As mentioned in Ignorance M. Valentine, the track before this one, this album has to do with feelings about an event in my life that some people might be aware of and some people might not be
I'll copy paste a little chunk form that writing:
"I started this album in Feb 2022, but each track (so far, i've made 5) in the album samples music I made in 2013 for a pokemon group run by glitchedpuppet. glip and i had a fallout which later culminated in me writing a callout about them about a year later in 2014... "it got messy" is an understatement
we reconnected in 2019 and have been working things out
we became friends again, and now we're dating
it can sound kind of nuts, but i wish it didn't.
i wish it wasn't rare for people to be able to reconnect and work through deep pains over complicated situations"

Ignorance M. Valentine was more about a snapshot of when I slow down and become malicious through pain, and you can read more about that in it's description

I have a lot of thoughts about ignorance, not just willfully harmful ignorance but also ignorance that isn't fully recognized as ignorance in the self?
So, things like thoughtlessness, assumptions, not realizing one isn't considering something... In other words, blindspots

"Permanence as a faulty premise" is more like... a bunch of beliefs I've ended up landing on over time, with a long line of reasons that have been abstractly summarized in the lyrics

if you have questions, i would like to answer them, though I might not always have the time or energy to do so

Though, if you don't trust me to answer your question honestly, asking me a question seems to be more for you to try to pick a fight than for a conversation, and I would request you be considerate on whether you genuinely want to ask a question or not

Anyway, the most basic way to talk about this song is that it's about my belief that there is more nuance to anything and everything we could possibly know at first glance, and it's meaningful and worthwhile to keep that in mind

The title, "Permanence as a faulty premise" refers to the idea that things can and often do change, even if we don't entirely understand the change, and treating things as entirely permanent is often, in my eyes at least, a way to close off seeing more possibilities and makes the world extremely narrow

There is a concept in Psychology called Functional Fixedness... I'm going to copy paste a bit from wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness
"Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used. The concept of functional fixedness originated in Gestalt psychology, a movement in psychology that emphasizes holistic processing. Karl Duncker defined functional fixedness as being a mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem."

A simple example would be something like... If you need a rope to tie something with, but you don't have a rope but you DO have a sweater... You could use the sweater to tie whatever needs tying, but if you only view the sweater as something to wear, you may only view it in that lens, and thus not consider it for tying something

I feel like... Functional Fixedness relates to being unable to see change, to viewing objects in a very static lens

It very literally prevents problem solving

And I feel that way, in a more abstract sense, with viewing things as unchanging or permanent

In my life, viewing things as unchanging often kept me in really dark or painful situations, because I felt like that's just how it was, and thus there would be no reason to believe in anything better, let alone to try for anything better

This relates to the psychology concept of Learned Helplessness

Copypasting from Wikipedia again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
"Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was initially thought to be caused by the subject's acceptance of their powerlessness, by way of their discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus, even when such alternatives are unambiguously presented. Upon exhibiting such behavior, the subject was said to have acquired learned helplessness.
In humans, learned helplessness is related to the concept of self-efficacy; the individual's belief in their innate ability to achieve goals. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from a real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation."

this shit is heinous to experience
I struggle with it a lot
If I believe things are out of my control or otherwise that I cannot change whatever is hurting me, it becomes a deep, deep level of hopelessness and unmoving pain

and I feel like... believing that pain is permanent is one of the most damaging beliefs a person can have
I struggle with this feeling, the feeling of being forever broken or damaged from pain, and when I believe this, I often become harmful to myself and then those around me
Be it from denying myself care and devaluing what would make me happy to the point that I just don't do anything, or to becoming bitter and hurting others in my bitterness, or to ignoring and erasing the times others have actually cared about me

it turns me into something that doesn't change... even though, i do want to change? if I am unhappy, I would like to be happy

but if I believe pain is permanent, and don't believe I can change myself then... I stay stuck?

my sense of self-efficacy can be and often is quite low
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy
"A strong sense of self-efficacy promotes human accomplishment and personal well-being. A person with high self-efficacy views challenges as things that are supposed to be mastered rather than threats to avoid. These people are able to recover from failure faster and are more likely to attribute failure to a lack of effort. They approach threatening situations with the belief that they can control them. These things have been linked to lower levels of stress and a lower vulnerability to depression.
In contrast, people with a low sense of self-efficacy view difficult tasks as personal threats and shy away from them. Difficult tasks lead them to look at the skills they lack rather than the ones they have. It is easy for them to lose faith in their own abilities after a failure. Low self-efficacy can be linked to higher levels of stress and depression."

and this can also make it feel like my state is just permanent
to feel like my pain is permanent
to feel like i am just destined not to connect to other people, that other people are just different and better, and i was made "wrong"

but... it is possible for change? even if pain is... painful and strenuous and traumatic experiences aren't deserved, believing one can change and grow and improve doesn't really take away from that...

I used to feel like it did? Like, I used to feel that if someone believed that I could grow and not be in pain, that they weren't takin my pain seriously, that they didn't actually grasp what I had gone through and were belittling me

And... truthfully, I do feel that sometimes people can belittle pain without realizing it
Even with good intentions

But I don't feel that it's wrong to believe change can occur
Even if one might not be able to go back to a previous point before the pain occurred, one can go forward with understanding the pain and starting to heal
Understanding what led to the pain, how and why, growing from it and protecting oneself

so this song is related to this feeling

this song is... reflecting on my own patterns when I have acted maliciously in the past (including things like harassment, mocking others, etc) and how those patterns related/relate to my own pains that I've just accepted (like, me being harassed and dehumanized leading to me harassing and dehumanizing others, feeling like that's just normal), and what I would prefer to believe now
It also relates to malicious patterns I have seen others engage in, behaviors very similar to my past ones, that cuts out nuance a lot and what that might mean for them in how they've been hurt in the past

As usual with reflections on malice and hatred and ignorance, my work is made with myself in mind, with feelings that I hope could have reached my past self earlier and could potentially help others explore their own thoughts relating to hatred/malice/whatever pains they have

This is part of why I try to express to others that they have a choice in reading what it is I write or not, because I am aware there are those who hate me and hateread what I say, but... I feel that when I would hateread things, it would be honestly hurting myself to read those things

I would rather remind people that they have a choice to read what I say or spend that energy elsewhere, and that choice matters
I am not forcing them to read what I write, and if they DO feel forced to read this, then to look where that pressure is coming from
If they continue to choose to hateread, then... I suppose my message is this:
You're allowed to like what I do and like me, even if you disagree or fear or feel aversion to choices I have made or feelings I have. I am stating this from previous messages I received that, truthfully, felt like fan-versions of a lover scorned.

When you say things like "I used to be your fan and now I'm in the art industry, and you're just washed up", you honestly just reveal that you valued and value my work still and are trying to cut at your own connection to what you care about by trying to put yourself above me. (Hint: While I used to want to be involved in the art industry, it's honestly something I do not have interest in... I want to create my own work and support the work of smaller creators. If you are happy in your job, that is nice, but it does not make you better than me)
Which... Honestly just hurts you more than me? And why do you want to hurt me anyway? Wouldn't you rather just feel your pain be understood than hurt someone? Do you genuinely believe your pain is impossible to understand? That you're not worth understanding?
I would hope that you can feel worthy of understanding some day.

You're allowed to have curiosity towards what I am doing or saying that makes you feel bad.
You don't have to try to attack me because of feeling cognitive dissonance over what you perceive as truths. You have the ability to try to understand what you believe are contradictions.
Trying to flatten me due to thinking you've caught me being a hypocrite or contradictory doesn't really make you a better person, it just means you're scared of being a hypocrite. Which, I am too. There's a lot I've done in the past that I feel so complicated over, because I no longer agree with it... But that's... growth? No one is always right. If I've acted in ways I don't agree with, there are reasons I can (and do) look into, and then I try to change.
My saying one thing in the past, and saying something different now is me attempting to grow, not attempting to lie.
If you cannot see that, I would look inward and consider if you lie a lot. I tended to project others were lying a lot back when I would lie more.

If there are people around you who are pushing you to continue being in pain, I would consider whether or not that helps you or hurts you. It had hurt me, when I was surrounded by people who would perpetuate hatred and pain.
It is possible for you to get out of it.

That's the extent of what I want to write here, because if the above is not genuinely considered, writing more does not really feel like it will cause more consideration.

Anyway:

"Let's start with the impossible problem:
"No one will listen if you're not right."
Let's skip to the answer then:
"Nothing is only in black and white.""

I genuinely feel "No one will listen if you're not right" is a poisonous impossible problem

"right" is not a one-size-fits-all state of being... everyone has different circumstances and needs, and it's important to maintain nuance in engaging with others (and nuance for oneself) because of this

it's hard to talk about this, because i feel like it is ever-present in so many things
a lot of online engagement revolves around saying a quip that sounds or feels right and makes the other person look "wrong"
things like videos that laugh at destroying feminists or something, interactions that value shutting someone down

the feeling that people cannot ask questions to understand each other can be really painful for me
just cutting straight to arguments is painful, arguments where it's about "defeating" the other party

"No one will listen if you're not right" is essentially "No one will listen if they think you are wrong"

"Wrongness" becomes a state that is one to be avoided, or you are shunned

I think about how children can often times say unique things, strange things, based on their own perception and willingness to try to understand things from their perspectives
Things like believing people in old times just used to be black-and-white (due to old movies being in black-and-white), or... well, when I was a kid, I used to think games I liked were real and just happened somewhere really remote and hidden, like Sonic the Hedgehog just existed off in some forest no one ever heard of or something

Stories have power! Feelings have power! They are involved in how we perceive the world even at a young age
even if this is not strictly, objectively "right", it still demonstrates that we are thinking and feeling and considering things

and that to me is important

but... often times, children are corrected in ways that do not consider why they thought these things or considered these things
children can even be bullied and hurt over this... children, who very literally are just learning!

an example would be the current education system in the US, wherein some class subjects are treated as more valuable by the system itself (maths and sciences), and thus these are considered more essential. students who struggle with these subjects are considered "lesser" within the eyes of the system, despite them potentially having strengths in other ways

i love math and science, but i wish these subjects weren't treated as the absolute judgment of a person's worth for much of their earlier years
many people struggle with this and are seen as bad students, and it makes me sad

an entire system devaluing children and this is just... accepted as "normal" by many?
"THIS is better than THAT, your answers are wrong, your feelings are wrong"

i remember seeing students who would just give up trying to get good grades and give up trying to learn as a whole, because they had already been treated as "bad" for not following along very well in their classes... If you're treated as "bad" for not being able to adhere to the standards set, it's very easy to fall into a mentality that things don't matter!

and some people say "well you should try anyway" but this doesn't consider the emotional state of trying while being treated like you're lesser for something you don't understand

it's somewhat cowardly in my opinion to see a flawed system, where children (and adults, if you consider college) are treated as flawed for not adhering to standards set for market viability (school systems are often in the middle of an idealogical debate, where there is the belief that knowledge is a concrete good, that people learning is inherently good and thus school is a resource for allowing knowledge for everyone vs... the reality that companies need/needed specialized workers and thus people being trained for companies to have a wider pool to choose from would be beneficial for profits and enable companies to have more control since... well, if theres only 1 guy who is an expert at what you need, you have to listen to him... but if theres 10k people who are experts, the first guy now becomes expendable and you aren't as beholden to him.), and go "well, try anyway"

instead of... i don't know, feeling "maybe something should change, if we put children at risk of being emotionally damaged and devalued"
it is and can be very important to try, but if people are not listening to your feelings and your struggles, if people are judging you for perpetually being incorrect (or, not being "right"), this really weighs down on you
if you're always "wrong" why try?
it becomes the learned helplessness thing again!
it's a really painful mentality to land in! "no one will listen to my feelings or care about me if i'm not right, so i need to become right" is a lonely place to be
it implies your feelings cannot be "correct" and thus they have no value
but feelings come from somewhere! even irrational feelings come from somewhere! erasing this, starts to erase the way people can understand themselves

This is something I still struggle with, and has affected the rate at which I make/post art and music... If what I make is never good enough, if it's always "Wrong", then why make anything? Why share anything?

I feel like people often treat "wrongness" as meaning "shouldn't exist in the form it does"
Which is a really hard concept to grapple with, especially if you encounter it when young

growing up, i was always told my anxiety was irrational by adults in my life... but ultimately, my anxiety meant things. it connected me to places where i had been hurt, and my anxiety was a flag that i was seeing similarities in the present to the past (where i had been hurt).
Even if I wasn't going to be hurt in the present, my anxiety perceiving the situation as one where i am able to be hurt, was meaningful to me! it meant that i had unprocessed pain i wasn't sure how to handle, it meant that I had something where I was still in pain and I could work with it if I acknowledged it... But I couldn't if I ignored it and was told to ignore it

just because others could not see what my anxiety meant, did not mean my anxiety was "wrong"... and that is a feeling in those lyrics as well:

"Nothing is only in black and white"

i feel that believing that you need to be right to be listened to incentivizes proposing one's own reality as "right", or else no one will listen to it... if you try to give a feeling, but no one will listen to it because it isn't "right", then the way for your feelings to be heard is to align with what is perceived to be objectively "right"

this doesn't actually help anything, it causes people to conflate their feelings with "objective" reality, just without actually realizing they're talking about a feeling...
i believe our thoughts and feelings are in every single one of our actions, because they are part of how we decide to take actions
our thoughts and feelings influence us, and thus influence our actions

so if someone tries to ignore their own feelings, those feelings will still come out, just in distorted ways, in their blind spots, because feelings are part of how we interact with the world and are part of our perception

So...
"Let's start with the impossible problem: "No one will listen if you're not right." Let's skip to the answer then: "Nothing is only in black and white.""

This first chunk of the song is essentially saying
"'No one will listen if you're not right' is unhelpful, it's a deep truncation of very complex issues, it's not a problem that can be solved as is, it's a faulty premise! The answer is to reject this concept, to view things in more nuanced lights and actually think about what "rightness" even means and why? Who determines "rightness"? What does "rightness" mean to them? Why?"

So, in the above example with the school system, remember how I wrote that schools are often mired in an ideological turf war between knowledge being a good for humanity vs more specialized workers means companies get more specialized workers without being beholden to specific individuals?

If companies/rich people are influencing how schools run (and they are, i hope it is already understood that the wealthy, at least in the US, hold a huge amount of influence and have for decades... the wealthy in history often hold influence even outside of the US, i really really hope this is self-evident) then math and science valued over art/music/other interests would align to how companies view these subjects.
So it means that these are people who are determining and influencing what it means to be a "good" student and what it means to be a "bad" student
Even if they are not the ONLY people influencing the school systems, they HAVE had a lot of influence and it is worth looking into what this means...

The answers to these questions (in that specific context of school) "Who determines 'rightness'? What does "rightness" mean to them? Why?" then would be... "The wealthy determine 'rightness'. 'Rightness' in this context to them means 'being an eligible child that can become a good worker for them in the future', because this helps them with profits and with a larger worker pool."

Which doesn't consider the wellbeing of the children at all! It is not a form of "rightness" I feel I agree with!
"No one will listen if you're not valuable to a company that doesn't care about you" really is awful!

And this sort of thing can be determined from a lot of different places, not just school
Things like beauty standards or peer pressure or anything else that involves a feeling that something is better than something else

I believe that when care is not present, it can be felt...

"faulty premise" is a phrase I use when I am looking over paradoxes and see that most of them are difficult only because the starting premise is incorrect
a good example is the paradox of the grain of millet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes#:~:text=Description%20of%20the%20paradox%20from,become%20something%2C%20an%20absurd%20conclusion
"Paradox of the grain of millet
The argument is that a single grain of millet makes no sound upon falling, but a thousand grains make a sound. Hence a thousand nothings become something, an absurd conclusion."

The premise is faulty! A single grain of millet DOES make a sound, it is just imperceptible to our ears. it feels to me that the premise is faulty due to assuming our perception dictates the reality of a situation

and that's similar to what my song is talking about! being "right" is a matter of perception, and treating that perception as objective is a faulty premise...

we are in a shared reality, i genuinely believe there is not a 100% objective singular truth, because our perceptions determine our personal reality
There are shared truths with multiple points that can overlap (such as, most of us can perceive the existence of the sun, for example), but what doesn't overlap doesn't mean it's not real to someone even if it's not real "physically" for lack of a better term

For example, what I mentioned where children can share perceptions that are unique to their realities
I think it is important to find a balance between what is considered to be the "objective" reality, and what everyone's individual realities are
I think it's possible to bridge things often when care is present...

I feel like in writing the above, I've already lost a few people, which makes me a little sad admittedly, because I would like for this concept to be understood
it is meaningful for me to be understood, and i am trying to be vulnerable in sharing, because... well...
believing in a sole objective "right" truth was (and still can be) a really painful mentality for me, believing i was just objectively stupid or ugly or whatever else, objectively not "good enough" based on some nebulous standard set that didn't consider me or my feelings was so harrowing

starting to genuinely feel and understand that this (an "objective" truth of reality) didn't have to be what I chain my life to, really helped me

understanding that i can share my personal reality with others, and also be shared with, was really pivotal for me... it meant i didn't have to adhere to anyone's standards but my own, and that my standards are determined by who i am and what i feel
and that my own standards can change and grow too

what i feel is that i would like to share what is important to me and learn to grow and connect with others who want to connect wth me and who care about feelings as well

when I had written the callout about glip in 2014, i externalized a lot of my feelings into "objective" statements about glip... i had felt that no one else would listen to the pain i had, if i wasn't right about whatever had happened
i had felt that no one would care about me sharing that i was hurt, because in the past i had tried to share pain over how our falling out had gone, and some of glip's fans had discredited and dismissed me
glip themself had been dismissive as well at the time and it hurt a lot

and this led to me eventually writing about everything in a really destructive way that... really, was not what i wanted?
what i had wanted was for my pain to be heard, for my feelings to be taken seriously
It was a method of trying to reach for control? I hadn't been heard before, so I instead wrote out a callout that would posture objective reality and focus on that
but... that honestly meant that people still didn't really see or understand the pain I felt, because I obscured it all through objective reasons that... weren't even actual
Purposefully or not, I ended up taking an action that was more about bending reality to suit myself than actually sharing how I was hurt and caring about my own pain

i would have much rather wanted that to be heard and understood before it got to the point of writing a callout! that's the thing... the callout really did not have to happen

it didn't

painful things that happen... often times could have been prevented

i genuinely believe this, i feel it's important to believe this

if we treat pain as eternal, if we don't treat pain as able to be worked with and solved, we just generate more and more stuck pain forever
it's the thing again, where pain treated as permanent leads to stuckness

we don't always have to be the ones to solve them, to solve pain, but believing it can't be solved just... makes us susceptible to taking damage in ways that close off our feelings and the possibilities we can see

Because... these "faulty premises" can and do get combined
If pain is permanent... AND no one will listen to you if you're not right? It means... What if your pain is wrong?
If you're permanently stuck with something no one will listen to?

That's harrowing! It's a cruel existence! I refuse that

I believe pain is able to heal and I believe "no one will listen if you're not right" is faulty, and that there is value in individual realities, even if not everyone is able to connect to everyone else safely (as in, people do not owe others their attention... if someone has hurt you a lot, you do not owe them your attention, and likewise someone else does not owe you their attention)

"The world as split into dichotomies?
It's no surprise that the H-machine will freeze.
Zero-or-one is reality for none,
Truths as singular is not something that can be done...!
(Something that can be done...)"

The H-machine is a concept referred to in a video I saw a while back
https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo?t=1333

It should start at 22:13
i'm going to be upfront, i don't really like this video, i feel some aspects feel off to me and I don't feel super motivated to break down the entirety of it, but this aspect of it stuck with me:

"let's assume we can make a machine, H, that can determine whether any turing machine will halt or not on a particular input.
[...]
for now, we don't worry about how h works, we just know that it always works, it always gives you the right answer.

now, we can modify the h machine by adding additional components:
one, if it receives the output "halts" immediately goes into an infinite loop
another, if it receives "never halts", then it immediately halts.

we can call this entire new machine H+

[...]
whatever output the halting machine H gives, it turns out to be wrong. there's a contradiction. the only explanation can be that a machine like H, can't exist."

this struck me, and bothered me

there is an assumption here that H can be modified without losing the trait of "always right"
there are a lot of assumptions, at least in the way the video proposes the situation
For example... what if something can be both a loop or solved? what if things that are seen as "mutually exclusive" are NOT mutually exclusive?

the world is extremely complex and trying to reduce it in really objective ways is something that I feel is not always possible... I don't really want it to be the basis of "truth"?

This could be a wholly separate conversation, but essentially the lines

"The world as split into dichotomies?
It's no surprise that the H-machine will freeze.
Zero-or-one is reality for none,
Truths as singular is not something that can be done...!"

relate to the feeling that if our reality is a lot of shared perceptions (or "truths" (plural)), then trying to divide things into singularities doesn't necessarily always work

I believe there IS value in trying to understand things, but i feel like objectivity in understanding does more harm than good
there is a lot lost when trying to divide something in a way that doesn't allow room for variation? Our understanding can always evolve...

"Truncation as attention is misdirection.
Context as subtext is not self-reflection.
Is nuance a luxury for most to throw away?
Why the fuck don't we change that today?"

these lines relate to ways I have been malicious or hateful, and ways I have seen others be malicious or hateful, purposefully or not

"Truncation as attention is misdirection" refers to things like people claiming to care about me but then ignoring my actual words as if my thoughts don't matter, as if I cannot make my own decisions
I have been treated like abuse victims cannot make choices on their own, and that as such I can't possibly be making choices I want to make, especially in relation to glip
But... the thing is... this... treats abuse victims like they cannot grow?
This "positive attention" ultimately felt like... trying to control me, telling me I didn't know myself and showing no interest in why I care about things or feel certain ways

Which... means their reason for telling me these things is not actually about my safety or care for me, it's about something else? Hence "misdirection"

This line also invokes things like people claiming they actually are a fan of glip and want them to improve, but then make comments like "glip has comments off cuz they know people would tell them to kill themself, and I'd be one of those people doing baiting them to do it"... that's...
That attention is not care? truncating things, ignoring things that make it easier for you to hate someone, that's not actually caring and showing positive attention?

it IS misdirection, there IS something else here that is leading to these sort of actions!

I'd express similarly to glip, where i'd say I just want them to be better or something, but then ignore whenever they'd talk to me about ways they've tried to care and gotten hurt, or otherwise ways they've done a lot of the very things that I wanted them to do (like, they would try to understand how they had hurt me, even when we weren't talking)

I was truncating feelings and information, and I can STILL do this!
Like I mentioned earlier at the start with learned helplessness and pain as permanent, when I get stuck in deeply painful places, I can ignore and erase a lot of people's care and efforts as not real, because if their care is real then my pain isn't

it's a really faulty perspective that I'm still trying to understand and work with, the idea that if someone cares, my pain isn't "that bad"

so then I make someone else responsible for my pain... like ignoring glip trying and changing, and instead repeatedly hurting them for things they have tried to address and grow from in how they hurt me?

Me giving glip attention there was not really attention, it was trying to get something out of them

and genuinely, I feel like hatred makes people act more parasitically, trying to get things from others
people hurting others for entertainment or for closure ... is parasitic to me
it means that you are treating another person as responsible for your emotions, that if you hurt them then you're happy? that makes you dependent on them?

feeling better about yourself because someone is worse than you is... dependent on someone being worse than you?

Earlier, I referenced someone had messaged me with "i used to look up to you, and now i'm in the art industry and you're washed up" and... this is a perfect example of "truncation as attention is misdirection"

this message literally is not about me, it's about them? they're misdirecting weird feelings about themself onto me, using me as a filter to feel better about themself? Truncating, simplifying, flattening my entire existence to bolster THEIR OWN existence?

It also helps with the following line:
"Context as subtext is not self-reflection."

It refers to truncation again, where context, the basis of whatever is being discussed, is made into subtext, information that is not explicit or otherwise not touched upon directly.
The message I received placed their own context, their feeling of trying to push themself as better than me, as subtext, while trying to act like the full context was just me being shitty or something
That's not really self-aware
that's not really fulfilled
I don't feel like that person is fulfilled in their life, and it doesn't feel like they're working towards fulfillment if they are making hurting me the cornerstone of feeling better about themself

So the context as subtext is not self-reflection line is about that sort of behavior, behavior where people look everywhere but themselves... This also includes ways I've been, and still can be sometimes, where I struggle when in pain to actually self-reflect... Self-hatred often makes it hard for me to look at myself

it goes back to that feeling of "Wrongness", where I can feel like who i am is wrong (for a variety of reasons) and cannot change, and thus looking at myself is like looking at a cruel "reality"

when it doesn't have to be that way, really
if i can change what makes me unhappy with myself, then i can grow
but it's hard to see that sometimes

Which brings me to the next lines:

"Is nuance a luxury for most to throw away?
Why the fuck don't we change that today?"

Pretty self-explanatory... I'm questioning why nuance is uncommon-- well okay, there is a feeling about capitalism and consumerism here, with the line about "luxury for most to throw away?"

I feel like nuance takes time and effort and a lot of energy really. it's not easy sometimes? especially when youre in pain
and consumerism often tries to be as convenient as possible, cutting corners, trying to be as easy as cheap as convenient as it can be
being physically healthy can be hard! if you need money and don't have time to cook or exercise, then fast food or cheaper processed foods are easier
especially when you spend all your energy working at a job that doesn't care about you

not that everyone is in that position, but when you ARE in that position, it's hard to muster up the energy to care about yourself sometimes, to take the time to exercise and eat healthy, to try to care about yourself when a big part of your life (your job) doesn't care about you...

and I feel that is true of emotional health as well? if you're surrounded with difficult emotional things, sometimes it's just... easier, more convenient, to act automatically
to hate something, to dismiss something, to attack things, to ignore things, etc

and I feel these are very connected issues! If large parts of our society (At least in the US) devalue feelings (i.e uncaring jobs, belief systems where people shouldn't show their feelings or else they're Weak, school systems that rank students as "bad", pervasive social beliefs that people who need therapy are bad or broken or something, so on) then we are under a LOT of pressure emotionally!

we can eat poorly, take care of ourselves poorly, and then regulate our emotions poorly as well

Nuance CAN be a luxury in the sense that... if YOU are not used to being treated with nuance and kindness and empathy, you may not have the energy nor the grasp of how to engage with nuance either
Which is why the next line is "Why the fuck don't we change that today?"

IF nuance IS a luxury, why don't we change that? I believe it would be beneficial if nuance were present more frequently, if people were able to care more, if the systems we live in are able to be changed to be more caring

"If you feel someone's worth laughing at,
Let us think about it for a second...
Don't you think that means someone's laughed at your pain too,
For you to think it's fine for you to do?"

I touched upon this a little earlier. This is thinking about how I became more and more hateful and malicious when I experienced a lot of ignorance towards my pain when I was a kid and growing up.
I gave the example of glip and their at the time friends dismissing when I tried to talk about my pain before, which led to the callout

My callout held a lot of feelings of trying to reflect glip's feelings of anger back at themself, making them into a hypocrite

I find that when I was in pain in the past, I would often try to reflect whatever it is I felt
So, if I felt that I was hurt in XYZ way, I would act XYZ way back

Glip and their friends laughing at me, meant I would try to laugh at Glip, make them the laughable one, not me
It became me making Glip worse than me to feel better about myself... But... that doesn't heal the pain I felt? It makes the world more full of that sort of pain

If I was hurt by being laughed at, I don't necessarily want to laugh at others? I would rather the pain be addressed and worked with... Laughing at others, hurting others, acts like the best thing I can do is hurt someone else? But that's...
That's not about me? It's that misdirection thing again
I'm settling for focusing on someone else than on myself and my needs?

I'm giving power to the person who hurt me?

It makes me think again of the person comparing themself to me, where they express they got an art industry job

I wonder why they value the art industry job... It feels like a symbol like "here is this objective proof that I matter, I am so good that the industry chose me and not you."

But it feels like... what happened to you that you feel you need an "objective" comparison to feel good? Do you often feel "objectively" worse than others? Who made you feel that way and why? Where did that come from?

Don't you want to know? Why do you give this pain the power to control you like that?

I also compare myself a lot
I hurt myself with comparisons, and I think about that a lot recently, because it's so invisible to me!

I can often feel like my works are bad because I can tell it's mine and not someone else's... Which is sad? I see myself, and I think "this is bad."

I've been hurt a lot, for my feelings and for being me, even before all this glip stuff

It's a hard cycle to break out of, because it's so ingrained

but this song is related to breaking out of it, or trying to
I'm happier when I look at my work and see myself in lights that are not about comparing to others
I'm happy when I look at myself in my work and recognize "this is something that means a lot to me, and something I want to share... Not something that others wanted to see out of me"

I've been taking a long time trying to work on my feelings on myself and my work... Which I guess is as good a segue (hahaha segway) as any for the next lines

"Wouldn't you rather someone had helped you?
Wouldn't you rather someone had cared? and
Wouldn't you rather someone be there for you
Even now before your laugh turns cruel too?
Wouldn't you rather be understood? and
Wouldnt you rather no one deserve to die?
Wouldn't you rather not be alone and
Feel that it's okay to ask others why?"

These are questions that I didn't really ask myself when I was more hateful
These were questions that felt... impossible for me to ask, because the reality at the time for me was that sometimes people just are bad and deserve to be hurt, and I could be a bad person and deserve to be hurt too, and this cannot change, and if I'm a bad person I can't change either

But... that's no way to thrive
that's no way to thrive...

It is referencing to the previous lines, where I ask "if you're laughing at someone, don't you think someone laughed at you?"
so these questions are in reference to the event where the person laughing got hurt

for example, this would relate to me being hurt by glip and then writing the callout
wouldn't i have preferred to have been helped instead of dismissed or hurt? wouldn't i have preferred care before I became cruel?

yeah
i did have some friends who tried, but some of them also suggested writing the callout, so it was complicated

but... ultimately i would have wanted things to go better earlier... so why did i make it worse? why did i believe that the only thing i could do is be even more hurtful than glip was and hurt them back?

glip had stopped engaging with me for about a year
i was not being harassed by them
i didn't have to engage

i was stuck with a lot of pain and felt i couldn't grow from it myself, because i didn't like myself

but... i guess this is complicated

"Wouldn't you rather someone be there for you Even now before your laugh turns cruel too?" includes myself

I wish I was there for myself
I wish I had cared about myself

Part of why I wrote the callout was because people acted like they were too scared to talk to glip about issues, and sure, fine, but i ultimately wrote a callout caring more about people who wouldn't talk about their own pains and not about what i myself wanted or needed

i do feel bad for people who have stuck pain, and i have sympathy for them, but... i wish i had not felt like i was responsible for them
i tend to hurt myself a lot, feeling responsible for other people's feelings
so i wish i had been there for me at that time
i wish i felt like me being there for myself had mattered

my care for me matters
your care for you matters

Wouldn't you rather no one deserve to die?" is a really specific feeling for myself
often times, i can feel like i "deserve" to be hurt, or sometimes even deserve to die
and this stems directly from when i feel pain or hatred, where i truncate the world into situations where there is "good" and there is "evil" and that evil just needs to be punished by the good guys

it's really easy for me to feel "evil" because i'd been treated as such when i was young
when i was a teen, i knew someone online who, when i hurt them, they would scream at me and insult me until i hated myself
not until i said sorry, but until i hated myself
they wouldn't stop, saying i was ugly or misshapen or diseased or so on, until they felt that i felt hatred towards myself for hurting them

that situation is complicated, i hurt them too and i don't want to remove that fact
they were also abused by their parents to my understanding

but... it's hard
it's hard to recognize that in my formative years, i essentially internalized that when i do a "bad" thing, i deserve to be hurt
that if i do not feel hurt, that if i do not hate myself, i will continue to be hurt

and I would genuinely prefer this not have happened to me
I would prefer that this person not had been hurt to the extent that they acted that way to me

I would prefer no one deserve to be hurt, i would prefer that people could be helped before they become cruel and hurtful

"Impact and consequences aren't
Only for you to use
Like weapons to ignore your pain, and
Your blame to diffuse"

this relates to how I acted with my pain when malicious or hateful
i'd bring up my pain in these objective ways to hurt others, not really paying attention to my pain

this also feels like how people act when harassing others
like, recently I saw I got a message that was saying they wanted me to justify something i said because they need a good laugh
they implied i had harassed someone... but...
then why are they harassing me with sending this message? if they think i deserve to be harassed over "harassing" someone else, why don't they care about the person who was supposedly harassed by me? why are they just trying to laugh?
why are they using punishment and consequences as a way to blame me for something i supposedly did, that they are conceretely doing ?

these lyrics relate to that sort of contradiction, refusing it

i do not like when people use things in ways that justify harm they want to do? "you hurt someone, so i'll hurt you" doesn't really amount to anything

ESPECIALLY if the situation may be more complicated than originally thought? this does happen constantly with glip, where people act like harassing them is okay because they supposedly did a bunch of stuff
when a lot of what happened was complicated manipulation by their ex-husband marl (like lying to glip and i, lying to others), and the results of a decade of abuse

it's disheartening sometimes
i think a lot about how people who harass don't seem to slow down to think "what if i'm wrong about this?"

because if they do, then they caused someone a lot of harm who then didn't "deserve" it
which means they're the bully and bad guy, and now they deserve to be harmed
which... they don't want to be harmed

at least, that was my thought process
if i was wrong about glip, then i was the bad guy so on so forth

but it doesn't have to be that simple? and staying stuck in a negative harassment loop isn't really "better" than going "ah shit i was wrong"

or even just "maybe pouring energy into being hateful is harming me, too"

"I wonder who will think this song
Is supportive of Right or Wrong?
And who will think I'm trying to be...
A little bitch, really."

These lines are a little fun for me truthfully
I'm aware that when I was hateful and malicious more, that I would be really REALLY resistant to listening to others feelings if they made me feel insecure or like I was actually the bad guy

I don't intend for this song to imply right/wrong
I intend for this song to share concepts I've thought about and considered, and thoughts about "rightness" and "wrongness" but... a lot of these thoughts honestly actively try to move away from the dichotomy of "right/wrong" and hopefully towards thinking more about what our actions and feelings mean and why?

but it's hard to see that sometimes, when you're stuck
the nuance may escape you
it certainly escaped me

so these last lines are wondering aloud about this... Will listeners think I am trying to propose a dichotomy of rightness/wrongness? If they are hateful or malicious, will they feel self-conscious and will they feel I am telling them they are in the "wrong"? And from this feeling, they will act like that is my intent?
And thus will people think I'm being a little bitch? a hypocrite? something else?

I suppose it's predicting behavior I am very familiar with
It feels like a wink and nod, wrapping the song up in a little bow

The song starts with "lets start with the impossible problem, no one will listen if you're not right" and then ends with "I wonder who will think I'm trying to be a little bitch?"

AKA, "i wonder who will automatically dismiss me because they are viewing me as intrinsically not right?"

I guess the song feels a bit like being in my own head, trying to share, but knowing that sharing is a two-way street

and that this song, made with my own malicious behaviors in mind and the behaviors of others as well, is kind of in a weird place where it is made with love and interest towards these sort of behaviors... but at the same time, these behaviors are the kind that will try to close the song off, render the song "unshared" or "unheard" so to speak

but, the song is still sung, the song is still shared
so i wonder what it will mean?

I believe sharing this is meaningful even if it doesn't immediately change anything
change can be like seeds that grow when the conditions are right

...

i feel like i should say something else here, but i'm not sure what!

I like the energy of the song
It feels kind of playful, fast compared to Ignorance M Valentine

I am not always as lucid feeling as I was when I made this song, but it is nice to feel the feeling embodied in this track even if I'm not always in this feeling

I'm happy when I feel like I've made a song that feels very much like me, sometimes

I think this song feels very "me" and that makes me happy (as opposed to above, where I wrote that sometimes I work on art and feel deeply upset when i see myself in it)

I suppose I feel "only I could have made this" and that is a nice feeling to have positively
as opposed to something like "it only looks like this because I don't know how to make it not look like this"

I suppose it's perception of choice

i notice an anxiety sometimes when i write things, near the end of the writing
like i don't want to stop writing because i will forget to mention something? i'll have to think on what that means later

I suppose... I don't really feel like I've made it clear how much what I've written about matters to me
It is meaningful to me
This writing, the song, when I create

I hope people can feel that from what I write and share
Though, I'm not entirely sure why I hope for that
I suppose meaning is nice to share in

thank you, if you've read this far and considered your comfort and mine with reading