you remember me Do you remember Every time I see your eye I see it I remember it to I don't think I've ever seen myself smile Tell him I left it under the mat Yes, the one outside the front door Portal to hell I can't see our reflections anymore I need all of the attention I drain of their soft hands and heavy wings Won't you let me go I don't know what my face looks like His face Send me an angel Save me from myself I'm running away again I keep dreaming about the apocalypse I'm going to die I can’t stop it I can’t stop it I've accepted it Why have I taken morality I felt the cold snow silence my heart I saw the look of fear in the eyes of the damned What is it I'm ready to die For a moment I felt like I knew what it was I saw for a moment what it meant to be dead I saw myself cry I'm shaking now I don't remember my face I feel the gun to my temple Blade to my throat Breeze on my sweat soaked face as I sit here Knowing what comes next Am I okay with mortality? I'm shaking
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1. Were You Listening 2. The Man With Soulless Eyes 3. Missing 4. nomoreangles 5. I Just Want Resolution 6. Blasphemy 7. Vodka and Old Gods 1. Were You Listening? Yesterday I thought I died But I was disappointed to find I was still alive I couldn't hear anyone speak But I saw their lips moving Were they talking to me? 2. The Man With Soulless Eyes It's so cold here When I cry my tears freeze With my clouded breath I can't see I shout but my voice dies And I scream but it's only lies When I cry from my soulless eyes It's so cold here Give me the rains I want to steer! My love is cold like the snow so I'll Crash the carriage into the lifeless trees And let my bones rest in the snow covered leaves My blood is a brilliant vermilion paint Melting the frost It turns to brown rust And I swear to God it will taint All the lovers who fallow Into passionless frost With their hearts beating so faint Maybe twenty years from this time you'll find my bones Cold and alone Filed with moss and snow Let my sorrow wash over me and haunt me on the marrow Then you won't be lost in my soulless eyes My blood no matter how delicately it splashes on the white canvass Shall never be as brilliant as the stars that splatter the blackened sky And just as before When I close the door My sore arms will turn from red to brown And when I close my eyes I'll wish they were part of the sky Their black and empty abyss are soulless as a night with no moon And without the moon I will crash this carriage Without la lune to illuminate the earth's winter skin I'll be lost in the pale flesh And be let to crash into the black bones of the forest Spilling my blood so fresh The forest empty as my eyes Will capture my soul when I die And I'll be lost to time Oh what a crime? I shan't be missed All those lies Ah yes, I'm the man with soulless eyes 3. Missing It reminds me of something I can't remember Like when you know you've lost something But you can't remember what you lost And honestly, it's a bit like drinking cold coffee You can't quite enjoy the bitterness it brings you And honestly, I'm missing something important here When I've proved myself right You still want to tell me I'm wrong And you can't give me what I want So why am I even trying You never were intriguing and I'm just going through the motions Just going through the motions I can't and I won't let you know if I have emotions Nothing is pure or good with me so don't expect anything please I'm sorry I made the mistake But I can't take back things like that, now can I? 4. nomoreangles oh if you let us we will latch onto you and fall deeply madly infatuated with you too if you let us in we will grip onto everything and pull it apart let us live oh boy if you let us in we will pull at your wings mother me mercy i see youre angelic and i cannot resist oh the wings oh the feathers i cant help myself claws and eye extra limbs limping limping i cant help myself oh just you just you not revenge theres no need for that i just want your feathers claws extra eye tall tall strike me down i know nothing about you i just want to someone like me ah no no no not again dont let yourself fall for another angel little demon boy demon boy dont do that no more angels no 5. I Just Want Resolution Grip onto me with your lust If my friendship is true then I'll let you take my love If I say, "I love you" break my bones Snap my wrists covered in blood Though my knuckles are bleeding this sap is not innocent And though I wish to tear your world apart with my teeth It's sadly ironic it's you who's come to reap what I have left Grip my neck as hard as you can Crush my hopes and dreams Crush my body, just like flowers beneath your rough hands And even as my blood pools around me I'm let to believe Oh god, you're not the one killing me But how can that be when you're breathing And I'm left faithless If I'm the victim then why do I feel like the villain? I'm drowning but you keep telling me it's the other way around But why aren't you struggling? Why are you laughing at the tears in my eyes as I gasp for air? I came here for solace but I was given nothing but bad memories And was told to make something of them And instead of solidarity I received pity There is no resolution in drowning in your agony There is no solace in picking at the scab that will never heal And so, I chose to sleep with my demons Claws and teeth will comfort me Since your soft flesh only cut me And I will hold them close to me when I dream of you Because I know they will always be there to keep me safe And I know they will always tell the truth If humans are inherently evil what is a hell hound to me or you You've beat all the good left in me And I'm soon doomed to repeat your blasphemy This is not resolution If I have to shake the hands that tore my dreams right out from my scalp There is no such thing as feeling resolved When all you know is the crimes of Gods 6. blasphemy you'll never see me as a martyr in the eyes of your monotheistic god the deities aren't man and they do not rule like your false kings how can you pass judgment over me how could i have been so wicked in the past life to deserve this the fates have this planned out for me i will paint myself in the blood of your god so you will look at me i am the man you need i am your synthetic messiah wash your bones with my holy tears your western lord is the one i will bend my stigmata is infected as my wounds seep distrust 7. Vodka and Old Gods It tastes like death and decay
Even though it's sweet it rips the roof of my mouth It burns my stomach like acid But it calms my brain and restless heart beat My skull hurts, fighting tears that have been tugging at the corners of my eyes I'm so loved why am I so sad My bones are cold as ice even when I'm wrapped in a thousand layers of black wool My shoulders ache and my arms ache and my nails ache like I've been clawing out of the cold and cracked winter earth Bounding from the ground like spring itself My throat burns from fighting these tears I'm so loved but why then, why am I so achingly sad I'm wandering in a glass I can see myself looking into my own eyes I'm empty and sad What do I want? Come with me let me take your pain away into the abyss Whiteness blinds me as an angels’ voice sings Is she singing to me Rolling in tears and dripping in sweat I drink fire Despite the burning in my eyes I don't think I'll be able to sleep for a thousand year 1. Heavy Heart 2. Cliché Fruit Pit 3. Sweet 4. Chalk Lies 1. Heavy Heart If all the love I had for you could be converted to gold I should be the richest man to live But the cliché truth remains That in my youth I shall never be able to love you If I could collect the stars And give them on a sting to you Would it be enough to make up For all of the galaxies and star dust filing your eyes Would you be surprised? If I could empty the sea And give you every ounce Would it be enough my dearest And would it make up for all I am not And all that I am? If I could collect all the light And shine it on you Then supposed it be enough To compensate for my morbid fate? Would that be enough for you my beloved Would that make up for all the tears I have made you weep From when I scream in my sleep From when my eyes are sunken so deep Would that make up for it all? 2. Cliché Fruit Pit Cheesy and classic, I understand why eating the fruit of Eden curses man Ignorance is bliss and the truth cuts deep Tasting something so sweet is the most painful thing I have ever endured Cavities I cry I have cavities from this peach I sunk my teeth deep into the fruit and bit right down to the pit My my how does my jaw ache Grinding though cyanide and core of a stone fruit I'm drowning in sweet nectar and I can't breathe but I still don't have enough I need more now the sweet taste has touched my lips Rose and jasmine will forever permeate my senses It burns my throat All three still sting but it was drawn from my lips Drowning in sweet sweet honey I gurgle out a cry They bubble up to the surface and pop on the feathers of angel wings as a terrible chorus of my voice lift into the clear night air Overused and powerless in the wrong context I save it for the very last as every breath I draw is wasted on these words I try to bite more off the fruit but I cannot tear any more flesh from the pit My yearning is more true than any fantastical nights I have found the dangers of starting the gods in the face 3. Sweet So hot it give you chills Amber and sweet like honey It burns your throat It's potent like cloves and rose It stings Everything is golden Sap roles down your face Roles down to you lap Sweat pores into the glistening pool Like melting You'll start to drool Your heart pounds blood through your sweating hands Can't gab into it The fire is dim Can't see Soft like a pillow yet jagged are the bones jutting from you Blood sweet like wine You are the divine Your horns crack glass as you soon pass You're truly here for a good time Sex and sweet blood The pools he sips from dark like his eyes Black like the night His smile says hello but his eyes make you want to go The flame is bright And phantoms haunt you tonight 4. Chalk Lies I said to him "I want to grip you tighter desperately but I'm afraid you are made of chalk."
He said to me, "I promise I'm not made of chalk as long as you promise to not grip any tighter." And then he asked me to grip tighter, he told me it was fine despite my promise. But when my hands curled around him and gasped on, he crumbled to chalk dust. "You promised me you weren't made from chalk!" I shrieked. "You promised to not grip tighter!" His powdered remains shouted back to me. "But! You told me to grip tighter!" I cried back to him. "I never said anything like that! Look what YOU did to me!" Finger pointing, playing the victim, it's all my fault because I did what you said... But that's just how you are. Dream Sequence Poem from Ego Death (2020) When you wake up slipping into the deep pool you will discover three eyes on the back of your head and three broken clocks in my nightmares. In a drunken haze from the bags that drag my eyes down heavy with the second hand of a clock. When you are awake you feel like you’re wandering through a night terror, seeing old dreams while you sit awake in the illumination.
Life only exists in its purest form when you are asleep. Fighting falling deep into the dark haze of ghost images kept at bay by caffeine. These dreams have been feeling like gladiatorial coliseums, with a pounding heart and organs that hurt from acidic erosion. Sit here and play at the grim reapers slot machine like the human snowflake, you are forever living out self fulfilling prophecies in the white static. Maybe it is too old for you to remember foolish magic things. “Why should you bring me around humans who will only hunt my gold? They will only eat it as all humans do” said the glinting blue dragon, angry in his smoke. “Look... I’m magnificent, no human should attempt to fight me for my forfeits.” You agree with him. The monorail theater is what you must chase down when you are late for class. Vultures won’t let you go? Won’t let me go? This theater is haunted but keeps running along its track. You drive a semi truck to get back to a place you once knew in San Francisco. Jettison out to space to die and you wonder if you were tricked. Conjure up some blue flames to avoid the impending flood levels, the ditch far too deep to protect you now. Poverty festers in a mansion with its untrustworthy medicine. Everything is broken, your brother is trying to stay positive, how can you be positive when you are in agony? Can’t they just anesthetize you? Blind and vampiric in the basement, sipping on soup made from lilacs. You see your old self, you wish to peel your skin off. The lilac soup is lovely compared to the fear and gout. A street full of great, cancerous maple trees, all this rain causes the trees to bleed into the wall paper. Too much suffering you can’t feel anything when the dark figure hunts you down in this house, if you don't look it cannot find you, do not look. I saw a golden angle in a cage on a street corner and he was in pain. In Italy you will terrify your enemies for pleasuring your pain. Strangers kindness brings you home with a full belly and a head full of familiar wonder. Sunset will show you who you really love, then there will be nightmares about separation anxiety. Don’t let them die before you see them again. Blood poisoning, veins are turning dark blue while green lighting goes through them. You’re dying, why are they laughing at you? Now the electrical storm drowns you and Chicago floods with blood through the train grates, showers, and the eyes of friends. You see it all sitting in a colorful library as you try to eat with relatives using customers you don’t know sitting across from a lost love. Nothing tastes real alone now in this library of shame. They are posed by the old gods, like trusting people you’ve forgotten. If you eat the fruit, pomegranates will fill your blood with the gods, you belong to them. Everywhere you look faces in mirrors and knives being thrown when you try to look. We are truthful but as long as you don’t look at the demons, they won’t hurt you. When the sun goes down you scream when you see yourself in the reflective screens. Then an uninvited brass band crashes an upscale garden party you did not want to be invited to. A church is now burning as you carelessly sleep inside. Like an angry score scorching you never settled. He’s wronged you, left you with die much anger for yourself, for others, and for him and who he could have been. Held captive to manufacture continuity in a place you’ve never been before. Oh so very tired. Not yourself anymore. And you don’t know where you are anymore, existing in no place and no time. You have so much to do but you are so very tired on A clear November day where the ground has grown red with fallen leaves, trees freshly bare. You feel like you are being watched. Could this be hell? The boy with butterflies and broken ribs
Somewhere there is a boy with butterflies hatching in his ribs. It hurts him, chokes him, no beauty will escape. There’s nothing inside, again he pulls the weeds but this time the sunflowers won’t grow back. Just decomposing compost, turning to dirt and stone weighing him down to the bottom of the lake. And how I hate these scars, I’m feeling them a lot more these days. Every line aches and thirsts for blood and wine. It doesn’t matter if you don’t mind them, their grotesque persistence is not what makes me worry, it’s the aching. I want to remember what I was waking up for, but sometimes all I see is corporal static as the TV stations of disappointment are flipped through. I want to remember holy places untainted by a cruel spirit. But they lack funding from the station provider. Ribs hurt now, laying on the floor, I can’t sleep through the pain. Dose it make me cry or is this just a physical manifestation of rotting blood, marbling like purple lighting. Thirst for forgetting when I’m gripping to try to remember the good. Why do you look for some one to kick your ribs in, maybe that’s why they hurt so much. Or maybe they hurt form the crushing guilt of searching for love in empty wells. Oh these brittle bones, they ache to be softly wrapped in silk. If I’m dropped again from this height my frail bird bones will just snap. Breathing in this cage feels like drowning sometimes when I’m alone. And the flowers can’t fight the fear that grow though the stones. But if it can be pulled from the stones maybe there will be an end. An ending is not always somber. Perhaps the death of fear will allow for a new beginning. And let us suppose that decomposed ribs will no longer ache from braking. And maybe at the bottom of this lake we will all sink through the soft sand floor. Find a grave to be held in, and start again. Originally posted July 9th 2019
2019 seems to have been one of the worst years yet to be a creator in the digital age. Why is this? There are many different factors to consider what is bringing about this widespread notion of burnout and hopelessness among artists and content creators. A few things I should note before going into my essay. This is purely a personal opinion piece and is in no way meant to be taken as fact or science. All the statements I make are merely options and are not meant to disrespect anyone's hard work or insult anyone. Also my opinions will be focusing mainly on visual media such as illustrations, paintings, and digital art but can also apply to film, wiring, sculpture, music, etc. Before I take you down the rabbit hole I highly recommend reading THIS article to help situate yourself in a timeline of the decline of digital art sharing. I should also note I myself am a young but fairly experienced artist who is feeling the heat with failing at building a community and following in this digital age. With that out of the way let's jump into the meat of the issue here, burn out. Burn out is when you essentially run your creative juices to their very limit and find that creating no longer brings the catharsis that you are used to. It is something of art block and exhaustion caused from over working and can mean different things to different people. However it is anonymous that this feeling is harmful to one's mental health and well being. So how is it that so many artists seem to be suffering from this? I began to wonder why I myself was feeling sluggish like a worn down workhorse who was worthless when I no longer was able to produce. At first I thought I merely had just pushed myself too far. However this perspective changed as I began to talk to fellow friends who were creators and saw numerous amounts of people online talking about these feelings. After about the 50th tweet I saw about an artist feeling “burnt out” I began to try to inspect the elements of our climate for creation that might have been a factor in this awful widespread feeling. A huge contributing factor is the climate change of the platforms we have available to us to share our work with communities. Over the years of the internet (but particularly in the 2010’s) there has become a wide spread change of the way in which we consume and communicate digital media (see mentioned article). The once robust landscape of art platforms to choose form and ways of building communities has become squeezed into a few big name social media platforms. The days of deviantArt and friends have since left use and now art fights for the limelight in a sea of unrelated information. As of 2019 there are no public platforms that allow for NSFW or mildly controversial artwork to be shared amongst an audience with fair game. Though things that pass the bill also tend to not have that much of a fighting chance either. When you boil it down what is causing this kind of mental distress it comes down to what I call the three C’s - Censorship, Capitalism, Competition. Let us begin with the route of the problem, money. As much as we all don't want to admit it, the number obsession of these social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube) comes from the unfortunate tie between success and money. Now this sentiment may not go for everyone, I’m sure it doesn't. However for many younger beginning artists the internet has become a way for us to turn what we love into a mildly profitable life choice without falling into the starving artist box. But in order to achieve this one needs some surmountable level of success. I'm sure you've seen plenty of things that say “you just need to build an audience” which is true for all art but it swiftly turns into the number obsessions and addictions associated with social media. Ranging from follower counts to the amount of interactions with pieces online. There is a strangely awful and unique feeling of seeing a piece of work you felt was wonderful just flat out flop. Because so many artists are forced into such a small variety of social media platforms there becomes less room for a sharing community and more of a competition mosh pit. This is not to say that making friends and building community is impossible. That said, it is definitely not as streamlined or easy as it used to be when there were more options for people to build communities on other corners of the web. It has gone from small communities widely spread out to what feels like competing with everyone in the entire world, which is not really how things have worked for art until this century. All of this to say that the greed of capitalism forcing corporations to conglomerate and force artists to compete in order to make a profitable living has driven making art on social media to be exhausting, especially for those who do not or cannot produce like hound dogs. Unfortunately because of the way our media has been filtered it has created an unfair amount of competition amongst people. It is not just the lack of variety of sharing options however, there is also the dreaded “algorithm.” This is a really loose term that gets blamed a lot but it basically refers to the way in which websites have changed out of linear based post viewing in favor of “relevance” or “popularity” viewing. Unless you are constantly creating many platforms such as Instagram or Twitter will stop showing your followers your work. In order to get any kind of engagement on these platforms you need to be at best posting multiple times a day just to be slapped on your followers’ dash pages. This way of breaking down post sharing might be more profitable or sound better to the companies that host social media but it leaves artists to be forced into an insane work ethic. In order to build community and gain relevance one has to constantly produce work at an inhuman rate, no wonder people are burnt out! It slowly zaps all the fun out of being a creator as you are forced to either fall into irrelevance in this computerized haze or work yourself mad to stay afloat. And this demand for constant production is just unrealistic for many, including people who might have other jobs, attend school, or have a disability/ illness. The algorithm is not the only roadblock that artists have to work against in this minimized digital sharing landscape. Censorship is rampant and has effectively destroyed the way in which we are able to share our media. A perfect example of this was the great purge of Tumblr back in December of 2018. The reason so many people were doesn’t (beside the blatant destruction of a huge sex work community) was the fact that many artists who livelihood resides with making NSFW content were instantly removed from their main source of income and communication. It was not just NSFW artists but those too who made things that were deemed inappropriate for the platform's content. This same censorship carries over if not more severely onto Instagram (a platform owned by Facebook) and Twitter (which is slowly moving the way of Tumblr with its treatment of NSFW content). Not only is censorship an artist’s biggest enemy but because only real sharing platforms are so strict, many people cannot make what they want, or have to lock their work behind a paywall through places like Patreon (who still shadow bans NSFW content by the way). Not only that but with these changes to policies it's essentially impossible to gain a footing at a NSFW artist or someone who makes things that aren't “family friendly”. Like YouTube blocking sponsorship on videos containing curse words and LGBT+ content (which is a bigger beast to deal with yet) or people being shadow banned on places like Instagram or Twitter. Alright so what? What can we do to “fight” all these different beasts. Is there hope for burnout among artists? Unfortunately I think burnout for content creators is only going to get worse if this continues to be the only way we can communicate and reach out beyond our own small communities in real life. We might very well be better off and more successful without these platforms in the long run (again this might not go for everyone but it is an idea to consider). Until there is a complete overhaul on social media and art sharing I'm not sure if people will be able to fight burnout on a mass scale. But for yourself it might be time to log off. I think many people need to take a wellness break, a vacation from creation. Log off, put your tools down, go read something, watch something, visit a museum if you can, plan a day out with friends or a vacation if you have the means. Spend time researching your next work of art instead of continuing to grind yourself down in the cogs of this rat race. Your human life is worth a lot more than how many likes your art gets on Instagram. |
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