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misanthropy strikes me these days as being kinda facile--you know, easy peasy, reductive. maybe this is something that accompanies getting a bit older. i say this because when i was maybe 20 i was quite full of a sense of my own superiority and quite convinced that most people are simply fucking stupid. but now i don't think so much that people are stupid--instead folk spin imaginary worlds continually and what differentiates one from another is mostly a matter of the frameworks they use to set them into motion. mostly i'm interested in how this spinning happens, curious (and often bewildered and sometimes disgusted) by the premises that folk adopt and why they might choose them--why direction a or b instead of what i'd take to be a sane one.
i've also figured out that it makes little sense to compare yourself to others, and even less to fob off the results of this comparison as issuing into a sense that you're better or smarter or more skilled---there are alot of people in the world and it's inevitable that there are folk who do anything you do or can think of doing better than you do. once you figure that out, you also figure out that comparisons/evaluations are mostly about your own vanity and not about the world. vanity isn't interesting, particularly not the vanity of others.
so you just do what you do, do what engages you, and move along that line. that's what i think matters.
for example, when i was young and stupid i would decide on whether someone was interesting based on the music they liked. of course my personal preferences were by definition far more interesting than anyone else's because, well, the were mine. there was some kind of stupid yardstick that i'd apply--the closer to my preferences someone was, the cooler they were apt to be. but that's an idiotic way to think. not only does it make you obnoxious to talk to, but you miss out on alot. folk are drawn to music that moves them, and they play (for example) what moves them and what matters about that really is their commitment to the form. whether you or i like it or not is of no consequence. if you dont like it it's simply not for you. so what? and there are a host of experiences you miss out on by thinking otherwise. in the end, it's your choice but if by making this kind of choice you're also choosing to live in a diminished world with narrow experience because you're so sure you know everything that you don't venture outside your little tiny box, why do it?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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