Wednesday 9/25/24
"I've written 3 bad poems in the last week, and I love that for me."
"I literally love this for you!!!!!!!"
These people.
"I am, to the best of my abilities, trying to decolonize my classroom as much as I can within academia, which is one of the most patriarchal of structures."
It's difficult for me to conceive of willingly having your entire existence be one of utter nonsense.
What are you doing today?
I'll be decolonizing my classroom.
Oh. That's cool. Why?
Because academia is among the most patriarchal of structures.
Wrote 1100 words this morning for the first time in over a month. Celebrate with me please.
You have to understand something: If someone says that last thing, 2000 people like that person will applaud it. They'll support that person. They'll have no issue with them succeeding because it's no threat to who they are. They're the same. If you can, I can.
But if that person had done anything of greatness, there isn't a single other person who would applaud what they'd done or support them.
Do you get how this works?
This is how everything works now. What does the person of greatness who does great things and creates great works do? Because they are on their own. There is no support, no applause, no one who wishes to see them fare well. There's resentment. That's who we want to see fail and not get anywhere more than anyone else.
Can you imagine me ever saying, "I wrote 1100 words this morning for the first time in over a month, celebrate with me please"?
It's inconceivable.
Everything in the writing world and the publishing system comes down to people in either or both insisting on and needing others to be like they are.
That is the single biggest criteria for success, which doesn't translate to success in the global sense at all--that is, an actual sense beyond simulated, lip-service success in a hermetically sealed-off system--because the work by each person who fits this bill of "alike" enough is dreadful and has no value nor appeal for the world.
When these people see people who are the same as themselves, as dumb as they are, as simple as they are, as lazy as they are, as full of it, frankly, as they are, as bad at writing as they are, as unlearned as they are, as evil as they are--whatever it may be--as blue-blooded as they are, all is right in their world. There is no threat. To ego, sense of self, undeserved position, peace of mind.
Whether you're the people who posted the lines above, David Remnick at The New Yorker, someone that never really did anything in their whole life like ex-Tin House editor Rob Spillman (who actually has the term "literary citizen" in his bio, which of course is code for "I love the system, I hook up the right system people, I require a hook up for anything I get, I suck at writing, system system system!"), this is what it's about.
These people can't handle someone being better than them. The better that other person is, the greater their desire for that person to be held back. If they could wish that person dead, they would. I'm being literal about that. It would give them pleasure and relief, because it would make them feel better about themselves that that other person wasn't around doing what they could never be capable of.
So what do you do when this is how it is?
That's what everything comes back to for me.
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