"I took a dose of edibles strong enough for three people and then I went to the Kayne West show"

The Saint Pablo Tour, November 17th, SAP Arena, San Jose, CA
i would like to preface by saying this: i had an incredible time at the concert. i am a huge Kanye West fan and remained so before, during, and after the show. the 24 hours directly following were some of the most exciting and awake i've had in a long time. certainly the massive quantity of drugs helped, but they were not its wellspring. for hours afterwards a thunderous energy stormed through me and i wrote and clawed and laughed and dreamed...


Father Stretch My Hands
an introduction, to break my thoughts into pieces that make sense. my notebook writing is wild and raging: huge all-capital notes in the margins "INDIVIDUALISM" and "AUTHENTICITY/DISINGENUITY". 10 dense pages which boil down to this:

1. what did we see? what did Kanye West say?
2. why were we all there in the first place?
3. did he give us what we wanted?

not a thinkpiece not a journal entry not like anything you've read before or will ever read after


Blood On The Leaves
some scene-setting first:
the lines stretched around the building
the 19 year old girls with their arms up, being metal-detected for floor seats.
the arena filling with smoke. fog.
the waiting in our seats for an hour. the oblique sound effects
antsy, incredible anticipation
much waving of cell phones
and then he was there,
floating above everything.
15,000 souls shouting:
and if i fuck this model// and she just bleached her asshole
but very quickly we realized something was wrong

i will not play-by-play his speaking. much of it was very interesting, but another large part was uncoordinated and circular. i will say that he did not play much music. he would start a song, let the crowd rev for 8, 9, 10 seconds and then pull the plug. this was agonizing for us. he tortured us with his hits. his catalog runs deep.

the biggest, most central ideas:
we each are individuals. we each have our own very individual beliefs, brightnesses, and energies. we have a responsibility to discover & uphold these. to first search for and then live the things we know to be true. we owe this to ourselves and to our communities. we need people living fully & honestly if this project is going to work.
following this, we need to live with acceptance. everyone has their truth and deserves to shine it. there are people at this show tonight, a Kanye West show in California, who voted for Donald Trump. and they have a right to be. and they should be celebrated for their opinion. attacking someone else's light does not make yours stronger.
we are not going to move forward using a two-sided model. democrat/republican is not the way that things work in real life. we need to develop a system, a new system, where the smartest people, the brightest lights, can gather from all sides together to address and examine our problems. i'm gonna run for president in 2020 etc. etc.

people were not listening to him. he was not speaking clearly, sure, but people were not listening. they were too busy reacting to listen. the arena felt like this incredible microcosm for twitter and the internet; the crowd would start to boo before he could even finish a sentence. they would hear the smallest piece and shout back the first thing that came to mind. the vibe was poisoned. people threw shoes at him.

we want the fastest, most digestible thing so that we don't have to think. so we can keep scrolling to the next thing. everything is written just to make us click. our social media is a mirror that we masturbate in front of. Kanye West asked us to distrust the internet and people started looking for their coats

BUT THEN HE WOULD PLAY A SONG and the whole room would explode. all sins forgiven, shouting out his words, moving their bodies like animals

"listen to what you just sang out loud. i just said the vulgarist shit and ya'll just started dancing. the most vulgar shit back to back to back and you think that's okay"

and we did. almost nobody left, despite the ranting. and he played banger after banger after banger. or the first ten seconds at least.


30 Hours
Kanye West is a cult of personality. Kanye West is so fucking real. when he speaks, you know that you are actually looking at the man - his authenticity is blinding almost. for better or worse, he really actually thinks this way.

people can smell out bullshit instantly and they hate it. fake stinks like shit in the sun.

it helps also that he's an egomaniac. in 2016 we identify with this deeply. he is what we could be except for XYZ excuse, if we just had more free time during the day. standing, shining in light, on a suspended platform, speaking your mind as people lean forward with open mouths. they're raising their hands, they're chanting your name for president. isn't this the fantasy we've all had? isn't he showing us ourselves in our bedroom mirrors? the day our instagram catches fire the day our food blog gains traction the day we finally take that leap and are rewarded endlessly. i am the best thing there is nothing else like me i have something to say

also, the dude can really make music.

the way people responded when the sounds were playing: this should be the measure of music always. forget lyrics, meter, chords: look at what happens to people when the music is on. transformed, transfigured. ass shaking, mouth open. you cannot deny this from him, no matter what your other opinions are. boy made some hitters. and continues to make them.

the feeling of 'Waves' amplified through every bone in your body. deeply high on marijuana, i writhed and raised my hands up to the ceiling, the sound & voice filling me.

FML
i was the victim of a Kanye West concert rant. he probably spoke 4x the amount of time that he performed songs. and that's unfortunate, but.

ranting is a very big part of why Kanye is important to us and why we want him. and while it may not have been a ton of fun for us in the moment, it was very in keeping with his brand - a brand much larger than the SAP Center.

we wanted to see a real thing and we did. it just wasn't what we were imagining.


Runaway
a conclusion, the final thought. i've had time to digest. every drop of serotonin wrung.

during the show, i carried contempt for the people who were booing. who were reacting rather than listening or thinking. don't they see can't they hear? how can they be so simple?

but as time passes, i'm realizing that i am also this person. why are the most important ideas coming into my life through Kanye West? what does that say about my diet and intake? my willingness to push and discover?

it's much easier to write 10 pages about a Kanye West concert than to actually study. to actually reflect. my current legacy includes only rich people's houses and a half-written blog. there is real work that i'm avoiding here.

it's just a rap concert after all.


atm1
atm1