The Middle of Nowhere #4

Welcome back to The Middle of Nowhere. I don’t often pat myself on the back but it genuinely feels great writing again. Admittedly, I’m still trying to figure out how good I still am at this but more importantly, I feel free and I’m having fun. There’s a lot I want to cover but lately, I’ve been thinking about the end of the world.

Someday We’ll All Be Free

T/W: Suicide

Read the Bible enough, watch enough TV, dig up enough movies, there’s limitless ideas of how the world ends. Bursts of flames engulf skyscrapers, terror running rampant on the streets. Hurricanes annihilate coastal cities, earthquakes ravage the earth’s crust. There’s something funny about the human ego that leads us to believe we’re destined to go out in flames. Maybe it’s a culmination of centuries of sin that catches up with us. After everything we’ve done, God has come to collect the devoted and the truly repentant. Maybe we’re too important to fail uneventfully. We are too powerful to truly go out with a whimper. I never understood why people are fascinated with the concept of the end. Why romanticize our dooms? Shouldn’t we have a deeper desire to live?

We’ve long ignored the signs and I could never see an entire globe on the same page for anything. We are the masters of our own demise. Who knew it’d be so fucking slow? We exist on this earth, melting and/or drowning mentally, spiritually, metaphorically, and literally, soon enough. It’s deflating that all we are to do on this earth is to work for a few decades and hope we made enough of our lives that it’s not a bunch of filler episodes. There’s gotta be something more man. After spending so much of my life in deep anxiety over our end, I’ve come to a reluctant peace with the end. I’m still terrified that there is truly nothing after this. At the core of my suicidal urges, I’m a man that still wants to live. The unknown is scarier than the current state of agony. But maybe there’s liberty in the conclusion.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Donny Hathaway’s death. It’s probably the saddest thing I’ve ever read. On the 15th floor of the Essex House Hotel in New York, the window to his room was cleanly removed and he fell to his death. No sign of struggle. The coroner ruled it a suicide but his family and friends’ can’t fathom such an idea. After all, Hathaway would often hang out of windows to not disturb hotel managers when he wanted to sing. Regardless of what happened, it’s the mental anguish he persevered through that leaves me heartbroken. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and saddled with medication during a time that hardly knew how to reckon with his condition. It’s the spiraling of the mentally fragile and disturbed that breaks my heart. According to musician James Mtume, Donny spent his last day on Earth spiraling out of control. Hathaway felt like people were trying to kill him, trying to steal his voice and his art. The artists in the session felt like it was inappropriate to continue recording when Donny was suffering and impossible to rein in. Hours later, he was found on the pavement.

I spent the last year spiraling out of control, losing control of everything I loved, burdened with constant bouts of depression and mood swings. It’s horrifying to lose grip with something that you cherish so deeply. When I read about Donny Hathaway, I wondered if, somewhere deep inside, he was aware of what he meant to people. Did he know what he would leave behind? I couldn’t wrap my head on ‘why’ until I spiraled out of control myself. There’s a sense of liberty in finality. I revisited Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free” with the common idea that this was a song about injustice; despite all the prejudice, there would be a time with true equality. But knowing what I learned about Donny Hathaway, it made me think about what the brighter days he sang about would be. This isn’t an easy thought to reckon with, but maybe there isn’t a better future. It’s possible we can’t fix this. There is no peace — at least not for the living. The voices are quiet, the world continues but we stop. I think a lot about The Supreme Jubilees’ “It’ll All Be Over” and how we won’t have to cry anymore. That song is the closest song I’ve ever heard to true peace.

I think about the tragedy of Gil Scott Heron. Even as the voice of a generation with the willpower to fight, some demons are too strong. I think about his addiction to drugs and the inner turmoil he would sing about. I think about “Pieces of a Man” as a song about someone who lost their mind due to the world around them. He couldn’t be helped even when he desperately needed it. I’ve cried to Pieces of a Man as a whole album more than I care to admit. That feeling when you look in the mirror and you hardly recognize yourself anymore, it takes more than the human spirit should have to persevere to come back from that loss of self.

The biggest takeaway I got from Donny Hathaway, Gil Scott Heron, and Pieces of a Man is that it’s logically a lot easier to quit. There’s no sensible reasoning that dictates it’s better to continue. The list of life’s cruelties outnumber the glimpses of purity. On “I Think I’ll Call It Morning” from Pieces of a Man, Gil Scott Heron writes, “Why should I survive on sadness and tell myself I’ve got to be alone? Why should I subscribe to this world’s madness knowing that I’ve got to live on?” Being a strong person is constantly grappling with the fact that it would be easier to die and surviving in spite of it. A lot of days, I’m tired of being strong. And while there’s liberty and peace in death, there’s strength in love and perseverance. I think about those days I was merely a husk of myself, angry at the world, exhausted by staying alive, and dejected from losing the war in my mind. After everything life has taken from me over the last year, I would’ve killed myself if I was a different person. But in my core, there is deep love for the love for the art and the people and the world. Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand, to fight a battle we’re destined to lose. But there’s liberty in living unshackled from the anchor of the mind.

The Cut

• Swami Sound called his redub of Omarion’s “Ice Box” Final Fantasy music and, yeah, that’s a really accurate description. But it’s also the ideal repurposing of this song, Omarion’s voice blowing in the wind as the beat pumps into the bloodstream. It’s one of the most satisfying listens of the year.
• Last week, I briefly discussed JID’s lukewarm sophomore effort and I mentioned the Spillage Village album Spilligion. I remember it being in my top 5 albums of 2020 and while I do think there are probably 5–10 albums better, it’s still one of the only truly great rap albums this decade so far. Leaning into the folksier, country aspects of the South give Spilligion so much dimension. You can smell the trees, the slight breeze, the humidity, the grassy fields. It’s an album truly in touch with the Earth — in a refreshing way and not like the chakra merchants of today.
• I mentioned in another column that I was mostly left mild by the last Young Nudy album EA Monster and its homogenous, vaguely weird production. Babyface Ray’s new song “Goofies” nails the ideal version of that album; arrogant, defiant, and bubbles up toxic acid.
• I miss when albums had stories you could attach to them. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of COVID lockdowns but I remember album release days I could recall like the art was a part of my trophy collection. Frank Ocean and Kendrick Lamar are the only ones that can do it nowadays, simply because they refuse to be active enough to insert vague expectations. The art is better when the artist is merely allowed to create without micromanaging.
• This Saints Row reboot is some ass, pal. Not solely because it’s woke or whatever buzzwords people use when they don’t know how to express something is bad. But it’s a pandering, unfunny, buggy mess that dulled its writing and zapped the wackiness that made its world pop. Rather than simply dial down the headache inducing maximalism that made Saints Row 3 & 4 weaker, it sands its edges down to the bare bone. I’d forgive a dumber, flimsier plot and zero calorie side missions if the game was a bit more fun.
• Watched Top Gun: Maverick the other day (full thoughts here), I’m fascinated by the idea of the modern day actor and how coveted they are by the camera. You watch films and you can tell they’re magnetic and the cameras are allured to them. Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt are the best examples but I’m curious who captures the awe of the camera today. I could really only think of Daniel Kaluuya, maybe Florence Pugh. I might expand upon this idea in the next column

Once again, thanks for reading the column. If you’re interested in directly supporting me and the column, DM me on Twitter @/calebcat23