And I breathed. I am half sponge, and I can fill myself with and feel atmospheres.
What I felt was that all the difference and identity was an inch deep. I felt like if I pushed most of these people they would lapse into an innate neuroticism and deep anxiety.
“Who are you?” is one of the most basic questions you can ask of yourself, and of others. “Someone who has a nice beard and listens to musicians no one has heard of” is not a very good identity. When I ask of myself and others “who are you”, what I want to know is what I, or they, are willing to fight for. What are you willing to die for? Suffer for?
And I felt this demonic voice present in the background. It did not speak loudly, because it did not–does not–need to. What it offered was comfort and shelter and strength and power. All you have to do is join the cult, to join the headless ones. All you have to do is turn your brain off, and accept at face value all the news you are given by approved outlets, and feel the appropriate emotions when you are told to feel. Feel sad when you are supposed to feel sad, and angry the rest of the time.
All of this seems magical, like some sort of thing that would exist in a book and not in the real world. Spells are not cast in our empirically minded world, are they?
Of course they are. Daily, and often.
Unless you feel you are often fighting off spiderwebs, and pulling back curtains, you have likely accepted a manufactured truth, and more likely, many. Up is down anymore. Gravity exists in the real world, but not in our psyches.