“I’ll keep it shorter!” …still somehow over 20 minutes of blabbing x_x
Well, since you are snoopin’ on my discord status, I might as well share some TikToks, like I would DM to Laura. My rule is no more than three at a time. This is 4. The Boys one doesn’t count, ok? And I promise, when I DM her, they don’t come with multiple paragraphs of text. (usually 😭)
RE: what I said at the end of the voice memo – I missssss being an honorary guy in the gamer guy squad. This is what I mean by bro coded ASMR. you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone, fr. Why is drew so especially sassy? T_T
I relate to this viscerally. I do feel a little iffy on the specific example, because I often search a term I’ve never heard before to confirm my assumption about what it means. But too, TOO frequently in my day to day, I have interactions where people are in front of a metaphorical 4 piece baby puzzle, disassembled, and get asked, “what is this a picture of?” “I dunno. How should I know? It’s a jumbled mess.” AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WAKE UP!!! Please. Please God. IT’S FINE IF YOU DON’T KNOW. I promise, I frequently get faced with 4 piece baby puzzles I scratch my head at, because of microplastics and dopamine deficits and trauma. BUT I RECOGNIZE IT’S A PUZZLE. ONE THAT IS EASY TO SOLVE. AND I TRYYYIIEEEEEEAAAAA. God. It’s the disdain and annoyance at the mere suggestion that you could make one logical leap yourself. Also heavy on the LOOK AROUND, WHATS GOING ON? People will almost run into me, despite me making my best effort to move, and then get startled and almost upset that I materialized into their universe. It is. Agonizing!
I’ve said this a million times in a million different ways, but when it comes to kids’ content, nothing less is at stake than the soul of upcoming generations. It is our moral legacy. At some point, we need to divorce the term “Disney” from our affection for a handful of brilliantly made late 20th century animated films. Completely.
Any time I listen back to my voice memos, I’m hyper aware of how I overuse “like” – it’s grating and embarrassing. But I realized listening to drew here, that he does it similarly. I don’t notice it. It just sounds conversational. It made me realize that while I still would like to purge like (ijbol) as a filler word, it’s almost certainly not as annoying to most people as it is to me.
I also noticed the account name “rememberingdrew “ – as though he died. Crazy, maybe pearl clutching to say offensive. That’s for drew to say, really. But I do feel like it puts in harsh relief the impact of being an influencer on top of being an artist. If a band went on a break for 5 years, even if you didn’t know if they were ever coming back, you wouldn’t talk about them like you were in mourning. People talk about drew like a friend who went missing, who they have no way to contact. His content felt like personal, social connection more than it felt like creative work. This is why, if you are a creator, and evil, milk the parasocial shit for all it’s worth. Sell the baby photos on a flash drive. Drive the porcupine spike in as deep as you can, without ever touching skin to skin. Those tiny little reverse tines means that if they ever try to pull it out, they’ll be ripped to shreds.
A final point – Drew breezes over a profound but unintuitive insight, which is worth unpacking. “Your memories can’t contain emotions.” We might recall the fact that we were feeling a certain way, but as the memory is recalled, the feeling you have is a response to witnessing the memory. It’s not part of the vhs tape that you dug out, if that makes sense. This seems incorrect when we experience a feeling that mirrors what we remember feeling. It makes more sense when there is a divergence – when you did something joyfully but oblivious, and now only feel regret and shame.
This works in the opposite direction too, when we project forward. This has been my struggle with attachment. Intellectually I know I can’t hang my heart on a specific outcome. I hear the logic in something unexpected and better coming in. But my heart screams “NO, FUCK YOU. YOU CAN’T CARROT ON A STICK ME AND PULL THE RUG, AND THEN TELL ME TO SAY THANK YOU. TO BE GREATFUL. THE WHO AND THE WHAT MATTTTERRSSS FUUCCKKK. WHY EVEN ASK ME WHAT I WANT, THEN? Just tell me what I’m supposed to want. I’m too tired, I don’t care, I can be grateful for whatever I’m given, truly. But ~~quit playin’ games with my heart~~ my heart~~”
I am stuck in my current emotional reality, where I want the thing I want, and something other is just an abstract concept. I can imagine the “Oh! Omg, this is really what I was looking for all along. I didn’t actually know what I wanted.”, but I can’t feel it. All I feel is betrayal.
So do we have no control over our emotions? Not in the moment, other than to suppress, cling, or accept. We can cultivate our emotions through intentions, like planting seeds. We don’t directly choose, but we can guide the subconscious towards a view of the world that elicits calmer/more positive ones. That has been my experience, anyway.
_—
Last but not least, a bit of me and kayla. Genuinely, my inner nasty voices are working on overdrive as I’m posting this. I mentioned Steve Merchant in the voice memo above – in high school and just after, Steve was…he filled a similar role that danny has in my life. I guess “skinny white guy comedian with big blue eyes” is just my Achilles heel. Unfortunately for still-maturing teenage me, Steve was much less of a role model – and he came packaged with Ricky Gervais, at least in the radio shows and podcasts I would obsessively listen to. I don’t think Steve is a bad person in the way Ricky is. I would rate him True Neutral on the DnD scale. But. At least in his late 20s, he was, no word of a lie, the MOST insanely fatphobic person I have ever come across.
He was so excited to talk about “fats waller” whenever he came up, describing in gory detail how disgusting the different parts of his body looked, how him existing in public spaces was a nuisance, and eyesore. He would go on and on about how only a tiny, tiny percent of fat people actually have a “legitimate” reason to be fat – it’s just “greed, pure greed and laziness.” Ricky made the comment, “Have you ever noticed how fat girls try to do their hair so nice? Like it’s always curled and they have a little bow and she’s sitting their eating her little salad…like, lady. That’s not doing anything. It’s lipstick on a pig, embarrassing.” “And they seem so apologetic when you have to sit next to them on a plane, they always smell nice, but its like, maybe don’t fly if you can’t afford two seats for your lazy fat ass?”
When I flew out to chicago last time, I bought two seats. The middle aged guy in the ailse seat still gave me nasty looks, as if just existing in his eyeline was a rudeness towards him. Every time I put on my favorite butterfly headband, I hear “lipstick on a pig. lipstick on a pig.”
I know I talk about my weight insecurity too much. Many people I know in my life are overweight, and they seem to navigate it fine. I think its just a confluence of my rejection sensitivity, and then hearing that kind of stuff over and over from this guy who I thought the world of, just as the effectiveness of the mental footbinding was starting to break down – it bypassed any rationality or self worth and went directly into my heart. It’s festered for a long time, and we are trying to clean it out, slowly.
Whether or not I look at my body, I look the way I look. Better to desensitize myself to it, and replace Steve’s commentary with my own. I don’t cosign what he said. It was unbelievably cruel and unnecessary. I want to write my own script, based on what I believe, and that is – being beautiful is not an objective good. The body is the vessel for our consciousness. I only care what I look like to one person – my soulmate. Luckily, like we learned in the grinch movie, your soulmate will love you the more you look like you, rather than what society thinks is beautiful.
>>robyns_ramblings 