The reasons we're transfixed
Welcome to Hella Immaculate, I love you.
I’m Dave, a comedian and budding abolitionist. I love making light of heavy shit and taking frivolous things too seriously. Hella Immaculate is my existential, spiritual, political, creative-process-and-culture-obsessed alt-weekly.
You can support my work by sharing it or paying me to keep making it! Do that through Patreon, and you’ll get hella goodies and other chances to connect.
I hated the idea of Lil Peep before I listened to his music.
I knew he was sampling emo to make trap music, and I saw critics praising the return of rap-rock like that was a good thing. I listened a bit, and I was transfixed in what felt like a rubbernecking way.
This week I watched the documentary about his too-short life, Lil Peep: Everybody’s Everything, and I’m not as sure my transfixture was rubbernecking.
If you’re a fan of memoir, music narratives, or biographical docs like I am, I recommend it. It’s a rawer picture of addiction than you usually get (the footage of the L.A. show toward the end is particularly upsetting). And it got me into the music a bit! It’s impossible for me to watch 2 hours of any musician without being able to hear what’s compelling in their work.
But the real shit of this documentary, what won’t let me go, is all of the voiceover clips of his grandfather reading letters he wrote Gus (Peep). They’re incredible. Instead of typical adult advice, they’re full of commiseration about how terrible the world can be, how hard it is to trust people but worth it when you find the ones you can trust, and unforceful questions for Gus to ask himself to find his way in life.
This grandfather is John Womack, Jr.—Jack, Grandpa Ack Ack—a former Harvard professor who spent his life in leftist causes and chronicling Mexican revolutionary history. He doesn’t appear onscreen until the end of the film, and fuck is the wait ever worth it. He just drops gem after gem of philosophical-spiritual insight, with references ranging from St. Augustine to “This Little Light of Mine.” His exegesis of the latter’s “way beyond the blue” chorus is one of the most moving things I’ve heard in a while, pointing to the Mystery at the heart of the universe that is my deepest held spiritual belief.
I hope you watch Everybody’s Everything. I hope we cherish the Grandpa Ack Acks in our lives. I hope we all get to reconsider the reasons we’re transfixed.
THIS IS MY PODCAST, THIS IS YOUR AFTERLIFE
I posted a bonus clip from my conversation with Catlyn Savado, the 14-year-old abolitionist organizer in Chicago. It was her Animal Spirit reading, which is a thing I do with all my guests and post on Patreon.
She asked a question: “Where is this life taking me?” We pulled a card from an oracle deck I have called the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck. We pulled the Owl. We read the Owl entry in the accompanying guidebook. Then, together we interpreted the Owl’s answer to her question.
It’s a really cool document of a then-13-year-old giving herself advice for darker times during a moment of stability.
If you enjoy it, you can get clips like it every week by joining my Patreon!
THEY’RE JUST, LIKE, MY SUGGESTIONS, MAN
Donate to Courtney Queen! She’s a neighbor of mine (and maybe yours) going through an acutely tough time, as she explains below in a post in our neighborhood mutual aid network’s Facebook page.
I donated $30. Reply with what you donate, and I’ll post our total next week.
Got a response to something here? Reply or comment, and I’ll hit you back.
MAY I PLAY YOU A SOUND?
Just my current favorite song on Apple’s Lil Peep Essentials playlist. I’ve heard it in full precisely one time, today, grocery shopping, while walking the cereal aisle. I don’t even know if I love it, but I think I like it. And I think it’s worth sharing. And I’m curious your thoughts if you listen!
Oh, do Lord,
DM
P.S. I don’t expect anyone to pay as close attention to Hella Immaculate delivery times as I do, but you might get a kick out of why this week’s edition is a bit late. I had to order the bluetooth keyboard I’m typing on right now because my laptop’s keyboard types the last paragraph of this week’s essay like this:
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