blew it up, i guess i don’t
have self-control
life imitates art or something like that. i’ve been feeling very reactive lately.
re·ac·tive
/rēˈaktiv/
adjective
showing a response to a stimulus.
"pupils are reactive to light"
acting in response to a situation rather than creating or controlling it.
"a proactive rather than a reactive approach"
having a tendency to react chemically.
"nitrogen dioxide is a highly reactive gas"
when i say i’ve been feeling very reactive lately, i mean i am acting in response to situations rather than creating or controlling them. i feel compelled to respond. and the compulsion oftentimes feels chemical to me - my heart rate increases, my hands shake, i can feel my face get flushed. i’m not seeing red necessarily, but i am definitely turning red. something deep within me is physically stirring, it is an anxious emotional eruption. one might say, i am triggered.
i just need to take a breath. i need to touch some grass. maybe if i boil a pot of water, let some herbal tea steep, light some incense, and put that floating points and pharoah sanders record on, the one featuring the london symphony orchestra, surely i’ll feel better. maybe if i listen to some floating points. floating points. that’s right, they’re playing boiler room in new york… damn yeah, boiler room. sucks that they got acquired by kkr. kkr’s that global investment firm which according to a quick look at wikipedia, is the largest stakeholder in the conglomerate that offers housing spaces in territories belonging to the state of palestine, investor in israeli cybersecurity companies, weapons manufacturers and companies that are dedicated to purchasing data. kkr is also a major investor in axel springer, which owns yad2, an israeli classified ad site, which runs ads for developments in the occupied territories. it’s that one. they acquired a company called superstruct entertainment, which owns boiler room. any profits made from those high energy 360 dj sets get funneled back up to those investors, the ones investing in a genocide.
i’m turning red again. damn, i wish we could all just focus on the music. it’s supposed to be about the music! there are so many evil companies out there, ya know? maybe i’ll just listen to an ambient playlist on spotify.
oh yeah, spotify. the music streaming platform that pays me cents for hundreds of thousands of streams. the one that effectively destroyed the music journalism ecosystem pushing the discovery of new artists and bands, replacing thoughtfully written features and reviews with curated “editorial” playlists… the same playlists that became so successful that now people willingly let AI decide what songs to play next for them. and at this rate, that queue might be filled with AI-generated music too. damn yeah, spotify. the company who has that ceo… daniel ek. the guy who is also now the chairman of helsing, a defense technology startup. helsing sells software that uses artificial intelligence technology to analyze large amounts of sensor and weapons system data from the battlefield to inform military decisions in real time. last year, helsing began manufacturing its own line of military drones.
my heart rate is increasing.
for the record, i canceled my subscription to spotify a year ago.
that compulsion, the sensation of it - it’s getting harder and harder to pacify. the breath-work and chamomile tea aren’t really working for me anymore. i’m the type of person that fixates on the things that elicit this emotional trigger. in 2011, a tornado hit my house while i was in it. it was and still is the most traumatic event i’ve ever experienced. i became an expert in weather forecasting for years to come. i checked the weather nonstop. over a decade later, when i notice the clouds looking a certain way, i still immediately check my phone for my many programmed weather alerts. i feel compelled to deeply understand the things i’m up against.
lately, i’ve been fixating on cognitive dissonance.
cog·ni·tive dis·so·nance
/ˈkäɡnədiv ˈdisənəns/
noun
psychology
noun: cognitive dissonance
the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. it is sometimes referred to as a mental discomfort that results from holding conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes.
i’ve been simultaneously fascinated and disturbed by the way people can so easily say they believe in one thing, and act in ways that make it really clear they believe in something else entirely - in a way that directly clashes with how they hope to be perceived. i’ve been observing this mental phenomenon so frequently lately among strangers on the internet and even in people i consider peers or colleagues of mine. noticing it so often that it’s a constant topic of conversation in my home, because i cannot shake wanting to better understand it. strongly feeling the urge to become close to this thing that i think i might be up against.
i’ve been mouthing off to people i hardly know, sending lengthy voice notes to friends, posting grating instagram stories suggesting that “clout-hungry brain worms have infested some of your skulls.” i’ve been unfollowing profiles, deleting contacts, shaming the inconsistencies. some might say, i’m crashing out.
did you know the merriam-webster dictionary has an official definition for “CRASHING OUT?”
to CRASH OUT is to become suddenly, uncontrollably angry or distressed.
the reactivity that was once a response to a situation now becomes a stimulus. an ouroboros of frustration and disappointment.
all because i didn’t have a little self-control?
but is forcing myself not to react to something that bums me the fuck out really “self-control?” it definitely feels like a type of “control,” but there’s no way it’s coming from the “self” if i’m actively fighting against an intensely emotional response within me. if “crashing out” is just allowing myself the space to express how i actually feel when the feelings may not be positive, then yeah bro i’m fucking crashing out. and may the bridges i burn light the blunt, or whatever the saying is.
i know it is very common in the dance music and dj space for people to push false positivity, convincing their peers and fans that the music is meant to be an escape.
mu·sic
/ˈmyo͞ozik/
noun
vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.
"couples were dancing to the music"
ex·pres·sion
/ikˈspreSHən,ekˈspreSHən/
noun
the process of making known one's thoughts or feelings.
"she accepted his expressions of sympathy"
music is an expression of emotion. expression requires an understanding of your own thoughts and feelings well enough to make them known. a song can transport you into a different emotional state, but “escape” is not an emotion.
i make “dance” music, but i love when my music makes people feel things - nostalgic, introspective, horny (ideally all three in one song)! sometimes the introspective bits conjure up other feelings that aren’t necessarily positive, but that’s okay because feeling a range of emotions is part of our humanity. finding creative ways to express those feelings - turns out that’s art.
i recently read jia tolentino’s new yorker piece, “my brain finally broke.” she somehow beautifully expresses what it feels like to be alive (and thus online) lately. after a few paragraphs about how “the phone eats time; it makes us live the way people do inside a casino, dropping a blackout curtain over the windows to block out the world, except the blackout curtain is a screen, showing too much of the world, too quickly,” she naturally brings up the many atrocities happening recently, and the ways we are succumbing to defeat.
“There has been real resistance directed at forcing an end to this unbearable situation: people have marched, written letters, harangued politicians, occupied buildings, blocked highways, got arrested, set themselves on fire. At some point in my own tame letter writing, it occurred to me that I didn’t expect a single word to meaningfully reach a human being. My senator’s office finally sent me a form letter this past December, telling me that Israel’s goal was to “minimize the loss of innocent Palestinian lives and maximize the amount of humanitarian aid to innocent civilians in Gaza.” (Immediately after October 7th, Israeli authorities publicly called for a “complete siege” on the “human animals” in Gaza, and for the total cutoff of electricity, water, and fuel; Israel has repeatedly damaged infrastructure in Gaza and blocked humanitarian aid.) A chill sets in at some point, then a grimness, then a detachment. I kept writing, but it felt like a ritualistic impulse, or like throwing coins into a fountain when I was a child.”
she eventually wraps up the piece after touching on the way AI is distorting our concepts of reality:
“The image appeared on my feed in the midst of a bunch of bullshit, and then I refreshed. And, as intended, it disappeared.”
when i read her article two months ago, i remember feeling comfort in knowing that i wasn’t alone in my defeat and dissociation. i can’t be sure if it’s the sun’s heat persuading me to be outside with people in real actual life or if it’s the way a self-proclaimed democratic socialist won the NYC mayoral primary with the most total votes in history, but something within me has changed since then. i don’t think simply reaching an awareness of what’s going on externally vs internally is enough anymore. if we are all so “aware” of a permeating hopelessness, then what exactly do we have to lose? we already know the promise is false, so why aren’t we standing for anything? at the very least standing for our own beliefs?
it’s more clear than ever to me that small actions compound, and i think a defeatist attitude from someone we consider a peer may actually be more harmful to progress than the people actively working against us. we can’t keep chasing an overton window, we need to stand firm in what we believe in for more than a week. and yes, there’s a lot to keep track of! there’s shit going on that none of us are talking about. there’s shit going on in our own country, our own cities, our own lives. all of that can be true at once and it doesn’t mean you have to stand for nothing.
maybe i’m misplacing my creativity when i’m “crashing out” online. maybe the “self-control” isn’t pretending everything is normal when it absolutely is not, instead it might just mean re-directing the compulsion and focus toward truly understanding my own thoughts and beliefs, so i can meaningfully engage in ways that may help other people to know exactly where they stand too. i have control over the intention i bring to difficult conversations, my creative work and through movement on shared dance-floors, and i also have control over when to set a boundary for my own well being.
sometimes when i let an emotion overcome me until i am compelled to act on it, i feel like i’m violently thrashing around. an anxiety grows twisted roots in my brain, it scares me when i consider i may need to go in there and pull them apart. now, i know when i have to and as any decent dj knows, there is no release without tension.
blew it up, i guess i don’t
have self-control
