Passion-ate/less (AKA how the hell dont you have a hobby?)

Audrey Kawasaki.
I'm pretty sure she literally does
nothing else at all but this and its beautiful

Have you ever had an itch? Not the kind that beautiful organisms like crabs can provide.

I mean an itch. A nagging need, to do something specific.

I don't mean,

Fucking
sleeping
eating
drinking...
drugs
alcohol
work.

I don't mean going out to get wasted, or to engage in superficial interactions and call them social events.

I mean a burning desire to invest yourself into something that may very well only captivate You and you alone.

Is there something you obsess over so much, that when you engage it, you lose track of all time. Bending so unapologetic to the strange hunger that you simply have no concept of it... it seems to last forever, but then end far to early.


Do you know what you like?

Have you ever really stopped to think. "What do I believe?"  "What do I really think?"   "what do I really want?" "what do I really like to do?"

Do you drift through life from moment to moment, and engage only on the most trivial of levels with the world around you.

Could you sit in a room by yourself with nothing else, and not entertain yourself with the incredible dialogues of your own ideas on that which you are most passionate about?

No?

Then you are passionless.

I encounter a lot of people, who really genuinely don't seem to have any hobbies or interests beyond a superficial appreciation.  People who genuinely, come home from 8 hours or more of work and don't do anything.

People who also seem to have no interest in how existence works and whats going on in the world. They seem caught up in reality TV or Famous people, or money or buying things. You ask them their opinion on something but they don't really known enough to care, and are not interested in trying.

I find it... gross.

I try not to be judgemental and always objective.. but with this I cannot help it, I will definitely admit to having an extreme sort of discrimination against this type of person.

Really its just more of a shame I suppose, but I do know there is nothing more beautiful to me than when I see people who are passionate about something.

Now I will preface this by saying there are some types of passionate that, when misguided can piss me off more than anything (religious or political zealots. Conspiracy theorists), but those are not the types I'm talking about


           One night when I was in a hotel in California while doing some training for my job. It was about the second night I had been there and I was still not use to the time zone differences. It was probably about 12 AM in San Jose but in Baltimore it was about 3 AM. I was trying to keep myself up to get use to the time difference, rapidly flipping through channels for something to watch.  I had just about given up when I stopped on some type of spoken word performance. I had no idea what it was... but as I watched it I became so emotional that by the end of the performance.. I was weeping like your girlfriend at that movie " the Notebook".

Here's a preview for that program, I later found out it was called, " Brave New Voices"



This is from the 2010 grand finals, look it up and watch it if you can.

I had no idea what was happening to me, I had never seen any like it.  Such, raw, uncensored passion, pure and eloquent. It unwound knots of emotion in me that spilled out from my face and by the end of the hour long program I was weak and drained from it. It wasn't just that a lot of the content was sad, no. I had never seen slam poetry like this before. These were young people, screaming at the top of their lungs, the most honest and passionate things I had ever heard. Young people Demanding to be heard by everyone about every current topic and about life.

I wasn't crying because I was hurt by their painful experiences, I cried because I was hurt by hope.  The hope that in reality, this world is not a colorless as it seems, that the Human race, holds more to it than just the zombification that seems to be our future. I've never seen anyone express their anger, or sadness or nostalgia in such a honest way.  Passionate people, who are emotional about the world they live in and the state that its in. The innocence they have lost and how they cope with existence.

Yeah, I've seen art, Ive seen talent, I've seen the confidence of skill and had my breath catch in my throat at the awe of genius. But passion, this was something that I had long forgotten existed in the world except for that which I felt. To see it reflected, broke down every barrier I had and I was happy for it.

      I realized that there are even things I love which lack that passion, and I had no Idea.  Music seems like such a key representation of it but in reality,  so much of music is packaged and sold to us that it too is passionless.   Especially now a days, we listen to music that tries to emulate, an existence, a passion that we felt way back when and now, these shadows of what was, have us nodding our heads trying to get that feeling back. Believe me, the current iterations of the music you love will not make you feel the same as when it was innovative and passionate.

Don't get me wrong,  there will be moments,  certain artists or songs that bring it out of you, Like this Song by Janelle Monae



Honesty, Passion.



Believe me,  the difference between the first time I heard bands like Poison the well and Hopesfall or Wu-tang  and the music I hear now will never effect me the same, with the few rare exceptions. I realize its why I began listening to older music. Much older music, symphonic music, string quartets, by Shostakovitch and Vivaldi. Feeding off of the sad melodies and suddenly passionate  build ups,  the complexity that bled every ounce of emotion from me. I sought out the simple honesty of old folk and country music, big band and early 1900s music, the misery but hopefulness of chain gang chants. Early hardcore the sound of desperate youth. Early hip hop, the sound of a battered race, that from experience created an incredible culture. 

Even art and writing..  mediums, to tell information. It took me a long time to understand that my penchant to draw and write were passions to generate information which I am passionate about, Ideas and story arcs. But even in art that is not narrative in itself, there is information that fills me with excitement.

A few of my favorite Artists  Ashley Wood and Bengal,


             

Ashley Wood

Bengal

Images of Woman and robots and intense color. Seemingly obvious because they are well done and pretty, but what do I see that underlies the complex lines and color palletes, is the simple LOVE of the human body. The absolute passion for female curves and shapes that I share with these artists is delicately arched into existence, and fine tuned.  The love for mechanical things and a vision of color.  An artist can narrate such passions and you might never know it because he or she did it because they love it. You might never even have seen what they have done and it wouldn't matter, they do it for themselves.

90 percent of the art and writing I do is just for me.. even the studying I do is just for me. I feed on knowledge, and understanding like its all  that exists in the world. Most of you who know me realize that at every moment of any day I am lost in a constant day dream and that even while you are talking at me, I'm on a sort of auto pilot, giving you the most minimal prerecorded answers possible (mostly so you will leave me alone).

I promise I will explain why, in another blog post. Just know for now it has to do with an uncontrollable passion.


If there is something that you would drop everything to do.  Something that wouldn't necessarily make you rich or even earn you money, but that you could just do all day without having to worry about anything else.

If there is something in this world that makes you go " Hey.. Hey wait this.. This moves me! I'm not a ghost, I am a passionate human being"

Rejoice because it is a beautiful and seemingly rare thing.


Anyway..

Ill see you in hell

-We Are Hell

God is unncessary (Why I am an Atheist)

So, how did I go from superstitious god fearing child to, skeptical dude with a hunger for science?

 I wanted a great cataclysm that cracked the world.. and split humanity from its stuck little places..

I’ve always felt .. even since a very young age that this is where the world is headed..  in my mind and heart, a great war was coming.. a great end. That I should live the last of my days in the struggle of survival, by law of steel and fang.

     I’ve never understood exactly where this instinct had come from. I wouldn’t actually become aware of it until years later and even then did very little to analyze its origin, nature and effects.

    at first applying the concepts imprinted on me by religion, since at a young age it was forced upon me and my construct of reality. A part of black culture I could not escape.  The words end of days, and revelations, associated with the coming of god and the war on earth between good and evil. It seemed natural to me that even as I out grew literal understandings of religious things, that the emotions and feelings that this powerful story incited, would remain. This hypothesis would still seem far too empty in the end, as my religiosity would approach zero.


 I was a superstitious kid, and  was deeply into fantasy and Sci-Fi, from too much of reading, movies and video games. My entire world and understanding of it was shaped by these things and still to this day I joke about how these things raised me. Religion would further my intense interest in demons and hell. I relied on these understandings as though they were fact, praying for help to god when times were tough, wondering at the symbolism behind these seemingly cryptic replies...

Until...  it stopped making sense. how is a universe in which a god exists but acts in such a way that you cant tell he exits, so much different from a universe where doesn't exist at all?

... i know now why I wanted a great cataclysm..  its not what I really wanted, what I really wanted was meaning..  the meaning to life. A great cataclysm , was a representation of the moment I would have to pick up my role in the meaning of life.

I had to understand what reality is.. I had to understand how it works.  What is the point of it?

    Knowledge in all of its forms having always been my truest passion, and science the best aperture from which to gain it, furthered my understanding of the world at its more basic level. math, physics, geometry, geology, astronomy started such thinking, my analyses continued.

What dire and abstract reasoning, only because as out of place as I have felt, these thoughts  and studies distanced me further still from my situation. 

I was stuck

Not only in my role in life, but in the debilitating struggle of my knowledge versus my actions. I never wanted to be this. Struck content, and sliding through existence on the charted path of giving up. In fact it is everything I have ever fought against. That which I would never let myself become.

Content. Giving in.

I still rage against this and though close, so close that I would fall with my face inches from the bottom, eyes shut and hoping the bottom was not as close as I felt. I brandished that which fills that spark. that curls my lip and makes me shiver. That need to drink pure understanding from reality. To imbibe it and feed my moments of euphoria.

So I did.

Day after day, though I felt the veil pulled over my eyes, hiding my lack of action. I swelled with a litany of observation and information.

During a debate in a class on logic, over determinism vs existentialism, the conversation turned as it often did toward the whether or not gods existence mattered.

"if there is no god, then how can I find a meaning to life?"  Said a classmate, who opted for the deterministic approach of a plan laid out by God.

Curious. The answer became obvious to me even as it dripped from my lips in a dry and irritable compulsion.  "there is no general meaning to life, you attribute meaning to it yourself.  " I retorted. (I was/am a huge jerk)

At that moment chaos theory made perfect sense to me,

As did probability theory.

But as I cocked my head and studied the boy who had spouted the original argument with hopeless exasperation, staring fearfully at his hands and then around for any who would help him. I suddenly had an epiphany and understood then why I was loathsome about human nature. I said it easily enough, with mostly curiosity, but i suppose my follow up was in fact ripe with impatience

"you mean,.... You really sat back.. Waiting for some god to give you meaning to your life? How long have you been alive without living?"

My professor interjected himself here, a clear severing of what would have most likely been a cruel engagement.  But I saw the tears in his eyes.  I saw him still staring down at his hands , silent, awestruck, and beneath the lenses of his glasses a well of tears which formed the corners of his eyes and snaked down.

I kept staring. Not out of malice but pure fascination. Had I really just torn down someones defenses, sundered the pillars that held up his world? Had I really watched someones understanding of existence collapse. He was standing in the rubble of his unchecked reality. Something I would later call a paper bridge, the root of my studies on humans and existence

 I was cruel in my youth, I realize now. I still may be as cruel when getting a point across, but what I learned about people was directly gleaned from that experience.

When one came to a gap in their knowledge that could challenge their understanding , they built a paper bridge. A temporary construct that had enough support to help them cross this gap. But something so poorly conceived would never hold up if stood upon. Typically when forced to deal with this gap, their world collapsed and they would either survive it to make it stronger, or not survive and fall prey to a weakened mentality. They call it, "The god of gaps"

The next phase of my observation would take me far longer to flesh out, but was marked by a sudden understanding of the politics and mass thinking that was engaging the war on science and  reason itself

My resolution into an atheist took sometime...  Even before arguing in philosophy class, my objective reasoning only took me as far as the agnostic principles.

Religion, whether genetic or memetically ingrained, the questions of how and why still lead an ignorant youth to a universe where god might exist, (though with little to no anthropomorphic characteristics.)

But it was exactly that.  Ignorance, the day I understood the processes of evolution and the creation of the universe, my necessity for god went from possible to unnecessary.  Even then, I did not reason myself as an atheist.

This video taught me the absurdity of the thought that the universe was made for us, and that all things seem perfectly suited for existence




I followed the war between science and religion aching from head to toe at the irrationality of what was happening.   History denial. Science denial, all on a principal of chosen ignorance..  I could sympathize with religious scientists who could path the paradox of belief and  science.  But to see our world literally in the grips of the small minded.

The day I stumbled upon TED Talks, and listened to Richard Dawkins a call for militant atheism, is when I first began to critically think about my position as an agnostic.



What caught me is, that everyone is agnostic by default.  logical people whether that are religious or not,  know they cannot know for a certainty that god exists or he doesn't. To say that you know or don't know for a certainty makes you a zealot, in either camp, and to say that you re agnostic is an unfinished statement. Not an exact quote, but I vibrated with the tenacity of what he meant.  Of course no one can KNOW for certain. That is the nature of faith and also the nature of scientific method.   But with the evidence I have for understanding reality, I could easily base my life on the principal of gods existence being completely unnecessary.

Reality felt cold and some how. I remember turning in my thesis to my professor in logic class and his words were.

"huh.. a universe without god, and the consequence of being sentient enough to why?........ this seems, true.. its hard to dispute but.. so cold.. and just.. "

Cold indeed... it felt like something was not right.  I studied biology and evolutionary biology, with the hopes of filling that void. I could completely describe the process and the complete theoretical path from a pressure point in nothingness to the birth of a universe and stars,  to the development of DNA in puddles of mud, to the evolution of strange upright walking primates, who like to make weird laws and pretend they are special and buy things, while breeding like pond scum..

                                                           There is no god

                                                            Not a single god.

why did I still want there to be a god?.....   A friend would bring to my attention, the studies that aching question.

Religion as an evolutionary tool? A mechanism for survival? Here is a link to such studies

Put simply Example of this in use could be as follows:


Two separate families of prehistoric humans, become trapped in two different caves during a long blizzard or drought.


Family A: the family prone to magical thinking, assumes a position of helplessness, humbled by the idea of a higher power that will get them through their troubles.  They wait out the Blizzard or Drought, and are seemingly rewarded with its end and the chance to pass on genes that are prone to magical thinking

Family B: the rational group, knows the reality of the situation they are in, survival becoming as an imperative, the actions they take possibly lead to betrayal and likely cannibalism to survive the storm, or drought, Since they know these environmental hazards may not end before they die or starvation and thirst. Thus ending the gene pool less prone to magical thinking.

That was it..  The yearning for a god and an answer to the question why am I here, was not in and of itself special...  I had to think objectively and step outside of myself to answer the question.  The angle I was attacking the question at had the "feeling" of yearning god as the bases for my question. but in reality I should have been asking why should there be a feeling at all! this is the bases of Critical thinking.  Objectivity in understanding the whole without biases.

It was the Day I watched this talk by Neil Degrasse Tyson, that not only did I not need a god.. I felt better than ever knowing that I was apart of something even more spectacular. Stars... and the entire universe.

Please if you have 16 minutes.. watch the entire thing.you will be moved.



Brilliant.  The most moving concept ever..  My ancestors were Stars and suns.
This would move me. Powerful, arching light of knowledge, and the passion about science that I had had billowed through me..  To Know.. to touch the knowledge of something so immense and elegant. I would never be the same.

I was an Atheist..  A feverish challenger of faith and poor logic,  a deep drinker of natural history and understanding. A Preacher of how amazing out universe is...


Through understanding nature and the scientific method, Through skepticism and inflection. Through crticial thinking, I determined ... there was no need for a god in the universe,  I dont know everything.. WE dont know everything, but I know from history that we can and will always keep learning and expanding knowledge..   Tha that God of Gaps, is an antiquated Idea...    I may not understand the next boundry of our knowledge but that doesnt mean that someone else who comes along may not either.

anyway,  I'll see you in hell.

-We are Hell

Why Donald Glover is important (to a kid like me)

         I've been watching Donald glover since his days on Derrick Comedy(link). My favorite of his skits involves a student pooping his pants in class.





         Unbeknown to me, his career developed quite some amount since the time I first noticed him. At first his role in the television show Community, then it was brought to my attention that he could rap.

and I mean rap his ass off. I wasn't told like, "hey you know that black dude from community could rap?"

I was at a friends house when he just showed me a video (this video) of a dude rapping hard as shit, and suddenly I recognized him.

I said, "....is that the dude from Derrick Comedy?"

My friend, "yup... he's tight as shit"


I was DONE. I used something called the internet to study the subject more, and found that the dude is in fact quite a phenomenon.

So why is he so important to me.

I'm a black kid, which is tight, but my issue is, I'm a black kid who comes from a middle class suburban upbringing. When I say suburban I really mean like deep in the woods with like... horses and deer and shit. I was an awkward youth who never paid attention to what race I was, and mostly stuck my nose in books, played in the woods, played videogames and drew pictures. Life was good until I went to elementary school and met other black kids.

My elementary school was further in the suburbs towards the city, where black folk became more common. It was in this place that I leanred I was a a gigantic "bitch ass nigga."

No no it wasn't because I wasn't a giant, even in grade school, I was a stone heavier and a head taller than most kids. It was simply because I wasn't black enough..I didn't care about music, especially rap. My mom bought all my clothing and most of the time I had no idea what I was wearing.  I played games like "Giant Robots" instead of any sports at all.

I never got beat up. My size assured me that I'd never get assaulted and I never had a lack of good friends or good times. However socially I developed a crippling fear from always having to defend myself against other black kids because.. well  we just couldn't relate to each other.

As time moved on this problem became worse. Add to the list, private middle school, of which I was one of 7 black children, who liked reading and videogames... well you get the point.  It took a long time and a years of being comfortable in my own skin before I out grew my shell.

My point, besides making myself look terrible, is that Donald is an artist I can truly relate to. I love hip hop,  I love culture, but I am never going to claim that I struggled to survive growing up, or that I had a criminal background.

Nope, I loved tight beats and a wicked flow, but aside from the fact that I liked fighting and talking shit, I couldn't relate to hip hop as much as I wanted to.

I rocked Eric B and Rakim, Pete Rock, Nas, Common, The Wu, all that shit that came out when I was young.

It took years of growing up on my own, and hangin' out and observing and learning before I could understand and relate in someway..

It still wasnt where I came from, not exactly. I'm still black and I know my history, but my struggle growing up was in defending and proving that I was black enough to the other black kids, including members of my own family.

Thats what I appreciate about Donald. Childish Gambino could spit sick about how I pretty much grew up, and what I have to deal with.

A lot of his songs like "Freaks and Geeks", talk about other niggas calling him faggot and talking shit because he's a nerd.

Songs like "Break" talk about growing up with girl problems, from being a nerdy ass black kid to suddenly being the hot shit.

Yup.. yeah me too.


I'm a lot older now, and a lot wiser. I've reconciled my youth with who I am and I assure you, through being a black male and surviving on my own I can relate to things alot differently now, but its good to know I wasn't the only one who had to go through what I did to get where I am.

So Donald, from all the the middle class black kids like us.

Yay Nigga.

-We are Hell