Hotline Bling: Hedonism and Drake

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For those of you who hold the sense of hearing, I am quite sure your ears have been bedazzled by rapper/singer Drake's Hotline Bling; for those of you fortunate enough to not be able to hear this, unfortunately you have only had the opportunity to let his Uncle-Derrick-the-pervert-at-a-child-halloween-party-bash dance moves bedazzle you, and for people like me, who take everything in a rather serious manner, you have been offended at the lyrics contained in the video, in just the same way as professional choreographers have taken offence to his dance moves.
And for those of you even more like me, you would have shook your head at the lyrics and their connection to our current society, a society where hedonism is glorified and highly sought after - one would go so far as to say that the latest iPhone and hedonism go head to head in the minds of our adolescents and young adults. Four minutes of Auras of pastel colours and silhouette of slow grinding later, the entire meaning of modern love has been redefined. And though modern love revolves around sexual encounters, sex is still somewhat frowned upon. Well, the word, at least.
 
Yes. 'Sex' is still rather taboo in our society, surprisingly enough, and this is particularly the case in Disney movies. Apparently storks deliver babies and cartoon women do not have to undergo hours and months of pain and contractions and bladder leakage and vaginal discharge and days without sex. Do they even have genitals? Who knows. And why attack Disney? Well, popular culture. So popular that it has inherently become a part of our society, replacing common sense.
 Just the other day, on my journeying to obtain a so-called fresh Subway roll, I parked next to a metallic blue car with the windows down and the doors throbbing. Inside, seated on the passenger seat was a young girl, I would say somewhere in her late teens. She had her feet up on the dashboard and her phone cradled in both her hands atop the meeting of her thighs and her head, along with the entire car itself, was bopping to Drake's Hotline Bling. And as the lyrics rung out through the open windows, I shook my head and walked away, prioritising my plan to fetch my meal, and not wishing to ask her if she was aware that the lyrics she was ingesting contained a sexually implicit desire for lust.
You used to call me on my cellphone / Late night when you need my love / I know when that hotline bling, / that could only mean one thing, sings Drake, and radios all around the world boosted it into their top ten. Sometimes I wonder why it is that we censor direct sexual language, and not indirect?
Poor Drake, right? Why is this devilish writer targeting the one rapper who is emotionally adept, and unafraid to show girls all around the world that his many hypothetical break-ups have taken a toll on him? He is not the only singer with sexually implicit tracks bumping on our radios. Take Jason Derulo's Trumpets, for instance, wherein he sings, Yeah the drums they swing low / And the trumpets they go / Da da, da ra ra ra, da da [...], implying that once the woman's breasts are in his vicinity and unclothed, his urinating device blows like a trumpet. Put the pieces together.

And let us not forget Flo Rida's Whistle: Can you blow my whistle baby / Let me know / Girl I'm gonna show you how to do it / And we start real slow / You just put your lips together / And you come real close. The amount of times I have heard little children whistle along to the catchy whistle in the song makes me cringe. 

And classic songs are not exempt from this. Take I'm So Excited by The Pointed Sisters: Give in this time and show me some affection / We're goin' for the pleasures in the night. / I want to love you / Feel you / Wrap myself around you / I want to please you / Squeeze you / And if you move real slow / I'll let it go. These were the songs my parents would have rolled their ankles to. 

Or The Divinyls' I Touch Myself? Olivia Newton John's Let's Get Physical? Labelle's Lady Marmalade? Or Britney Spears' If you Seek Amy? Donna Summer sought some  Hot Stuff and 50 Cent invited people to his Candy Shop. Next informed females all over the world that if they got Too Close they would 'make it hard' for them. Salt-n-Pepa had no shame blatantly asking people to Push it, and neither did George Michael when he sung  I want your Sex. Marvin Gaye said, Let's Get it On, and Ludacris decided to politely ask What's your Fantasy, attempting to take in his listeners' preferences. The Ying Yang Twins, on the other hand, decided to take things more intimately in the ear, singing Wait (The Whisper Song). R. Kelly in the meantime saw nothing wrong with a little Bump N Grind, and Madonna cried out Like a Virgin and David Banner asked her not to Play with him. These songs and more, all causing a Sexual Eruption, much like Snoop Dogg's, all through the radio and through its listeners ears. Do not get me started on their video clips.

And so that brings me to my point at hand: why are these lyrics not as frowned upon as the word 'f**k'? I think that implications are worse than blatant desires. Implications can be picked up by many innocent ears and spread around like margarine on freshly toasted bread, all over the schoolyard. And that can lead to problematic situations in the owners of the innocent ears' futures, for when they wish to court with another human, they will dance around the matter - not to mention how awful courting through sexually implicit wording is:

"Can you blow my whistle?"

"You make my trumpet go da da ra da da!"

"Tell me if you want to seek Amy!"

"I want some hot stuff. I need some hot stuff. Give me your hot stuff."

"I don't see nothing wrong with bumping and grinding?"

"You make me feel like a virgin."

"I'm hot just like an oven. I need your loving."

"When I'm feeling down, I want you above me."

So what is the point of censoring vulgar words, when sexually implicit phrases, equally and most of time more vulgar are allowed to ring through our ears? Would you rather have your child hear the word 'f**k' or would you prefer having your child be asked by Flo Rida himself to blow his whistle? And so what we are left with is a hedonistic culture that frowns upon direct hedonistic ways, and glorifies sexually implicit language.

Thank you, Drake, for the questions you have posed in my mind. For your awful lyrics that make amazingly funny Joseph Ducreux memes. For unknowingly giving hedonism room to grow in the minds of the innocent. For making awful dancing look 'cool'. And I hope that girl never calls you again.

Dear Kat Von D

After having just moved houses, parts of my life that have slipped away have reappeared, such as DVD sets of your television show, LA Ink, and several tattoo magazines with you featured on the cover. I even went so far as to purchase my very own tattoo machine, and even performed my first tattoo. I suppose at one stage of my life, I looked up to you.

Now, however, things have changed. I have been watching you through my social media feed. You have promoted yourself and recently you came to my neighbouring city, Sydney. I was affronted with the fact that I could not afford to go see you, even if it were just for the promotion of your cosmetics line, and not for the promotion of what you apparently excel in: tattoo art. Time passed, I barely paid attention to any of your posts, and tonight, one of your posts struck me with both a tinge of surprise and a tinge of anger:

"Fuck everyone", you write. Thank you, Kat. From a former fan, who used to stare wide-eyed at my television set, watching you tattoo people. Thank you, from a former fan who one day wished to fill your shoes. Thank you on behalf of all current and soon-to-be former fans.

Recently, something inside of me has been re-ignited, and that is my love for certain peoples. I have seen a falsified version of passion pouring out of people such as yourself, masking your vanity, and I have seen the passion of regular people who, in their daily treks, have nothing to mask, and instead, reveal their true sense of human nature. These people are people like my father, who, buried in debt, gives money to drug-addicted customers who revel in his presence when they feel hungry. He is under a lot of stress to support his family, yet he wears a smile and wakes up every morning to drive an hour to work and still sports a smile. You have people like my mother, who has survived a bombing back home in Lebanon, who has left behind her passion for medicine after her father passed away to support herself and her siblings, and who has left her desires to ensure my own. You have people like my family friend, a single mother, who is one of the best nurses you should ever meet, had you lived here and fallen ill, who dedicates all of her time tending for the ill in order to support her only son, and other nurses alike, who all are underpaid. You have doctors, surgeons, lawyers, firefighters who risked their lives to assist victims in the 9/11 terror attack, dentists, pharmacists, social justice workers, youth workers, educators who strive every single day to act as role models for younger citizens, and police officers who attempt to keep social order: and who are you?

"Fuck everyone", you say, perhaps only jokingly, however I am disliking your undertone. True rolemodelship occurs in places which merit higher-order thinking, and the unconditional care for others, Kat. Who are you? Who are you, really, without your fans? Who are you directing this hate-filled nonsense at? Without your fans, who happen to be people which constitute the human race, and exist in the group you label "everyone", you are just another person with a tattoo gun, looking to make a living by scarring the skin of others and leaving behind traces of ink. Wow. A great contribution to society.

I am sick of society's valuing of certain figures who deserve no spotlight. The mind is a wonderful tool yet it is an unpopular one. People like Maya Angelou, or Marina Abramović, they are people who are of value, but thanks to people like you, Kat, here are sixty-thousand people who agree with your sense of loathing, who agree that, yes, "fuck everyone". No, Kat, I will not sit here and let you demerit those who are unseen because of the valuing of people such as yourself, who stomp around on the little people, and use their dignities as a springboard for you to dive into a large pool of their own money.

Take a step back, Kat, and think of the younger people like me, who used to aspire to be a vain, undeserving heap of abhorrence such as yourself. I have left the teaching industry temporarily to cater for academia, however I do not appreciate all students past and current who look up to you the way I did, only to see a loathing person. I forgive them, for they are yet to find and explore their spark of humanity, thus they cannot see you for who you truly are, behind all the glitz and glamour of showbiz. Reevaluate your outlook on life, Kat. You are nothing without the cheers of those who follow you. Who are you aiming that at?

P.S: I can draw much better than you, but I do not need my own television show to know that.

Oh, and Kat? Fuck you. 

What Dennis Quaid's Rant Taught Me

Recently, I saw a video of Dennis Quaid losing his patience whilst on set and verbally abusing all those in his line of fire. I laughed uncontrollably whilst holding a shocked face, and after having watched it the second time around, I came to the realization of something.

My entire life, I have always been the quiet one. I have been Peter Pan’s shadow, not Peter Pan himself. I never took risks. I sat there content in watching people take risks for me, people shaping my pathway through life. And none of it mattered so long as I was out of everyone’s way, so long as I remained in my shell, my comfort zone.

This was the way until I started attending university. I never saw myself as a future academic. I always thought that I would fall into some subliminal career, like video game design, wherein the only place I exist would be in the credits, the shadows again. Either that or tattooing, also the shadows, because all I would do is draw on people watch from afar as others fell in awe on that person’s skin, far from me, with only a name to represent me, and if I were lucky, a business car. But university changed that.

University gave me a voice. It powered my anger. It fueled me. Whenever something unprofessional would happen, I found myself commenting on it not just through text, which is the way I lived my life earlier because of my obsession with networking, but through voice. I was a decent public speaker in my youth, but entering the academic world gave my public speaking a powerful surge. Something inside of me came to life and cast me out of the shadows. It cast me into vulnerability, into the spotlight, a place that I had feared my entire life prior to entering this academic space, and since then there has been no going back.

I have been vocalizing all that irritates me. I have been standing up to myself, seeking justice where it is due. One particular instance is when one of my aunties had sought out to avenge my sister on her choice of preferring a spouse from another race. Upon other devastating phrases, she screamed “love isn’t about loving someone, it is about making a child that looks like you so that they won’t be bullied. You have to think of what your children will look like before you marry!” My blood boiled. I could no longer contain myself. “how,” I retorted, after my father stuck up for her, “can any of you sit here and listen to this? How do you all expect me to sit here with you after I attend classes which preach about diversity? How am I meant to grow as an educator and love others when all you do is tell me to hate everyone?” It was pathetic. Everyone had let me down at that moment, particularly my younger cousins who felt the same way that I did but dared not speak about it.

What was important was that I had a voice. I grew out of their expectations, I grew out of their nonsense and developed my own self, developed a character that would take a stand when they feel something is wrong, a character that would give voice to the voiceless. Had I not spoken at that moment in time, I would have sat there appearing to fall into agreement with the ridiculous nonsense that my aunt had released, and the hopes of my sister or myself or anyone in that room alike would have fallen into an abyss of hatred that my aunt was attempting to cast it into. By standing up for myself and for the right of all human beings at that moment, I had put a plug into that abyss, ensuring that nobody, while I was around, would fall into that again.

In Dennis Quaid’s rant, he screams “I am doing my job, here. I am a pro. This is the most unprofessional set I have ever been on. […] This is garbage!” I came to the realization, upon hearing that, that fighting for what you believe in is the only way to survive. He could have continued sitting where he is on the set. He could have continued to fall victim to the unprofessionalism that he was faced with, but after having been in a certain professional space, he would not settle for less, and right he is for not doing that.

He has grown. Not physically, but mentally. His inner horizons had been stretched. He has been through things that he probably had not anticipated, and then he is thrown into a situation where regression was imminent. That scenario relates to the scenario I went through, when my aunt had her racist rumble. I have been growing in all these six years in an academic environment, what good would I do myself if I had left myself in a place where the only choice I had was to regress and comply? None.

Be the Dennis Quaid in your life. Embody that change. Do not let anything tie you down. Once you are filled with the helium of growth, let go, and fly. Only come down to inform others, and then fly off with them as well. Growth is a splendid thing, and once you feed on it, ignorance becomes easier to spot, and much easier to evade.

We Writers

Something happened today that shook me to my very core.. Something was said that rattled my soul and rendered me taken aback due to the utter disbelief I emitted due to what I had heard. And I felt the need to remove this from my chest before it takes someone else by surprise.

One would think that, within an academic setting, in an English classroom that aims to educate future educators and lovers of literature and written expression, one would be surrounded by common minds – minds that think alike, minds that believe communication in any form is an output of personal integrity. Today, I was shown that this is not the case.

After having gone through a dreadful peer presentation on a reading, I was shown that it could indeed get worse: on to the front of the class marched the next presenter, armed with a USB holding the blandest presentation I have ever set eyes on – but who was I to judge? We all have starting points. So I sat there, attempting to focus in despite all of the “like” and “ums” that I heard. I was fine with the fact that this particular presenter had no idea what to say and kept stating the obvious, that the science fiction story she was assigned to read and analyse contained alien life forms – that was completely fine, great analysis, thank you.

In our presentations, though, we are required to ask the group three key questions that contain depth. Her first two did not contain such a thing, and her third had me taken aback, and not in the way that I had desired.

Let me explain, first, the reading that she had read, ‘The Women Men Don’t See’ by James Tiptree Jr., who in actuality is a female who goes by the name of Alice Sheldon. She had adopted the pseudonym so as to divert the public’s gender-shaming of her work due to women’s writing apparently not being acceptable enough. But that is not what I am here to argue about.

This reading was preceded by another reading which gave an insight into Alice Sheldon’s personal life, her beliefs in gender equality and such, and it was not meant to be discussed by the presenter. What did the presenter do? The presenter took the last sentence of the following reading:

‘In May 1987, when Alice Sheldon’s beloved husband was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, she shot him dead and then turned the gun upon herself’.

Alice and her husband, later in their lives, practically became recluses after having suffered due to her chain smoking, and after her husband’s degenerative disease grew. Their health declined and they saw it fit to shy away from society. I understand that, because when I am sick all I want is a person who I adore to keep me company, and a box of tissues. Nothing else matters.

After having shot her husband and herself, they were found with their palms interlocked in an infinite embrace. They both may have wanted this. And that is understandable, because most of the time I think of ways that I can escape but I admit that I am not brave enough to do so. That is beside the point, though.

After having learnt this, this particular presenter had the nerve to take that fact into account and attack all writers with a mindless powerpoint slide:

The presenter thought it was appropriate to ask such a thing. And not only ask, but to imply that all writers are mentally ill. She flung the word around as though it meant no harm, and stood there in front of the class waving around her wrist that was entrenched in Tiffany and Co. jewellery, and paid no attention to my look of utter anger mixed with bewilderment. How dare she.

How dare she stand there laughing at those who do not befit the qualities of the status quo. How dare she stand there and mock those who render themselves vulnerable, who go out of their introverted ways to display a piece of themselves and categorise them in a department that society has labeled with negation? How dare she stand there and imply that most of the people in the room, and all other writers are the other? Something alien to the norm? Something that avoids standards of ‘normality’, something that undermines their intellectuality?

It is pathetic to think that some people classify writers as such. We writers document things that most people think and fear to think of again, let alone write down or read. We writers lift our very souls from our depths and scatter them into categories collected in clusters of words and share them with all to see. We writers bravely inscribe our belief systems, our notions of thoughts, our theorizing of concepts, our imaginations and fantasies and reach out with them to others who feel the same way to both acquire a sense of acceptance and receive one. We writers are urns of tears, spilling ourselves onto material accessible to all.

How dare anyone attempt to nullify an unshielded human who is looking to connect? How can anyone be so heartless as to invalidate a person reaching out for a touch of understanding? How can anyone be so cruel as to not inquire into the life of someone who may or may not be going through mental trauma, only to stand there waving their arms like a skewed lamppost, for the sake of a grade out of 25?

Mental agitation is something seldom considered. Rarely does one consider that maybe the person in front of them who has been wearing the same clothes for months, who drifts off into daydreams looking outside the window in class, who sits there with a yearning smile and a burning desire to be accepted, has fought in an internal battle just to be there that day. Rarely does one consider the mental battles themselves that most people go through.

Those people who fight these battles are the ones who do not appear as though they need to. They always smile. They are approachable. They are always happy to help. They are compassionate. They are generous. They will go out of their way to be there for you, to offer you a shoulder or a hand. And they are the ones who sit there and watch as negative connotations are carelessly flung around, aimed utterly at them when all they crave for is what they give to be returned.

We are writers. And we do not hanker for our integration into your commonplace, rather we hanker for your respect.

And to answer your question, presenter, yes. Mental illness certainly plays a part in our role as authors. But we do not see it as an illness. We see it as an antidote, repairing us from the notions that your society has placed unto you and us, blinding you of what we see. Do not get me wrong: we forgive you. But moreso, we pity you. You will never have the depth of our minds' springs, so do not lay implications where understanding is scarce. 

Baby on Board…

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…And he’s in the driver’s seat. A beautiful night, a night where one can do nothing but just stand there yet release buckets of sweat from their pores. Regardless, after having been dragged up to my grandmother’s house, a humid little oven with a cooling system so strong that penguins leave Antarctica for just one feel of it, I decided that I would head elsewhere. My mother and sister joined me, and we went to the beach.

It was a great drive down to the beach. Nobody tailgating me, no hassles on the road. We had the music blaring, and as the filthy lyrics were spat seductively we watched our mother’s complexion turn paler and paler, but we reassured her that the music was nice ‘cruising music’, music that even the car would dance to. And she was okay with that. After all, we will have to listen to her loud Lebanese music the next time she takes us somewhere in her car, so it was a decent deal.

The first stop was the area after the pier and before the beach, where my favorite gelato van hangs around, selling the best tasting orange gelato to date at a cheap rate, too. Just as I parked beside him, he turned off his lights and turned the van on, preparing himself to leave after having spent the entire day melting like the ice-cream he sold to little toddlers who knew no better than to eat it before the sun did. My mother and sister panicked. I made them run to the van as I stayed behind to roll my windows up, and surely enough he decided to serve us some gelato. It is fine – I tipped him an extra thirteen dollars for our having been a nuisance to him.

We enjoyed our gelato, each one of us a varied cone of frozen goodness. My mother was the first one to feel it: a giant grasshopper flew from around us, evading the seagulls, and chose her arm as the best landing spot. She shrieked after realizing it wasn’t her hair stroking her, and threw all of her belongings besides her gelato on the floor and jumped. We decided to get back into the car and roll onto the next stop, the beach. When we got there we walked past couples until we found more grasshoppers and decided to sit beneath the light. Smart of us, yes? Not really, because fifteen minutes into our sitting, my left hand, which was cupped, palm facing the bright night sky, became a landing spot for an even bigger grasshopper, and  it caressed my little fingers before I managed to jump, shriek and power-walk back to my car. My mother and sister followed.

Air conditioner on, we began to drive around the neighborhood on our way home. On a street where the limit was 50kmph, a speedy red Commodore was driving just over 20kmph, and slowed down even more when he found out that I was behind him. My mother and sister assured me that there was a baby on board, having read his little yellow placard on his back window. I decided to wait until there was nothing between our lane and the oncoming lane, and no cars, and I decided to overtake him since he was too stubborn to move for me to pass – and what does he do? He decides to match my speed with his car, and I could not speed more in case my mother’s hair was completely overcome with the color grey, so I sped up as much as I could just avoiding the car on the oncoming lane. I slammed my brakes having just passed him, and looked through my rear-view mirror to see a laughing brat, showing his friend how ‘cool’ it was to nearly send the person behind him to collide with oncoming traffic. I was about to come to a complete stop and make use of the hardest object in my car, when I decided that a taste of his own medicine was better. I drove even slower in front of him, and he decided to give my middle finger a spotlight as he flashed his high beams. I stuck it up, and it surely danced long enough for me to dispel some of my anger. When the road allowed, he took to the lane beside me and just as I turned off into another street, decided to honk his horn at me and throw obscenities.

My mother told him to “shut up” , so I knew at that moment that despite my having scared her during the happening, she was on my side again. We drove off into the night, cruising around my street waiting for my father to notify us that he arrived at home after he was left by us at our grandmother’s house. He called, and we headed back.

It is occurrences such as this where I begin to wonder whether some drivers have this placard on their rear windows to notify us that they have limited driving skills, because if they really did have a ‘baby on board’ then they would not attempt to cause a collision, and they would consider that other drivers behind them who are sharing their wide road need to drive somewhere much closer to the speed limit than them so that they may allow room for these drivers, rather than turning what started out as an innocent family cruise fueled by the interfering of grasshoppers into an episode from Speed Racer fueled by the interfering of an immature driver who is possibly avoiding the attention of the police by pretending to have a baby on board when in reality they are the baby who needs to be tucked far, far away from a supercharged vehicle and even further away from being able to reach any form of license which permits them to operate a vehicle.

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Now, the next time I see a car with a ‘baby on board’ placard attached to it, I will automatically assume that they have no such thing on board other than a potentially underdeveloped brain sitting in the driver’s seat, and I will try with my very best efforts not to attempt to entice them into believing that my very strong car wants to race their even stronger car because I am one of those limited amounts of people left in the civilization of drivers who believe that drivers should be critically aware of the speeding limit so as to ensure the bad temper of the people driving behind them are not to be tampered with. Yes, I drove on the wrong side of the road for an excess of five or so seconds exposing me to risk, however had I not calmed down enough I would have spent more than five seconds exposing the twat behind me to several risks.

And what infuriates me more is that unlike this certain twat, I abide by the speed limit and yet certain other twats choose to want to observe my tail-lights up close, so close that scientists have never seen the movement of bacteria even with the aid of a microscope in such closeness. Tailgaters should make themselves useful and clean things on the back of my car to save me from doing it.

What upsets me the most in this entire ordeal is that he did not sing 'Baby on Board' by The Be Sharps to console me. Twat.