The Gospel according to Six

–The numbing embrace of the barbiturates sag my lids into a slit. —

The night’s quiet grace stole into my fancy; neon signs freckled across a swath of city-spread, poker-faced passers-by bathed in smartphone light, indifferent to most things, subject to everything. There were no aliens, and the air smelt of futurism. I loved GOD and women, still. Nothing had changed. When May turns to August, I’ll still love her, something feral, but this isn’t a love story, I’m just fiddling with the details.

–My earphones are plugged in and I’m caught in the same matrix of genres and soundscapes. —

A friend once told me that country music was depression on depressants and I was like, ‘preach’. He also said we belonged to the age of the polymaths, prequel to the revenge of the millennials. That night, a dying spliff kept nix of our wits. And we were the world.

He said everything was going to low impulse-control youths and the psychopath reward-system of capitalism… “I hope my apathy is feeding someone’s ego-ideal somewhere”. He spoke as smoke escaped his lips, n’ I began to hate the world. Lamed by the high, we crept down the sidewalk like cripples. That night, the seconds seemed spaghettified, and the stars aligned with our low-lidded languor.

“Everybody’s depressed nowadays, I don’t get it”, him.

“Neither do I, but it’s a sentiment of extensive latitude, it snags me on the odd occasion, too”, me.

“It gets the best of us, though, in old age or youth. We leave the pursuit of happiness to fill all our in-betweens”, him.

“Anything worth pursuing deserves a pair of retro Nike’s”, me.

–We fist-bump–

“If it isn’t hormonal, then it’s existential and that kind of depression is gotten from introspection, over-thinking to be precise”.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ll introspect myself into a singularity n’ I’d become a black hole n’ sh*t’d start disappearing”.

“But the depression’d still be there”.

“Nope, intangible things’d get sucked up, too”.

“End of the world”.

“Consumed”.

“Consumerism”.

“The Kardashians”.

“They symbolize everything I hate about the ‘new world’”.

“That new age sh*t?”.

“Not quite, but it’s a sub-set”.

“I don’t subscribe to anything ‘neo’, though”.

“You think?”.

“Mostly”.

“We’re all stuck in the mud. Vice and stupidity have a gravity of their own, if you’re guilty of either, ‘up’ isn’t an option”.

“If you ask me, people’re stuck darting between binaries. Fake, real; good, bad. Sometimes they get it right, but most times, it’s just affectations. Everything is fiction nowadays”.

–We stagger off into the pasty orange of the streetlights. —

The next morning, we wake up on the sidewalk.

SIX

ff on instagram @sixisms. I love wine