SONG OF THE DAY: Nine Steamin'

Contemplating a continent as a planet is an interesting concept, because obviously the first issue with this is the planet we live upon (which is the foundation for most all our human knowledge of planet life) is more water than land mass. So you’re taking a small part of the whole and amplifying it as the whole. But fuck it, let’s do that. Planet Asia we don’t really need to discuss, unless you’re not aware, because Planet Asia as a theoretical entity is already a sick ass rapper, and one of the best MCs going, for a number of years. Planet Europe also doesn’t need a lot of theoretical exploration due to the historical colonial exploration (aka conquest) that shot from Europe which essentially has given us more of a Planet Europe than any other type of continent as planet. In fact, Planet Australia would just be a sliver of Planet Europe anyways, and also using football (the United States’ soccer) as example, Australia considers itself part of Asia anyways, which also is weird because it means it’s a tiny Europe pretending to be Asian. So Planet Australia would probably get called out on Twitter tbh.

Planet Antarctica is mostly non-inhabited, and also becoming irrelevant due to climate change. Is there land under there? I don’t know, I’m pretty far removed from my school days, and no longer trust Wikipedia to be any better of a source of truth than subreddits, so I’m not gonna search internet boxes for the answer. I was always led to believe by pictures that it’s just a chunk of ice, so I assume it will melt and be gone entirely and then they will drill for oil and accidentally puncture the inside of Earth and our entire planet, the whole not the theoretical continental versions, will deflate like a balloon, and our best hope is that flat earth theory becomes true and we can continue to exist on the deflated Earth.

Planet Africa would actually probably be pretty lit, but Planet Europe would never allow that to happen. Plus Planet Europe already pillaged Planet Africa, so it would be existing off the remnants, which is also kinda nice because it would be that rundown strip mall with the tienda and Roses and thrift store and Dollar General grocery store, but at a planetary level. That’s probably unsettling to a lot of folks, but that’s also a sign of how badly Planet Europe has actually been created on Planet Earth. Stop being so white.

This leaves us in this theoretical exploration with Planet America, because obviously it doesn’t make sense to split it into Planet North America and Planet South America. I’m not sure if there are two planets in the Universe who are referred to as north and south, because how do you use compass points at universal scale anyways. What’s the center of the universe? I’m gonna have to consult my 120 lessons pamphlet again, but I don’t think it’s in there. Thus we combine the two continents into one America to think of Planet America. Now there are some who will say Planet America in fact already exists, as the United States has exercised its military might across the globe since the fall of the Soviet Union. I used to think this way myself. But in recent years I’ve shifted my thinking, because there was a history on these continents – a very deep and rich history – before the United States came to be. In fact, just like Planet Australia, the concept of Planet America being the United States hegemony over the globe is in actuality just a baby Planet Europe. An actual pre-United States and non-Columbian Planet America would be a very different thing than US military bases around the world. Oddly, as life in this false Planet America notion which is actually just the United States empire being a last gasp expression of the racial culmination of Planet Europe philosophies feels more and more doomed, as it does under current leadership, not just now but really since the 1980s, and actually likely all along if we start pulling the tendrils out the ground, thinking of America as the pre-Columbian land masses on this half of the Earth, and imagining those philosophies and motivations for existence returning to these land masses, but also (hopefully) strengthened by the people here now, including those brought from Africa, as well as the Europeans who can get along with it, because even in the growth of Planet Europe into the false Planet America (US Empire), a lot of various breeds and broods of European were cleansed, killed, and beaten into submission for assimilation to create this sense of American whiteness used to create this shit coming to a head now. And to be honest, it is also in that line of thinking of Planet America as not being tied to US Empire but to the land itself, and the deeper and longer history, as revitalized but with the added hands of American immigrants of a resourceful and economically neglected nature (black and white and brown and other), which is what I’m conjuring in my heart when I say “Southern Gothic Futurism” because it’s thinking not in terms of the American (US) South, but the Global South. So it is an application of the theoretical Planet America, which ultimately overtakes from the Planet Europe which is now masquerading as a Planet America when actually it’s just the last dying gasps of European thinking being performed with US military might and self-importance, under the assimilated European identity of whiteness. So when the Global South is allowed to reclaim Planet America, I feel like that’s a beautiful possibility, and it gives me hope, which is hard to find if you’re looking at the blip bloop machine news feed nowadays. So don’t look at it. Go outside and stick your fingers in a creek, stack some rocks, go walk from here to where you were born and back, or if it’s not on this land mass, walk to the edge and look out over the water and contemplate how the land mass is just a small part of the whole, and there’s not whole worlds out there you don’t know about, just the one world you live in, but it’s depth is far greater than your fears and loathing and worries and hard-earned anxieties. Life is still a beautiful thing, even as forces of order try to squeeze every free and easy breath out of you with further constricting psychic gridlock. Fuck them. They don’t own shit except paper they printed themselves like a five-year-old petulant child saying THIS PAPER MEANS I OWN EVERYTHING NOBODY ELSE ONLY ME. It feels like it rules everything, but it doesn’t. Life is still beautiful if you look for glimmers of light within the crushing darkness. And if you’re able to see those glimmers, be a prism and shine it out there for others, if you’re able. Hopefully, if my nonsense heart philosophy of Southern Gothic Futurism works out like I hope it will, all the glimmer folks who shine it back out through their own prism of beautiful existence are gonna turn all this darkness into world full of rainbows. That’s my hope at least.