Scarier Than an Atheist

School struggles. Sobriety. Shit.

I thought that when I quit drinking and smoking weed I would have so much more time on my hands, but life never has a shortage of problems. If every obstacle in my life were suddenly and miraculously removed, every one of them would be replaced by a newer, stranger one; this is an apparent fact of life, that there is no escape from struggle, for anybody. If no big troubles exist in one's life, the little ones will loom larger, insinuate just as deeply into the mind and cause just as much stress. We are required to feel stress. Millions to thousands of years ago, it was all about eating and not being eaten, but jungles turned to concrete and the danger lessened but the anxiety has not, will not, can not. Bills unpaid, deadlines passed by, dreams undreamed, impulses ignored, prayers unwhispered, dissolved every morning like sugar in coffee, present but invisible amongst the things to be done RIGHT NOW with a thick and crippling urgency.

Maybe I'm not equipped to endure this the way you are, maybe I was made or thereafter formed to just barely scrape by, tackling the day by day and letting the months and years tackle me, overcome me with unattained goals, unfulfilled expectations just like every other American child who was told they could be whatever they wanted to be but was never told how much work it would take, that it wasn't an entitlement or a guarantee but a distant and unlikely option. I wasn't told that failure is very nearly as common as trying, that there aren't enough white picket fences for everybody in the world. I wasn't told that my having one meant someone not having one, that my rise would necessitate so many staying down. Perhaps I can take comfort that my staying down necessitates someone's rise, but it doesn't really work that way, does it?

Writing, writing writing. Or vomiting existentially the thoughts that poison my figurative gut. What do you care? You're nobody, because nobody reads this. Less than a drop in the massive informational bucket that is the internet, I could confess to a million crimes right here and never face prosecution, had I the gall to commit a million crimes in the first place. But I've already been caught for every crime I've committed, already sentenced, already working them off. I'm a lousy criminal, can't get away with anything. Except for anything that I write here--this is all sure to go unnoticed. So the only crime I can commit with any security is thoughtcrime.

But I'm not really original enough for that, I'm afraid. What could I write here that's truly seditious, truly unorthodox, truly challenging in today's world where madness and hatred and ignorance and propaganda are already so conventional, so thoroughly saturated into our consciousness from every channel and radio station that nothing can shock us anymore?

Would it shock you if I said I was scarier than an atheist, because I believe there is a God and that he hates religion? Scarier than a terrorist because I think a revolution will come not with bullets but with bytes? Scarier than the devil himself because I am real?

Dear Charles: An Open Email to Charles Hamilton

aka The Pink Panther

aka Sonic

Everybody has to hate a man who gets to walk on clouds
Because nobody ever dreams to have their feet on solid ground
So the people trying to bring you down will only have to see
That with a change of frame they'll be up here with you and me
Rest easy, be at peace and don't look down at jeering voices
Their protests are the dying pangs of ignorance, that noise is
Just the rattled cough of all our sins, the sickness unto dying
But we are the cure, the weight will lift and all will soon be flying

True to Youth, but Young to Truth
Each nook is a studio and shower a booth
Each hour the power to get Dreams out now or
To Glare in the Mirror, to ataxic to move.

Dear Charles Hamilton,
I am writing you as a great admirer and lover of your music. Your work, your lyrics in particular, have always possessed a certain ethereal quality, of a greater weight in spirit than things other rappers may say, and your metaphors distinguish you as a man with a very unique and beautiful brain. I'm writing you because I worry about that brain, about the great potential that is about to be squandered by the career seppuku you are committing.
I remember first hearing your music, Charles Hamilton, and feeling so fucking invigorated that I shook, excited as a child with an expensive new gift. "Is this the new wave?" I thought, hoping I was seeing the fresh face that hip-hop would take, a return to the mastery of language and poesy as much in thought as in word, as much in the resonance of ideas as the assonance of syllables, that has led to the production of what are now considered "immortal" works of art. I thought you might be going in that direction, not to stand amongst the ranks of Pac and Big (no disrespect), but with Whitman, Milton, or Blake. Taking so much stock in the opinions your contemporary artists, as Ye and Em, will only frustrate you. Be content that, if you stay true to the art and the heart, you will be remembered as readily as they when America is a memory and Hip-Hop the name of a university class studying outdated forms of expression.
The world is very big, and history is very long, Charles Hamilton. And we, all of us, are very, very young. Cultivate your Thirst for knowing and skill, ignore your Hunger for fame and power, and you will be given that which you surrender. Don't take it as a slight against you that neither Mathers nor West responded-they circulate in different globes than you, as you do in relation to me. Don't try to be talked about for throwing punches above your weight-nobody would attempt to compare you to Hov at this point. Don't battle in barbershops-there is a time and place for it, and if you respect the conventions, people respect you.
Focus on your music and words, Charles Hamilton. Find a Voice that is undeniably yours but yet more than yours, that speaks from your mouth but from a larger and broader Mind, and you will see that matters of "career" are transient and irrelevant, purely incidental and without value to people as Artists.
I hope to continue hearing from you via mixtapes and singles. ("All Alone" was great, by the way) Eventually I'd love to hear you perfect and finalize an album. But I think it will take a radical change in perspective, "getting your mind right." Break out of where you're at, change some settings, meet new people, and get a library card. Yeezy's where he's at because he told himself he was the best since before anybody'd heard his name, and it took ten years, but people are beginning to agree. Will you wait ten years?
Good luck.
With the best intentions,
Your Fans

More important than what you die for is what you live for. It is not meant for us to choose the way we die, which is why most of us don't, and won't; but the way we live is ours to choose.

Every breath is an artful stroke, every death the final signature on a masterpiece, and whether we are the painters, or God, is inscrutable, irrelevant.

Maybe better than what we accomplish is what we intend, what we dream, and who we inspire.

The patience of a slave is nobler than the forbearance of a master.

EDIT: This could easily be misconstrued. I am in no way encouraging "slaves" to be patient, merely saying that their burden weighs heavier, which I suppose is kind of obvious.

The smallest particle of matter possesses despite its size a gravitational force that spans the very length of the universe. However gentle its pull, however slight or small, there is not an atom in existence that does not feel it.

Chopin and Alcohol

I am actually drunk. In many ways I pride myself on being somewhat of a psychonaut. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it basically refers to a person who explores the outermost reaches of human consciousness via whatever means they find transcendant. Emerson was a great transcendentalist, and I think had he been more informed by the good William Blake he might have been on to something of the greatest importance.

***Turns out it's very likely that Emerson did in fact read Blake. Though eloquent and intelligent, Emerson knew he was not really a poet in the way Whitman was.

It's starting as an autumn of disappointing youth
Leaves were art are matter and will be shit
You can smell, top of the throat, dry-lipped
The flutter of Black wings as dust sets
And, infected with silence, implosion
You see, can almost feel. Leaves. falling, drifting
Shadows juggled, flickered sunlight
And beat. And beat. And beat. And.
I'm not what I meant to be.
Dreams smeared away, decayed, forgotten
Present tense. Present tense past. Last.
Eyes have black hearts; minds a cruel flavor
Reminiscence cast ahead, a Fisher King's Line
I was have failed become what,
Am not success, who wants success
And who is not what is not me
Or is what who I think?
My reality hurts, the doctor said
Put Ice ON It i said I always fucking put Ice on it I don't come to a doctor if I can just fix it by fucking putting Ice on it at home and he said Put More Ice ON It and i said ok
I guess I grew up yesterday. Maybe this morning
Sometime around the swirl of the coffee
Or the coughing of cobwebs from ambient eyes
I could've sworn I was nothing a few hours ago
fairly certain existence wasn't, oblivion adrift
The encapsulated meaning of the universe
In the void outside of mind
Tiny tremendous ants on march
A slightest spark in the brightest brain
A bite caught flame and screaming
A bolt from the sky, sizzling ecstasy, and ashes
Not here.
Not now.
But I see, can almost feel.