yourbraindeath

[yourbraindeath]

For better or for worse, I’ve become the man to some extend I’ll always be. Sometimes when I get bored at house parties I catch myself making small talk in my head. It’s not even the palatable kind either. I don’t know why so don’t ask me, sometimes I’m just going over the lines I put on stereo in smoking areas. too many lines will do that to you. But, whatever. The more I realise how I am when it’s just me, the more I make peace with the fact that I’m the only man that hasn’t left me. So I’ll keep talking, even if in my head.

[yourbraindeath]

A bit obvious yet never expected, I’m still so young still so free. It never rains in California after all! But girl don’t they warn ya. It pours man, it pours. So why am I still afraid of letting go of my naïveté when it never really went away? Still a part of me is as clueless as the kid I’ll always be. I refuse to learn or grow, indulging in all the glorious vices of seeing through without care to waste. I’m still swept off my feet riding the wind off every word spoken, I listen. The world has grown, I too have with it as I watched it happen. So much confusion, so many questions. Still unknowns and mysteries abound. Yet everywhere I go I’m still me. Always me, always with the kid in me. I want to show the world to him, all the beauty and warmth far from the shadows. I fear he’ll see too much, coy away because sometimes it burns. Because when you want to see it all, take it in stride to satisfy insatiable curiosities that never fades, you have to sail without knowing where you’ll anchor. And just as you’ll basque in tropical paradise one day, another will be raging like a storm all the same.

[yourbraindeath]

In a 1959 lecture called “The Two Cultures”, the scientist and writer C.P. Snow warned that society was “being split into two polar groups”: those who understood science and those who did not. Worse, the bookish types did not even know what they did not know. Literary intellectuals smirk at the illiteracy of scientists but, Snow said, ask them to describe the second law of thermodynamics (“the scientific equivalent of ‘Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?’”) or even to define mass (“the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?”) and the answer would be a “cold” negative.

[yourbraindeath]

"Do you feel more yourself in the good or in the bad times" asked a friend once, having just cold turkey sobered up (as I'd find out later). I suppose that might have explained why his cynic was especially strong that day, perhaps even more so in his answer. Did I? If so, alike him or on some unimaginable alignment that must sit in the spectrum from that binary 'good' or 'bad' answer. Maybe it's all silly and pointless to ponder as we march to join Keynes in the fabled long run. But just perhaps, the world might be bigger than the sum of its myriad constituents. Becoming something mystical and romantic through its self-experience. It becomes alike mankind. A need for familiarity perhaps that drives the humanoid personification of the world. A drive to superimpose a comforting story to give one's life meaning. In all ages, across all lands: maybe the last bastion on which all share that need for belief in a system that awaits and provides. All want to see themselves as fulling a role in a greater whole: whether in the desire to love and be loved or to uplift, to integrate or to innovate.

So why in all the human stories, are the likes of the good and the great always cohabitated by evil and bad. Sinister grand providence might be the business of the truly draconian powers but the real plague of the mundane malignant rot of unkindness is just self actualisation? Wow, that's a dark thought and a long one. But who cares anyway, if people should be allowed to live as they choose then is it such a problem to allow them to embrace their distaste of humanity? Afterall their cause is a righteous one too. Seriously it is. Children born of war, the scars on survivors, the countless minds crushed under the weight of exposure to all the worst compulsions of mankind too numerous to list here, there or anywhere. They are claimants on the trial of humanity and the jury is still out, dismissal would be inexcusable. But I'd find any snapshot of their consensus to be fleeting if not entirely fallacious.

If given the power to make all men all good or all bad or all free to choose - which way would you sway. More importantly for our purposes, would that be your steadfast view. Of all of you, for all time? I couldn't be so sure of that myself. Not due to an inherent relatability in either argument but as an acceptance that most people might be most like their self in either or neither at any time or all at once. Human experiences are infinitely complex and heterogenous. Therefore one can come to understand and appreciate how beyond the way all are now is a history and prophecy of oscillation ad infinitum. If that be the case for our lenient empathy of mankind's unending rehab and relapses than with time, we should allow ourselves the compassion of understanding. Even if all that entails is absolving it the guilt of surviving through darkness - come what may.

[yourbraindeath]

“Bootlicking: a guide to pre-election British politics”

- Apr 10th 2024

Omg they want to be different so bad 😭🫶🏻 like yass ig King! you’re not like the other papers (4th estate ganggg) 🫢🫣🫣 no but seriously how can you sling at your fellow servile maestros in their service of power-to-be as the ever tarnished banner of your own bourgeois proselytising faces towards a fleeting audience. A paper written by intellectually inbred gentile piggies whose pale fragile faces reminisce the unpleasant visualisation of a certain ham smell. Oh well, if the sinking ship of champagne riding loose cunts lubed by coke n renter’s tears takes you to the bottom of the ocean, I hope your vanity fair of a symphony continues to play for the fishes 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

Commentary on The Economist, a Series:

[yourbraindeath]

Commentary on The Economist, a Series:

[yourbraindeath]

Sometimes strange illusions mist my mind, they are not strong in constitution yet in endless chaos best my reason. not many others are so strongly delusional, i have observed. but others have also at time come face to face with that dark side that lives parallel to thee. naur, it can fr be scary. however, today i am here to just discuss with you a theory. In my examination of such a state, upon reflection that others could and therefore had seen the world from the dark place. for i am sure, in those mad man whose internal convictions were driven from a contained inner source of chaos, there could have ruled mighty gods of mischief. imagine those singular titans of history whose names we have kept in spite of the billions lost to the annals of time. All strange faiths of mankind have somehow been crafted at hand, so much of our setbacks in progression to survival have been by the hand of man. see, in retrospect what if all the civilisational challengers in the characters of hitler, genghis khan, caesar, napoleon- what if those singular power hungry psychopath were so proficiently successful in the war of the chaos to escape their mind that they face it outwards to mankind to put out. what if the fires of creation that burned in them flamed millions in the process. the dark souls of the mind are dutiful enemies.

[yourbraindeath]

what would you sacrifice for peace? it's all we seemed concerned about nowadays, regardless of awareness. in our lives where our minds at war- against everything and not so much, searching for an anchor in a lonesome sea. is it too cliche that the art of modernity imitating life on earth, the price of peace is all that's in our prophetic media. who would accept what in the holy land? how to split the (black) sea? here is one man's thoughts on the price his people could pay for their peace.

Even as our people our superior in our tastes, culture, aesthetics and might, we need neither spread it nor wield it. Recall, you the descendant of great mankind fire forefathers who built up utopias. Where has the wealth of that prosperous British who ruled the seas or the proud Soviet who brought up to civilisation the enslaved serfs?Each in it's own time, drowning in their hubris gambled away on some silly pretension the welfare of their people for the subjugation of countless more they didn't consider truly equal.

What duty or prerogative do we have to press our understanding onto others? Why must it concern us whether they believe or look up to us? If we be righteous in our belief, then let us be that city upon a Hill. We owe no one but ourselves this greatness that we realise. We would content ourselves to our fate on this chess board if it mean's we keep our square polished and our people safe in it's fold.

Bizim o hak o kader.

this is what I believe Ataturk is, these are my best impressions of his payment for peace. there is a reason he is the first leader of his school of non-expansionary nationalism. he believed in his nation, in her people more than any would favour - that was why he didn't press it. if the goal of all patriots is the accomplishment, the proof of their people's greatness, why not pursue it with all vigour and without distraction? if you offer what's best for the negev desert or the post-USSR world, why don't you do so in your part of it? how can you possibly justify the suffering you bring to your people in the process of achieving nothing for them?

[yourbraindeath]

The land scares you. Never realised, yet ominpresent - at all moments there is the tension of reality. The man of history; who you have been taught birthed you, lived in a world freer than our own. In their sights was the land which gave it sustanance and nature which it tried to tame. From the beginning of your story, there is man on land. Yet, now you are in a temple of your civilisation. Your entire life has been lived on the manmade streets of your town and cities. You step foot on land, the true mother and provider only in the chastasided homunculuses in your imperial gardens.

It is forgotten when the war began. Someway in your evolution was the constant wager to settle the earth. In your expansion you strategies advanced survival strategies. But one dominated your success; your agglomeration. There you gathered and gathered until density necessitated intensity. Soon your manmade anchors in the sea began to meet with the pavement of your roads. There - that was the start of the war. From then you only succeeded further, populating and advancing until the breakthrough point that accelerated your modernisation. You formed the imperial core, built on the possibilities given by that industrial mega expansion. There in your cities were feats achieved that concluded the war. An infant birthed in these lands may never walk land again. No - not land in its unaltered realness. He will spend a life trodden on steps in his worldbuild zones.

[yourbraindeath]

the wonders of [as] a samurai jack live review

Oh my god, purposeful. thats whats jumping out to me omg yaasss samurai jack midilf era. wait no everything is burning.... chaos slay ok woahhhhhhhh insanity motifs I like it I like it. love the framing and bold experimental colour grading - I can see the influence this had given to EEAAO.

Brutally deep character building, incredible. yes this is great stuffff conflicted about the child labour god cult tho... they yearn for the minds??

[yourbraindeath]

In my mind you were the first sunrise after my war,

You were my hard won peace and I wanted more.

You don’t deserve the tears I’ve shed on canvas,

I was just another one of your meaningless damsels.

All those nights alone I forced my frown to be pretty, 

So you could say ‘how poetic’ when you looked at me. 

You watched as I whipped my pain into pageant,

But your eyes only saw what was out of fashion.

Even as I write this, my pen digs blood out of my palms,

So the paper can be a rouge that soothes and calms. 

It hurts that you don’t want me, worse that you once did.

I had all I wanted till you took it back as I faltered. 

Now with my frail bones all I can do is crawl back to you.

So I follow the map I carved into my inner thigh for you.

My god, I see how weak this starvation has made me.

I lost myself as the dagger of loneliness tamed me. 

At the end, is a picture of me and you - It says home,

Though it’s empty and rotten like all the ones I’ve known.

I gave up my wants and made your likeness my needs. 

Once I stood tall, now I can’t stand up from on my knees.

This aching inside has rung through my bones and nerves,

All I can feel is where my limbs end in 4th degree burns. 

So I’ll fill up the hole in my ribs with momentary relief,

All I see at the end of the tunnel is my blind belief. 

[yourbraindeath]

The Origin of Religion; Ancient Anti-Social Constructivism

Greetings, 21st century human, you are a fool without a mirror. The forces which shaped your development for millennia - those gods you cannot live without and couldn't live with; you know nothing of them. Always this question of 'how, how, how, boohoo'. You are so narcissistically enamored by the greatness of your forefathers' ability to shape their shit smears into stories, you haven't stopped to ask why and ignored those who did. Always so obsessed with what came before the thing that came before that which thing you were studying and the men whose names have been lost to history who first stood up and did that thing which down the line snowballed from one butterfly to the next and boom the next thing you know a Genocide in Timor PLC. Well, do you want to stop for one moment and exit the reality which you cannot ever truly escape - as both the creator and consumer of this society which you were born into and will die with, that which you learned how to learn and know all the things you know through?

Well, to answer the question which doesn't dawn: why is religion the way religion is? Think of the essence of it - through the survival of the fittest those religions which are the most successful in their narrative creation tells us what humans accept and what they don't. Those things which they seek and will thus build themselves. So of all the ancient religions which existed, whether worshipped in their millions by long-dead empires or the village prophets whose memory has been forgotten by the roadside, why did Christianity, Islam, Buddhism survive and thrive? Because they provided explanations in absolutes. Think of the Greek thinkers who turned men into featherless biped and through thinking and tribulating came to the conclusion that liberal society is built on today; everything is 69. No two people will observe one phenomenon in the exact same lens since no two people saw all the things the other did - the marks left by life on their report cards are not the same and the grades never will be. Liberating, to some. Demonstrable in the same degree to others. While the curious among your people, especially in your century and the following have been set free by the relativity of it all - it was not always so.

You, you especially, have this silly little habit of being anachronistic every time you look in the rearview mirror. The asphalt roads that line your world are not older than 60 years at the healthiest. So why would you look for them 600 years ago? View your elders not as the curious, tolerant, mindful explorers that dot your world today but the fearful worker one bad harvest away from demise. You take for granted that lightning is electrostatic discharge - when all you see is a god of fire and fatality, your curiosity would not be as bright as your death. So to hell with those mirrored men who sought answers without the tools to find them and in their proselytizing looked forward farther than they could see. In doing so, they angered those fatigued believers they had lured out of mindless dwellings by the promise of truth. Thus came the backlash. Now now, don't be so quick to blame your forefathers. When the promise of changing the world is turned on its head, it is reasonable to seek comfort in its retrograde. That is, indeed what all the reactionary movements of your time are. In a way, humans are surprisingly consistent.

So what came of the empty questions? Well, the brutes that bashed the broken thinkers took their place as the creators of narrative. And just as a child with crayons that inherited an unfinished Cezanne canvas would, they colored it in. When a 6 year old in 972 asks 'why are there 7 days in the calender', the answer couldn't be 'because mankind decided as such' - no, that power had been taken away from men. 'It's because that's how long it took God to create the world.' Now, think back to religion - when reading the Bible, all those seemingly random, irrelevant and even redundant stories you came across, all the ones which made you say 'What the hell does this have to do with hell?' Those stories were in fact once handbooks. Religious texts are full of narrative explanations of the world in absolutes because the people who created and preached them were at war. They were fighting against the men who claimed to build the world with their speech. Those stories were to create absolute answers which could give comfort where the thinkers' empty 'we're working on it' promises had failed. And they succeeded. For generation after generation, men were born and buried knowing the absolute answers that gave them comfort and ignored those who questioned to build otherwise.

Of course, it is ironic for mankind to fight against social constructivism... through constructing absolutes. In that poetic twist of idiocy, which your people are known for across the galaxy, social constructivists who dared to machinate with thought were hunted down and eradicated by the social constructivists who preferred not to construct. What does it say about a people when the victor of a grand war of ideology is the astute followers of sloth? Maybe not much, since when humanity acquired the tools to begin answering your questions, you didn't stop until you got to the questions without answers.

[yourbraindeath]

Drive My Car; the allure of the surreal hypermodern

Have you ever watched a film that impresses you. Not because it is 'good' or 'better' but true to the literal world, it leaves its impression on you so thoroughly that your mind harks back to its echoes whenever you see it reflected in your life? Whether it is life imitating art or your innate survival instinct to match and categorize every thought and action - there is a movie once every decade or so that doesn't just documents life on planet earth, it holds a mirror to our own zeitgeist. That is Rysuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car.

Whether or not multiverse theory is real, there are infinite realities in this short breath of air we inhabit at the edge of our history. You do not have the same perception as the distant Vietnamese farmer that harvested your rice bowl, the hypercompetitive NYC lawyer crying over too few zeros in her bonus, or the deaf-blind Liberian baby abandoned at the edge of a forest. Dunbar theorised that any given human could have a stable relationship with a maximum 150 other people. These 150-unit blocks interlock and overlap with each other where any given person is in perhaps 149 other units, but the farther you get from your starting unit - hopping from one interlocking overlap to another, the less recognisable their reality becomes. So in this Western World of ours (including Australia, SK, Japan and etc.), which is the greatest extent of the bubble where any random individual within it can reasonably relate to another there are some ~900,000,000 individuals. That is >6,000,000 social relationship webs or over 6 million realities and universes. Forget the 6-10 'multiverses' explored by the MCU or Evelyn Quan Wang, there are maybe twice that number of realities in your local Starbucks. Would every customer there laugh at the same joke? Or maybe more tellingly of their stark realities, how many of them have had a single common thought between them that day? Once you see how niche your everyday tasks and thoughts are in this over-specialised world of ours, you realise that the portal to another universe is just the doors in your family home.

So in this world of strange, alien creatures that look and sound like us, how can a movie represent or even understand 900 homo sapiens, let alone 900m? Sure, some appeal to the lowest common denominator with great success, Re:MARVEL. Drive My Car is different, it is different like Gone Girl was different. Hamaguchi doesn't stoke our most basic evolutionary reflexes, instead he shows the complex tangled parts that lie behind the curtains we dare not sneak past. He takes the most abstract, weird, irrelevant decisions for his characters while also forcing us to see the movie as real and reflect on why either the characters are idiots or we are. The cinematography, design, pace and sound of the movie are all so consistent and palpable that at once you feel the whole of the movie makes sense. When it turns from the dark dull and natural whenever Oto is on screen to the burning amber associated with Misaki. When the concrete grayness associated with Yusuke's driving becomes the midnight black of Misaki's drive. When the screen gains colour in Hiroshima and loses it again from towards the end. Every weird quirk in the characters, in their interactions or their decisions - they go unquestioned because the film's aesthetic feels like our lives do. Because our lives are dark dull and natural when alone, but burning amber when you're with him or she's with her, our lives are concrete grays and midnight blacks and we chase after colours only to lose them again. Drive My Car (2021) is a modern masterpiece. You find yourself in the look and feel of the movie but can't recognise a single one of the aliens on-screen; so through the search to make sense of them you find the world that consists of more than yourself.

[yourbraindeath]

Guide on selecting the perfect placement for your Ding Yis

So you bought a few Ding Yi paintings and don't know which room to put them in? Have no fear, for yourbraindeath is here. The selection depends on the vibe, dimensions and colour pallet of your painting - here are my recommendations.

Appearance of Crosses 2021-6 (1m x 0.8m)

A timeless and breathy painting with fresh yellows and pinks that draws you in through the subtle vortex created by the soft juxtaposition of colours. It would make the effortless backdrop for your conservatory, hanging opposite floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the gardens.

Appearance of Crosses 2018-1 (2.4m x 2.4m)

A much darker tone in 18-1, punctuated by bacterial shapes and a mystic aura, it is a statement piece for sure. Due to its dwarfing dimensions and transient nature - it is best suited to hang in the library. To spend hours in front of this painting, glancing up to gather your thoughts and to be greeted by 18-1 would be the dream of any modern man.

Appearance of Crosses 2020-28 (2.4mx2.4m)

A magnificent clash of greens, oranges and pinks dotted in grey and set on black; as if we were looking down on some otherworldly bird glide over sunset waves, this painting is an ecosystem of its own. As such, to place it in the heart of the home, across your dining table - angled so that only a greedy man at the head could enjoy it as he ate - is where a rapturous piece like 20-28 belongs.

Appearance of Crosses 2015-11 (2.4mx2.4m)

A more systematic masterpiece, through its kafkaesque labyrinth nature, 15-11 is a beautiful painting for any study. To have it hanging on one side as you type, write or read - the busy lines will be your company.

[yourbraindeath]

More Fictional Suicides

There are many plot tools available for the Gods of fiction - to live, to laugh, to love and to kill oneself. One of these is not like the other: yes it is the latter one, for it is underutilized in media. Because what is it we yearn for in leaning towards the Stefaniesque sweet escape(ism)? It is the extreme simplicity, clarity, monochromatic play-outs of the 36 Dramatic Situations we can produce. We want to be transported to a world so that the dynamic, fluid, irrelevant and whimsical arcs we find our lives playing out in (often out of our control) vanish for the duration of 3 seasons of 8 45m episodes. But to do that, we need a satisfactory ending (don't talk about Killing Eve or GOT I will end it all).

So therein lies suicide. Or, well - suicides. The beauty of fictional death is that it is so much more plentiful than fictional life. The drama and shock of dying at one's own hands can play out in infinite ways - surely enough for us to make plenty of use of it in media. So why don't we? The very thing which makes suicide such an effective tool for emotional transfixion makes it costly - watching our attachment to a character through their development disappear. Whilst the melancholic beauty of suicide can be appreciated in fiction as the last brush stroke, or in well-written media even as the pièce de résistance, that might be difficult for the braindead cows that is the target audience of most mainstream media.

Thus I am in favour of turning to what has been a forgotten dreadnought in the arsenal of a writer. We should turn to the indie films and non-english literature that have pushed the bounds of media creativity since the 60s as they disregarded what we wanted. We should look at all the masterful storylines that have unfolded beyond the gaze of our self-dimmed lighthouse to incorporate their best parts in our works to move forward and experience the human condition from a perspective which we have made taboo. After all, if life imitates art - so must death.

[yourbraindeath]

I hate your vibe boo

Critical thinking in our generation is being hunted like an obese handicapped boy from District 11. The stem of this decline can be traced back to this shining beacon of intellectual discourse and academic peer-reviewing: Tumblr. What started as an attack on well-written literature, in order to cleanse the inadequacy-guilt felt by those who enjoyed shit writing off Wattpad and Teen Romance clearance racks, under the guise of 'Let People Enjoy Things' has spun out of control. I am very much against 'Let People Enjoy Things'. Shit media has to be called out and the cultural critics who discern between the good, the bad and the ugly need to be praised and scrutinised for their services rather than shelved and replaced by 14-year old run Twitter accounts and Letterboxd pages.

Ever the revolutionary movement, at its core this thinking is deeply anti-intellectual. You may not see this as a problem, after all not all media is meant to be thought-provoking. But let's be clear about one thing: good media is. Because good media is personal development in some way or another. Pollock's Blue Poles is a good painting because it visualises an emotion (for me, I often find it to be contained anarchy though I may deconstruct the painting in a later post). Those shitty Mushroomglitchcore paintings made by 'cool indie artists' are shit. Those new processes of producing no-message, no-meaning media, however 'cool' they look are shit. Just colouring in old facades new skin tones or placing emphasis on the identity rather than the art is, frankly speaking, shit. They make you think of nothing but 'Woah trippy'. There is no new perspective, or any story told in necessary elaboration - in fact, most of this 'Let People Enjoy Things' bullshit isn't even adequate enough to stand on its own without the preface of having been created to 'be different'.

There are so many terminally online morons who for the sake of their edgy, contrarian identity will oppose (sometimes for dangerously worse consequences) not only good media but the rational thinking that birthed it. A race to the bottom of stupidity is hitting our people like crack in the 80s, becoming dumber than the other person is in vogue. The 'ironic homophobia' or 'ironic misogny' that is so often used to taunt twinks or white women stems from having 0% critical thinking.

[yourbraindeath]

Hard Life in Vanity

The trials and tribulations of being a princess go beyond what Walt Disney could imagine with his 40s world view of the wild Americana - for the real princesses of the post-Guilded Age would only rise again after the monetarist reforms of the 80s.

So hear me when I call out to you, Valley Girls, Chelsea Boarders, Upper East Side bitches - your life is hard. But you already knew that, because you moan about it whenever any sentient creature looks up at you from in between tequila shots - what you don't know is why. Sure you have some idea, but the reason you are so sad, stupid and empty inside - the reason you can only find joy in desensitising or seeking extreme highs alludes you.

It's simple really, you live in the Imperial Core. No, not the eye shadow palette (though I must admit Periphery Blood Red looks ravaging). I mean you live your whole livelihoods subsidised by the quinoa farmers in Peruvian mountains, silicone implant factories in Thailand and blood diamonds from Sierra Leone. Did you ever wonder the reason why your ceilings are higher than the Duomo di Milano, dug-out closets restocked every season or marble floors scrubbed clean by a small retainer of maids on your Daddy's Lawyer's salary whilst Doctors in Angola (a more taxing job, even if your Daddy argues ‘without cooperation') struggle to gain the living standards of those burger-flippers you look down on.

Of course you didn't, because the same interconnected web of bullshit jobs that consult bullshit venture firms funding bullshit widget startups to solve bullshit problems keeps your brain full of only one thought: How To Fill This Great Hole In My Chest Which May Retreat and Resurface But Never Disappear.

Could I suggest you look beyond your crystal palace to examine why that hole exists? Do not let your therapist (another bullshit profession to be sure in the superstructure of the Imperial Core meant to smooth out the externalities of so-called 'market exploitation fatigue') tell you that there is no reason for the guilt you feel - there is. They try their best, it isn't their fault they're given the impossible job of making you feel better about yourself after you claw out the guts of third world mothers to strangle their unborn children so their slave fathers work harder on rubber plantations.

But please, enjoy that $1.49 Bar of Hershey's. Because you were born in America, that will be only 1/6 of a minimum hourly salary - but 2 hours of a Mexican. Whatever happened to racism, empires and slavery anyway? Just reach for the elf bar, I guess.