𝔄𝔩𝔩 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔏𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔩𝔢 𝔅𝔦𝔱𝔰 ℑ𝔫 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℭ𝔞𝔯𝔭𝔢𝔱
Today, dear reader, I am half blind again.
I don’t own any spectacles right now, and I ran out of contact lenses, and the hurricane delayed delivery of new ones, and in my exhaustion after last night’s impromptu midnight live set, I forgot to preserve the last pair of daily disposables I had, so now I am without lenses, and the whole world is a gaussian BLUR which is very trippy.
My uncle first noticed I was half blind when I was around my son’s age, because I couldn’t make out sign posts. They took me for an eye test and confirmed, yes, he’s half blind, and fixed me up with a pair of thick-lensed goggles with a fluorescent yellow elasticated strap attached to them to save them from smashing when they’d inevitably slip off of my little-kid nose. Kids at school mocked my new visage with gleeful savagery, and overnight I was transformed into a “speccy twat”, but I didn’t care too much immediately, as I was exploring my new world.
When I first put the glasses on it was a revelation which I remember clearly to this day. The soft, blurred world I assumed was the sum of reality gave way to a new, hyper-real, almost grotesquely detailed actuality, and nothing was ever the same. “I can see!” I exclaimed! “I can seeall the little bits in the carpet!”
It was like when Dorothy got to Oz. I knew for certain now what I’d long suspected - the world as it was presented to me was not the world as it was. And as I explored this new terrain, I had a sneaking suspicion that there were levels beyond this, that would be opened up to me if only I could find the right glasses. Less than a decade later I ate some fungus that grew round the back of the science block in my school and discovered my suspicions to be correct. “I can see!” I exclaimed. “I can seeall the little bits in the air!”
Without my corrective lenses, it turns out I can see bits in the air again. It’s like there’s a gaussian blur on everything, with a heavy film grain on top of that. I think this is why we prefer the look of movies from before the digital age. In their distorted imperfection, they’re a closer representation of that which really is.
That’s why I put vinyl crackle and tape hiss and field recordings all over my music, and drench my videos in analogue distortion and grain. My aesthetic is partly me trying to recreate the glimpses of the true nature of reality I’ve been privy to in my short life... and what I remember from elsewhere.
Right now, every day, unprecedented numbers of people wake up into hyper-real, grotesquely detailed new worlds, radically different to those they had contentedly existed in for decades. This is the age of discovery. It is shocking to some, but not me. I am accustomed to this place. I have lived here all my life.
Timelapse of me drawing my new avatar
Tools: Procreate on iPad with Apple Pencil
Own the NFT at https://opensea.io/akirathedon !
BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER FROM BERTON AND THE DON!
TELL THEM NOW!
With lyrics adapted from Berton Braley's poem of 100 years hence!
STREAM https://go.meaningwave.com/TELLTHEMNOW
Art by me!
Own the NFT! https://opensea.io/akirathedon
An odd thing about knowing things is that once you know something, you immediately forget you did not always know it, and then strangely, default to assuming everybody else knows it too.
This is my experience, at any rate.
Somehow I often manage to completely forget the decades I spent flailing around not knowing things that I now take for granted… like the fact that picking up heavy things and putting them down again makes you feel amazing, skyrockets your confidence, increases your mental abilities, and connects you to the transcendent and divine in a manner that serious 1990s ecstasy devotees could but dream of. I only worked that out relatively recently, due to some errors in my upbringing and the devious and evil propaganda I suffered, that convinced the young me that artistically inclined types like myself didn’t engage with physicality, and the sorts of people that did were dumb meatheads (inversion as usual, the people I meet in gyms are typically the most wise and cerebral one could hope to encounter). No, what I ...
STREAM & DOWNLOAD: https://go.meaningwave.com/ONESHOT
From the album GET SOME: https://go.meaningwave.com/GETSOME
VINYL: http://igg.me/at/GETSOME
MERCH: https://www.meaningwave.com/products/get-some-ft-jocko-willink-men-s-cotton-shirt
Often, people write to me saying something like, “I love you and Jocko’s song GOOD (https://fanlink.to/jockogood)… but how can I reconcile that with death?”
The song goes some way to answering that. EVEN IN DEATH (https://go.meaningwave.com/EVENINDEATH) is a highlight from an album that is all highlights, GET SOME (https://go.meaningwave.com/GETSOME), and was one of the songs I spent the longest on. It started as a simple string coda, carrying Jocko’s words like a calm ocean, building into a storm of tsunami intensity as drums and guitar were added, and finally the glory of the full string section.
The video features footage from Ninja Scroll, which I have loved since I first saw it as a child, and remains one of the most powerful films I have born witness to.
...
STREAM: https://linktw.in/ZgWLJi
DONATE: https://www.meaningwave.com/pages/donate
Rapper, broadcaster, political slash cultural commentator, and designer of excellent hats An0maly, who used to come and dance like a very tall Travolta at my epic Saturday night sessions at No Vacancy in Hollywood invited me onto his show to talk about being locked out of the USA like Novak Djokovic (https://twitter.com/LegendaryEnergy/status/1633563997537705984). We spoke about how my family and I got locked out of the USA, what LA was like during lockdown, our new life in Mexico, and much more.
Lots of you have been asking how you can support Meaningwave and help us get our stuff back and all that, which is very nice and floods my heart fit to bursting. You can always cop merch, join the Patreon, and send one of donations, and there’s a page with all that info here.
LOVE TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY!
