I feel my personal favorite music might be shriveling a bit. This year’s output wasn’t as thunderous as the previous two years were and it felt mostly melancholy. I know musicians are human, but I’ve been relying on them through these tough years of white supremacists, homophobes and misogynists who toasted Rachel Held Evans’ death and planned to send Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, G. Willow Wilson and Miley Cyrus to the guillotine. To see them exhausted and present, to some degree, a melancholy, defeatist attitude in their music, it makes me wonder what future do we really have in this country? Stalinism is coursing through the Republican party, they don’t believe in History, Facts, Reality or Science and I’m even seeing some Democrats utilize it for their own personal gain. I can no longer think of the Hollywood Vampires, Tim Burton or Pirates of the Caribbean without thinking the painful truth that America’s beloved Johnny Depp drunkenly assaulted Amber Heard at least 10 times while they were married, then used social media and the idiot masses who don’t fact-check on Wikipedia to claim she abused him when she sued him after divorce. Now, I can’t go around one of my favorite websites without seeing people believe Amber Heard should be executed for high crimes against Johnny Depp, and she was the victim. I used to respect and maintain friendships there, now, I don’t even care if the Federal Government shuts it down as a “dangerously pornographic website” for its use of kink material. Both Depp and Trump are guilty of manipulating the masses through blatantly lying to them, which gives them the power of gods, making them able to define history, reality and truth for millions due to how their drone behave like cult members. They can say the sky is green, grass is purple, 2+2=5, Japan never surrendered and we’ve been fighting World War II against them for 80 years and we’ve always been at war with Eurasia; and their disciples will execute anyone who doesn’t believe the lie and destroy any and all contradictory materials. We are dangerously close to living in the world George Orwell prophesied in the novel 1984 and we need to about face and leave it behind now, or we will plunge into it, accept it without any thought and not realize the millions we are slaughtering in the names of our dictators and erasing our facts for lies until we are destroyed by a coalition of nations who have had enough of our crap.
Where would I like to be right now, when faced with this day after day after day?
A crisp summer day, bright blue sky, light dusting of clouds, not too hot, not too cold, in a field of grass, lying down and relaxing with a light breeze in the air. Slight ambient noise, nothing that disturbs me. No hurry, no rush, no one coming to say I have to wrap it up, we have to go. Just soft, slightly cool peace as I rest off all of the wearying baggage of fighting through life over the past six years. A break that I haven’t gotten in all that time with the constant assault on freedoms, continuous deaths, love affairs with Stalinism from the right and even actors on the left and awful tragedies and violent actions. No urgency to rejoin the fight, no screams of panic or “let’s continue our victory, we can’t let up now!” No, nothing but the quiet, the rest, the sereneness of the world as God made it, a free rest for the soul for the time being. We will return to the battle, we will return to defend the people we love, but for now, we lay down and let the pain of the burden of constant war ease off of our lives.
We have lost a lot; Lemmy, David Bowie, Prince, Carrie Fisher, George Michael, Chris Cornell, Gregg Allman, Chester Bennington, Haruo Nakajima, Tom Petty, Jon Short, Rachel Held Evans, Neil Peart, Bob Kulick, Frankie Banali, Eddie Van Halen, David Prowse, Dusty Hill, Charlie Watts, Koichi Sugiyama and worst of all, our peace of mind and ability to trust those around us. I have no words of comfort to this. We almost lost my Dad and my favorite wrestler Roman Reigns, as well. To go through this while the assault on the Freedoms of the LGBTQ+ community, the turning of a falsely elected celebrity President with genocidal and Stalinist tendencies into a messianic figure, I’m certain I’m less sane now than I was six years ago. Another loss was my trust, love and faith in Michael Sweet and Larry the Cable Guy. When you see a prominent Christian musician who plays Heavy Metal endorse the most Neo Nazi Presidential candidate in US History so repeatedly you think he has traded Messiahs, it is gut-wrenching as well as a fistful of depression pounded into your face every single freaking time. And Lawrence verbally assaulted anyone who was a feminist or didn’t like Stryper on Twitter to a degree that suggested if he met them, he’d physically beat them and leave them for dead, and one of these people was Rachel Held Evans, who later died. I bet he cracked open the good champagne that night.
The only good sides I’ve seen out of this whole mess are a better appreciation from myself of minority musicians like Gary Clark Jr., Jimi Hendrix and Lil Nas X and the rise of strong women who take no Republican garbage and stand up for orientation and race-based minorities. Rachel Held Evans may be gone, but I can still see her fire in Megan Rohrer, AnnaSophia Robb, Miley Cyrus, K.Flay, Aly & AJ, Kamala Harris, Tara Platt, Laura Bailey, Barbara Dunkelman, Arryn Zech, Colleen Clinkenbeard and others. The latter five even play characters who reflect this fire; Platt plays Edelgard in Fire Emblem, Kali Belladonna in RWBY and Mitsuru and Elizabeth in Persona/Blazblue Crosstag Battle, Bailey plays Vex’halia, Jester and Imogen in Critical Role, Lucina in Fire Emblem and Smash Bros., Chun-Li in Street Fighter and Power Rangers; Battle for the Grid, and Rise in Persona, Dunkelman plays Yang in RWBY/Blazblue Crosstag Battle while Zech plays Yang’s girlfriend and Kali’s daughter Blake in both RWBY and Blazblue Crosstag Battle and Clinkenbeard plays Erza Scarlet in Fairy Tail and Erza’s double (for both mangas were created by the same person) Space Pirate Elsie Crimson in Edens Zero, as well as being an occasional voice for Android 18 in Dragonball video games and the voice of Momo in My Hero Academia. AJ Michalka of Aly & AJ also plays Catra in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, an openly Lesbian character who develops a relationship with the titular character.
I also believe the Mariners will win the 2022 World Series and some great comic book movies/action movies featuring actors from those movies from both DC and Marvel are coming up. On November 12th, Netflix is releasing a movie called Red Notice, which will star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool, Detective Pikachu) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman, Shank from “Ralph Breaks the Internet”). Thor; Love and Thunder, which will feature Natalie Portman returning as Jane Foster, this time with Thor powers, as well as Chris Pratt returning as Star-Lord and Pom Klementieff returning as Mantis, as the Guardians of the Galaxy will be interacting with the Asgardians in the film. Also, the film will feature Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” at some point. The Marvels, featuring Brie Larson once again as Captain Marvel as well as the Captain Marvel from the WandaVision TV Show and Ms. Marvel from her own upcoming TV series will come to theaters on November 11th, 2022. Chris Pratt will return to the movies on December 22nd of that year where he will face Jack Black as they play Mario and Bowser, respectively, in an animated Super Mario Bros. movie. Also, Aquaman 2, which will feature Jason Momoa and Amber Heard returning as Aquaman and Mera, has been announced and a recent Twitter picture on Heard’s Twitter featured her hair dyed red/orange, so filming may be in progress. (Jason doesn’t have a “verified” Twitter, so it’s hard to tell which one that bears his name is actually him)
That’s all for now, this was very cathartic and I hope it helped someone other than just me. Talk at you later and take care of yourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment