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HERE_IN_THE_REAL

                                             May 11, 2021


Here in the real, we need to recognize
the romantic appeal that Reality has.

When someone demands that you "face reality" they're
often demaning you ignore many of it's actual aspects--
your own desires, your hopes of surpassing the mundane...

Beauty and joy, love and harmony, tranquility and grace,
are all to be sacrificed on the altar of the Real.

                                                         It's well known that
                                                         optimistic,
  Closely related to this are                            flattering tales can
  problems of authenticity that I                        decieve; but there's
  think often create traps for                           a converse problem of
  writers, muscians and artists...                       the appeal of the
                                                         negative, the
     In particular, I think a                            pessimistic and
     tremendous force behind the                         critical is given
     gangsta hip-hop trend was                           credit for being the
     that's what the suburban                            truth.
     kids who bought the records
     *wanted* to hear.  Tell me
     again about that gritty
     urban reality I've been
     sheltered from.


            And Ta-Nehisi Coates often seems to me
            like a prime example of one of those             TA-NEHISI_HOP
            suburban kids, albiet the black variety.

            He's a guy who got sold a story about blackness,
            a guy who's convinced himself his life was so
            inauthentic that he distrusted his own experience
            and favored the tales of rap stars who might very
            well on some level been playing up to him, being
            the blackest of the black because that's what
            the market demanded.


   And these are all things I've talked about before,
   in sketchy fashion, and maybe I should dig into them
   some day, expand on the points and see if there's
   something more that can be done with them.

   But when am I really going to get to that.  Realistically.


                                    NEGATIVE_TRUTH

                                                   DESPERATE

                               DOUBLE_THE_NEGATIVE



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