Metaphor is Dead
I'm fun at parties
Blue Pills for Breakfast
I'm not cut out for healing
so might sext my therapist
get high off a feeling
let me choose that fake ass bliss
give me that ignorance
because my mask
just keeps on peeling
blue pills
and rose colored grins
I won't say shit,
if you plug me back in
bring back that smoke
I want to be choked
Don't want to see the world
for what it truly is.
We can vacation
in the matrix
get away from this
and retire our
cognitive dissonance
glue on those glasses
to hide from the masses
and stay on the internet
more than in life
because I checked outside
and nothing is right.
So give me those blue pills
and plug me back in.I archived all my posts on Instagram. Social media was created to show our lives. Like “hey look what I’m doing now." But, instead, it has become life.
I wasn’t sharing what was happening in my life. My life was in Instagram. Waiting for things to happen.
Take all the places I would go just to take photos. Yes, I love photography, but was I doing it for the craft or for the social media? Art is about witnessing yourself. It is for exploring your soul — what it wants to say, and how your soul is moving through this world. It takes time. It takes breaks and contemplation and nourishment. I was guilting myself through those breaks because I was searching for something to post online. I started to paint not for my own expression, but for the validation of it.
This isn’t a new revelation. It’s just now that I finally decided to do something about it.
In the past, it was my purpose. I let it drive my identity. I was so afraid of “quitting” selling my artwork on social media that I was sure that my life would implode if I let it go.
So this is an act of release. An act of trust. Proof for myself that there is not “one way.”
And I’m doing the same thing with dating — where I would be more focused on being desirable than on my curiosity about a person. I would be more concerned about being told I was worthy of their interest that I didn’t even question my own.
I’ve decided to release myself. To release dating and focus on committing to exploring myself, loving myself, seeing my Self.
It is only natural then that in an act of love, I must shed the old attachment to that validation.
Archiving all my posts isn’t the end of it either. I am setting new boundaries with my self to make sure that I am really and truly present.
Go to a concert and not take a video.
Drive by a rainbow and don’t take a photo (I failed).
Go to a coffee shop and don’t post about it.
Can I move through life without the need to document?
This learned behavior isn’t just about the validation on the internet.
I also think it began from my fear of lack of control. By documenting, filming, and posting. By constantly focusing on my “art career,” I was able to give myself some image of choice — image of control.
What control do I have if I don’t post about the nuances of life? It’s safer to be in the mystery if I am able to make a reel about it.
The more I post, the less nuanced I allow my life to be.
I think we’ve lost the metaphor. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve evolved away from those nuances of humanness. I even struggle with writing and painting metaphor — almost as if I can no longer grasp the potential a layered meaning can offer.
Everything has just become so…literal.
Maybe it has to do with that speed and quantity that left me waiting for validation. We don’t offer ourselves the time to sift through the art of metaphor in all the content we see. If the post doesn’t grab our attention, we bury it in the wake of our speedy thumbs. We go to art museums to take pictures of ourselves next to instead of sitting with and truly seeing the art. Advertisements switch frames every second to keep our attention. Tweets or whatever the fuck they’re called now have to be so short that we can get the gist in a sentence. I don’t even know the last time I sat through a whole movie.
It’s all so punchy now.
At the beginning of social media, it seemed like videos that had any nuance to them received the most backlash, which caused creators to start being extremely straightforward. Almost over analyzing the message to end up delivering a regurgitation of everything that has already been said. Then, it started in movies. And in popular books. It’s almost like everything has just become a media for referencing something else. Like remakes of old movies. Or retellings of Persephone. I can’t tell if I’m just a bitter person or if the writing in shows and books are actually that bad and too literal.
Am I behind the times and we are just shifting how we communicate?
Or is something…off?
One of my favorite movies and books is Life of Pi. It’s one of the few movies that I think live up to the book, and it is dripping wet with metaphor.
The movie came out in 2012, the same year that Instagram was acquired by Facebook, which honestly was right before the world of social media blew up.
So I wonder if the movie would be made the same way today.
I’ve now read and watched Life of Pi multiple times and every time I come out of it with a different perspective. My interpretation of the story tends to be dependent on my emotions going into it. Am I hopeful for magic in the world? Or am I feeling despondent and out of control?
The story follows a reporter that interviews Pi, who was lost at sea, on how he survives. Pi recalls his past — as a boy, his father purchases a zoo and eventually decides to sell and move the family from India to Canada on the ship with the animals. A storm capsizes the ship and Pi must navigate the ocean with a tiger, Richard Parker.
There is also Orange Juice, the orangutan. And the Hyena. As the story unfolds you question if the animals were actually people: he as the tiger, his mother as the orangutan, and the hyena as the cook. Is it a story of coping with the death of his mother and the brutality of nature? Or is it a story of the magic and power of nature and all animals?
Part of me craves the truth. And another part knows that there is no one truth.
And leaving an open ending like in Life of Pi just doesn’t seem typical anymore. Everything seems to have to be wrapped up in a bow, even when it must be forced (looking at you Game of Thrones, Westworld, The Witcher, etc etc).
We are now deeply unsettled with things left unturned. We claw at it until we are left with a universal truth that we can tout as law.
But, there is no end. It feels like one of the consequences of social media and our society’s affinity towards “diagnosing,” is that we are trying to reach something. Scrolling on Instagram is so addicting because there is never an end. We are just perpetually pulling the sheet off to discover another sheet, on and on. And that’s how we’ve been taught to approach ourselves too.
There is always a deeper depth.
There is always a meaning to uncover.
We’ve destroyed our ability to sit with the unknown.
And maybe it’s not just in our media, maybe it’s also how we relate to one another.
Social media is new age gambling. We grasp at psychology tik toks or preach factoids we have not researched ourselves, but simply saw on a reel, almost as if we are seeking ways to validate our addiction.
Just as you might “hit it big” and have to keep playing the slot machine — no one wants to be the one to walk away when you are one pull from winning — we keep scrolling to scan for that one fact that will prove our time was worth it.
We are not consuming to consider studies or contemplate ideas, we are simply searching for a way to tell the world “I’m not like the others that are addicted. I have knowledge.”
It’s why psychology tik tok is so huge — why everyone seems to be an expert in attachment theory — or have short-sighted opinions on politics that may or may not even be true — everyone is a history major and a science nerd and a fitness influencer and a therapist.
The longer I’m on social media, the more I realize that it is a place where nothing happens, but we are all shouting how involved we are with the world. I have not once attended a county meeting or pursued getting involved in my community or learning about the politics of this country, but I have definitely preached about what the government should do to fix the atrocities I am sure are occurring.
The black and white mentality of our society today is so alluring, all the while being completely void of human kindness, compromise, or empathy.
The internet is mad right now because Instagram is limiting political content on our feeds. And maybe there is some ulterior motive for doing so, but I hope that it might convince people to get involved offline. To research the policies the parties they are blindly voting for are promoting. To care for their community and put a hand out to those around them. Maybe in doing so we can find the metaphor.
And as I hit send on this newsletter and will inevitably post and advertise to get readers, hopefully with new boundaries and more of a window into my life instead of opening the whole damn roof.
Or maybe I will just be sucked back in to the gambling cesspool that is scrolling.
We can only continue on.
