The True Artist Lives By His Art, or Dies. He Does No Harm to Anyone for not Receiving Him.
At the end of the day
There is not a shred of evidence.
Either aye or nay,
Either right or wrong.
For, when all are fools
And believe themselves wise
That other men had not spoken
That all ideas must be catchy and pithy quips…
What knowledge there is was hidden
By men in a state of egocentric predicament.
A thousand writers lay before me
Their thoughts contained in the jars
Of wood pulp, ink and glue.
Numerous thoughts lay before me…
Seneca, Livy, Horace
There in used copies at the bookstore.
Where are they sold now,
New, in those beautiful Penguin and Oxford bindings?
I don’t see them on the shelves at my local book store.
Rather, I get one more rejection letter in the mail
Because I don’t sell a detergent.
I don’t sell deodorant.
I don’t sell left or right politiks.
Soon, that large library will wane
And what will be put in its place
Is the cacophonous voices
Of Fox News Analysts,
CNN and MSNBC commentators,
Politicians and the few Celebrity intellectuals.
No serious works of philosophy, religion,
Art or political science.
A thousand voices,
All shut up by populist opinions.
Slowly, we deteriorate,
Until the Reichstag is performed by the almighty dollar.
It’s performed, because all ethics are “Too emotional.”
All philosophy is “Merely speculation.”
Technocratic, we burn our books with our own opinions.
They don’t sell, so are thrown into the flame.
I read the famous poets.
None of them wrote like me.
None with the modern story telling element—
The clear language and imagery,
The thematic elements of our modern fantasies.
Why I couldn’t be squeezed into that little space
On the bookshelf I saw,
Why, even though there are thousands of famous writers,
Some I have never even laid eyes upon,
Why cannot I be a part of this tradition?
Rather, we burn Seneca with Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow;
Piers Morgan, Anderson Cooper and Milo Yiannopoulos;
We bury Pride and Prejudice with Stephen King, Stephanie Meyers
And George R. R. Martin; Fifty Shades of Gray, Hunger Games
And Divergent.
We praise poets like Ezra Pound—
Never reading the word salad of his
Which no man living can decipher;
I’m not even sure it’s meant to mean anything.
Then, of course, there is E. E. Cummings.
Garbage.
Does anyone read Wordsworth, Byron, Keats or Longfellow?
Essayists, of course, are college students
As Shane Dawson writes like he’s submitting a high school essay
And it prints and sells millions.
Emerson, Thoreau, Montaigne;—
Much more interesting… if they were given a shot.
Yet, I have to search the used book stores for Emerson and Montaigne.
They’re both slowly going out of fashion.
Both kindred souls…
Both so similar in their styles.
Plutarch I found, after some digging.
Herodotus tells me about Ancient Babylon,
Yet somehow the idiots online do not believe historians mentioned it.
A rich source of historical analysis,
Filled with Babylon, Persia, Media, Assyria, Egypt, Mesopotamia,
A Greek historian.
Yet… sadly there is online materials that would “prove”
These empires never existed.
Yale lectures that would even insinuate that they never did.
They find a “Sumerian” empire, and automatically say,
“Well there was no Babylon.”
Wholly forgetting that cultures call themselves by different names
Than other cultures. Germany in America is Deutschland in Germany.
Some idiot a long time from now might speciously believe
Germany never existed because they dug up German artifacts.
We’re dealing with a stupid generation
Because books aren’t read,
But podcasts are listened to.
There is not a touchstone to the past
Therefore, anything can be made up about it in the present.
And, my writing has touched the past.
But, they can find no place for it in that empty slot on the shelves.
Because, as it still remains,
I get rejected for having a racist character.
Wholly disposed, that the generation I was writing about
Was saturated by racism, and it was about their only sin most of them.
If we could excuse them of it, and wonder at how they were so far superior
To what we have today…
Perhaps we will have a more educated tomorrow
That doesn’t—as every movie seems to do—
Imprint their own values on the past.
Frankly, every movie you watch about history
Is ensconced in its present’s vices.
The best way to know what history was like
Was to read what was written at that time period.
Often, you’d find the most degenerate scoundrel
Had a heart of gold when compared to our modern man.
And that I find by reading history;
Watching history;
Experiencing history in what are called books.
But, today we’d like to invent it for ourselves
To shape it to our modern way of thinking.
Why can’t I be on those shelves
To represent modern man
As he truly is?
The reason I like this song is multifaceted. I had just heard it on the Radio not too long ago, and the music video is not good because it ruins the musical shade on the meaning. It's just, not capturing the song the way I see it. It's unrepentant. It's the modern age, unrepentant. It's not sarcastic; it rather basks in the glory of sin. It's saying, "I did this, and I'm not going to say sorry." And in doing that, it shows how desperate our civilization is, making the point that the Music Video doesn't have to; rather, the music video is too moral bearing and not journalistic enough. The song as it is naturally makes its point---shaded by an unrepentant beat, an unrepentant soul, an unrepentant sinner praying in the golden cathedral for the faithless. It's upbeat, about screwing over the other guy in order to get where you are going. And "It's ok." The song doesn't need to bear a moral weight. All of our songs are like this. They just say, "Screw it, I'm going to be bad." And I like it because it's honest. It's easy to know how messed up it is. The writer of this song is obviously unrepentant about being successful---"If you lose, boo-hoo." Panic at the Disco does a good rendition of it, but secretly, like a few Johnny Cash songs I know, they probably didn't write it. Johnny always wrote his songs, but surprisingly was the talent behind a lot of our most famous grooves, and you'd never know it. The ethos of the song is unrepentant, and the pathos is too overbearing. It's just flagrant, spiteful, not angry, just flagrant. And I LOVE IT! Because I feel like everyone I know is like this. I feel like our whole society has to be this way in order to make end's meat. I love it because it captures exactly how I feel about modern society. And, journalistically---that being a style without the moral expressly stated---it makes sense in our modern ethos to have a song like this. Halsey did a good job in a few of her poems at doing this, but it's too dank and depressing. It's not glorious enough. It's not that glorious future that you get if you just say "F____ off" to everything, and then go on living your life not caring about how it affects the people you love. And then "Hey look ma I made it!" He's singing the chorus to his mother, who is probably seething and chomping at the bit to just smack that boy across the behind. Not because he made it, but because he compromised all of his virtue doing it. It's beautiful, how "Ma, look at me! I'm successful!" and Ma is looking back at him, seeing whatever revelry had to be done to get there. She's thinking, "I'd rather you be poor and a rat, being honest, than to be successful screwing over everyone who ever loved you." And that is our modern age. I love this song because it just captures it without any hesitation. There isn't a beat missed, there isn't a groove missed, that doesn't say, "Hey look Ma I made it!" The puppet didn't need to be there, because this isn't a puppet. This is not a puppet at all. This is an unrepentant, flagrant, "Hey look ma I made it!" I like our modern music for this reason, but I would like to see something more sentimental. I'm getting tired of the whole, "I'm bad and I'm not going to care about it." Because it's getting boring. I'm tired of hearing songs accusing the listener of all their hidden sins, or on the flip, encouraging people to be bitter and petty. I'm tired of it. And with this song, I think we've captured it all, the portrait Halsey couldn't paint. The portrait that a lot of singers and songwriters couldn't. "I'm having fun, therefore I don't care about who I hurt." Halsey comes at a close second, but this song by Panic at the Disco really just grooves it. Other songs are singing about women wearing blades in their bras, and how they can fight a man. But this song just grooves, and seethes with this generation of America. It is the alter call of American civilization. "Hey look Ma I made it! And if you lose, boo-hoo." Panic at the Disco. "Hey Look Ma I Made It". Pray For the Wicked. Fueled By Ramen, DCD2, 2019. Radio.
B. K. Neifert 