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what’s up I made a connection between about flipping perspective on TRENCH from splitting yourself in two to understanding fear, and the relationship between the culture and the flesh, vialism and blurryface. in retrospect it seems obvious but I GET SOMETHING. thread time
first: one perspective flip in trench is what you’re analyzing: from carving off one half of yourself that's threatening or corrupted - which tyler had been talking about literally since self-titled - to deconstructing types of fear. are some good? where are they from?
my train of thought started with noticing tyler uses the SAME WORDS to talk about his view of success "in my flesh” in faceculture 2013 as success under vialism in the discord clique chat 2020. so flesh and culture have agendas that take similar shapes. what goes on???
it’s not *influencing people* that’s wrong. tyler wants to influence people to stay alive, and vialism wants to influence people to die; they’re polar opposites. the similarity is the “numbers thing,” thinking that you’re worthless if you don’t impact enough people.
this thread will assume agreement about what “the flesh” is in the context of top, so if anyone reads through this and goes “are you high or what,” check this by @poptivist. tl;dr I consider “the flesh”/skin and “blurryface” to be closely related symbols
it's been SO hard for me to have a cogent thought about where the blame goes (internal vs. external) because tyler externalized those thoughts about the body/flesh/skin into a character the record before - and used the SAME character when turning his gaze to our culture.
like when he says “fear might be the death of me / don’t know what’s inside of me” in doubt, the threat is blurryface - a piece of him. but “we’re surrounded and we’re hounded / all our tormentors” is uh? the threat is the bishops, but it’s harder to tell.
in 2013, he says, I put up roadblocks to things that tell me I’m worthless “whether it’s just me or the world around me.” in 2018, we see those roadblocks during car radio. 2013 it’s amorphous what you’re keeping at bay. 2018 it’s dema. vultures = culture circles when you return.
so what is dema then - that thing you're protecting yourself from? just you? the world around you? both? something new?
I kept going "is blurryface, as nico, supposed to be the culture instead of the flesh now?" this is the first record without splitting yourself in two or cleansing the skin. he’s been critical of culture before (like IOFB), but the death-glare calling it out by name twice is new.
a new name (blurryface to nico) signifies a new understanding so maybe, right? but it JUST occurred to me that the culture vs. flesh thing isn't in conflict because VIALISM is the CULTURE and NICO is the FLESH. nico isn’t EITHER culture OR flesh - they are two separate actors.
the flesh - the part of yourself that is broken and dangerous to you – is a part of you that is literally *worshipping the wrong thing*. numbers or nothing. it’s not that nico is an extension of the culture; it’s that nico enforces the culture’s value system on the individual.
so my question isn’t “is the thing that wants me dead intrinsic (flesh) or extrinsic (culture)?” better question: “is the part of myself that wants me dead inherently drawn to a twisted view of success, or has our culture convinced & manipulated part of me into that?”
maybe that’s chicken-or-the-egg. do we think we’re worthless unless we hit those numbers because our culture tells us we are, or has our culture reached a consensus about that bc we all individually feel that we have to measure ourselves above other people to be significant?
looking back to 2013 again, tyler brings up self-control in both faceculture and the vessel commentary. in the commentary, he acknowledges that one broken thing (self-control) is shared by all of us. it’s not just him. but – like me – 2013 tyler has only questions
tl;dr the change in perspective is this: “which parts of me are the broken ones? how do I kill them?” to “this broken thing I feed myself into, why does it need this from me? what is IT feeding into? what can I coexist with?” the new perspective is clearest, fittingly, in bandito
I dunno this seems really obvious now! but I've been SO stuck on “if I could influence and impact THIS many people” being attributed to “humanly instincts” AND vialism, and the “just me or the world around me” thing, and I think I finally get where tyler’s at now. chefs kiss
please ignore the shittiness of my imovie captions but I wanted to emphasize stuff and I can’t edit videos :^) end of thread
