They tell you to think about legacy
as if there’s a panel somewhere
taking notes,
as if the lighting is fair,
as if the sound carries.
So you rehearse.
You soften the sharp parts.
You explain yourself in advance.
You live as if someone later
will understand the context.
You don’t get to see the tape.
No playback.
No notes in the margin.
No moment where you say
ok—right, that’s what they meant.
You spend your life performing
for an audience that arrives
only after you’ve left the room.
Wait…
does anyone hear how insane this is?
Different cuts.
Different editors.
Different needs.
They’ll splice your worst sentence
next to your best year
and call it coherence.
This is called wisdom.
This is called foresight.
This is called legacy.
What the fuck are we doing?
Meanwhile…
meanwhile the only people
who can hear you
are here.
You will never see…
you’ll never…
Fuck the tape.
Fuck the legacy.
Fuck the careful metaphor I just spent
twenty lines building for you.
You’re going to die.
They’re going to get you wrong.
There is no panel.
There is no fair edit.
There’s just people who need something from your memory
and they’ll take what they want.
Ozymandias could tell you about legacy
if you could find him.
Stop auditioning.
Stop rehearsing.
They don’t need your best angle.
They need you.
Love them.
Be present.
Leave sweat and fingerprints, not monuments.
I will not waste my numbered minutes
polishing echoes of a future ghost.
- UpsilonA
Very true. Have a beautiful weekend! 🔥
Those two last lines land hard. Who are we performing for? What for? Shouldn't it be to finally strip ourselves of performance and actually find beneath it the raw experience of being human? Perhaps. Or perhaps we'll never find out. Or it could be that there's no reason at all. It’s all non-sense.