rant
A group of kids was huddled underneath my building's alcove last night. They were sitting cross-legged around a guitarist. There was a hint of talent in the chords he played. He was strumming a folksy tune while he sung weak lyrics with a distressed voice. His voice sweetly brushed against the ears like a soft Autumn breeze. There was a mystical power in the song he played, the crowd was proof of it, but I was too far away to hear this power. I wanted to join them as they listened. I briefly considered it, but my old habits returned and dispatched the thought. I glared bitterly at the group. I was wishfully trying to make my pupils act as the barrel of a firing mechanism. My eyes beamed a detestation wave. This sinuous attack, I thought, would cause them to experience a profound revelation. They'd achieve an enlightenment of futility. There was no sustenance in the poetry, not even the slightest fragment of empiric knowledge. Nothing but empty, dead metaphors lived in his words. I continued scowling at the guitarist, because I could not see the beauty within him. He was accomplishing only a cathartic expression; why was this so great? What has he done that separates him from the pedestrian crowd? What form of beauty is this? With despair, I remarked to myself that beauty is dead within this generation. I then began to question whether beauty has existed in the past. Am I supposed to be awestruck by the magnitude of the poet's words? What great emotions will be aroused when I stand on the cliff's edge, refocusing my eyes to accommodate the vastness of the crevice? I gaze down then I look up and blindly stare into the sun. The feeling of insignificance within the universe embraces me with kisses and thorns. This amalgamation of emotion so confuses my mind that I drift from this reality to understand it. I don't feel pity for man. I don't feel hatred for man. There is emptiness. My body feels vacuous. I can't see beauty in the artist that strives to achieve--achieve what?--anything. This question is, perhaps, dependent upon the relative gravity of purpose, or meaning; but, even so, my preconceptions fortify my brain to an extent that forbids suggestion concerning these matters from penetrating my mind. I cannot understand this fascination with "intuitive song." The guitarist, like his contemporaries, appears to me only as vapid, ineffectual, and redundant. His words drizzle on to the callous earth. I do not mean to denounce the artist of doing anything wrong. I just want him to understand that regardless of the energy in his chorus, the weight of his lyrics, or the amount of listeners his work gathers his work is utterly and pathetically disposable. In years time, it will be swallowed into the vacuum of space, and it will drift briefly unnoticed in space until it is inconsequentially extinguished by a passing star, or gaseous cloud, or is vaporized by electromagnetic radiation. Thus, we find ourselves at a conclusion: Nothing you do is meaningful.
Acknowledge this, and the world is yours.
Acknowledge this, and the world is yours.