How the World Feels, an 18 year old dreamer’s view.
And a tribute to Harlan Ellison.
“I’m a writer. No adjective behind it. Call me a ‘sci-fi’ writer and I’ll come to your house and nail your pet's head to a coffee table” ~Harlan J. Ellison
I’m a standard run-of-the-mill wannabe big shot with something to prove who plays a guitar and sings in their past-time. That is to say, as such as my mother who chose a career that actually matters, poor. From my perspective, there’s a lotta’ wrong happening around the world, centralized in the great melting pot itself. See, my family has been rather prevalent in our home town, going back for generations in some of the most interesting history I’d ever heard. Some land now owned by the government with tunnels stretching hundreds of miles? Ours originally.
One of the first baseball players who happened to be an Indian? Our family. This is to say, we come from a family-line of generational intrigue.
Now let’s get to the skin n’ bones of why you’re here. Whether you’re me in some 12 years, or a fairweather reader enjoying a slice of what the world seems like to a proverbial and literary psychopomp.
I got this idea from listening to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London”, its message (however drenched in layers of irony) is one of noble cause. Something that can’t be remade nowadays.
I’ve always been called an old soul. Someone whose likeness is that of the times past, times fairly remembered, & times forgotten. People have been telling me this since I can remember, whether it be my music taste, sense of humor, style of dress. I’ve always been that musically inclined outcast who would bring a proverbial guitar to a campfire.
That being said, the campfire part is false, I’m far too shy for that. Far too nervous.
There’s a certain confidence the internet strips you of and leaves you naked. Covered only with tattered leaves and very last gasp of a dying dream that you’d be someone.
The internet provides a source of entertainment, sure.
All that and a longing that you could make it, a vague deft attempt at cashing in on your subjective humor and chance to make a living off proving yourself to others that you’re funny, just as Richard Pryor or Norm Macdonald did in their time. The difference is - and however frankly - the world is far past its glory days for people who find normal humor enjoyable. There’s a place in America, for those who are(n’t) reading outside of the States, called the Rust Belt.
It’s a long stretch of places in general where industry collapsed and people are destitute to live with only rags.
That is the internet.
I’m a writer. Sure, sci-fi is my main genre, dipping into fantasy and or Lovecraftien horror. The point is, I’m a writer. Writers make nothing. I’m a musician.
Musicians make nothing. I’m a streamer.
A streamer with no audience. There are many facets to my life as much as yours and anyone else's. There’s a certain feeling that can only be described as “abject joy” from creating something, even if for only myself. I do things based on the fact that some people, some day, might see it.
I sit here writing this with a Shure SM58 attached to a boom arm, a Chinese keyboard by Leobog and a Glorious Model O Eternal for a mouse to use.
These parts combined are around $400 or so, about 1/5th of my computer. Together within the programming of these instruments of electricity I prolong this message into an everlasting aegis of swift change, one which I will rewrite upon my reaching of 30.
There’s violence in the streets, riots, protests, assassination, unrest, general contempt. There has never been a time more divided from my eye.
“So while you fill the streets it’s appealing to see, you won’t be undercounted ‘cause you’re damned and free” ~2-D, Gorillaz
People from all sides are as much after each others throats (sometimes literally) that there is not much to be said other than that “The Winning Move Is Not To Play”
There’s extreme class disruption, poor people barely able (including my household) afford to eat.
My dream to become someone famous (that being famous in favor, not money) stems from my natural born entertainer self. I’ve tried ever since I was four to make people laugh, cry, feel something, get me? There isn’t much I won’t do to get enjoyment from nothing.
Sometimes all you need is a little smile to brighten a day from something terrible to something amazing, that is what I seek to provide. Whether you’re reading this or it’s being read to you or it’s being fed through a screen, it shows you care. It shows you’re interested, that’s what matters to me.
The fact you’re willing to spend time - precious time - out of your life to see what someone else thinks proves initiative beyond all shadow of a doubt of a shade of a thought.
So readerlistenerwatcher, let me journey you through my opinion on the world’s status. Something so volatile and everchanging as such is surely to make this outdated maybe by even next year, though I’ll put things as if concrete.
The world is in recession. I really think so, sometimes. Perhaps you too have this feeling, the feeling that all the best and brightest have gone? The feeling that one day rust and nature will take over the remaining parts of the world solely based on our inaction as a species to work together under one unity and respect what we’ve been given?
Alexander Nobel. You most likely know him for the
Nobel Peace Prize. Did you know he also made dynamite? He made dynamite in order to blow open collapsed mines to break out trapped miners, his invention later twisted into a throwable explosive to kill others in trenches.
He made the Peace Prize to detract from that fact, it having brought him a great shame to know what he’d made, however noble it might’ve been in its glory day.
Did you know that after that, Robert J. Oppenheimer almost won one? Isn’t that a kick to the head?
The revolution of atomic power. Need more be said?
Everything we’ve ever made can be twisted (and eventually will be) into something violent and malignant. Something so viciously savage that cancer would kowtow and weep to its resplendent red sky formed from the blood of innocent.
Just look outside where you are, lest it be Vegas. Rubble. Decay. Filth. Destroyed roads. I guarantee you, should you be in the states, that within 15 minutes of your current location - readerlistenerwatcher - that you could find a destroyed road.
Money. Isn't it a powerful word? A small rectangle that can govern your entire life and status. Some of us millions, some of us none. There are great things that can come from money: protection, food, shelter, locomotion. There are just as many bad things that can arise from something that makes people become like Smaug from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: greed, envy, mismanagement.
My father (of whom I should make clear I do love and respect, barring what I’m about to say) is removing me from his insurance on June 8th this year. This has led to me having several of my teeth filed down and capped in rapid succession; I currently have stinging pains through them.
After working nine hours lifting planks that are about the size - I estimate - of your room, I made $40.
That’s $4.21 per hour. Then, once pulled into his driveway to unload this bounty of wood, he gets a big smile and wide eyes only to tell me that my child support is ending, that he called to make sure it would the first day it could, that my mother’s financial status “[didn’t] really matter”, that my insurance was being revoked unless I worked three days a week with him, that he’d have an extra $660 dollars on his paycheck. There is nothing I despise more than money.
I do realize, however, that this style of monetary system is most likely the only that could work, despite however flawed it can be at times.
I live and suffer by several afflictions every day: scoliosis, hEDS, IBS, etc. I’ve had a surgery done on my left lung because it had a growth.
Point is, I’ve seen my share, I’ve earned my stars. That being said - as a creator - nothing is more terrifying than the fear of being truly forgotten.
You’d think that something actually death-causing would be the fear I’d rationalize and canonize inside my head; no.
No, readerlistenerwatcher. That is my greatest fear. I can sympathize with someone like Harlan Ellison in that regard, however cantankerous. The fear that one day you'll be completely forgotten, erased from the mind of everyone you knew and everyone you entertained and everyone you thought of. You, yes you, they who are readinglisteningwatching. You'll forget me, some day. Although, within that there is a comfort, I can guess. Think of it this way: the chance of being ever truly forgotten is incredibly slim. The people in the generation after me, they don't realize it; they've been born under a strange, bizarro version of the world I once called home. Think about just the changes in technology from 2019 - 2026. Now we have to question whether anything is real, or a machine operated faint memory of something vaguely human. I grew up on GameCube, real media, real media by real people and - more importantly - good media.
Sometimes I feel like I'm part of the last generation who'll see a happy, blue sky. A family member, yes, a one Shawn M. B. once said to me: "Maybe that's what it is. The rapture already came and we're just stuck here." He said this in jest. Think, however. On a night in august of 2025, I was playing a computer game by the name "Caves of Qud", exploring the rust area just east of the starting village, Joppa. It got me thinking about the rust belt in real life. That got me thinking about the world in general. Artists are using A.I. to do everything for them. Musicians are using autotune & pitch correction to make everything flawless, some to results that are worse than their natural voice; just to fit in to the crowd. Sometimes it feels like the world is in recession, a lilting age so unbearably long that I won't see it through in my life time. Even at that, people persist on through, the next generation enjoying their "Huggy Wuggy" and their generic-mascot-horror-that-wouldn't-entertain-a-wildebeest. I feel for them: sadness, anger. They won't know what it's like to grow up without the internet, without incessant whining and trying to fit in everywhere they go. They won't know the pain of having only ten minutes to complete a level of Mario Sunshine before the bus comes. They won't know the fear of tackling a new game without a strategy guide, or a playthrough. They won't know the anger when exploring a whole half of a stage only to find there was nothing ever there.
They won't know the feeling of reading a book through and through and then coming to their own conclusion; simply looking up its name brings a summary. They won't know the sorrow of learning through word of mouth and paper that their friend was sick that day, unable to come to school. They won't know the agonizing emptiness that is small-town America; they have unlimited people they can game and exploit at their fingertips however they please because - and after all - why care what others think when you can benefit yourself? This is why I sympathize with Harlan Ellison. I have nearly zero evidence to back up what I'm about to say, though I feel it necessary to get out there somewhere: Harlan was a brilliant writer, sure; he was a human's human. Someone who was himself to the bone, someone who didn't bend the knee and make things all preppy or fancified for the press. Someone who (at times) could be crass, harsh, violent, disturbing. At the core? Someone who cared. Someone who loved. Someone who cherished the time he had at his typewriter. Someone who, as read in "All the Lies That Are My Life", was afraid of being cast aside and having his indomitable works molested by the corporation. Someone who knew the venomous insipidity that lurched its way through the undercarriage of the business. Someone who understood. It ties in, back to everything I've said: Harlan was a man of many things. The one thing observable, however, was his unique twist of being able to make hate such an elegant feeling.
I read somewhere online once the following: "Harlan is a great writer, though he lacks the finer emotions." Referring to love, sadness, etc. I disagree. I think Harlan absolutely had those emotions through his words. Every blot of ink. In his prose, he wrote those emotions through a lens of hatred and resentment. Something I've never seen another person do. My point from all this is - to circle back - there isn't someone alive right now, as of my typing of this, that can do that same job. Edgar Allen Poe is still talked about, however shady the details of his life are. Rembrandt is still remembered, even if most people don't know his name-by-work. Since those two have died, no one has replaced them, 'get what I'm saying? I feel like the best and brightest have all gone. I've had this feeling for quite some time, though I haven't been able to put it to words. To finish here, as this is getting quite long (to the point I'm sure the interest has long since died), allow me to say one last thing. I sympathize with Harlan because I, too, see what is happening. What's coming. What is already here. I can recognize the world isn't as good as it used to be, however out of touch that may sound. I've verily been left behind by my own generation: my friend's discord server members all talk in slang that I verbally have to inquire about to understand, when it seems just yesterday I was the one finding new memes, new jokes. Here they are, all talking in slang and inside jokes and thoughts about their life and I've been left in this embryonic chamber of the 1990's. As to say, there won't be a writer like Harlan. There won't be another Layne Staley. There won't be another Van Gogh. Hell, there hasn't even been a mainstream rock artist in nearly 30 years. I was on a rock station one day, and I hear Glass Animals begin playing. No disrespect to Dave Bailey, as he has a good voice (which I'm sure has correction or something on it), but they aren't rock. They are easy-listening and//or pop. The world is getting softer at a time where sharp knives are needed. I sympathize with Harlan because I too have the fear of being forgotten. Even though I'll never truly be, at least until a few more generations, I know I won't "make it big" or even scratch the bosom of that life. I won't bend the knee, neither as did Harlan; his later career was mainly propped by his fans. I implore you, reader, do not archive this text. Don't put it somewhere you'll think about it. Only tell people about it once. This isn't meant to be something fondly talked about or something people like modestly because an online video-sharing-platform talked about it, such as The Haunting of Adeline. I'll be forgotten, just as Harlan one day will. Though he has a much higher chance of being remembered, even if for his sour mood and ridiculing of his fans. You'll forget my name, my prose, my proverbial life. If anything you take away from this, I want you to remember this next part very well. It's something I wrote before all these words, something I can't make fit, though I feel it's a better ending than the melancholy drivel I'd come up with now:
and as I live and breathe, some day in say, twenty years, you'll hear something and you'll think: "Huh.. That sounds like something that guy that I was watchinglisteningreading said one time." Then you'll spend an hour or two trying to think of my name, which won't come to you. Then you'll be online searching for any trace of me, which you won't find. After an hour of that, you'll say "Alright, I'll pick this back up tomorrow."
And then that tomorrow never comes. Your tomorrow does.
It's only natural. Regardless of if you remember my name, prose, face; there'll always be a piece with you, somewhere deep, far down in your heart. Or mind. Or soul. A joke, a quote, something that makes you remember a specific time in your life. No one is truly forgotten then, I suppose.
“He called me up and he wanted me to sign on these things, I said ‘you gotta be crazy to think I’m gonna sign on the-’. I said ‘I despise these thi-’ he said ‘you’ll make a lot of money!’
I said ‘You don’t seem to understand. Money is nothing to make for me, I can make money! Money is the easiest thing in the world, money is what they give you when you do your job right. Money is bullshit! Money is what they pay you to keep you quiet and keep you in line. Keep you working at a job you don’t like, that’s all money is.”
~Harlan J. Ellison, 1993