SONG OF THE DAY: Straight Loungerism

The Power of Lounge is not so much the abandonment of caring about everything, although it might appear that way to an outsider who is more of an insider, and not an innate dweller of shadows. The philosophy of “loungin’” is an acknowledgement that institutions and systems are not built with the people in mind, not the full spectrum and abundance of people, and that institutions and systems, by design, tend to fail a whole lot of people, purposefully. I can’t think of any six month period in recent memory that has made that more obviously clear in American history during my lifetime. But the entrusting the Power of Lounge to provide sustenance to soul in a world hell-bent on material satisfaction of the brain, which we often find is never satisfied, due to its own unlimited expanse, which when trained to chase greed, only finds avarice. And though it’s a noble heartfelt pursuit to attempt to reform or tear down and rebuild institutions and systems to provide for all, human history is littered with empires that were founded on noble principles that ended up enforcing their aged visions of a perfect order on a world that had spun slowly in directions that can’t ever be controlled entirely, not by human hands at least. So the Power of Lounge is acceptance that you can’t control it, not the whole pile of bricks and mortars and village and mass of people. So you work to do well with your own actions, spread raw joy in your interactions with others, both human and non-human, animal and plant, the whole fucking deal. Anybody who has experienced the full economic spectrum of life in America will tell you in a heartbeat that poor folks are far more generous, that a cookout aluminum tray full of leg quarters bought with an EBT card is gonna have less strings attached to it as far as who can get a plate. The Power of Lounge is knowing the world is fucked, not because it’s a world but because of how men act upon the surface of it, but you can always shift yourself more underground, more into the shadows, find freedom in the margins, and maybe find happiness. It ain’t always easy, and moving away from the system always has repercussions, when you try to do normal shit, like acquire material wealth or buy a piece of land with a house on it or whatever. But again, all that shit ultimately is unloungin’; the act of “owning” land is perverse anyways. Doesn’t mean you don’t do it, because the institutions and systems we live under are far more over-reaching than most of us realize in all the little ways. But the philosophy of “loungin’” is also accepting that shit as much as you have to, rejecting that shit as much as you can, and building camaraderie and community despite and outside those institutions and systems as much as possible. They call it “networking” when it comes to economics – building relationships that benefit you. Outside of that metaphor I don’t really like the word “network” though; it’s more like long ass mycelium connections beneath the Earth, tendrils of shared existence and survival, that helps clean the superficial poisons from your brain, so that you can keep on living by your heart, and enjoying life. Because if we can’t enjoy our life, being it’s the only one we gonna get, then what the fuck’s even the point?