The hard part of modern life? Not becoming a pitiful, degraded, bird-whacking, food mauling, sports watching, gambling, weed smoking, button pushing porn-crazed chimp groveling for dopamine hits and Bozo buttons.
The Overwhelm: the tidal wave of vitriol, advice, opinions, hopes, dreams, sales pitches, hustles, photos, videos, insults, desperate needs, longing and abject madness of every single person on the planet coming at you hard.
The peace of the world depends on the lawful goodness of the violent.
Society works when people have well-developed principles, live consistently within those principles, respect the principles of others and are honest about their trade offs.
Hallmarks of evil: lies, victory at all costs, extremism, willingness to sacrifice others who have no say in the matter.
Morality is denouncing the tradeoffs of others.
Do fictional characters exist? No. Yes. Maybe. Kind of. Of course… not. Hm.
The Dirty Distance: the distance between evil deeds and carnage caused. The CEO who never meets the mother of the child he gave bone cancer.
True noir is about how jet black it can get in the world, with fate, in you. True noir says sack up and be ready for anything from anyone at anytime, including yourself. Given the right set of circumstances we’re all capable of anything. Chumps think it’s a style.
True punk is the courage to fully express yourself regardless.
“It’s always somebody tipped them.” Never “the cops are smart.” – Verna Jarrett
Rawthentic – it’s a word now.
The average American Christian reveres vengeance with such devotion you’d think Jesus tore himself off the cross, then took it and fired lightning as if he was blasting a rifle.
Faith is an invisible good deed forgotten by the doer.
To let other human beings restructure reality in bright, powerful images set to emotionally-charged music is to let them permanently implant their visions in your brain.
The beauty of getting older is you run out of ways to f*ck things up.
No matter how brilliant you are, someone’s sure you’re an asshole. And the intensity and volume of their rage is in direct proportion to your success.
If it hurts your feelings it’s true.
The definition of “wonder” includes “a cause of astonishment or admiration; the quality of exciting amazed admiration; rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience; a feeling of doubt or uncertainty.”
To put art on social media is like putting a baby in a blender.
A high-functioning punk rock soul can dress nice, earn a good living working for a corporation and be an all-around perfect gentleman. Until he hears it. And the charge electrifies his skull. And in that moment he really can burn it all down. Every last motherfuc*in bit of it. But probably doesn’t.
The ultimate disrespect: skip their wedding.
You can’t save the Fallen, but they will destroy you.
“Turn the other cheek too often and you get a razor through it.” – Johnny Rotten
The old time Hollywood writers said great writing “chops a lot of wood.”
What you lack in talent, make up for in heart.
More beautiful young, higher cost old.
Creative discomfort is what separates grandmasters from chumps. The grandmaster can handle the pain til he figures it out. The chump rushes every fart out to beg for a sniff and the assurance it smells like petunias.
Zen symmetry, order, minimalism, openness, cleanliness, carefulness, control, discipline and commitment to craft are beautiful things.
One time I was in a crowded country bar, the Saxon Pub, in Austin, Texas. Jampacked. Raucous loons sending shots of whiskey up to singer songwriters they approved of. Caught in the joy I put my arm around my wife’s shoulder. As I did my hand tenderly stroked the naked iron forearm of a long-haired shit-kicking cowboy seated right behind her. He stared me down hard and cold. I said, “Careful hoss, you don’t want this.” He took in my threat level and with the hint of a grin said, “I know. Dynamite comes in small packages.” The real wisdom, the messages we most need to hear come in heightened moments.
Everyone thinks they can talk their way out of it on Judgement Day.
Knowing what you love, what you really enjoy, what electrifies something deep within, who you really admire, what you really believe without any influence from anybody ever, not your religion, family, culture, influencers, parents, siblings, stars just what you really love and having the guts to follow that trail wherever it needs to take you this, this is the difference between the true greats and the chumps. The greats pay that price. The chumps live with the self-hatred, bitterness and blame. The agony the f*ckin agony that never goes away.
The messages that come in heightened moments pack extra meaning.
Social media destroys the souls of artists by encouraging carelessness, comparison and the need for validation. It’s like placing exotic animals in a zoo, that’s built to turn wild, beautiful, unpredictable, diverse and dangerous things into over-exposed travesties, dead-eyed parodies of what could have been.
We use the same word for a car crash that we do for crapping our pants.
Born good looking is not an achievement.
It’s a sad thing when you’re in love with an idea, on fire and working long hard hours then suddenly the light goes out, the window closes and you know in that second it’s gone. Maybe you can grind it out but it’s gone. Have to guard inspiration as if a maniac’s coming down the hall late at night heading for the sleeping children.
Unbearably cruel for any religion to be untrue.
A gorgeous face with an ugly mind and nasty soul is a particularly virulent strain of monstrosity.
There is no joy in all the great expanse of the universe like that of an old person watching a waitress bring lunch.
Faith in self rises once you realize no one cares.
Doesn’t have to be true all the time if it’s true enough of the time.
You either surf The Overwhelm or get drowned by it.
Some people are addicted to pain, drama, shysters, abusers, self-destruction. They’re impossibly stupid even if they’re smart. They seem unlucky but it’s far worse. They attract every kind of demon. You can’t save them. But they can exorcise their demons if they war hard enough and grace is on their side.
99% of time, it was better left unsaid. (The irony, hypocrisy and ego of these words are not lost on their author.)
Texting is inherently rude.
If you take forever and it’s genius you’re courageous, gritty, heroic and believed in yourself when none else did. If it fails you’re a delusional ape, a hubristic stubborn fool who wasted precious years. Either way you’re the same person.
There’s freedom in irrelevance.
The Great War is between sanity and madness.
Only prayer for civilization is some sort of cosmic elevation of spirit. Intelligence, sanity, empathy, ethics, insight, rational violence in response to savagery and madness, no beliefs without logic, consistency, humility, acceptance of the possibility of error despite even the deepest faith.
The worst people enjoy victories won by cheating and revel in lies.
Except for the carnage, hypocrisy is hilarious. There are people who call themselves things that not only have zero relation to who they are, but what they claim to be is literally the opposite of what they are. Incredible.
Inspiration is higher than discipline and needs no accountability.
A physicist once wrote a letter to his aging mother who feared death. He argued that the Universe is so well-ordered and intelligent that there had to be an afterlife. Otherwise human life would be random and stupid, which would not make sense.
Genuinely religious people shake your foundations. They are so authentic, content, inspired, sacrificial and conscious that simply being near them elevates something deep within you. Religious frauds are egotistical, judgmental, condescending. They feel confident speaking for the eternal creator of the Universe. The louder they pray, the more confident their retribution, the more damage they do. On Judgement Day it would be something to see the look on their face. But standing butt-ass naked before the Lord, facing one’s own Judgement probably leaves little room to consider others. For all you and I know, we’re that person.
If your spouse is not the most important person in your life eventually they won’t be your spouse.
In righteousness, it’s difficult to score faith and action since a truly faithful person would do righteous deeds. Or at least live as righteously as they’re capable of living. So the debate between belief and righteous deeds is pointless. And who’s smart enough to keep that score anyway?
Nothing provokes an extreme hemorrhoidal flare up like a smug Buddhist.
Social media promotes carelessness, conformity, comparison and the need for external validation. The four beasts of the apocalypse of your art, writing, soul.
A famous, controversial, egomaniacal, at times brilliant, at times profoundly decent, at times revolting psychiatrist once said that to call yourself a “Christian” without truly taking up your cross, and enduring all the agony that requires, is deeply problematic. This was his finest moment.
There’s a certain body part that is strangely located if sinful to muss with.
I’ve heard three rabbis discuss the Joshua-led raid on the Promised Land. The Orthodox Rabbi said God sanctioned the slaughter: those killed were hopelessly evil or insane. The Reform Rabbi says God would never give such an order, the Hebrew Bible is in error, that ancient warring people misinterpreted the Lord. And a Conservative Rabbi said the story should be interpreted as a call to adventure, that the moral of the story is to avoid complacency, which rots your spirit, to go forth and do impossible things. To live in this world seems to require, on some level, the ability to decide how to respond to murder.
Comedy is believing you’re not in the game, not accountable for nothin’.
Inspired Rabbis, Imams, Priests and Atheists all feel exactly the same: wise, humble, courageous, profoundly decent and courageously weary, certain but never too certain. These are the Good people. The Fate of the world depends on them defeating extremists of every kind.
Three people it would be nice to know more about: Moses, Jesus and Shakespeare. The sheer miraculousness of the last one is still underrated.
If the meaning of action is so profound, moving and inspiring does it matter if it actually happened? And if so, why?
Successful people can enjoy a filet mignon with a perfectly matched wine while you bleed out at their feet. It might not be their fault. If your howls and pleas upset them they wouldn’t be successful.
A new religion is dawning. Its values, rituals and sacred media are fueled by fitness, optimization, combat sports, violence, technology, hyper-productivity, tool-making, invention, innovation, exploration, building, wealth, sexual prowess, money, power, insemination, epic seed spreading, super-procreation, athletics, influence, domination, excellence, glory victory above all, victory. Its enemies are softness, weakness, carelessness. Its Satan is defeat.
By the time you write it, it’s a genre. We’re all pulling buckets from the same well. It’s not about originality. It’s about purity of heart, commitment to craft, attention to detail, necessity and having something to say about the issue at hand.