The Allegory of the Bathroom

I spend most of my mornings on the toilet, daydreaming. Today, light filtered in onto the tiles through the window and the way the blinds sat resembled prison bars, a dark array of shadows slicing through the light. 

All of the sudden, a butterfly from outside flew past, its shadow was all I could see fluttering through the light and shadow display on the tiles, and I felt as though I was in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, except in my bathroom. This also is the case because I spent the entirety of yesterday indoors, unbeknownst to all the beauty and mystique of nature that was lingering outside. I had missed out on an entire day of life, just sitting there, procrastinating, wasting away on my sturdy computer chair. 

It is a shame - or is it? I wonder about all the things I could be doing and then I think about my mild social anxiety and remember that I would not do any of those things. And that encourages my inhibitions. So I still sit in that cave, only seeing fragments of outside life through the shadows of the perspectives of the telling from everyone else, whether it be television shows or books or posts on social media sites. So much potential laying in its place, idle, watching only the potential of others and living off the perspective and observations of the outsider that visits the cave to tell the others of the wondrous things. 

Yet while I view this idleness as a negativity, it also plays a part in shaping my identity. For in excreting waste, I get the vicinity I require to think things over freely and without any interruption. In fact, most of my ideas are formed whilst I am on the toilet, or whilst I am in the shower, both very private sanctities. They provide me with headspace, and I come out of both situations not only feeling refreshed, but also feeling enlightened. In a way, I need these sanctities. I need procrastination. I need a cave, but I do not need the chains that it normally comes with.

I will continue to live on this way, presumably because I have showed no signs of difference as of yet. Perhaps my inhibitions will later in life disappear, and I will be able to accomplish more, but for the time being I remain a thinker, an observer, and a voluntary victim of the cave.

Raw Rhyming Raps

There are many days when I listen to all sorts of music and there is none better soothing than having a mildly rough African-American voice gently trumpeting lines of rhymes that can somehow relate to my experiences in life.

Someone else in the barren world has experienced what you have, and thanks to our advance in technology. We are now able to connect in more intimate levels than mere phonecalls, levels where one can download, purchase or transfer a voice message that resonates within themselves and play it over and over again. They have their own personal companion and the relationship cannot be lost because there exists no mutuality beside the experiences being the same. The singer most likely will never know the listener and the listener will never know the singer. The singer will be relieved in that their fan can connect and their fan will be relieved that there is someone to connect with, and in most cases this connection is difficult to break.

Connections require strenuous efforts on both parts of connectors involved. Like magnetic links, two ends needs to be physically close in order to connect, and in the case of humans, other layers of connections must be met too. When it comes to rap, the only connector is experience. All other connectors like similar habits or interests die off because all humans go through phases, and though experiences are what links one to rap music, experiences can also tear people and rap music apart. If anything, though, rap music assists one in acquiring a sense of temporary relief, a sense of briefly ignoring things or those who rile one in their life. One becomes attached to their oversized headphones, and when one wears noise-cancelling headphones they sometimes are cancelling the world.

Some people cannot comprehend why it is that some rap music contains derogative terms, racial slurs or profanity. Those three make up a layer of barbed wire, protecting the underlying message contained within the song, contained within the raw words and the harsh terms. Sometimes the underlying message is so painful that it is too heartfelt for the rapper to share with the world what it is, so they have to hand it to the world on the casing of a bullet. Explosive, and deadly, raw rhyming raps attack on sight, spitting words like acid burning through the very walls that some people work so hard to build.

Raw rhyming raps channel through the music underground and penetrates through the protective layers of listeners, resonating within their very present state of minds.