One of the most powerful Kanye West songs ever released is probably one you’ve never heard. Once in a while, it resurfaces on the internet, I happen to stumble across it, and inevitably, I cry. Yesterday, I did that just that. I held my wife in my arms as we listened to it and I cried.
I’m not ashamed of that. I’m not ashamed to share that. I feel everything deeply and that’s my strength. It makes me a better person, a better husband, a better son, a better brother, a better friend, a better creative and a better entrepreneur.
A world that doesn’t feel, is one that I don’t want to belong to, and I’m fearful that’s where we’re heading. We’re numb right now. Numbness leads to harm, and like the addict, when all pain has left the body, we venture too deep into something we can’t come back from.
I wasn’t sad yesterday, in fact, the last few weeks have been quite uplifting. That being said, as a creative that suffers from depression, when Kanye released this video, if only for a moment, it gave me hope that the conversation was moving in the right direction. It did, and then, it didn’t. The dichotomy of that makes me sad.
I think the fact that it vanished from the Internet days after being released is part of why this song moves me so much. There was hope for people like me, and then, it was gone. If Kanye can’t express himself without ridicule, who can? I started It’s All Sad to give lasting hope and I want this conversation to continue moving in the right direction.
Since beginning It’s All sad, I have conversations nearly every week with complete strangers from all over the world. I think that’s moving in the right direction. I also have no intent on vanishing from the Internet. Kanye, the community even, might not have been ready in 2015, but I think it’s ready now.
I’m not sure how long this video will live here before I get a cease and desist, but I wanted all of you to experience it while it does.
You might get something different from it than I do, but I hope you get something good from it. I hope the impermanency of it makes you consider your own position in the world, how short your lives truly are, how small your place in it truly is, and I hope that it makes you feel something.
Most importantly, I hope that feeling turns into something good, an action, something that helps others feel again.
Crediting Kanye West and Steve McQueen, in the hope that this video might live a minute or two longer.
Skip to 5:10 for the feels.
“I Feel Like That”
While you’re fast asleep
Kanye West
Do you experience nervousness or shakiness inside, faintness and dizziness? The idea that someone else can control your thoughts. Feeling others are to blame for most of your thoughts? Trouble remembering things, feeling easily annoyed and irritated? Feeling afraid in open spaces or in public? Thoughts of ending your life. Feeling that most people could not be trusted. Poor appetite, heart or chest pains?
I feel like this
I feel like this
I feel like that
I feel like this all the time
I feel like that
I feel like that
I feel like that
I feel like that all the time
Do you feel tempered outbursts, that you cannot control? Feeling lonely, even when you are with people, feeling blocked? Feeling blue, sad, feeling disinterested in things, feeling fearful? Are your feelings easily hurt? Feeling that people are unfriendly, or do you feel like people dislike you?
I feel like that all the time
I feel like that
I feel like that
I feel like that
I feel like that all the time
I feel like that
I feel like that all the time
Do you have trouble falling asleep? Nausea, upset stomach, hot or cold spells? Numbness, tingling in parts of your body, trouble catching your breath?
I feel like that
I feel like that
I feel like that all the time
I feel like that
I feel like that
I feel like that
Feel like that all the time
It’s all sad but it’s not bad.
Stephen
