Tag: culture

The Liberation of Lambs

‘Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.’

            -Isiah Berlin

People often speak in similes and metaphors. We find comfort in symbolism and allegories, creating a sense of spatial separation in our minds from that which we desire and those that haunt us. Business men refer to themselves as lions when they wish to appear dominant or king-like; school children degrade one another by calling their peers a chicken, a dog, or a pussy. And a person of low morals can often be labelled as a rat or a snake.

Even free thinkers are not exempt from this kind of hackneyed pigeonholing of their peers; labelling those that they consider to be mindless drones suckling on the bosom of society as lambs or sheep.

It’s no coincidence that we choose animals to explain or understand our behaviours either. After all, we are merely another creature that rose from the primordial depths and evolved into the beings we are today. Though we may try to deny it, we are primitive creatures trying valiantly to adapt to a world that is developing at an ever-increasing rate before our very eyes.

In today’s modern society, with its abundance of threats (both perceived and legitimate), relating how we feel about ourselves, or how we perceive others to animals recognised as being courageous, dastardly, or cowardly, allows our brains to easily establish opinions about who to fear, and who to trust.

This act of association allows us to pursue other ventures such as art, education, business, and romance. While this may can seem like an intelligent concept; free your mind of primitive tasks to focus on modern obsessions, it is in fact fraught with risk. Why you ask? Because that thing you call an imagination; that beautiful part of the brain that allows us to dream, also causes us to fear.

Hmm. Now that there’s a little perspective around what I’m about to say next; it’s time to hit them with the sucker punch. Let me shake out my hands for a second and stretch out my wrists. Here it comes…

You’re not a lion. You’re not a dog, or a rat, a pussy, or a fucking snake. But you are a lamb. And you are surrounded by sheep. Whether you want to admit it or not, you are afraid to be the best version of you that you could possibly be. Why? Because you have been conditioned to see the weakness where there is strength, and convinced that the art of survival lies in finding safety in numbers. The great shepherds of society have created an illusion of fear that keeps you suppressed and afraid to be an individual, rather than one of many.

It’s not difficult to do this either. It’s been happening since the birth of mankind. Society is defined as an aggregate of people who function in an orderly community. What better example is there of societal order than a shepherd controlling a flock? What greater illustration of mental suppression and conditioning than a small few influencing the actions of the many? Moving them through a mundane existence and uniformity before they are finally led to the slaughter.

Controversial? Maybe. Reality? You better believe it. But we’re not quite done yet. 

Here’s the kicker: You are the shepherd of those around you; just as much as they are the shepherds that keep your own thoughts, feelings and actions in check. Our desire to be socially accepted and valued means that we are consistently watching over one another to ensure that we are subduing those that threaten to move incongruously to the flock, whilst simultaneously striving to do so ourselves.

Shepherd

We look at those who are strong and independent as threats: wolves at the door that should be feared. And we look at those beneath us as lambs who long to be led. Lambs and sheep are instinctively fearful creatures who thrive off of social awareness. They are placated when they can see the rest of their flock and are afraid when they are forced to stand alone. When we view one another in such a way, anxiety plucks at our heartstrings and inhibits us from being all that we can be. We condition ourselves to feel discontented if we lose sight of our peers, so we shepherd and we suppress.

Inversely, a wolf is a highly intelligent, fiercely loyal beast with a desire for freedom and faith in its own instincts. They roam in packs, but are comfortable in their ability to hunt alone. These are characteristics that any collective of individuals should aspire to, not quash. And yet our imaginations; the very thing that affords us the opportunity to think, feel and act, convinces us to fear a strength that we fail to acknowledge is within all of us.

Imagine if you will, a society where individuals didn’t feel the need to play shepherd over their peers. Where instead of devoting attention to watching over one another in fear of the successes of friends and strangers, we instead focused on developing and inspiring the characteristics of loyalty, intelligence, and the desire to be free within ourselves. Imagine the emancipation from an anxiety-fuelled societal philosophy as we celebrate the successes and positive attributes of others, rather than focusing on reigning them in so that we can feel a sense of control and security as we watch over our flock.

For some readers this idea is going to sound like a bunch of contrived bullshit. They’ll screw up their nose and say that a society of wolves is dangerous. They’ll argue that we equate the wolf with fear for a reason, and that we are better off as lambs and sheep. But they are wrong. They really, really, are.

I opened this post with the quote liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, and I pray with all my heart that the mindset of lambs does die within our society. It needs to. There are so many brilliantly talented people living out their lives denying themselves of the opportunity to be great because they are fearful of standing out from the flock. We have created a bizarre culture where fitting in is more important than embracing oneself.

And yet, just as sheep and lambs move in flocks, so to do wolves move in packs. The difference between the two is that the latter move according to their own whim, not at the direction of others. They move with a pride and a purpose that the lambs of the world will never understand.

Our minds are faculties of consciousness and thought that enable us to experience the world around us. But the imagination can play tricks on us. It can convince us that we are small when we are powerful beyond all measure. And it can allow us to believe that we wish to be lambs, when we would be so much stronger as a pack of wolves. Intelligence, loyalty, and a desire to be free are traits to be revered, not abhorred.

Clichés & City Lights

 

Sometimes as a writer you can’t help but feel as though your very existence is a clichéd hybrid of all those who have come before you.  You write about feeling like an outcast, both revelling in, and despising the idiosyncrasies that form the microcosm of you. You are volatile, temperamental, a deep thinker, quirky, a workhorse, a masochist, and about a million other things. You yearn to be accepted, yet when those moments of companionship with your fellow man arrive, your anxiety craves independence. You write to fight demons, to understand the world, to question the illogical and voice an opinion that needs to be heard.

You write because you are different. Yet by doing so you prove that you are ultimately the same as almost every great writer throughout history. You’re still a minority, and you deserve to be celebrated as such. But the eccentricities that define you are a collection of all those brilliant authors whose works inspired you to create and compose in the first place.

You’re nodding your head; yet you’re sceptical about where this is heading. I don’t blame you. Those opening two paragraphs are nonsensical bullshit written by an author trying to astound and astonish with his philosophical thoughts and linguistic repertoire. But, as always, there is a point to this. I promise. 

I have a confession to make. Just like literary heavyweights such as Hemmingway, Capote, Wilde, and countless others, I tend to spend a lot of time in bars.  The great Ernest Hemmingway once declared that he drank “to make other people more interesting.” While I haven’t quite reached that level of disinterest in the people around me, the truth is that actually I fit into a lot of the categories outlined above. I’m temperamental, an emotional masochist, and a deep thinker that yearns to be accepted yet thrives off of being alone.

But perhaps one of the most clichéd tendencies that I have developed throughout my life as a writer is a genuine love for the social setting of bars. While I often feel isolated and alone in this world, there is an undeniable allure to dingy dive-bars and poorly lit nightclubs that I can’t deny. The combination of people, music, and liquor, leaves me captivated. It’s not necessarily that I have a desire to drink myself into a stupor either; I could whittle away hours watching strangers hang their hopes and dreams on relationships and interactions forged on a cocktail of inebriation and camaraderie. A bar is such a unique societal backdrop that brings together men and women from various colours, creeds, socio-political, and economic backgrounds, creating a melting pot of humanity and raw human emotion that any writer would find intriguing.

I know that it must shock readers to hear that a writer finds solace in bars and nightclubs, in fact, I can imagine a few readers furrowing their brows right now. How could someone ever be drawn to such a place? Yet if it wasn’t for this love affliction with lady liquor, I never would have found the window.

There’s a window? For a moment you thought this was just about liquor and inebriation didn’t you? You thought that I was going to wrap this up by saying that I have my infatuation with the nightlife under control and that all is well in the world. But alas, there’s more to this story than you thought!

brisbane-city-lights

It’s midnight. I’m in a bar with my family and closest friends. I excuse myself and walk towards the bathroom, cutting down a narrow passage beside the counter, moving past the kitchen where chefs cuss at one another over open grills as flames lick towards the ceiling. The passage continues, until I reach a single door with a sign signalling a unisex bathroom pinned haphazardly against it. I push open the door and step into a cubicle roughly the size of an airplane bathroom. There’s a toilet, a hand basin, and the tell tale smell of a public restroom. The hygiene is questionable at best; grime clings to every surface like a thin layer of film. But despite the cubicle’s terrible state, there’s also a window.

It’s roughly the size of a shoebox, and looks as though it were never meant to be more than a small section of wall removed at eyelevel to provide a source of ventilation within the cramped space. But through that window is the most beautiful view of the city that I have ever seen. The moon sits above a sprawling metropolis of lights, illuminating the city in an ambient glow. Buildings rise from the earth and form streets and suburbs, providing shelter for the millions that live within their walls. I’m supposed to be quick. There’s a line of people waiting for me to finish, but I am so captivated by the thought that there are people I have never met moving through their own existence somewhere in that sea of lights that I can’t move. Here I am standing in a dingy public restroom staring out at the cityscape feeling a sense of hope coursing through my veins.

I am incredibly hard on myself. In addition to afflictions with night clubs, being temperamental, and longing for camaraderie whilst simultaneously yearning to be an individual, I have a proclivity to push myself until breaking point on a regular basis. I want to be a great writer. I want to create a body of work that transcends time and genres, becoming part of literary history.

But sometimes my quest to constantly redefine and improve my craft can leave me blinded, bitter, and miserable. I can become so focused on achieving my dreams that I forget that there is an entire world of wonder and possibility around me. I need to constantly remind myself to stop focusing on my failure to be successful right now, and instead turn my attention to everything that I have already achieved and remember that there are millions of other men and women all around me who are desperately working towards their own dreams.

Things often sound so simple when you break them down to the ridiculous. You’re not alone. Sometimes you are just so focused on walking your own journey that you can’t see how many others are moving through theirs. We often sit at our desks, or on busses and trains, or even lie beside our partner in the dead and wonder why they can’t understand our dreams. We ask why they can’t see that we are struggling, or that we are hurting. We become so consumed with this idea of self that we don’t understand how anyone could ever care about anything but what is afflicting us. The sad part is that the person next to you is thinking the exact same thing.

I struggle every single day to fathom just why people don’t understand or appreciate the sacrifices that I have made to write. I’ve given up friends, relationships, careers, and almost everything else in my pursuit of greatness. But greatness isn’t achieved in the blink of an eye. It takes years of development and continuous redefining of what one considers to be great before such a entitlement can be reached. But we unfortunately live in an era where we bombarded with the idea that dreams and achievements are often realised overnight. But the honest to God truth is that this is rarely the case.

Clichéd or not; writers are creatures of great emotion. We break our hearts over and over again so that we can show the world our vulnerabilities and humanity. There’s nothing wrong with this. There is great beauty and release in allowing ourselves to be naked for the world to see.  But sometimes our extreme vulnerability can cause us to internalise our perspectives and forget that we are never really alone, no matter how much we believe otherwise. For me it took standing in a shitty public restroom that smelled like ammonia, beer, and regret to remember that.

The camaraderie that I chase through my writing might never come, but the intimacy I feel with strangers who I know are living through their own successes and failures is just as meaningful and rewarding. There’s a silver lining to every situation, and a lesson to be learned in every day. Sometimes you just have to shift your perspective away from the immediacy of your surroundings and ignore the filth and grime of the cubicle, and find that little shoebox sized window with the view of the entire city instead.

Glass Houses

I was recently told that my writing has the ability to cause great harm. According to one visitor to my site, my mindset is damaging and shows a proclivity towards destabilising social order and pushing boundaries. While it is a compelling argument, and it is true that I do try to disrupt societal preconceptions; to say that I am a destructive force within the blogging community seems a little far fetched. Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered that my work could affect someone to such a degree that the felt the need to contact me in an effort to degrade it. I just believe that those in glass houses should not throw stones.

A hush falls over the crowd as a collective sense of anticipation builds. There was an undertone of malice laced through those words. You can almost taste the tension in the air. Hell hath no fury like a writer scorned…

…True. But a wolf doesn’t concern himself with the opinion of sheep. I’m not bothered about the judgement or belittling bestowed upon me by the ignorant or close minded. So rather than descended into a petty diatribe about why someone offering bullshit advice as a life coach should be careful about criticising others for giving people hope, I thought it would be better to take the high road and comment instead on the paradoxical logic that leads people to make such assumptions.

Telling a writer that their work is damaging to the mindset of the reader is merely a poorly conceived assumption that the writer’s purpose or intent is exactly as you perceive it. And that every single consumer views a piece just as you do.

We live in a world of unprecedented exposure to art. Gone are the days where great artists created works to hang in prestigious galleries, or musicians crafted masterpieces to be played to amphitheatres of patrons dressed in their Sunday best. Even literature has become a living, breathing entity that moves through trends and creates successes and swallows failures.

Nowadays the creative arts are just a click of a button away on our computers and phones, allowing us to constantly immerse ourselves in the new and exciting. Music and movies can be streamed, literature can be packaged as an eBook or weblog, and art can be created or captured through photo sharing applications.

The benefits of this are obvious. Creativity is all around us. One can connect with an author or artist half a world away and be educated and enlightened by the works they produce. As an artist we can accrue an audience of similar minded consumers who we would have never had met without this widespread coverage. The audience that I have amassed here at The Renegade Press would not have come to fruition without having the ability to expose my works to the world through social mediums. Yet while I am grateful for the exposure, I am also aware that we are blessed with a curse.

The abundance and availability of art has created a devaluing of the work in the eye of the patron. Society has developed an insatiable lust for the new, bold, and creatively brave, meaning that artwork doesn’t undergo the same maturation process it once did before becoming a masterpiece. A song, film, book, blog, or painting is viewed, appreciated, then forgotten with the swipe of a thumb or the refreshing of a browser. Rather than creating works to last a lifetime, we now create pieces to capture an audience for just a fleeting moment.

IMG_9081

This lust to discover and consume, coupled with technological advancement and mankind’s desire to feel valued has allowed anyone to create and share through social media platforms. In our efforts to fit in or perform, we have unwittingly become venomous critics and hypocrites ready to disparage others to make ourselves appear greater.

Take me for example. I am a writer/author who has created a website through which I can create pieces of social commentary for a readership that chooses to coddle my creativity. Yet there are times when I will read through the blog posts of a like-minded writer and think that their work is sub-par in comparison to my own. Sometimes I will even pass judgement on them for making a stand for what they believe in. I’m not proud of that fact; it’s hypocritical of me to make such absurd assumptions. It’s ridiculous that I could believe that no one anywhere could find value in another writer’s words, or that anyone anywhere would derive the same meaning from it that I do. In those moments I’m standing inside my own glass house constructed through creativity hurling stones at my neighbour.

Thankfully, because I refuse to voice such negative opinions, my thoughts and feelings don’t hurt anyone but myself. They make me close-minded, arrogant and a bit of an arsehole without battering the fragile individuality of the artist in question. Yet this conceited judgement is a common practice in modern day society. We critique with bias, misconstruing both our perceptions of ourselves and of others. Teenagers call their peers a slut when they post a photo in their bikini, yet litter their own social media accounts with similar pictures. Musicians call another artists music dreary while haphazardly slapping together shoddy riffs and generic lyrics of their own. And sometimes fuckwit life coaches trying to swindle people with pyramid schemes or get rich quick plots dare to deem the works of another blogger as damaging to their readership. Yep, even the snake oil peddlers in their infinite wisdom dare to throw stones from inside their own glass houses.

So how to we counteract our penchant to throw stones? How do we dispel with this mentality of mass consumption, devaluation, and our proclivity for judgement and volatile critique? It’s actually rather simple. Stop being that ignorant consumer who believes in belittling another person for pursuing their own dreams. Stop throwing stones from within the confines of your glass house. All you are going to do is break a few windows and cheapen your own image.

If you want to be an artist, be an artist. If you want to be a writer, be a writer. And if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, then be that. Just don’t be a hypercritical arsehole who disparages others for wanting the same thing.

Wolves & Sheep

wolf mist

‘The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.’
– Hugh Macleod

If you were forced to make a choice between living a life of boredom, or one of loneliness, what would your decision be? Would you choose a stifled existence of mundanity in which you are forced to conform to the whims and needs of the masses? Or would you be comfortable in a life of isolation? Could you find comfort in the knowledge that you will forever be without inspiration, surrounded only by the mediocre and the monotonous? Or would prefer a life of seclusion and segregation?

The truth is that you wouldn’t wish to be afflicted by either. If I pushed you into a corner and forced you to make a choice, you would probably shove me back and call me insane. Why would anyone want to make such a ridiculous decision? No matter what avenue you pursued, you would be damning yourself to a life of frustration. And yet, on a subliminal level many of us have already made this choice. I’ll get to explaining why in a moment, but first I want you to ask yourself what you would decide. When your back is against the wall and you’re forced to decide between being a wolf or a sheep, what are you going to chose?

A life of boredom sounds well… Boring. But a life of loneliness sounds heartbreaking. Only a sadist would wish to spend their life utterly alone.

The human brain is preprogramed to pursue a life of boredom over one of isolation. We rely on chemicals and endorphins flooding our mind in order to feel accomplished. We establish friendships, set achievable goals, and pursue larger dreams so that we can succeed and our minds can be flooded with hormones that leave us feeling contented. Mankind is for lack of a better expression; a reward centric species reliant on self actualization and social fulfillment. On a subconscious level, we have a yearning to fit in, so we create communities of like-mindedness and consume products and ideas that fall in line with our beliefs and ethos.

We move like herds of sheep. Not because we are unable to stand alone, but because we are compelled to move together. Our behavior is indicative of boundless successes and our greatest accomplishments as a species are born out of this togetherness. We are all connected, regardless of colour, orientation, gender or creed.

But this herd like attitude can also lead to a lack of originality. When we all move in the same direction, we all think, feel, and act in an identical manner. We believe that we are exposed to beautiful literature because we are told by our peers that something is groundbreaking or unique. We believe in the faux realities portrayed to us on social media because we are afraid to ask questions. And we fail to understand or appreciate truly original thinking because it doesn’t fall in line with the rinse and repeat mentality of the modern era.

We become bored with ourselves and the world we live in, yet are somehow perplexed as to why anyone would dare to create something new and exciting.

Hold on, let’s take a break for a second. I keep throwing out the expression ‘we’ and yet I have never really subscribed to this type of behaviour. In fact, I have never really found my place within society. I’m still a lone wolf wandering adrift amongst sheep. Even after twenty-seven years of trying to understand myself, I am still the loneliest son of a bitch that I have ever known. Not because I am without peers, but because I don’t share the same ideological constructs or accept the same realities as those around me.

When you break down society into the two categories of sheep and wolves I fall firmly into the classification of the later. I would rather die of heartache than live an existence plagued by boredom. I would rather strive towards greatness than settle for the mundane. And I would rather fight for a dream than be handed a bullshit life suffocated by monotony and tedium on a silver platter. When I look at myself as a man and as a writer, I would rather be a fucking wolf than a goddamn sheep.

But in a world as fickle as this how does one find sanctity in loneliness? How does one chase a dream without succumbing to despair and isolation?

…You can’t. It’s not possible to be a wolf and to stand for what you believe in without learning to grift and grind when life gets tough. I am a twenty-seven year-old writer who suffers from anxiety. Why? Because I want to be something far greater than who I am. I push myself to produce and create so hard that oftentimes I find myself frustrated, angered, or crying in a wardrobe. Shitty literature, tacky mass produced music, and shoddy films break my heart. And the fact that celebrity and marketability has replaced talent and hard work feels like an affront to everything that I stand for.

And yet I write. I keep pushing through the loneliness because I believe that I can be better. I believe that through my words I can change the world. When I first started blogging I was an extremely unhappy, and tremendously lost individual. I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, floating through an existence that left me feeling broken and unfulfilled. But writing saved me. It became a reason to dream, a reason to love, and a passion to live for. Four years later, The Renegade Press has grown into something far greater than I had ever imagined. What started off as a way for me to embrace my inner wolf and peel off the layers of sheep skin that clung to my frame, has now become a medium through which I can connect with like-minded souls who believe that there is more to life and art than boredom and bullshit.

The price that I have paid to make it as far as I have in this industry (admittedly I’m still scratching at the surface) has been huge. At times I am so fucking lonely that I contemplate quitting. Sometimes I pray that I can start over and decide to be a sheep rather than a wolf. I tell myself that I would be happier if I learned to accept rather than question. But then I look at how far I have come, read the kind words of my readers, and look at my name on the spine of a novel and find my courage return. I am a wolf. And when a wolf finds himself backed into a corner he bares his fangs and fights his way out.

If ideological loneliness and heartbreak is the price that I have to pay to be a writer, then I welcome it with open arms. Because even though loneliness can be devastating, it is better to die having spent one day as a wolf than have lived an entire lifetime as a sheep.

Loose Threads

Close your eyes and imagine your favorite sweater. Take a moment to envision it in all its glory. Maybe it’s blue, or red, or maybe it carries a garish Christmas print, or the logo of your favorite sports team or band. When you wear it something just feels right. The way the fabric falls against the contours of your body, the way the neck has stretched out slightly and the elbows are worn through makes it perfect to you. It’s comfortable, it feels wonderful, and you couldn’t ever imagine loving another inanimate item of clothing quite like your sweater.

Now imagine that your favorite sweater had a lose thread, and suddenly you’re faced with a decision you never thought that you would have to make. Do you pull on the thread and risk the delicate stitch work unraveling? Do you try and find a pair of scissors and cut it off, leaving a gap in the intricate pattern? Or do you simply accept that even something as cherished as your favorite sweater can carry an imperfection and leave it alone?

Well, what would you do?

Now imagine that your favorite sweater is in fact the world. The loose neckline is the Northern Hemisphere, the stretched out hemming at the bottom that you have learned to love is the South Pole. That garish Christmas print or logo is actually a cluster of nations defined by borders of water and man-made lines carved into the earth. And that lose thread? Well that my dear reader is what we know as racial intolerance and religious vilification.

I know that it may seem like an odd analogy at first thought, but look a little deeper; look beyond the surface of this earth and see the world for what it truly is. Look at what we as humans truly are: a species of Homo sapiens stretched across the planet with alternate thoughts, feelings, physical attributes and social structures. Yet for all our differences, we are supposed to be bound by one thing: our humanity. Those differences that at first make us seem so incongruous, are merely another tawdry pattern interwoven into the compassion that binds us.

So why the fuck after thousands of years on this earth are we still killing one another in hate? Why are we the only species on the face of this earth at war with itself? And why the hell are we so willing to blindly accept the wedge being driven between races by faceless cowards and men who hide behind misconstrued messages of faith?

There has always been a loose thread in the fabric of the world. With a population of over seven billion people and over four thousand alternating religions, we are bound to have clashes on an ideological nature. But right now in this moment in time, we as a species seem so fucking intent on yanking on the filament until the world unravels like a shitty sweater and anarchy reigns supreme. The thing we love so much: life, is being ripped away from us. We are been bombarded every single day with public imagery of war and hate to the point where we now mistreat and mistrust our fellow man based on the colour of their skin or the faith that they practice.

We’re pulling; we’re yanking on that thread by dividing and segregating ourselves and playing right into the hand to the minute percentage of arseholes who genuinely want to watch the world burn. Yet no one seems to have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say fuck this. There’s a bunch of bullshit on social media that allows the general public to believe that they are making a stand against hate and cultural vilification. You can change your profile picture on Facebook to the colours of a flag belonging to a country who has suffered at the hands of terror. Or you can subscribe to anti-war pages that promote slightly skewed logic to their followers. But no one is really doing anything, are they?

We’re still stuck in this troublesome cycle of fear and loathing, feeding the hunger and needs of terror-based organizations and allowing them to grow. Imagine the world as a sweater once again. Imagine that the loose thread is you and your intolerance of a race of people that is rooted in the media you consume and propaganda you endure. Imagine that you start pulling on that thread; imagine that you start vilifying innocent men and women because of the faith they practice. In turn your friends do too, and the sweater unravels ever so slightly. Those people that you discriminate against grow bitter, and start to lash out against you. Tensions rise. Social order breaks down and the fabric of the world begins to deteriorate as the sweater becomes an unravelled pile of yarn.

Now imagine if you just left that thread the fuck alone. Rather than discriminate against a set of values you don’t fully understand you instead try to learn about them. Rather than create anger you create love and passion. Soon that tiny thread of cultural differentiation becomes obsolete and irrelevant in the lives of those around you and the compassion that binds us grows ever stronger.

We can either have a sweater made stronger by our cultural diversification with a few loose threads throughout the stitching that add character. Or we can pull at the loose filaments and watch our world unravel. The choice is ours to make. We can pretend to make a difference, or we can swallow our pride, roll up our sleeves and actively do something to overthrow religious and cultural vilification. Befriend a stranger, learn their story, and stop passing judgement on matters of faith you haven’t taken the time to understand or comprehend.

Mediamorphasis

I need you to clear your thoughts. Remove all distractions, torments and dreams. Free your mind and abandon everything that you have ever learned or assumed to be true. For the next thousand words or so you are a clean slate. You have no beginning; nor end. You are an infinite entity uninhibited by prejudice and fear. It’s difficult isn’t? It’s hard to remove all the subjectivity and partisanship that we have allowed into our lives. But this little experiment will be worth the effort. Trust me. I’m a writer.

I want you to think about the evening news. Close your eyes if you have to. Imagine the reporters and journalists on your television screen. They are immaculately dressed in the finest of clothing as they sit at their desks or report live from the field. They look fantastic. Enviable even. One must feel so accomplished standing in a beautiful dress or designer labeled suit as they deliver the current affairs.

But looks can be deceiving. When you turn your attention away from their image and the branding presented to you; when you focus instead on what they are saying, are you still impressed with what you now hear? Death, destruction, and sacrifice reign supreme. A man has murdered his wife. Another has shot five people dead in a robbery attempt. Millions are starving. Wars are tearing the humanity from the clutches of nations. Another child has become radicalized. Every heinous report is accompanied by depictions of broken windows, police units and fractured lives splashed across the screen in a macabre slideshow.

Ruin and woe are threaded so effortlessly through each story that you have become desensitized. The damaged lives and senseless murders of others have been reduced to nothing but sound bites and footnotes that barely even pierce the veil of your subconscious. You have probably never noticed how repulsive the evening news is. Until now.

Every day the media tells us to trust no one and fear everything. Ruin and woe make the world go round. Or so we’re told. But are things really as horrible as we have been led to believe? Is the man whose religion differs from yours actually plotting your demise? Are governments truly lying to us about everything? Is every man, woman and corporation really your enemy?

…The short answer is no. The guy who lives next door and practices alternative beliefs doesn’t give a shit about you. He’s too busy trying to live his own life. The shear logistics required for a government to deceive its people make it nigh on impossible for them to cultivate devious conspiracies against us on a daily basis. And no one actively wants to hate you.

We’ve merely been misled and misinformed in the media’s quest to win our attention. Outlets like current affairs programs, tabloids, and circulars are businesses. As a business their primary objective is to accrue viewers. More viewers equal more money, and big business learned long ago that the human brain is attracted to two things: violence and obscenity.

The world seems to be becoming increasingly grim because the media started exposing the general public to violence, obscenity and disorder through events like the Vietnam War with the intent of providing a genuine insight into the perils of a conflict on foreign shores. But their pure intentions became distorted when marketing began capitalizing on society’s interest in the darker side of human nature. Nowadays media organizations are competing for viewers by continuously pushing one another to feature increasingly graphic and repulsive imagery, and we the viewer have become so bombarded with grotesque content that we have stopped seeing beauty in the world.

Before we go any further I feel like we need to take a quick break so that I can issue a disclaimer… I am a writer first and foremost. I’m not a scholar or leading expert in the media industry. My thoughts that are being presented here should by no means be taken as gospel. If you don’t like my opinions, or don’t agree with them, that’s fine by me.

Alright, let the controversy begin.

The media has undergone a metamorphosis. What was once a medium designed to communicate messages of interest and entertainment has now become a rabid beast hungry for consumer attention. While it is fair to say that we have become desensitized to violence, we have also created a world in which we form judgment and beliefs based off of targeted stories and biased opinion. We believe that the Muslim man who lives down the street is an extremist because we are told to mistrust. We believe that foreign parties are radicalizing children because we are exposing them to adult concepts long before they have the mental capacity to develop rational thoughts and understand their own emotional and chromosomal makeup. And we believe that it is our right to question everything, but we are being led to ask the wrong goddamn questions.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. There are horrible people in the world. It’s inevitable that with a world population of over seven billion people that there are bound to be a few bad eggs. But the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists, extremists and extortionists are a minority. They are not the majority that you have been led to believe…

…So let’s start over…

…I want you to clear your mind again. I want you to empty your thoughts and bias just like you did at the start of this post and try to imagine that you are watching the nightly news again. Picture the anchors, the journalists and field reporters. They’re still dressed immaculately; they still smile at you with brilliant white teeth. But this time they’re telling tales of a different tune.

Instead of reporting that a man of Islamic decent has been arrested on terror related charges, they are instead talking of the Sheikh who has encouraged his community to aid the homeless. Instead of a story reporting that a man murdered his wife, there is one describing a man who loves his partner so dearly that he has professed his love with a hundred red roses. Instead of a child being accosted for attempting to carry a weapon onto a classroom, they are praising a school for their academic and sporting excellence.

Imagine how different our outlook on the world would be if the media presented stories designed to expand our minds and highlight the better angels of our nature rather than beating war drums and chanting tales of ruin and woe. If you knew of the wonderful deeds that they had completed, would you still be so quick to judge your fellow man? Would you still be so afraid of everyone and everything? And do you believe that we would be plagued with the same issues currently eroding the fabric of our society if we focused on positivity and progression rather than fear and violence?

I’m not saying that we need to be ignorant. We should never turn a blind eye to the one percent of mankind that choses to hate and destroy rather than love. There is no heaven without hell and without those heinous acts of brutality and violence we could never truly appreciate just how lucky we are to be alive. But we shouldn’t allow that same one percent to rule us through fear. The media has undergone a metamorphosis and led us to a horrible state of misinformation and hysteria. And if they can transform once, then surely they can do it again. So isn’t it about time they evolved into a medium of integrity and human decency once more?

Hellion

Hold up. Did you just try and walk up on me? You’re just a bottom feeder and you think that you have what it takes to front up to a wolf?

Alright; it’s your funeral. But let’s get one thing straight right from the start. I’ve taken down bigger motherfuckers than you before. I’ve buried bodies in the dirt and washed the blood from my hands without so much as a second thought. If you think that this is going to end well for you are sadly mistaken. I’m going to tear you apart.

You have to laugh at Internet trolls don’t you? You know the type: backwards pieces of shit who believe that they are clever because they sit behind a keyboard and demean or defame others. More often than not they are armed with a plethora of facts from reputable sources like Wikipedia or offer highly intellectual taunts like questioning someone’s sexual orientation or telling people to kill themselves…

I’ve had a few trolls in my time. From religious fanatics who believed that equality is the devils work, to scholars who thought that the ideas presented in my posts ran incongruously to what they understood to be true. At first the idea that someone could be so repulsed by my work that they felt the need to actively try and damage my reputation upset me. A lot. I’d sit for hours at my computer and read through the nonsense that people were writing about me and wonder how I could appease rather then offend. I didn’t want to be hated. I wanted to be loved!

But after a while you start to realize that the reason a lot of people turn to trolling is because of jealousy and fear. Through this site I have developed a sphere of influence that outreaches some and threatens to eclipse others. For those that envy what I have created they try to break it down, while those that I am threatening to out produce try to ridicule.

After you’ve been trolled a few times you start to enjoy it.

And why shouldn’t you? You’ve touched a nerve with someone to such a degree that they feel the need to try and belittle you on their own forums, unintentionally providing you with free publicity. I’ve been called out by conservative Christians, psychology scholars, other bloggers, business directors, and even a politician who resides half a world away; and every single time someone has tried to break me down their attempts have backfired.

You let the wolf lose inside your head you piece of shit. Now I’m going to eat you alive from the inside out. Can you feel me clawing at the back of your eyelids? Can you feel my fangs tearing apart your fragile mind? You started this. You stepped into the hunting ground and now you’ll be buried with the others. You wanted to front up to a world eater. Now I’m going to take yours away from you.

Let’s pump the breaks a little. This post isn’t about me sinking back into bad habits and trying to tear the head off of everyone who wrongs me… Well, not entirely… It’s about trying to ask at what point in history did it become acceptable to try and belittle and destroy someone’s hopes and dreams from the comfort of your lounge room? When did it become common practice to hide behind a URL, proxy-server or avatar and heap shit on others? It’s about asking where do we as a community draw the line against online bullying?

Because it has to be drawn somewhere. There has to be a moment in time where we as a society stand together and say no to trolling and the degradation of our fellow man and woman. There has to be an end to the faceless attacks against artists, writers and everyday people that leave them feeling broken and alone. Society has turned its back on humanity, decency and compassion in favor of bullying and faceless tormenting and it has to stop. It’s disgusting to see someone’s life or ambition shattered by their peers simply because we feel comfortable to harass from afar. If you don’t have the guts to step away from your keyboard and say something to someone’s face then you need to shut your mouth before someone breaks your fucking jaw.

Brutal? Probably. But as someone who has suffered through depression (and still lives with the knowledge that it will forever be apart of my chemistry) I know first hand the devastating effect that the words of a complete stranger can have. I understand better than most the hollow void that can consume your soul when you feel lost and abandoned. So if I have to get a little aggressive to rouse the masses from their blind acceptance of bullying then so be it.

There are far too many brilliant people out there who don’t have the belief in themselves or their abilities because they’ve been broken down and belittled by some piece of shit that hides behind a keyboard and thinks that it is funny to destroy lives.

For someone has arrogant as I am, the pathetic attacks from online bullies are worn as badges of honor. But the knowledge that there are other artists and ordinary people living in our society who feel threatened, lost and abused by faceless fucks makes me feel ill. Trolling and bullying has to stop and we as a community have to understand that belittling others destroys our humanity. Mankind is limited only by its imagination, so it seems counterintuitive to our progression as a species to be intentionally crippling the ambitions of one another through faceless subterfuge and online harassment.

If we abandon hate and focus on praising our fellow man and woman than there is no telling what we are capable of achieving. If you aren’t brazen enough to take your messages of hate to the streets, then it’s time to stop posting it online.

And if you really want to be a hero then try and walk up on a wolf again. I’ll happily rip out your throat, you ignorant piece of shit.

The Lion’s Gaze

There is an ancient fable from Terma in which Padmasambhava, a literary character, appears before a Terton and teaches him how to better focus his emotions. Padmasambhava says that when a stick is thrown to a dog, the dog will chase the stick. Yet when you throw a stick to a lion, the lion chases you. A dog’s gaze will always follow the object: the stick. The lion gazes steadily at the source: the thrower.

Yep, that’s right. After a brief absence from this site I’ve returned to drop some obscure philosophy served with a side of self-indulgence on you that’s sure to leave you scratching your head wondering why the hell you’re even reading it.

But hear me out. Open your mind and be prepared to look beyond the stick and instead focus on what is really important: the thrower, and why they tossed it in the first place.

The stick is a distraction; a frivolous entity designed to draw your attention away from your heart’s true desire. Yet so many of us chase the damn thing every fucking time that it’s thrown, diligently returning it to its owner, only for them to hurl it in a different direction. So many of us are as loyal as a hound, and that loyalty ultimately becomes our undoing. We play according to the rules of men and women distracting us with a petty game of fetch, when all we really want is for them to treat us as equals or allow us the opportunity to blossom.

A lot of people have been commenting on how quickly this site has grown over the past few months. Your writing has improved! Your followers have exploded! You seem so much happier in your work! All of which are true. I’ve put in a lot of hard work into what I am producing and amassed numerous sleepless nights as I’ve toiled away at my writing. It hasn’t been easy, and at times I’ve wondered why I chose to enter such a fickle industry. Yet when people ask me what inspired the metamorphosis between the boy I was eighteen months ago and the man I am today, I’ve struggled to answer.

            I’ve learned to silence my ego. I say. I’ve let go of my hate.

I haven’t though. I’m still the perpetually frustrated mind I was back when I was producing endless streams of whiney bullshit to a lackluster audience. And I’m still arrogant as sin. I don’t understand humanity, and I struggle to tolerate much of popular culture. Yet I have grown. And I have improved. But I’ve never really understood what changed inside of me that allowed me to become someone with a published novel and a chance to actually carve my name in the walls of the literary industry.

Until I learned about the lion’s gaze.

When I first told myself that I was going to become a writer I did what most people do. I dove headfirst into an industry that I didn’t really understand and started fetching sticks, wrestling them from the mouths of other like-minded authors and presenting them to literary masters. Get and editor they’d say. So I did. Tone down the violence. I obeyed. Jump through this hoop. Sit. Roll over. Play dead. I’d bow down at their feet and do anything that I could just to capture the attention of the industry. But the industry itself was merely throwing sticks into a field to keep me occupied.

The problem with trying to earn the respect of someone or something in this manner is sooner or later they are chucking more sticks then you can ever hope to fetch. You become confused, unsure what direction you should follow, or what branches are worth retrieving. Soon that confusion festers and becomes anger. You’re tired. You’re bitter. You dream of success and of lashing out to bite the hand that feeds. You become so caught up in playing games of fetch that you just end up chasing your tail around in circles.

But you don’t have to hunt distractions. It took me a long time to learn this but it’s ultimately true. The difference between the shitty little blog that I ran eighteen months ago and Renegade Press is that I learned to ignore disruption and interference, stop chasing sticks and do what I want to do: write fucking entertaining posts that capture the imagination of my readership. I’ve let go of comparing myself to the works of others, I’ve turned my back on purposely trying to cultivate ‘confronting’ pieces, and I’ve allowed my work the opportunity to be judged based solely on its merit.

It’s been a sharp learning curve, and at times when I’ve felt my confidence falter it has taken all my strength not to start playing fetch and conforming to the whims of others once again. To help me through I created foundations of strength through my wolf and world eater monikers, but never once have I taken my eyes off of my ultimate goal: to write damn good literature.

When you understand what your heart truly desires you have to learn how to develop a lion’s gaze. You have to teach yourself to ignore the distractions that life throws at you and never allow yourself to lose sight of your dream. You may dream of being a writer like me. You may aspire to be a parent, or a lover, an artist, lawyer, doctor, or poet. The dream itself can be anything. But that fire, and that intestinal fortitude to never lose focus even when times get tough is what ultimately allows us to grow and achieve.

When Padmasambhava, appeared before the Terton he taught him that the slightest shift in perspective can change the world. When I stopped focusing on chasing down frivolous exploits or competing with others and focused instead becoming a better writer, I altered the course of my life and found success.

Now it’s your turn. Take a moment and ask yourself if you were to shift your perspectives away from the unimportant and block out all distraction, where would your lion’s gaze be focused?

What could you achieve?

Why the hell are you still chasing sticks?

Fire & Ice

‘No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.’

-Aristotle

I often have days where I contemplate giving up. They’re the kind of days where I sit down at my computer to write and think to myself why the hell am I doing this? I’m twenty six years of age and I’ve never had a career, I’ve never finished any of the multiple university degrees that I’ve started, and despite having served more than a decade in the workforce I don’t really have anything of substance to my name. I really struggle when those moments arrive. I sit at my computer for hours and stare blankly at a screen clouded by my own insecurities and self-doubt wondering why I don’t just give up and become happy like everyone else. I want to be a writer; I am a goddamn writer. But in those moments I question whether I have what it takes to make a career out of this.

I hate those days. I hate when all the bravado and bluster is stripped away and the lost, lonely little boy that I once was is left sitting naked before a computer he bought with labors that make him feel ashamed. However for every day of isolation and insecurity that I suffer through there is a day of contentment. For every hour of self-doubt there is a period where my fingers dance so effortlessly across a keyboard, or my pen scribbles frantically against pages in a desperate attempt to keep up with the thoughts spilling from my mind.

I’m a man of contradictions. I’m a wolf; yet at times as vulnerable as a wounded beast. I’m a world eater, yet at times I’m afraid of my own realities. I’m a man, but still a child. And I’m a writer. Yet I still feel like I haven’t quite made it. I’m succeeding, but at times I look around at the life I’ve tried to create and all I can see is the decaying carrion of opportunities squandered.

Someone once told me that I must be crazy to try and create a life out of writing books. They were right. The truth is that I’m frigging insane. No one of a sound mind would ever spend ten years chasing down a career with no clearly defined path and no guarantee of success. They’d think that such a perilous decision was insanity. And it is. But after ten years I couldn’t imagine living my life any other way. I’ve become so used to being lost in my own thoughts that to lead a normal existence where I’m just like everyone else seems too difficult to comprehend.

So while everyone else I know lives in the present; I live in a world of fire and ice.

In those down days when I feel alone my mind is ablaze, yet my heart is frozen. While an inferno of self-doubt melts away my confidence and cripples my desire to write, coldness settles over my chest until my heart becomes as fragile as glass. If I were to cradle it in my hands and let it fall to the floor it would shatter into a million pieces and the dreams that I’m fighting for would be lost forever.

In my brighter days my heart burns with a force capable of turning the entire world to ashes, while my head is icy, calm, and methodical. The fires of my soul feed upon failures of days gone by and leave behind a head of dispassionate clarity. My heart ingests all the self-loathing and negative thoughts like oxygen, turning them into creative fuel. In those days I watch the world burn in the eyes of my peers and I know that I am good enough; and that if I just keep fighting for my dreams one day I will achieve them.

Lately I’ve been feeling pretty down. I’ve been struggling to find the inspiration to write and have felt the bitterness of winter turn my heart to ice while the firestorms of my mind have reduced my creativity to dust. I feel like I’m forever on the cusp of success and as though I’m always chasing something new. I wanted to write a novel; so I did. I wanted to see my work in print; and now it is. Now I want to do it all over again; so I am. I feel like I’m stuck in this perpetual cycle of fighting for my dreams and I’m so goddamn tired. I’m tearing myself apart every day just to thaw my frozen heart and hopefully lay the foundations of future successes. I’m stuck in a terrible case of writer’s block,  but I’ve been trying. I promise that I’ve been trying.

I’ve been sitting at my computer and forcing words onto a page. They’re not very good and none of them will ever appear in any blog post or book. But at least it’s something. And with each word that I manage to write a little piece of my heart softens and I begin to melt away the ice that leaves me feeling alone and set the world alight once again.

I may feel a little lost right now, but I’m never going to give up on this. I’m never going to quit no matter how lonely those darker moments may feel. Writing is so ingrained in my soul that without it I wouldn’t be half the man that I am today. We all have self doubts and moments where the odds seem stacked against us. In those times others may look at us and believe that we are mad to fight so valiantly when all hope is lost. But the only madness is giving in and throwing away a dream you want so badly that it hurts. Self-doubt will always pass. You just have to keep your head down low and work through the negativity. Keep pushing and refuse to give up. After all, there’s no point in coming as far as I have only to give up just because of a little fire and ice.

Landscape

landscape

I lie beside her and watch her back rise as her lungs fill with air. She breathes so carelessly in her slumber. She holds her breath deep in her lungs for the faintest of moments before she exhales and her body melts into the softness of the bed. A smile creases her lips as my fingertips graze her shoulders; firmly enough for her to feel my presence, but light enough so as not to rouse the muse twisted between my sheets. Her lips curl so gracefully in the corners, her cheeks dimple in response. This woman, this muse of mine is beautiful; from the crown of her head down to the tip of her delicate toes. And as I lie beside her and watch the rhythmic movement of her breath I can’t help but imagine how glorious it would be to shrink myself so that I can explore every inch of her not as a woman, but as a landscape.

I would start in the small of her back. To my north would lay the bottom most ridges of her spine. Small vertebrae visible beneath the smoothness of her skin, stretching away into the distance until they slip between the rolling expanse of her shoulder blades and vanish beneath her silky hairline. To my east and west her sensual hips arc and curve beneath her sleeping frame. And to my south the gorgeousness of her buttocks rises beneath a fragment of crisp white sheet that is draped across her. Such choices. Such wondrous journeys await me as I discover her beauty inch by glorious inch.

I would move south, slowly venturing to the crest of her round buttocks. I would cherish my climb; pausing to inspect a freckle, or to marvel at the intricacy of a birthmark. Her skin would be so smooth; my calves would ache rewardingly as I journeyed to the summit. I’d stand atop her rear and pull the binoculars from my hip, casting my gaze down the seemingly endless legs that stretch across my sheets. Oh how I would die to walk the length of her luscious legs I would think to myself before realising that in my miniature state I can do just that.

I’d march across the suppleness of her hamstring, descend the hollow at the rear of her knee, and traverse the concave of her calf. My journey would take hours. I’d stop to note pigmentation here, a scar from a youth filled with sport there, until I arrived at her ankle. I’d follow the runway of delicate bone past her padded heel, through her arch until I reach her toes. Her nails would be painted brightly, my footsteps tickling her slightly as I walk right off of the tip of her big toe onto the sheets before journeying across the bed and climbing onto her opposing limb, reversing my long walk back to her buttocks.

My journey would take me across her hips. Her gorgeous rounded hips would be like walking across a beautiful knoll. They’d rise gently from her back and roll across her side before delivering me to the firmness of her stomach. I’d reach her navel and camp by its edge. I’d dangle my weary legs over the edge and I would marvel at the feeling of her stomach muscles beneath her tantalizing flesh.

Rejuvenated, I would journey on to the base of her sternum. I would take my time to walk beneath her stellar breasts, running my palm against their curves before ascending each one to marvel at the loveliness of her areola. My, they are beautiful. Their pinkness so perfect against the whiteness of her untanned flesh; it is so exquisitely her. I can’t help but imagine how my loins would cherish this moment atop of my muse’s chest.

But my travels would not cease, I would venture on to the nape of her neck, and descend into the crevice of her collarbone. I’d track a path across her neck and over the precipice of her jawline until I arrived at her lips where I would plant the smallest, most fragile kiss she had ever received against them. I’d move to her ear and whisper into it just how completely she moves me as the scent of her hair fills my senses. I would move around her hairline and descend her occipital ridge until I arrived at the upper echelon of her spine between the two matching crests of her shoulders.

I’d begin to walk slowly now. More aware that my journey across the luscious landscape of her if drawing to an end. I’d run my fingertips across her shoulder blades and kneel to plant the softest of kisses against her skin. And when I finally arrive at the small of her back once again I would turn ever so slowly to view the beauty of her once more. My eyes would fill with tears. Neither of sadness nor those of joy. But the tears of a man who has witnessed something more extravagant that he ever believed possible. The tears of a man who believes in God, for he has found the true magnitude of his work in the flesh of a Goddess.

But alas, I cannot shrink to such a minute state of being. I cannot worship my muse as a landscape and venture along her supple flesh. I cannot plant those miniscule kisses against her skin, or stand atop her buttocks with a yearning within my soul. But I can lay beside her as she sleeps and watch as her lips twitch and eyes fritter with the makings of a dream. I can hold her tight as she stirs, and tuck the loose strands of hair that fall loose behind her ear as she wakes. I can be hers, and she can be mine.