as a general rule, i’m against of the use of quotes to communicate one’s identity or personal philosophy. like using quotes from famous people as email signatures or at the start of a journal or a personal motto or the like. the whole idea just seems suspect. like, anything that’s catchy and punchy enough to stand on its own as a quote is unlikely to be complex enough to, on its own, communicate an idea that’s thoughtful enough for me to feel comfortable co-signing. no matter how brilliant it is, on its own it will be shallow and inadequate as an approach to life, you know? like you’re trying to express the unpredictable beauty, horror and chaos of life on a fucking bumper sticker. even SHIT HAPPENS doesn’t seem adequate.

there’s an amazing quote from James Baldwin about humanity that i’ve always been very enamored of because, when i read it, i immediately and instinctively felt that, as much as anything i’d ever encountered, it was something that i always knew was the truth. i actually almost made it my email signature at one point, but even that seemed inadequate. this probably says more about me than anything else (like how everything is mostly talking about me, however incompletely and inadequately), but every time i come across a clever, insightful line that immediately hits me as some perfectly crafted expression of reality, i’m immediately uneasy, and i want to question not only the quote itself, but my own self for being so taken with it in the first place.

honestly, i’m even uncomfortable taking a whole work and saying that it’s somehow a perfect representation of life or a person, even the actual person who wrote it, let alone another person. i guess i’m just really dubious about the idea that all the complexities and contradictions of life, or of a real human being might be somehow communicated through a single quote or even an entire single work of art.

that being said, this shit right here is all of me:

A-higgedy-hoy there matey, I giggedy-gots to flow
My Saturday nights are live-er than Joe Piscopo
So yo, siggedy-save the bait for Charlie Tuna
See I be the boogie banger, like Esiason’s the Boomer

there’s nothing else to be said. tbh. ngl.

good to meet you.