I am become determined, fuelled by some fiery desire to change, to truly improve and become something objectively significant. But to be truly better, you must focus on the aspects of your personality that you dislike. To be able to improve as a person, to grow as an individual, and to get closer to approaching your ideal of self, you either need to withdraw from other influence entirely and become a completely solitary individual or else use your interactions with other people as mirrors, to understand yourself through reflections of them, i.e. Lana’s Jim, “cause I was filled with poison, but blessed with beauty and rage."

If you choose to interact with someone, you must never accept incomplete interactions that aren’t completely beneficial to you, you must consistently refuse stunted connections, and unless you feel that you are actively learning more about yourself through a given interaction - abandon it. It is only through another’s perspective, an alien reflection, that you can look at yourself in a truly objective manner. This exploration must be intellectual, physical, and thereby complete and if the Other is not willing or else incapable of doing that, they are not the mirror that can empower your growth.

SECTIONS

• HONEYMOON A – AGE OF THE AGELESS
• HONEYMOON B – THE BEST BELIEVE IN THE BEST
• HONEYMOON C – LA CRÈME VS CELLULITE VS CELLULOID
• HONEYMOON D – DEITY OF THE DISTINCTIVE
• HONEYMOON E – ECCLESIASTICAL EGOTISM
• HONEYMOON F – FRIVOLOUS FANTASIES

 

HONEYMOON A – AGE OF THE AGELESS

 

In self-imposed exile in an effort to discover myself and the rain is coming down, both on the street and in a little weather box I bought to reflect the inside. Inside and outside, the same – the same as what my goal is, to reflect others within myself. The goal now is the same as it has always been but it has shifted from the subconscious to the conscious recognition that it is what I want to do. If anyone knows about self-creationism, it is Lana Del Rey. She has consciously created Lana Del Rey from dissatisfaction of the lack of mysticism, romance, and refinement in Elizabeth Grant. Through exploration of the innate strengths and weaknesses of the things that defined Elizabeth, she has found a way to focus on changing herself and creating a persona that is perfect in her view. “Lies can buy eternity.” [Music to Watch Boys To, HONEYMOON] The most difficult part of doing this is looking at your personality objectively, looking at what makes you – you, while still being able to recognize flaws and consciously working to destroy them, to metamorphose into something that is better. The thing is is that most people do not look at themselves objectively, refuse to believe that they could be better because that means that they are currently flawed. People refuse to believe that they are anything short of their potential and want to believe that changing themselves means not being true to yourself. The fact of the matter is that is completely wrong. Life is not a race against other people for anyone that isn’t immensely shallow – it is a race of the person that you are at present against the best potential person that you could be. You vs. the ideal person you can become. To do this you need to be self-focused, must understand what your needs and wants are, and why you have them. One must look at once at the present, the future and their desires, the society that seeks to define them, their individual self, their separation, and their relationships – at once past, present, and future to gain an understanding of who they are now and how to get from where they are now to where they want to be. It is a mistake to claim that incongruence here is somehow a bad thing for it is this gap that allows for any sort of growth. “We make the rules” [Honeymoon, HONEYMOON]

The person that you are today is not the same person you were a year ago. Ironically enough, even now revising and editing this monstrous review – I have already changed, I am already not the same person who once wrote sulking for bedroom kids. I am now determined, fuelled by some fiery desire to change, to truly improve and become something objectively significant. But to be truly better, you need to focus on the aspects of your personality you dislike. To be able to improve as a person, grow as an individual, and get closer to approaching your ideal of self, you either need to withdraw from other influence entirely and be completely solitary or to use your interactions with other people as mirrors, to understand yourself through reflections of them, i.e. Lana’s Jim, “cause I was filled with poison, but blessed with beauty and rage.” [Ultraviolence, ULTRAVIOLENCE] If you interact with someone, never accept incomplete interactions that aren’t completely beneficial to you, refuse stunted connections, and unless you feel that you are actively learning more about yourself through this interaction - abandon it. It is only through another’s perspective, an alien reflection that you can look at yourself truly objectively. The exploration must be intellectual, physical, and complete and if the other is not willing or interested in that, they are the wrong person for you.

From another perspective, Lana Del Rey stands for many things simply because she refuses to go along with societal standards, a positive indication that she is an independent, real person. Self-sufficiency and independence means a certain solitude, but it has to be lonely at the mountain-top. If you are in amongst the crowd, you are by definition mediocre, not anything significant, not true to your ideal self. Just look at, Lana Del Rey’s infamous comment how “the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept.” [Rolling Stone, 2014] This holds significance not just for the obvious reason that she isn’t afraid of backlash but something more innate. Truly, feminism, meninism, affirmative action are not just degenerate at heart but also are just irrelevant to each individual person, important only in collectivism. Indeed, if you understand that each person has unlimited potential, there is no such thing as oppression – just individual failure to live up to one’s ideal self. Naturally, the knee-jerk reaction of people that are told that they are failures is outrage and blind indignation. Rather than accept responsibility for their own failures, people choose instead to whine about how they did not have the same opportunities as someone else. The fact of the matter is that your opportunities are absolutely irrelevant – anyone can achieve their goals if they fight for what they want. “I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer… and in that way, I understood him and I loved him.” [National Anthem, BORN TO DIE]

I am doing pretty well, I am working a lot, chasing my passions a lot. The thing that I needed to feel good was to apply myself to something that matters to me, to have a better understanding as to what is significant, and to abandon everything that doesn’t matter to me, anything that doesn’t directly benefit me. Similarly, Lana left her parental home, a life of luxury, privilege, coddled by her parents and moved into a trailer park in New Jersey. Unsurprisingly, the people there had no ability to have influence over her because she did not respect nor look up to them. Similarly, I got my own little place in a Canadian small town. I have a definitive two-year plan to leave Canada myself but I finally understand that the reason that I left to come to Waterloo is because I needed to discover myself, free from other’s influence. The initial decision I suspect was subconscious for both Lana and myself, but over time I have grown to understand that I didn’t hate this place because it didn’t turn out to be what I thought it would be, but rather that I specifically chose it so as to be free. To be in a place that is almost completely devoid of any other people to respect means that you move closer to your inner self, come closer to an understanding of your innate self. “We were born to be free.” [Art Deco, HONEYMOON]

in the rain

staying up to be exhausted

yet romantic

pretty postcard town

or inescapable bear bait

would be wrong to say it's one or the other.

it's the duality that defines them.

town couldn't be a postcard without being a trap, too busy, glitzy, glow and din of nightclubs

staying up if it didn't have a cost wouldn't be romantic

and so I'm in the same town a year on, a few buildings over a few stories up

and yet so much has changed

which is it - a horrible stagnation or a triumphant rebirth. both [2015-10-22, Personal Notes]

 

Is it fear that drives us on or is it what locks us up in place – frozen as the horrible monster of time gains on us? It's hard to say even now whether me staying in Waterloo for this long and planning to stay for even longer is necessarily a mistake. A rebirth of self is only possible with no outside influence – the man discovers himself through systemic avoidance of everything that deigns to influence him through osmosis. For somebody who has lost so much of himself through gaining so many layers, an onion rather than a human, it takes even more time than others to peel them off and see. The peeling is a process – it brings tears to the eyes and yet it is necessary for if you don't know whether your core is hollow and rotten, you can never fix it and work on improving yourself – the only worthy aspiration of an individual.

And so what is that innate self? For an artist who purposely attempts to be mysterious and elusive – Lana’s desires, wants and needs are often obscured, and little winks and tongue-in-cheek quotes are often misinterpreted as being far sincerer than they really are. Lana has perpetually refused to apologize for the things she finds interesting, attractive, which is a highly commendable trait. “He hurt me but it felt like true love.” [Ultraviolence, ULTRAVIOLENCE] I want to create something that I would feel is significant, I want to ignore circumstances and mold myself to be as close as possible to what my ideal is. There is a certain romance in a tough romance – in the completeness of dominance and submission, in pure, uncontrolled passion, in the embrace of one’s own fetishes and desires. There should be no shame in taking what you desire, you should never ever apologize for what you want. If you want something, there should be no explanation, want what you want what you want. Uncompromisingly, if you find being called ‘daddy’ is attractive, then be open about it, treating your relationships transparently. If you want something and don’t get it – say it, if you want something and you take it – deconstruct why you wanted it and what you got out of it. Rather than analyzing it out of shame, embrace it because it is true to your ideal self. It is better to stand out and be passionate rather than be vanilla in the crowd. Lana metamorphosed from a blonde starlet shyly performing to tiny audiences to a persona that sells out huge concerts. Is that not an achievement?

For myself, I have spent and still spend an enormous amount of time and energy on trying to understand what my wants and needs are. Central to them, is the desire to be surrounded by people who are equals. The process of self-discovery has been extremely productive but the idea of being with people that I can respect and find inspiration from is intensely appealing and will be the logical next step after I get a base level of what I want. Each person has different things that are useful to them for growth, for one it could be a trailer park, for another a luxury hotel. Funnily enough, people do recognize when someone is growing, getting something out of an experience and aim to replicate that by copying the experience for themselves. The issue is that what it is useful for one is empty for another, it is not something that can be forced. I know that Manhattan is the immediate next step to fulfill myself and grow further into myself. “Now I am in LA, and its paradise” [Radio, BORN TO DIE]

 

HONEYMOON B – THE BEST BELIEVE IN THE BEST

 

I want the fashion, to be amongst people who can appreciate what is beautiful and can understand haut couture, that the price of something is not the definition of its quality – the reasons why you would buy an Ann Demuelemeester dress over an H&M one. In possession – XS, is our sin. The music-focused people, the ones who can recognize art, the ones who do not just enjoy dipping their toes into the pool, but the ones who swim in it – who live it, create it, write it are enveloped by it. Constant events – from concerts to shows to speakeasies to restaurants and back to fashion shows. “Cases of Bacardi chasers, chasing me all over town.” [Off to the Races, BORN TO DIE] In seeming paradox, there is nothing wrong in finding people that inspire and push you, people to work with, and write for, as long as you are not betraying and losing yourself in pursuing this. It is the difference between trying to change yourself for someone else and discovering yourself through the utilization of someone else. The people that you can respect, admire, be inspired by, need to be abundant so as to not value them too much, co-conspirators – not bodies to be chained to. It comes with the space, the absolute enormity of the city, the anonymity and interchangeability of everyone. Understanding yourself also comes from experiences – Lana’s value is that she has plenty of things that make up who she is now. You must have a variety of experiences, choosing to ride across the country by motorcycle, to dabble in sex trade, both from the glamorous and the depravity of the different ends of society. “Hello, heaven, you are a tunnel lined with yellow lights.” [Yayo, KILL KILL] The person who is insulated and has never gone beyond their little perfect suburban houses is just as pathetic and disgusting as someone who has lived their entire life begging on the streets. To self-actualize you need to have experienced clubbing on cocaine, stimulating self-actualizing sex, endless interesting conversations with interesting people.

Most importantly, the thing that is missing from a majority of people is the drive – as opposed to the horrible and selfish, but self-actualizing people who are ruthless and amoral in their desire to succeed. The people who are fighting for their own end and will not compromise in the pursuit of their goals are increasingly rare. The biggest thing that disconnects me from my current surroundings and by far the biggest thing I despise in the people that I am currently surrounded by is that they are not willing to fight for their wants. In our PC culture, what is increasingly become the norm is accepting circumstances – finding the excuse for your own failure, rather than accepting fault for it, finding the way that life was so darn unfair to you. It is because I am a woman, it is because I am a minority, an immigrant, and so on and so forth forever. The fact of the matter is that every single person has unlimited potential and that is exceedingly frightening. Per Camus, est-ce donc du bonheur, cette liberté épouvantable ? [L'ÉTRANGER] Accepting ultimate freedom of choice and will also means that you are responsible for every success and every failure – regardless of the advantages or disadvantages you have experienced in your life. This is the fault in feminism and all other similar movements that seek to provide blanket excuses for individual failures, they all seek to eradicate that individualism, that very eternal freedom to succeed and thus, conversely, to fail. Of course it is comforting to say that “this is the best that I can do”, but to do so is to deny yourself success. It is settling, it is defeatism, it is living within this created limited reality. It is ultimately choosing to accept your circumstances and choosing mediocrity. Death is preferable to settling, and in some ways, “I wish I was dead already” rings true – what’s more beautiful and Dorian Gray-esque than eternal youth encapsulated by it. [The Guardian, 2014] What is important to do is to learn to balance out your potential and the level of effort that you have put into the accomplishments that you have obtained against how much those accomplishments matter to you. To do the best that you can and failing, is still a failure if the thing that you failed at was and is important to you. The only way that you can feel dissatisfied whilst doing better than your peers, is if you do not respect the people that you are trouncing. I would rather be mediocre amongst the best rather than be the best amongst the mediocre. Even if I were to absolute thrash my current competition, it would still remain completely meaningless as the competition is only relative, not absolute. “But Hollywood legends will never grow old” [Terrence Loves You, HONEYMOON]

Is it absolutely necessary to find someone else with whom to share your own success? The most extremist individualists swear no but it is in human nature to not want to be alone, to have somebody to recognize your successes and failures. Additionally, something that MGTOWs and strict individualists do not respect is the potential and massive benefits from entering a partnership. The right person would be someone provocative - a person must be an independent, an individual whole, a monolith that is not a yes man but an equal as a challenger. Together these two people would be more than they would be separately. The right resounding force would only need to wish something, for it to become real. Is this but a pipe dream? No, because statistics are on our side – with seven billion people, at least some of them must be both significant enough to be individual somebodies but also at the same time to be bearable as people. Some of these meritocratic aristocrats must consequently be ideal matches for one another – these making up the ‘power couples’ that can and have existed. And yet, I am not yet on the search for that – preferring to self-discover and become an individual before entering a binding commitment for mutual growth. If someone is not yet fully developed as a self, they cannot possibly be a good potential partner. This explains the American culture of divorce. When rushing into a relationship – marriage indeed becomes a pair of handcuffs, not sculpture immemorializing a bond.

And so again with the recurring theme - to prepare oneself for the future, one must also consider the past. It is constant temptation for an idealist-romantic to try to make something out of a person that they are not. “But I lost myself when I lost you, but I still got jazz when I've got those blues, I lost myself and I lost you too” [Terrence Loves You, HONEYMOON]. Plenty of people with potential refuse to themselves realize it. Success, just like failure, is a choice, and a stubborn one at that. There are numerous ways that one can choose to not succeed – they can run from it through anti-intellectualism, alcoholism, through running away from opportunity and instead moving into Canadian pastoral towns to escape the insignificance they felt in the great cultural cities of the world. As much as success is to some a glowing green light, ever seductive across the bay, to others – it is a monster, a horrible foreboding sign of death, mayhem, competition. It is far more safe and comfortable to never try and thus to never fail. It is a tempting quicksand and one that I myself have sank into as a youth. Some people prefer never trying and never failing, to trying their hardest and being faced with defeat. It's trying, it's awful, it's sad, but we can't force them out of their own choice. We must simply abandon them as lost causes, like hole-filled boats in a storm, and save ourselves, in hope that we will find somebody that still has the will to live.

It is through our trials that we get to know ourselves. When I began writing this review it feels like a century ago. There have been losses and failures and wins and falls. Revolutions have begun and ended, the things that seemed significant were revealed to be pointless, and the things that seemed pointless became critical. I lost my job, I dropped one relationship and was booted out of another one. The autumn leaves were replaced with deep snow, mild discomfort becoming bone-chilling cold. I write this in a different city than where I began and I at once feel without a doubt that life has changed and yet remains the same. The tragedy of losing a steady income became insignificant. [Personal Notes, 2016-01-05]

Ironically, a facet of humanness leads to that when we find somebody who we feel is an equal – it terrifies us. I ran into somebody who was at once poison and an antidote, as a funhouse mirror version of myself. It is endlessly interesting to look at yourself from the side but it is important to remember that overly lustful looking will lead to doom itself. After-all, Narcissus thought he was looking at someone else too. My reflection can never hurt me because I know it cannot be had, not really, not sincerely. The mirror only contains your image as long as you are close, but it is still vital to remember that it is an illusion, it is not really real. Through studying our reflection empirically, we can learn more about ourselves but nothing about anybody else. It is fun, it is exciting, and it leads to personal growth, but it cannot be said to be a social interaction. Lessons can be gleaned, but never applied – like studying a dead language. And so in the willful absence and avoidance of true relationships, one must stay open and free. “I feel free when I see no one, and nobody knows my name” [God Knows I Tried, HONEYMOON] Lay down ground rules for the self to ensure that exploration continues, even if up a mountain. Make yourself abide by strict laws for self-development: for instance, “no more commitment even if I fool myself and think I want it.” No more saying ‘love’, much more making it. Say “let's keep this casual” - see many people - for jealousy is insecure and childish. Say, “I know I fuck them best and if I don't then I'll get better.” It will whip you to fuck, and you will fuck with whips to whip back. Jealousy is the mark of a man unsure of his superiority. One must learn to embrace it. The ideal self versus the current, ad infinitum.

This is mirrored by the duality of the American Dream and the great “Land of Opportunity” and the very real stagnation, suburbia, the acceptance of being middling being so profound that an American leader has literally adopted restoring greatness as their campaign slogan. If America has lost its lustre and greatness and shine, it was through the choice of individual Americans to settle for picket fences, unpaid loans, and families of four failures. Happiness is akin to soma, sadness is not happiness, happiness is contentment and one must have contempt for content in order to be a person of content. What is easy is never right and what is worthwhile is never easy. But when burgers are $3 a piece, how can we feign surprise that the nation is obese, disgusting, and choking out culture with all the strength left in their pudgy arms.

And to what does the superior person cling rather than the burger? They set individualistic goals, little mountains for them and their ego to mount, climb, and look from the summit. As I write this, I am fulfilling at least two of my 16 for the year. I am perched in a tiny but endearingly cute Icelandic café, trapped behind a full crowd of very serious Icelandic adults. I feel the freedom of being thousands of miles from my home base, the tension of alien culture and landscapes, but most of all I feel excited, alive, on fire with the energy of individualism. I am free of society by being in it, I am in touch with my self by challenging it. Paradoxical living is the way for growth and being silent in the place of noise is being an artist, and being loud in the place of quiet is the unmistakable sign of the lack of either artistry or growth.

16 for 16 Goals

1. Decide on and make progress on bachelor

2. Write something significant to me

3. Find someone to grow with mutually

4. Get more involved with artist community, perhaps integrate into another city music scene and write reviews for and party with people that feel significant

5. Visit a sex club

6. Go to Burning Man

7. Do more alternative modelling

8. Look up and see other stars, discover some revelation through that with other people in New Zealand at a hostel, and/or set up for an exchange program

9. Do more and better drugs – psychedelics

10. Do more and better sex – dominance

11. Get Inderal prescription as well as more X

12. Read and write a whole lot more - reading allows me to better define myself and writing allows me to discover the things I need to define

13. Go to sleep earlier, it's free happy drugs

14. Buy even less, travel even more

15. Leave the continent at least once

16. Find something - a spot, a person, a drug, an activity: a base, that always makes me feel safe and happy no matter what. Something I can return to

we appear to be different, but we know ourselves we are the same

HONEYMOON C – LA CRÈME VS CELLULITE VS CELLULOID

 

Of course each individual has their own set of unique goals and strivings, with valuable individuals sharing nothing of the same due to their virtue stemming from unflinching distinctness. Expanding on this, society as a distinct group entity does not exist. Indeed, society is a collection of individuals – but that does not mean that it can have feelings, or norms, or standards or anything that should in any way affect the strong, dedicated individualist. Think Socrates and his hemlock. Genders are equal as society doesn't exist. The individual, whether they identify as a male, a female, or a Mars lander, can achieve anything – they are not limited except for by their own drive. Whether or not certain people have it easier or harder is utterly irrelevant. Success doesn’t guarantee further success for its issue, and similarly has time and again shown that people coming from the most mediocre circumstances have built up and cultivated their own objective success. Feminism is retarded by virtue of trying to improve things for all women, while hurting and refusing to recognize the success of specific women. Mediocre people are defined by their fear of being undefined/mysterious and by their desire to be defined by some subsection – a flag to hoist – of feminism, of nationalism, of shared passion for a genre, etc., etc. The true individual must remain undefinable, impossible to pigeon-hole into one comfortable little round pit.

For this reason, ut aiunt “social issues” or gender politics and the like concepts disgust and bore both myself and Lana. Indeed, here is only the individual, who has or has not improved life for themselves – the individual always having unlimited potential. The individual must also refuse to apologize for who they choose to be whilst refusing to fight for freedom of expression as an unnecessary undertaking. The individual’s existence, or rather will to be, is proof enough of that freedom. The ones who choose collectivism are those who have no meritable value as individuals – making them conveniently easy to identify, such as Trudeau with his feminism, or Sanders with socialism.

The ideal society is one that deigns not to destroy the individual but rather to play to their strengths, to allow each person to do whatever they want to specialize in, to value them based on the actual value of what they want to contribute and as a result reward them correspondingly. This comes as a by-product of the embracement of separation of the different classes – the great with the great, eternally separate from those that do not attain said greatness. That society would not punish a successful businessman for his success with higher tax, would not artificially inflate the value of a no-good artist simply because they are not succeeding and would lead to individual success, preserving their liberty, their desires, and respecting their goals. If the artist is good, they would be rewarded based on the merits of their talents as reflected by their work, and if they are not – then they shouldn't be rewarded for it. Instead, they can choose to pursue painting as a hobby, while maintaining their focus on that which they can do best, their most productive and useful work. The problem with contemporary society is that those who fail are rewarded for failure with a pat on the head and a hand-out and those who succeed are punished by making them pay for all the leeches and on-lookers. If one chooses to fail (remembering that failure, just like success is an individual choice), they should be expected to pay the price for doing so. Objectively speaking, different people will contribute in different ways and amounts and so the remuneration for different people would logically be different. A visionary like Elon Musk is worth a hundred, if not a thousand average people and it is logical that he would be rewarded respectively. The best part of all this it that it would happen organically, with no intervention necessary. What is valuable would necessarily be rewarded and what has no value would be disregarded. As each person makes their own individual value judgement, it would be ensured that all manner of value would be regarded, preventing the erosion of the individual for the purpose of creating a society.

With the concept of character creationism versus societal erosion – if properly upheld, with time, individual goals and emptiness grows more refined, a better understanding of why we feel unsated. Whatever it was that I or Lizzy Grant were missing – whatever it was added in the respective characters – “I’ve got nothing much to live for.” [God Knows I Tried, HONEYMOON] At the simplest level, the most base or basic needs are met and things go one of two ways. On one side, it's an endless, meaningless pursuit of beating others on the more banal side of things, fucking, earning, doing more. On the other, it's a subtler search for not doing more than others on those basic aspects but rather finding what matters most to you and may seem insignificant to others. This is the real self-discovery, the things if achieved by you become significant to you but remain pure in their self-introspection.

And so the logical next question is what it is that I or Lana actually want which is clearly a difficult question to address. Related to the desire to be everything at once, be an all-rounder. Due to the unlimited human potential, I refuse to be just one thing. That very disconnect between the current reality and the potential that I have is the thing that both whips me endlessly forward but also a major source of my discontent. It especially puts strain on interactions as if something means so much and has the potential to be everything it balloons it far past what is typical. Not everyone seeks atypicality, exceptionality, as it also reminds them of the fact that up until this point they did not exist in this way. To generalize, it ends up falling into one of two broad sections: both being defined by the fear of taking part in something meaningful, one more reflective and the other proactive. From the reflective standpoint, choosing something that could be significant must mean a dismissal of everything that was not. From the quintessential description of the American Dream, Gatsby requests “Just tell him the truth — that you never loved him — and it's all wiped out forever.” The reason that that is impossible for an average person is not because they value the people in their past but rather because they are not willing to admit their past failures. Just like when a woman is transitioning from her early 20s to her mid-30s, her past starts haunting her – the previous mindless, endless sexual interactions with frat boys at parties coming to light and being compared against the objective civilized present that has suddenly appeared in front of her. Of course, no respecting mate would accept those past transgressions and yet through that same denial, the average woman refuses to apologize for them. The problem is is that the past is of course a product of her past choices, and the consequences of those actions have caught up with the person. Accepting that responsibility means coming to terms with one’s objective inferiority, acceptance of being middling, undesirable, used up. Your past is your choice but the consequences of those choices are also your responsibility. When put like that, of course it is easier to drown yourself in denial, in blaming everybody but yourself. Accepting responsibility for your own actions comes with a side dish of accepting that all problems you have are also your own fault and nobody else’s. When one’s dissatisfaction with their current circumstances becomes apparent, that is a very sobering reality.

And like within Plato’s Republic, the enlightened have the natural human desire to share their enlightenment, unfortunately resulting only in the frustrated wrath of the unenlightened, of fear and loathing. The desire to provoke a response, a sort of intellectual-cum-societal awakening is near universal amongst the roughly 1% of society that is cognizant of their own individual self. However, due to the fact that the majority of society is a lost cause – these attempts fail. In order for someone to discover that they have stepped in dogshit, they have to themselves smell it and find it on their shoe. Other people pointing out the smell would only lead to the person’s resistance to the fact that the person smells like shit. Nevertheless, I cannot say that it is easy to cease all attempts to educate others. The fact of the matter is that caring about how other people can affect your life or respond to your thoughts and beliefs, only leads to a diminishing of the most important thing a person can have which is their awareness of their individual self and that can lead to a giving up of one’s individual ideals. Giving up one’s ideals for any reason is the telling mark of a mediocre, unprincipled person. Exposing that another person is absolutely wrong about most of the things that they have accepted as their own beliefs acts as a sheet in the face of a bull. Instead of a grand realization, the bull charges the matador. It is a surefire way to not only provoke attack, but also to risk losing your own superiority: “We won’t survive, we’re sinking into the sand.” [High by the Beach, HONEYMOON] How can someone that has accepted other people’s beliefs as their own ever accept that? There are many ways that one can be corrupted: a man can become a white knight cuckold by allowing himself to be influenced by feminist society, an exceptional individual can become a liberal SJW, a blue-blooded individual could allow themselves to be subjected to poverty. Evidence of this can be seen all around – the proof is in the pudding – look at how many men pay child support for other men’s children or raise another’s children as their own, look at the destruction of Western Europe through their acceptance of the Muslim horde. Indeed, nearly everything that masquerades as progression is in itself regression and further corruption of long-instilled civilization-defined ideals. By tearing those up, we destroy not ‘oppression’ but rather the last bastions of civilization. The truth stings, the truth hurts – and the worst part is that provoking and stinging the bull ultimately leads only to a goring. Being a gadfly to the bull leads only to a venti hemlock Frappucino. The best that can be done by the better class is to succeed as much as possible for themselves and let the lost lemmings be lemmings in their charge forward, right off the edge of the cliff. In some isolated cases, there are small signs of hope, such as say the long overdue rise of the National Front in France.

Returning to the two previously mentioned classes:

And what differentiates Lana and I from those middling, from the two classes, from mediocrity? It is a fact that for everything that you decide to take on, you decide to give up everything else – commonly referred to as opportunity cost in economics. Thus, the choices we make over time come to define us, specifically by not the things one did, but by the things one didn’t do. The problem is that every single time that someone chooses the normal, the logical, the boring choice which can be appealing to our sense of safety and self-preservation, we give up the exciting and thus become gradually more boring. A characteristic shared by the people that come to stand out from the crowd are the very people that due to a lack of a sense of self-preservation typically do the opposite: choose the dangerous and the exciting, over the typical. Of course, over time those experiences add up and in the end you become a person that has lived through, experienced a much more diverse set of things. This in turn shapes you into somebody that craves that high – needs those very same experiences to grow, to feel alive, the crack of danger. It is only when those people are trapped in situations where there is nothing to lose, where there is no present and real danger that those people start to shrivel and decay. From my experience in exile in a tiny university village as opposed to even Toronto, and in Lana’s sheltered, walled-off communities of her childhood – these things do wither us. The ones that end up being not mediocre are the ones that cannot live with it – that do not have that instinct for safety and self-preservation over standing out.

HONEYMOON D – DEITY OF THE DISTINCTIVE

 

This is similar to the pain of privilege, the very real gap in satisfaction for those that have the lower levels of their Maslow pyramids complete. The higher you go, the more difficult it gets, and it is so lonely at the top of the mountain. Indeed, the problem of someone who is homeless, starving, or in danger are easily solved. It is simple to reverse those and that is why the struggles of those that grow up in more savage cultures but then move to the developed world disappear so quickly. However, when the underlying cause for one’s suffering is rather the need for self-actualization, that is not a problem that is as easily solved. Indeed, the more intelligent a person gets – the more acute his suffering due to an increased awareness. It is more difficult to let go and cease thinking which is the actual desired goal when a person drinks or uses substances.

On the other hand, the very same substances – the alcohol and drugs – can be used to drive further exploration of self. This is a common theme both historically with various members of the crème de la crème, and with Lana Del Rey. Without a sense of self-preservation, a person is able to live more hedonistically and have that greater wealth of experiences, including the use (and abuse) of various substances. A person is defined by the experiences they have chosen. Where the average person seeks to have the safety and comfort of those experiences that lead up to an increasing sense of security for the future, the non-average person is certain of the inevitability of their own success and instead chooses to have experiences that add flavor to who they are – the very things that make them stand out. Analyzing counter-culture communities across different pallets of society, from fetish clubs to private interest clubs, to yuppie hipsters to Highline to Brooklyn – all those different groups which are often at conflict with each other but yet all loathe the mainstream together – they all share the characteristics of valuing unique and memorable experiences over achievements. When you compete and are driven forward, one should compete not against the taller white picket fence of his neighbor, but rather how they are doing against their potential self.

It is the baser needs that are universal – basically everyone who is not deluding themselves or practicing self-denial wants to eat well, be sexually sated, and to travel and have diverse experience. The higher needs on Maslow’s Pyramid are far more individually discrepant – some want to create a historically significant film, some want to write a great novel, some wish to only attain wealth and establish a dynasty. These ends are necessarily different for different people and yet they are common in the sense that the worthier an individual, the more necessarily lofty the aspirations. As people recognize the unlimited potential of their ideal self, they must consequently adjust their goals and as they come closer to those goals that were previously set, the bar shifts up again. The glass ceiling is non-existent, a creation that is self-serving for those who want to believe in some artificial limitation. It can be comfortable to a mediocre person to feel that this is it, this is the best that I can ever possibly do but it is a lie that one tells oneself. In truth, there is no limit and that is terrifying – to know that no matter what you have achieved, there is always more. This is not to be mistaken for dissatisfaction or something sad at all – for it is this limitless greed for more, this need for more achievement that distinguishes the best among us from the rest. And so, “Old age – not death – terrifies me.” Indeed, what can be more horrible than being ostensibly still alive and relatively well but to no longer be able to, or no longer be able to want and to be driven ever onward. The person that is content to be stationary is a person that is content to die here on the slope – to never keep pushing for the ever rising summit. The climb is solitary.

Despite the knee-jerk label of sociopathy, I admit that I have never felt the desire to be connected with others unless I receive a direct personal benefit. Simply put, other people bore me unless they stimulate me in some way. This is a common sentiment among those who aspire to be greater than their peers, who desire to be surrounded by the best people. Of all my goals, a desire for community that is equally aspirational, motivated, and thus successful is almost chief amongst them, as with Lana Del Rey. I want to be an equal partner to somebody who is equally hungry, starving for personal success, and insatiable in that pursuit. A power couple, to put it in a nutshell; an aristocratic power community to extend the analogy. However, this desire for connection with the limited few does not mean that I have a desire for connection with just anybody. Pickiness in general is a characteristic of both the well-bred and also the ones that end up being meritable. This pickiness in the people that you associate with is critical – success attracts success, and those with successful friends are usually successful themselves. If one is not picky in the company they choose, they risk being dragged down to the lowest common denominator, to be corrupted by vile ideas like the acceptance of settling, and to be held away from their self-actualization. Only those people that drive us forward can deserve to stay in contact with us, all others must and do inevitably fall by the wayside. Interestingly, this happens organically as those people feel the difference between you and so it is a process that happens autonomously, without any need to push for it to occur.

As for ordinary people, their trials and tribulations are utterly no concern of mine nor anybody of merit. I have long been waiting for reality to catch up with me – for me to pay the price for all the things I have gotten way with the in the past – but that time of great reckoning still has not arrived. I have never been made to feel the responsibility for any of my actions, and thus through the process of affluenza, I myself no longer believe that I will ever be made to be responsible. All other people and their accomplishments are utterly irrelevant to me – it literally does not matter to me whether or not someone contributes something, really. If one does not contribute, it is easier for me to dismiss them. If one does, then I can only learn from them. At the end of the day, other people do not concern me enough for me to worry about them. Why would I want to actually help somebody? Social issues and the like are utterly no concern of mine with the exception of “I scratch your back; you scratch mine” instances. Some people have worse circumstances than others – that does not mean that every (read nearly all) youngster would be worthwhile to save. Even if the majority of natural resources were depleted – I say so what? It is entirely possible that life would actually be easier for me. Perhaps not, but regardless I would succeed in the circumstances if I am worthy of life and liberty. If I didn’t then it would be my own failure. Circumstances are circumstantial. The Great Depression was a time of lucrative opportunity for the worthy.

My current main position is resident provocateur, an agent provocateur, if you will. My aim is to provoke something in my readers and followers – I can without fear say that I have as judged both by the metamorphosis of those who I have grown close to and the death threats of those who are too far gone to be changed. Mutual love and connection – sounds a little idealistic to me. I do not fear judgement and I believe in what I believe absolutely. Mutual vulnerability can be beneficial, I agree. If you reveal yourself to each other, then no trust is necessary. It is in the common interest of both people to not hurt the other due to the ability of each to hurt the other – a Cold War love of sorts.

Intense perhaps? I want to be not somebody else but a constantly improving version of myself. The authentic self is an illusion – we are constantly morphed by our surroundings but at least I am in control of my osmosis. I feel no empathy towards other people’s happiness – jealousy and inspiration, sure – but happiness for their success – never. I am the exact opposite, akin to a planet – cool and collected on the outside, a constant fire within. Settling for something less than ideal is impossibly sad. “I'm rising up, rising up, my hot love's full of fire.” [Freak, HONEYMOON]

Idealism is omnipresent amongst the people that are worthy of remark. Those that dismiss the worthy are the same that proclaim their love for Sanders, and the 99% - hiding their own inferiorities and disgusting mediocrity behind the shell of collectivism. One Trump is worth a thousand, nay a million idle poor damned socialists. The ones who are at the top are there either deserving it on their own merit or from their parents. Whereas the mob is the opposite – they have shown that they deserve nothing. Ayn Rand – she knows love, the human spirit, everything that makes one fulfilled and thus lead a worthy of life. Her definition of the ultimate value is precise and right. I quote from her Objectivist Ethics: “The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one’s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself—the kind that makes one think: ‘This is worth living for’—what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself.”

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group — whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ``the common good. ´´ No dictator could rise if men held as a sacred faith the conviction that they have inalienable rights of which they cannot be deprived for any cause whatsoever, by any man whatsoever, neither by evildoer nor supposed benefactor. [Reader’s Digest, 1944]

There is nothing that the mass could possibly achieve that would be worth the destruction of a single worthy individual. I know that being passive can never give me nor anybody worthwhile, true happiness nor satisfaction. The choice to settle is always there, hiding there and beckoning at the very edge of my consciousness – the very human laziness and desire for safety and security – but I know that for me to feel fulfilled, I need to be moving. “Too much I strive, so I just ride.” [Ride, PARADISE] I do things because I want to improve myself – to always feel that the person I am today is somehow better than who I was yesterday. There is naturally no ceiling to this process – but it is very inward-facing, I could not care less about the world as a whole. In my opinion, the most empathetic thing a person could do would be to give not charity but useful, relevant advice. People should help themselves and that is the only way one can improve. The thing that makes me feel the happiest with other people is when I feel that through interacting with me they have learned and improved somehow – I feel equally ecstatic when the opposite occurs and it is my main/only motivation for pluralized social interaction.

As they say, friends are the family you choose. However, I have no people that I am particularly close with for extended periods of time – but I do think that that is part of growth. Speaking hypothetically then, I would want to believe that I would meet people with whom I would want to feel a familial-like bond and at once an apartheid from all others – a selective, exclusive society of merit. Besides, being by myself is highly useful – when I am with others, I am a sponge; when I am alone, I get to decompress and process what I have sucked into me. My internal self is an endless living ocean (Solaris), I feel no desire or need to discover and feel other’s feelings – I am overwhelmed and fascinated enough by mine own – others’ do not interest me. The more you interact, the better you understand yourself, the better your chances to find someone that is right for you. There is nothing at all wrong with having plenty of deep+sexual partners and rather fear of that makes a person middling, average, dull, one-dimensional, etc. Meritocracy is not so different from aristocracy and I find comfort in that. Better the oligarchs than ochlocracy.

There may be eight billion of us but I would argue only a small fraction of that number are significant in any way. Cosmic insignificance I do not take seriously – all there is for me, is me. Nothing else matters and nothing else ever will to me – cogito ergo sum. Even if Archimedes already discovered water displacement it does not in any way diminish my own independent discovery of the same idea when I was four years old in a bathtub. I claim not to be a ‘Great’, but I am The Great One to myself. To quote a person of rare brilliance, “And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I’.” [Anthem, 1938]

An example of the distinction between the worthy and the mediocre is that there objectively exists both good and bad art. Some individuals know the difference, others cannot. Not everyone can be a brilliant critic and it is silly and juvenile to expect the average, mouse-colored people who take the subway as a part of their morning commute to get to the jobs they hate every day to understand anything of beauty. They are already dead – perhaps by self-sacrifice for their wives, husbands, families – they are not worthy of the concerto, instead of the concerto not being worthy of them. If one does not recognize the objective beauty of a Matisse painting, the fault lies not in the painting but in the fool in front of it. The human mass is like any mass – dull and disinteresting. Something objectively important and significant would often go unrecognized by the mass at all and there is no shame nor sadness in that. And if it is recognized, well then it can be recognized on a lower level, like Malevich’s Black Square being a pretty shape, or Lana Del Rey’s work being pretty music. The question is what do you extract from it, where do you want to go?

To answer an elusive question in one word – what does the future hold? Improvement. At what cost? At the cost of everything and anything, for to get closer to one’s ideal self is worth identity, is worth any price that can be demanded, up to and including a few pounds of flesh. As I continue to write, I'm on a journey of improvement – moving from the past to the future through the present, moving through Eastern Europe to get to the West and I know that I have made the right choice. There are always going to be forces that will want to hold you back, that will want to grip on and hold you back, that will oppose your advancement, that will want to either protect you or purposefully harm you but either way the result is the same. If the presented choice is either alienation or companionship at the cost of improvement, it is obvious that individualism is the choice to make. Importantly, individualism does not mean solitude as a necessity. Those that are similarly self-minded and driven will never attempt to hold you back and will challenge you in their own detachment. The eternally virtuous activity of societal detachment can be a group activity. Those who know their own value do not cling to others and those that derive their value from others will conversely latch on and never let go. If you wish to improve, you must embrace it and be willing to give up everything, ironically so as to not compromise.

 

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden

[THE FOUR QUARTETS, 1935]

 

 

HONEYMOON E – ECCLESIASTICAL EGOTISM

 

Solitude is only feared by those that have very little to offer – either due to the fact that they are scared of loneliness or because they are bored by it. In either case, the reasons behind it speak of nothing but negative things of the sufferer of those symptoms. If they are fearful of being alone, that means they do not know their own value – they need it to be constantly reaffirmed by outsiders, to be defined by their companions and lovers. The superior person has no fear of being solitary, because in that independence they can achieve greater things, for instance through travel to new places, through their knowledge that establishing new contacts is simple (Radiohead: Making Friends Is Easy) and that regardless, there is nothing to be ashamed of or to be afraid of in being temporarily alone. Indeed, the benefit of being alone affords them the chance to grow as a person. The other case of being bored, shows that they themselves are not interesting. If a person cannot find entertainment from themselves, and do not find themselves fascinating, how could anyone else ever expect to be interested. That's not to say that we should become all introverts and avoid social interaction. Au contraire, their very independence gives them the opportunity to be free to establish contact with anyone they choose. The only situation in which case that grand liberty should be abandoned is if they stand to gain more than they lose from teaming up with somebody else. This situation is rare for anyone, and even more exceptional for those who are themselves exceptional. Naturally, people who are above average will find it even more difficult to find an equal partner who is worthy of their commitment.

With time, our goals and our emptiness grows more refined, a better understanding of why we feel unsated. The baser or more basic needs are met and things go one of two ways. On one side, it's an endless, meaningless pursuit of beating others on the more banal side of things, fucking, earning, doing more.

On the other, it's a subtler search for not doing more than others on those basic aspects but rather finding what matters most to you and may seem insignificant to others. This is the real self-discovery, the things if achieved by you become significant to you but remain pure in their self-introspection. It is obvious that each person has different levels of base potential but at the same time, seemingly paradoxically, any person can achieve anything they want to. When one says that this present situation is the best that I can do is settling, is defeatism. The goal is to learn to balance out one’s level of potential and the level of effort that they would need to put in to achieve a certain goal. One should always compare themselves only with the accomplishments of the best, and also how much each achievement is valued by them. Doing the best you can and failing objectively, is still a failure if it's important to you to be successful at that thing. Thus, the reason I consistently feel dissatisfied is because I don't respect those people in relation to which I’m doing better. I, like any person of merit would rather be mediocre among the best than be best among the mediocre.

In order to achieve that, one must be principled and ruthless in pursuing their goals – be willing to do anything and everything, to sacrifice anything in order to succeed. A core principle is “if you want something you must take it.” Another tenet is that one must take personal responsibility for every aspect of their life, both one’s triumphs and failures. For instance, I have chosen to live in effective exile for now. The fact that the physically and intellectually stimulating people are rare here and the resulting suffering is exclusively my own fault for choosing where I live. I know that I can and must go to Manhattan and be amongst the people where it's common, and it is only my responsibility to get there. On the other hand, submitting to circumstances and the people that surround oneself are signs of weakness, of true mediocrity. When you live in a place where each person even marginally different seems significant, it is important to stay objective, to compare everyone even in this wilderness to the best people in the world. When one does this, the surrounding community is revealed with people’s true colours as a common whore. There are many places to sell your self – people are selling themselves short at cafes, on the streets, in boring jobs - incomplete. In a place where people are fulfilled and that is the standard, the line of “you won't work another day” [Swan Song, HONEYMOON] rings bright and extensively true, like in Galt’s Gulch. Of course, it is far easier to critique others rather than yourself but it is vital to remember to hold yourself to not just the same harsh standard as everyone else, but even to a higher one so as to remain superior even when relocating to a community of people who are used to being outstanding.

But whilst one remains here, there needs to be a reminder that to invest here - in furniture or people is a mistake because they have no value, they only serve for experience to be discarded when you can afford to upgrade. That you must start working on getting out of here, you've got to at least look at the prices of the things that are better if not replace them yet. And yet when I go, I'm gone. Nothing here's of any real value - the people are shadows in Plato's cave, meaning everything means everything subjectively but worthless in an objective perspective. A bear trap of a town, a place devoid of culture but don’t let it get you down – a place where people matter too much and you latch on for dear life to anyone who is in any way interesting because there is such a lack of cultural circles. A good place is somewhere where interesting people are numerous, disposable. Having an oxy/GHB/E/etc habit is far preferable to somewhere where nothing feels satisfactory, a severe, sad, sappy shortage of places where one can meet singers/songwriters/artists/creators. Dreams of NYC/Montreal until…

And here’s the kicker, in the absolute perspective, we can always “run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning”. Maybe we will find ourselves shot face down in our enormous pool, or perhaps we will find ourselves reaping the benefits of all the little seeds we have sown throughout our time. However, this fine lofty ambitious goal is never a means to itself, for the journey – not the destination is the point here. As we grow up and improve and achieve greater and better things, each past achievement becomes utterly insignificant, unremarkable and this, above all, is a good thing. Indeed, if we can look back on our past and smile, embarrassed, we know that we have improved, we know that we have stretched further and done more than we imagined before. This bemused embarrassment is a critical goal – a critical sign of the fact that we are better now than before and this must always be the case.

The state of affairs is that socially, we have abandoned the principle that those that contribute deserve things and those that don't deserve nothing. The problem with modern society is that the din of people screaming that everyone is entitled to a certain quality of life and other such nonsense espoused by the increasingly dominant Social Justice Warrior class is overtaking everything else. It is vital to remember that a person is only entitled to what they put out. If you excel and contribute in a larger way than others, then naturally you deserve more. If you contribute nothing, you deserve nothing. All grouping of people together and measures and programs resulting out of various forms of collectivism serve only the interests of leeches – of people that recognize and love the fact that they take more than they give back. They relish this and do everything to expand their reach, to crush the successful and exceptional and make them part of their flock of sheep, and to grind everyone down to the same awful level. When everybody is equal, nobody is exceptional, everyone is equally miserable, detestable, and disgusting.

There is no beauty like the shining beacon of a person who is a leader, who dares to stand out from the crowd, to shine a light forward and stand alone, a shining colossus of a man who has created himself and owes nothing to anybody. The giant cannot exist amongst giants, because for there to be one giant, a thousand if not a million must be completely ordinary. This fact offends SJWs to no end, and they do everything to devour, destroy, pull apart the foundations and to rob the individual of their rightful privileges and exceptionalities.

There is nothing possibly imaginable that could be more offensive to the middling, mediocre person that a person that is superior could be afforded special privileges and that in general all people would be judged according to the merit that they have and what they contribute back to society. The people whining and who are the biggest crybullies of them all, are more than cognizant of their own shortcomings. In fact, they happily embrace them under the slogan that all people should be treated equally and that this is somehow fair to those that are better than the average. To the superior person, there is no peaceful, blissful joy in the mad press of the crowd and being mediocre. The only people that could enjoy such a thing are the people that are objectively below the average, and thus want to hide away in a mass of people so that no one sees their own flaws and many shortcomings.

It is critical to remember that you can become whoever you want to be – your own idol, a la Lana. You can develop your own personality with any characteristics that you choose. If you want to be extroverted- go out to clubs and make yourself uncomfortable. Anything can be done with determination. The two-part struggle between knowledge and fulfillment is the key. The more you know, the closer you can come to self-fulfillment, the more you discover – the more you grow. It's a form of closet pragmatism, of only doing the things that are valuable to grow your knowledge, and to utterly dismiss all things that aren't valuable in that sense. If something doesn't grow your understanding of yourself what is the point of that knowledge?

On the other hand, it has always been windy, cold, and lonely at the mountaintop but that has never challenged the beauty of the view, the grand feeling of superiority, the endless human desire to achieve it and conquer the summit. That is what we need, that is what we yearn for, and it is in this eternal stretching forward that lies our greatness, the superiority of humanity. And is this not to be celebrated, shared with an equal?

HONEYMOON F – FRIVOLOUS FANTASIES

 

Sehnsucht is what we feel on those endless still nights when the world seems asleep at 3am and I feel like I am the last one awake, wandering the park in search of a je ne sais quoi. Do the stillnesses of our lives have inherent idiosyncratic meaning of are they prescribed them? Are our longings meaningful or are they themselves longing for meaning, for definition? The midnight sun shines down on me and the cold touch of concrete fills me with memories of sitting down in the cold, once, only steps away in the physical, a few bounds in terms of time, but utterly unreachable, eternity ago in terms of reach.

Porn parodies become more significant than the original film. Is it possible to see meaning in the devoid of meaning, or is that illusion, perversion? Once upon a time I remember being cold and alone, without a place to go in Toronto except for a 24-hour diner, hoping that the morning would be more clear. Now I'm neither conscious of the cold nor feeling alone despite the situation being much the same. Can never enter the same Rubicon twice – but is it because we are different or is it because the river itself has changed? Riding a horse endlessly to come to the prime relic of Dashoguz province; I want to feel significance in the stillnesses in my life but does wishing ever make it so? Is listening to another artist in the midst of a review for another one cheating or is Ellen Allien simply pushing me forward? I long for more than a direction forward, I long for meaning in the present – without a presence. Perhaps the presence is simply spectral, joined with the ghosts of our old places – closer to the ancient ghost towns and their buildings than the here and now. We are all haunted by our individual phantoms. However, it is rare indeed that we do not seek to subvert those feelings but want to embrace them instead, not forget our past and not relive it, but to grow closer to comprehension. I seek not closure as I leave this place, but rather to understand why I want it. I am not looking for a way to close out the review, but a reason to keep it going forever… And so I cross the same dilapidated train tracks, under construction or to be abandoned. I am not going towards my own green light but am running in place, waiting for it to turn red. The momentum and the determining reasons are there but what's missing is an understated understanding of what it is I am running from, what am I currently surrounded by. It is all foggy, it's all crazy and clever, and, it's all alright. If we don't know where we are, what we are leaving behind, well then we can never truly leave. Everyone's felt that what they want is out of reach but it's more strange to feel that where they are right now is itself a mystery. The place where I am is, and has always been alien to me, or is it me, am I the allien myself. The question haunts me, like I haunt this place – hovering above the ground and the modicum of real integrated life. Is this me – will this be what I am and always will feel – regardless if I'm in Paris, Reykjavik, Brooklyn, SoHo, or the Bronx? Is it a tragedy or a strength? Do I love phantoms because I am one myself – eternally undefined and undefinable – too many labels to pin down, no cozy square box perfect for me? The elusive elude me as they are wont to do, but that is why they attract me. Up close, even the most beautiful stars, will burn your eyes out.

I am eternally offended and deeply annoyed at the thought of purposefully limiting yourself so as to make it easier to settle for someone. That thought literally enrages me. People are of course ought to be replaceable. I HATE the idea of a “one and only connection” – it is a silly, quaint, small-minded idea. One connection cannot be proven right unless contrasted with many others – that is like arguing that you should buy the first handbag you see just because it is the first you see. That is profoundly ridiculous and wrong – you should see as many as you can – and then buy the best – the Prada, the Goyard, the wondrous – not some trash that happens to fall your way. Most people are worthless – not worth energy or time. I would rather die alone. Being with more people gives you more life experience – gives you wisdom, stories, ideas, makes you grow. It is a silly thought to think otherwise. We are dualescent in our nature, the best of us have a developed mind and brain. We have our physical body and our everyday self – the one that needs to eat and fuck and shit but we also have a soul, our longing, the side that eludes and precludes eternally. It is this side that goes beyond want, it is this side that wanders and wonders about why we want at all.

It is important to remember that love is not about accepting somebody despite their flaws, not miserly, maggoty settling for something that is corrupt and imperfect but rather about finding somebody that fulfills you completely, somebody whose flaws are your benefit. If two people benefit each other extensively and together become more than their separate parts that is worthwhile love. When two people settle for each other, they do so at the cost of effacing one another’s potential, they destroy beauty for the feeling of not being so alone. If someone fears solitude to the extent that they are willing to denigrate and deface their own beauty of independence, that is pathetic and sad in its own way. As I often repeat, never ever settle, and where could this be more important than in the search for one’s counterpart. How could someone be okay with destroying their potential for greatness unless they do not value themselves and hold their partner to the same brilliant standards as they do themselves. Some people are only destined for mediocrity because they accept it, but in reaching for something greater, in reaching for the top, their partner must not only be striving for the same, but be striving for something compatible. A person’s lover and especially a partner must be driven forward by you and you must be driven forward by them in turn for it to be a fruitful, mutually beneficial interaction. If both people don't gain significantly from interacting, there is no point in their interaction. Others might not be able to perceive that mutual gain – Lana’s semi-abusive relationship with Jim, her ‘hands-on’ love drove her to create and self-actualize further.

And then there’s Lana’s own dualescent personality – the duality of her is recurring in many parts. Lana is the virgin whore, the successful failure, the real fake. I am unabashedly obsessed with Lana’s idea of romance – the romance of her, and her romances. It is not evil to be detached but it takes a certain detachment to be capable of evil.

Lana is the virgin whore, a perfectly encapsulated manifestation of the Madonna-whore complex where she is at once a little girl, a Lolita – something depicted as innocent, as quintessentially American, an all-American sweetheart – the Nancy Sinatra of our generation and at once something else entirely. She is both distant and elusive and hard to pin down but she is also something entirely attainable, someone who used to sing about exotic dancers and gentleman’s establishments. Her lackadaisical but altogether fearless embracement of the grinder parts of American society showcases a deeper beauty. Beauty emanating from both reachability and at once completely unattainability. She sings about fucking her way to the top, but at the same time she stated that she wished that that were true. “You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.” [Complex, 2014]

Indeed, Lana Del Rey has come a long way from who she used to be, a certain Lizzy Grant singing at dive bars and living in a New Jersey trailer park. She flopped on her first album, then scrubbed it from existence, then released a second debut, an obvious impossible oxymoron and yet Born to Die was an effective debut for an artist, if not for the person. How is this possible? Simple, Lana reinvented herself and her persona never failed in the past because she did not exist before. She was widely stated as having failed her Saturday Night Live debut performance and then suddenly she didn't. It was predicted that her career was over with each new album she released and yet here we are on the third and no signs of slowing down or stopping. All three albums released under her moniker were successes.

How can Lana Del Rey be successful or genuine if even her name and her appearance changed entirely, cry her many critics – from feminists to Pitchfork nay-sayers? Who says that you can't become your vision of yourself is my response. If Lana Del Rey was actually Lizzy Grant all-along how could she so earnestly deliver her vision of self? The fact that her name and her origins were all false do not stop her from being an earnest and complete person (persona?). Indeed, the best of us are able to fine tune the aspects of our persona that we like and destroy our characteristics that we despise. I have certainly tried to do this extensively and have myself been in a state of perpetual change. Who I am today is not who I was a year ago, certainly different from who I was three years ago, and entirely unrecognizable from the person I was five plus years ago. Does that mean that I'm somehow fake? Perhaps, but I know myself that what I am able to do now, who I am now, and the successes that I have experienced since then were simply impossible back then. With each small adjustment, with each beat of my paddle on my sculling trek, I have become a better person in my own view. The fact that I have been able to sculpt myself and become closer to my ideal self is hardly a weakness, but rather one of my biggest strengths.

Lana’s idea of romance is similarly amorphous and difficult to pin down for the entirety of its duration. It is at once physical and abusive, and also deeply loving, faithful, yet uncommitted. Lana’s idea of romance is simultaneously all-encompassing, ever changing, toxic and poisonous, but also mutually productive. It is love in a way that is itself ever-changing – lively, vivacious, emotional, and deep. It ascertains that both people come out of it different, changed, more developed. It is exactly my idea of romance – detached but deep, longing but never paralyzingly binding, always focused on mutual growth. A functional, good relationship is when both people act in their selfish self-interest but without meaning to benefit each other through doing so. This their self-interest becomes a mutual one without intention to do so, without this disgusting giving up of self-interest for the purpose of a relationship which is wrong. In a partnership neither person should give their autonomy. They should both remain complete individual selves. No tyrannical self-immolation is necessary contrary to the Hollywood common man view of love. This is the vision that I have kept to.

Taken to an extreme to showcase the importance of selfishness in love, that both people should be acting in their self-interest to achieve a productive interaction, the pregnant mother, to be a worthy human being, should fight for what she wants, for her own human life. Giving up her dream (job for an example) for anything else makes her less than her ideal self. If her dream job was not her principal goal then it would be correct, but that is confusing two distinct things – her goals (whether it is the dream job or a family) and what is right (which is whatever she prefers vs. whatever society deems to be right). To mean to put shackles on her and make her do as appears right to you – that is collectivism, that is the desire to eliminate individualism and is despicable. The journey to accomplishment is the only worthy goal. “Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.” [The New Intellectual, 1963] I am happy not because I have achieved things but because I know that I will go on to achieve more. Thus I know I lead a more than mediocre life. That idea of compromise is idiotic – we either find a good partner or we settle for one worse – truly exceptional people do not end up alone except by choice. I offer a quid pro quo, which to a worthy person is just enough – neither too little nor excessive. I am not 99.999999% of people. An attachment stemming from mutuality is possible – both people benefit in the relationship and both grow within it. In a good relationship, once again, no one sacrifices anything because the goals and aims are common. Love must be complementary, never complimentary. Love is simply our token of greatest reverence and respect – this one, is the one I choose to spend my time with despite all the other people out there that I have or have not met. I admire and am attracted to my lover – but not because it is some arbitrary person but because that person has proven their mettle as the greatest character I have met. Unconditional love is foolish – how dare you assign value to something that holds none? Love is an entirely selfish mutuality – it extends to physicality, spirituality, and even emotion. The only healthy, deserving and good love is one that is an equal trade. All else devalues either one or both the members of the relationship.

Self-sacrifice in a partner is despicable, no matter the reason for it. A partner willing to give up their life’s purpose for any reason, even for myself, loses all my respect forever. A person that does not fight for their highest purpose is not worthy of life at all – they become a brute, an animal. In an ideal relationship, neither partner shall ever feel they need to sacrifice anything – the togetherness that defines it must work towards their individual goals, not sully and destroy their individuality. A relationship is between an individual man and an individual woman – each fully formed already. Letting go of any piece of your individual self is both disgusting and utterly unnecessary in a worthwhile partnership. Mutual attachment does not mean smothering one another. Simply put, the two are both better together than apart. It just makes sense and that is the attachment - it is self-contained and self-dependent, there are no sacrifices here, only the beauty of logic and good decisions. Once again, in a proper relationship, neither person ever sacrifices anything because it is not necessary. If it becomes necessary, then the relationship switches from being a comforting hug into torturous, twisting, throttling ropes. How could anyone not believe that people can have feelings for each other without the profound idiocy of self-sacrifice?

Simply, two people can grow together and learn something of themselves without the silliness of emotional attachment and etc. My ideal end-game is to extract out of a person the most I can for myself, and I happily offer myself in return. Is this utilitarianism, sociopathy?

Admittedly, that idyllic view of love is somewhat rare and it is important to recognize when a person has the potential to be that partner that improves you and makes you grow and when they don't. It's all too common as I found in my own experience to loaf in an undefined state, never quite reaching the potential for interaction, to never discover the actual complete potential of the relationship. Some people do not want you to know that for different reasons – for instance, they might put on airs of being important, complex, and significant as a means of hiding their own deep-set inadequacies, to hide how uninteresting they really are. What is important is to be not afraid to sort out where something could go, whether it is just a pleasing interaction, or whether it is something that goes beyond simple hedonistic pleasure. The thinking of the lesson goes like this:

“If I come and take what I want and fail then I figured it out.

If I come and take what I want and I get it, then I succeed because I got it.

If I didn't come and try to take it that's the only frustration.

My frustration only comes from not trying.

 

I want to take that's certain. I don't want what I'm given which has been the challenge. But in order not to be sad and in this loop, I must take what one wants to give and also give something back. To take a kiss, and not be given it - but knowing that the other person wants it taken. As long as two people grow together, that is essentially love.

I'm bored when I'm given things, and only taking pushes people away. Therefore, I must find people willing to give what I want to take, and give back what I want to put out there.” [2016-01-01, Personal Notes]

 

Recognizing that not all relationships are going to turn into something meaningful is just as important as understanding that some can become more meaningful than you could ever imagine. Understand and engrain the concept of “No more saying "love", much more making it.”

So keep things casual - see many people - for jealousy is insecure and childish. You must know you fuck people the best and you must know that if you don't then you’ll get better. Taking that concept to heart, has whipped me to fuck, and I'll fuck with whips to whip back. Jealousy is the mark of a man unsure of his superiority.

No one deserves to have you, the persona and the person, to their self, unless they are themselves potentially deeply valuable to you. You must be like the BIJ who is eternally elusive, eternally to be shared, and impossible to hold. Relationships aren't meant to be distractions to your passions and work, but rather further inspiration to grow.

At the same time, at my essence I remain an idealist. Striving for the best, and not settling for less is accepting eternal dissatisfaction.

 

I know what I want and indeed everyone must in order to have a vision that they strive towards. With large wide-open eyes, with doe-like dreaming we stand, not caring for the ever approaching, ever fading and growing never ending white lights. We want those large wide eyes, I want that diminutive nose, tiny almost non-existent chin, small lower face. Is it not insanity to repeat the same actions and try for something better? But to me, crazy eyes are a must; a certain insanity in one’s striving and reaching; a feeling of not belonging to something physical because the current physical must always be inferior to the potential future ideal.

 

I don't want somebody to wear a choker because I ask them to and to appease me. I want somebody to wear a choker because that's what they want to do and that just coincides with my own desires. I don't want to change to suit others, and I don't want others to change to suit me; doing so is insulting to both people. I just want a natural fit, a totally organic non-settling that comes from an ideal match – two jigsaws not forced together to fit but just making sense to be stuck together.

 

When I thought about where I am it made me sad not just because I felt so disconnected from my ideal, which is natural, but also because the whole crowd that I'm in was so far from this ideal for living. It made me miss those whom I haven't missed in a long time, made me want, nay painfully need this kind of lover - a musician, an artist, a beautiful independent person who is an individual, who does what she wants to do. I am and thus desire someone who is driven by and for art, music, drugs, culture, fashion. It reminded me of the banality of the place where I am, of the distance between me and Burning Man. What's more I fear that even if I were in a cultural city, counterparts aren't omnipresent. If one resigns themselves to be an individual, it is all the more difficult to find an equal. An idealist only wants the ideal and the ideal is by definition a minority of any group they're placed in.

Idealists are alone in a crowd, but can they feel more together with the select few? No, for it is natural and normal to always feel separate, so distinct. What I don't want to be is to be so distant from this underground, from this musical “in circle” it sometimes cuts me open. Like Berninger, "I'm missing something.” [Abel, ALLIGATOR] I want to belong to this unknown kuklos, to a group of likeminded culture jammers, of people who are equally posers and proud and fascinated by this.

I’m not afraid to say I need to be in this group, I need to be with somebody who equally needs this and together maybe we can defeat this feeling of separateness, of solitude atop the mountaintop. I can and I will go to New York, and find hip shows and clubs. I can feel confident in that my counterpart is doing the same, for they equally feel this luring desire for a place that's populated by likeminded and equal individuals. But right now I'm still so far, so damn distant from this dream of belonging, so far from culture and cultured people. We mountaintop-dwellers want to find someone who's also part of it, who loves shows, who loves indie music, somebody I can do drugs with and go out with and with their friends. A group of people who are all in love with the same thing, with the same ideal for living.

I wanna be with someone who has their trap house friends, who has their collective to go out with, find music, chill with musicians, do drugs with. I want to be with them and their friends and acquaintances and fuck shit up with, relax with, talk music with, and trade lyrical references with. I want to be with them, go out to theirs tours with, discuss music, and complain about culture with. Those who understand and love the experience of listening to vinyl on the floor, lit only by the soft light of the needle tracker.

But settling for someone who is missing your needed qualities, can be lonelier than being alone. I know what I want, I understand where I am, and I understand where I need to go. It's time to move from the hot pavement and into the grass metaphorically, but actually move from the grass into the pavement. If I'm in Lizzy’s trailer park, it's time for me to go into “LA and [its] paradise.” [Radio, BORN TO DIE]

The starriest eyes are the blindest, but those who have nothing to lose have everything to gain. And so I will go out alone into America, will go raging into that good night. In this hyperreality, blessed be the chameleons, the fakers, the ones who reinvent themselves. Nothing comes to those who wait and nothing may come to those who take action yet, but it's better to fail having tried than to never try and never fail. Gaze into your soul and state what you want most of all and then state why you don't have that yet. The cliff between the current reality and the future ideal is formed by a river- it's the Styx, it's the Rubicon. “Didn't anybody tell you this river’s full of lost sharks?”

Would you rather die alone, decrepit, surrounded by those who can't wait to split your inheritance or at a feast? Be the poison in the naked lunch, be the finnegan. Turn into the snat. Be a character in a Shahnazarov film.

How can one become closer to their ideal self and further away from the very grounded reality that they are stuck in? It’s not an easy nor a brief process, it is not something that one can do overnight. Look at yourself objectively, analyze who you are and what makes you distinct. Then, sort out everything that you dislike about yourself and everything that you admire that you are missing. If you want to be passionate, then that’s what you need to work at acquiring, at incorporating into your personality, faking it until it becomes a very real facet of you. What is real right now needs to be thought about, gradually recognized, and erased and rewritten as suits for the narrative of the new created you, of your Lana rather than your Lizzy Grant. Look at where you want to be – what do you want, what do you need to do to get there. What do you desire truly the most and why? Define yourself rather than accept the definition bestowed upon you. Become not only an individual in your own right, but the individual who has the characteristics you want to have. You can be anyone but you need to know who you want to be. Are you separated or defined by the groups that you are in? Are you the person you want to be or are you finding yourself becoming the person that others want you to be? No matter if the people you are trying to make happy are your loved ones, family, or strangers – it is always wrong to change yourself to suit others. Look in every direction of time – simultaneously the past you want to modify, the present that you are changing, and the future you wish to accomplish – figure out who you are and how that differs from who you would want to be in an ideal world. Distinction between your real present self and your ideal self is incongruence but it is a good thing – it defines the room that we all have to grow, our infinite human ability to metamorphose and to become anything we want to be, to do anything we want to do. Our bases may be different, but our limitless human potential allows us all to do anything we can envision. “We’re gonna get free” [Children of the Bad Revolution, LANA DEL REY]

 

Be at a cocktail party full of equally snobbish people as yourselves who hold the same fascinations and passions. Make the scene Long Island. Gracefully disappear in a room safely full of your common interest equals, be at peace and safe to not have to search and yearn for your droogs because the room is full of them. We are who we want to be and we are surrounded by likeminded souls who hath become their ideal selves, manifested. Through hard work, time, and effort – through a conscious metamorphosis: we exist.

Some people give themselves to religion, some people give themselves to a cause, I have to give myself to goals. I’m Mr. November.

 

And so all good things must come to an end… the bad ones just go on forever. At the end, being akin to the beginning I cannot help but fetishize the outlying, the distant, the obscure. Pitcairn, Bouvet, Tristan de Cunha, all have this appeal – that obscure object of desire – to borrow a phrase.

But yet, simultaneously, the very end of things – the very last outposts of a once great empire, the last colonial impressions of the British as the sun set, the last page of a review. It’s all reclining, it is all fading into insignificance, but, strangely, oxymoronically – I find the path of what I want through looking what was lost so many decades ago.

No, no one so obnoxious as Martin Luther King Jr, or Gandhi, or Churchill guides me forward and inspires me to live – it is rather something more like James Gatz, a certain Alice de Janzé that lends me an ideal for living.

As the ever-advancing clock of time ticks forward to 100 years since my family had last experienced its rightful position, I know that what I want. I want to find my own Happy Valley set – to achieve and to hold my rightful decadence. And it’s what a green light, another side of paradise, purgatory, penance for sin – for in possession is our sin. But so that is the goal and thus so it shall be – a modern aristocracy, a new formation, a new set civilization, somewhere on the periphery of the world as the rest of it can go to hell and burn. Zero-sum: the worse for you, the better for us. Now to find other issues of decent stock and the temporarily despondent, deserving, delicate blood. Trouvez votre idéal…

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