Turning face, I want to be loved, admired, to be cheered by the fans, for them to sing my song. No more giving my attention to people who don’t deserve it. No more interacting with low-vibration people, they are dragging me down, the negative energy, it’s messing with my aura and affecting the trajectory of my progress. I am turning face, I want to be a star and an inspiration to all like the Brahma Bull. I want to be the guy who opens doors for coming generations. I want to inspire, no more excuses and a life of mediocrity, I want to grace covers of major magazines and appear on the big screen. Best in the world like CM Punk, CM Punk, CM Punk! No more giving my power to people who don’t deserve it. If I stay longer then I am paid less, so let’s decrease the hours while maximizing on the quality. I am turning face, no more Mr. Bad guy, no more low-blows and you ain’t gotta acknowledge me anymore, just a fair and honest fight and if I lose, I accept. I am turning face, I am the good guy now, YEAH, I want to be cheered by the fans, I want them to sing my song. I have integrated my shadow and motherfuckers know better than to take me on, cause I don’t back down and I deliver my receipt with conviction. I am turning face, hustle, loyalty and respect like Cena, time to appeal to the broader audience, make them believe in a hero, make them believe in dreams, cause anything is possible, you just need to keep pressing. I am turning face, I want to be a role model to millions of people, instill good values, teach good morals and ethics, to be a good person. Yes, assholes still exist but I am better equipped to deal with them, I’ll kick their ass while pandering to the audience because I am a master of showmanship now. YEAH! I am turning face, because no one could displace me at the top as a heel, I’ve been carrying the show alone and I need some connection. I am turning face and that’s the bottomline cause I said so. Having beer bashes with the fans like Stone Cold Steve Austin. Turning face cause I need to be relatable to the crowd. Turning face cause I need a different crowd. Turning face, I want to be cheered by the fans, I want them to sing my song.
Don’t be a romantic is what I gathered from Johann Wolfgang von Goete’s book “The sorrows of Young Werther”. The book tells the story of a passionate doomed love affair between a young poet called Werther and a beautiful clever young woman named Charlotte. Unfortunately for Werther, Charlotte is married, so the love affair is impossible from the very start but that doesn’t stop Werther, a dreamy and practical young man who loves the arts above all else. Werther is under pressure to have a sensible career and join the bourgeois life but he can only think about one thing: the impulses of his heart. Eventually young Werther can’t take it anymore and kills himself, but rather than condemn him as a lunatic and a hothead, Goete one of the founding fathers of romanticism directs all our sympathies towards Werther. We are supposed to be on his side admiring his passionate and entirely impractical attitude to love. I think that love is a biochemical that the conscious mind can’t detect. We often find it hard to account for it when it is in process; it consumes and controls leaving us in a remote state from our mind and body.
Romanticism seduces because it comes from the works of artists, poets and philosophers. I am drawn to Amy Winehouse in a way I cannot truly comprehend. I reckon because she died lonely, depressed and misunderstood – I find those elements seductive and soothing. I want to be there for Amy, I love Amy, I would give my life for Amy, I would do anything to make her happy. I am seduced by her tragic death, by the fact that she was vulnerable and alone – I am seduced in a primordial, primitive sense. I was intrigued by her and based on that evidence I can hypothesize that I am a romantic. “Hypothesize” because it is not a fact nor a concluded statement simply because I know with certainty that the world of romanticism was fabricated by mortals. Therefore you can choose to be excluded from this mass hysteria.
Romanticism is what I call “Kayfabe” a termed coined from Professional Wrestling which means the portrayal of staged events within the industry as “real” or “true”, specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or predetermined nature of any kind. You could argue that everything in the modern world is “Kayfabe” and you’d make a compelling argument but that’s a topic for another day. We all know “romanticism” is “kayfabe” – a concept fabricated perceived as good and effective but disastrous for couples in the modern era. Evidence of this can be found in the high divorce rate, the anxiety storm in the west and the demand for drugs from pharmacies to help elevate stress and depression. The drugs don’t help because no one is happy. Striving for happiness is like an unquenchable thirst: we may attain some brief satisfactions, some momentary release, but in the nature of things these can never be more than temporary, and then we are on the rack once more. So unhappiness, or at least dissatisfaction is our normal state of affairs. Romanticism promises eternal happiness something that is not possible because happiness is expedient. Romanticism is ruining relationships.
Romanticism is being deeply hopeful about marriage. It united love and sex. Previously people had imagined that they could have sex with characters they didn’t love and they could love someone without having extraordinary sex with them. It elevated sex to the supreme expression of love. Romanticism made infrequent sex and adultery into catastrophes, proposed that true love must mean an end to all loneliness. It promised that the right partner will understand us entirely possibly without needing even to speak to us. Romanticism believed that choosing a partner should be about letting oneself be guided by feelings rather than practical considerations – that you are loved because you have a “special” feeling. It has manifested a powerful disdain for practicalities and money. The myths have reached cult-like status. That we should meet a person of extraordinary inner and outer beauty and immediately feel a special attraction to them and they to us. That we should have highly satisfying sex, not only at the start but forever. We should never be attracted to anyone else. That we should understand one another intuitively. We should have no secrets and spend constant time together. That our lover should be our soulmate, bestfiend, Jesus, Allah – My Universe! Oh, this is an extreme case of kayfabe and is now almost embedded into our cells – our senses. It has become a world of destruction that we walk into willingly with everything – our hearts, souls, hopes and dreams and come out empty-handed with nothing but battlescars that never heal. Romanticism is not love. Romanticism is a world that is fabricated solely from psychological needs.
Urban poet Kanye West expresses that “Love is cursed by monogamy” in the hit song “No Church in the Wild”. I think this is partly because of romanticism for now love “restricts” and “confines”. It has become contractual and formalized. It is now bounded with a checklist of do’s and don’ts. It has become about expectations and ownership. Love is passive with no will to power or the courage to be imaginative. It is cursed, set in stone, in a spell, intoxicated, bad and ruined. Marriage and monogamy should be expressive, open-minded, mature and enable the beloved to grow and self-actualize. This is reflected in the movie Emmanuelle about a young woman who takes a trip to Bangkok to enhance her sexual experience. The young woman is happily married and her husband encourages to follow her desires citing that Emmanuelle is not his property, and not his beauty – that her beauty belongs to the world. This enables Emmanuelle to grow and trust in the relationship because of the mutual communication, respect and honesty. To love someone means to see him as God intended. There are no restrictions to Gods lenses – no confinements. All he wants is for you to flourish and fly as nature intended. All life is meaningful.
Pop star Adele expresses love in its truest forms in one of her songs on the hit album “21” lovesong: “Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am free again, whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am clean again”. Those are words with meaning, words that matter, words with a lot of love, words that are full of serenity, words that provide a second chance, another glance at life. They are pure, heartfelt and honest and what I liken love to be like – a second chance to truly be myself, to share the best of myself and be all that I can be. To be liberated – I can be that when I am with you. It’s practical and concise. It builds and regulates one’s conduct and character, it inspires – it is love.
I love the WWE. As a company wow, they have so much imagination. Vince McMahon did it, he created the perfect company, a company based on his passion. He took this small dream and made it gigantic. Their slogan is “Then, Now, Forever” how fitting. The WWE has been around for generations, it has been popular culture for generations and has had many golden eras. From WCW to ECW to WWF to today’s WWE. It is immensely entertaining. The Kayfabe, the personas, the grand entrances, the music, the commentators – Jerry the King Lawler, Jim Ross, Tazz and Michael Cole, the catch-phrases, the promos, the gimmicks, the emotions they stir-up, the crowd and the talent in the ring. WWE is exciting! Everything is so structured and beautifully packaged. The storylines keep the spectators and audience emotionally attached and attuned. The personas give us an avenue to project our undesirable characteristics and feelings. This is so effective because everyone is repressed and we must not give in to our animal urges because society deems them undesirable and they can get you incarcerated. So, the next best thing in projecting those undesirable qualities is being a Randy Orton fan; a character who is sly, vindictive, sinister and two-faced, who claims to hear voices in his head telling him to do bad things and so he obliges. Randy Orton is unsportsmanlike, he injures his fellow competitors by kicking them in the head thus causing concussions and ending their careers. He once kicked the chairman of WWE Vince McMahon in the head and won the Royal Rumble the next day, guaranteeing himself a spot to headline WrestleMania. And so he was exempted from the repercussions of kicking the founder of the WWE in the head. These are the type of storylines that keep the fans engaged. WWE tackle morality, the subject of good and bad in their storylines and the wrestlers are exceptionally good in communicating this with the audience. Somebody like John Cena was exceptional on the mic. But they don’t just sell morality, they sometimes do unbelievable and the jaw-dropping. In the early 2000’s, Brock Lesnar superplexed The Big Show who weighed in at 500 pounds on the top rope, a move that dismantled the ring. The superplex was forceful and hard that the two wrestlers couldn’t compete anymore, medical assistance was dispatched to assist. We don’t know if WWE planned that or they were just as shocked as the rest of the world. What transpired was a freak of nature – it was like a natural disaster and the images are imprinted on every WWE fan. WWE can be spontaneous and chaos can roam out and throw everything on its head. However, much is controlled through the personas they have created for the wrestlers. They stage confrontations of two personas exhibiting a dislike for one another to garner hype and excitement to sell tickets and get an audience. One persona I loved was that of Eddie Guerrero billed as “Latino Heat”. His gimmick was that of “He lies, he cheats, he steals”, what this gimmick entailed is that he did everything and anything to win a wrestling match. Through this persona, Eddie was unethical and unsportsmanlike, he delivered low-blows to the opponents when the referee wasn’t looking, he hit opponents with foreign objects when the referee wasn’t looking, he raked and blinded opponents, he basically did everything that was morally unjust. Still, the fans loved him. He was one of the staples of the Smackdown brand when it started, along with wrestlers like “The Undertaker” “Brock Lesnar”, “Kurt Angle”, “JBL” and Rey Mysterio. What made Eddie Guerrero special was the fact that he could be a “fan favorite” and later play the “heel”, the heel is someone who everyone hates. Because of this rare ability he was the face of the Smackdown brand. Eddie Guerrero was supremely entertaining. He could captivate the crowd and make them laugh and he could make them boo their lungs out. He was a gem. RIP Eddie Guerrero. The WWE has its own world and they sell merchandise, make movies and generates millions through their trademark brands. They also have development hubs all around the world for aspiring and up and coming wrestlers. The talent they have on their rosters (Raw and Smackdown) are amazing. They are athletic and professional. They look like they love what they do. They are committed. They live the Kayfabe. You can see it on their faces, they are living their dreams. It is a beautiful billion dollar company. I love this company!
antakalipa 