"It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak."
James Baldwin 1964, on America
A cultural reckoning of electromagnetic proportions
The world is changing. The meek, the gay and the female shall inherit the Earth.
On the 1st of September 1859, a bright white flare was spotted over the photo sphere of our planet by two astronomers both named Richard, Carrington and Hodgson. This flare was due to a solar coronal mass ejection that had just hit the Earth's magnetosphere and subsequently induced the largest geomagnetic storm ever recorded on our planet. The Carrington event. Auroras were seen all over the world, from Buenos Aires to Baghdad, from Tokyo to Auckland.
The effect of this event was nearly immeasurable. It knocked out the world’s entire fledgling telegraph systems. Leaving the planet without communication for months. A similar coronal ejection of the sun happened in 2012 but it missed our planet by 9 days.
The Carrington event had such an impact on our planet, that the ionising radiation caused nitrogen oxide to form by the truck load, so much so that even today we can find it recorded in ice cores recovered from deep within Greenland’s ice caps.
Humans were obviously so impressed by this, that a century later we tried to mimic this electromagnetic event on our own, without celestial, coronal influence.
How did that go?
Bombs over Honolulu
Above was the aptly named Thor Missile in July 1962, a part of Project Starfish- a nuclear detonation in the vestiges of outer space just over the islands of Hawai’i - causing massive electromagnetic pulse effects, which if done today in 2021 would wipe out the entire electrical grid as well as irreparably damaging the Earth’s internet infrastructure.
This 1.5 megatonne bomb detonated 400km in space over Johnstone’s atoll had a devastating impact on not only our geomagnetics but also our wildlife. It is estimated that over 2000 species of plant and animals vanished forever in an instance, after that bomb detonated.
Were it detonated today, it would have massive and far reaching repercussions beyond just wildlife. As with the Carrington event 100 years prior, we would have a complete communication disruption and chaos would reign supreme.
The equivalent of such an event culturally would be paramount to a paradigm consciousness shift, one that our species has not encountered since the first industrial revolution. Even a partial Carrington event could cause uneven damage across the planet.
Any satellite dependent communication would likely be screwed and we would need to get back to steampunk computing.
Lil Nas X is our very own anthropomorphic Carrington event
Lil Nas X was originally born Montero Lamar Hill, named after the Mitsubishi car with the same name. His parents divorced when he was a toddler and he spent the bulk of his youth living in abject poverty with his mother and grandmother in the projects of Bankhead Courts, Georgia.
His genre-bending music (he’s been labelled everything under the sun from country, R&B, Pop, hiphop to new age punk rock) is a not so subtle critique of the old world - the boomers, the patriarchy, white supremacy, fascism, political polarity … all of the stuff that made the 20th century unbearable. Like a watch tower over the jail of pop culture, Lil Nas X’s genius prejudicial spotlight knows no bounds. He critiques white racism as well as black homophobia. Millennial indifference and apathy, no one gets spared in this polymath wunderkind’s seminal brainchild album Montero.
Echoing the classic Schwarzenegger romantic comedy Junior released in 1994, the last couple of months has seen Lil Nas X pregnant - after undergoing myometrial transplant surgery - a truly ingenious stroke of cyber marketing brilliance.
His foetus, it turned out, was his as yet unreleased album.
As was the universality of the message of his embracing the feminine within all of us, resonating around the world with his simple message:
“We all need to become women now”
He’s on the pulse here. All of humanity’s ills, the collective Zeitgeist, personified for the world to imbibe. Everyone needs this now.
Now more than ever.
Nas X invited the who’s who from members of the rap community to other pop icons, to join him in his virtual ‘baby shower.’ But most didn’t have the guts to show up - instead it was Elton John, Miley Cyrus and Megan Thee Stallion who showed their support for what he was doing. If Jay Z or Kanye were actually cleverer than they think they are, they would have responded to the RSVP in blazing neon green, skin tight cat suits, supporting and encouraging their fellow artist in the groundbreaking work they were doing. But no, the rap scene is notoriously homophobic, rife with men caught in the 20th century patriarchal paradigm, too afraid to recognise that the world is changing, something which X is subtly and purposely acknowledging in all of this.
His genius virtual marketing bravado stems from years of doing the hard social media curating yards for Trinidadian uber rapper Nicki Minaj - as her token cybernetic punk publicist.
His pregnancy was a well thought out public euphemism for his next album to be “born”.
A straight-up genius.
Lil Nas X - the James Baldwin of postmodernism
Like Lil Nas X, Baldwin was an openly gay, African-American artist living in America. The one big difference was that James Baldwin lived through the late 50s and 1960s whilst the whole country was wrought in a severe battle for civil rights. Baldwin had reason to be afraid -- and yet bizarrely, like Lil Nas X now, he wasn't.
Back in 1974, a journalist once asked Baldwin to comment on the fact he was born black and gay during a time like this, to which Baldwin laughingly replied:
"I thought I'd hit the jackpot."
Like Lil Nas X, Baldwin wasn't afraid to speak out. And this enraged many cultural pundits of the time, who often tried to silence him. Pressuring seminar organisers on politics and sociology to uninvite him. He was battling racism and homophobia. At the same time. No lesser of two evils.
His sexuality often came up when he dealt with the public. Particularly when working with religious and conservative organisations, his sexuality would be a major talking point.
Much like how Lil Nas X handed out an olive branch invitation to his fellow peers in the rap community regarding his album/birthing launch, in the 1970s Baldwin tried to be both a vocal and written supporter of the Black Panther Party, yet his sexual orientation became an issue and ended up being "thrown up at him in very hurtful ways" - just like the savage backlash that Nas had to face in the immature and scathingly homophobic reactions of some members of the rap community.
Just like James Baldwin was, Lil Nas X is quite open about his sexual orientation, and flaunts it at every opportunity he can get - after meeting Baldwin certain journalists would marvel that there was something almost "magical" about Baldwin's humble frankness on this particular issue.
Lil Nas X makes rap videos with graphic homosexual references and imagery at a time when some parts of the country are beginning to mimic white patriarchal Christian totalitarian dictatorships heralding vicious Handmaid’s Tale inspired philosophies when it comes to homosexuality and abortion - just like Baldwin who pushed the limits of his generation. At a time when major publishers wouldn't even begin consider opting a book on homosexuality, James Baldwin went out and not only wrote a book about the topic, he made the main plot line about a love affair between two white men in his fantastic book Giovanni's Room.
Champagne and drinkin' with your friends
You live in the dark, boy, I cannot pretend
I'm not fazed, only here to sin
Lil Nas X saves the day.
Nay the fucking decade. Century?
His work is sparking an already dry tinder of consciousness, into a next level paradigm shift - really getting people thinking.
The billboard campaign for his album launch was another stroke of perfection. I mean, who would not click on that link?
Other billboards read:
“Do you hate Lil Nas X? You may be entitled to financial compensation.”
or
“Do you miss the real America? Follow this link to find out how we can take your country back!”
Lil Nas X’s presence in the pop hip hop culture scene and hence our collective consciousness is a Carrington level electromagnetic pulse event with the power to take out our electrical grid aka the wiring in our brain to make us understand what it means to be human in the 21st century.
A black gay rapper who feigns pregnancy and worships the divine feminine.
It doesn’t get more next level than that. And this ladies and gentile men is what the New World Order is all about.
Consciousness shifts. To change our act.
To save the fucking climate.
Culturally as well as climatically.
Go listen to his album Montero now and find out what all the fuss is about.
I wanted to end this piece with the indelible words of Pitchfork’s own Eric Torres, who reviewed the album a couple of weeks back:
The hopeful ending is in line with Nas’ vision—this is the same guy who made a supercut of his videos in the garish style of Marvel movies, after all. Yet even with occasional missteps, the album fulfills the promise of a new kind of pop star: an out, Black rapper and singer who combines his omnivorous, genre-hopping music, forthright lyrics, and social media savvy to triumph in an industry that threatened his authenticity from the jump. His music is still radio-primed to work well beside Olivia Rodrigo’s pop-punk or Doja’s earworm rap, but he’s using both his music and celebrity to carve out a unique space explicitly for queer people who feel as alone as he did growing up and emphatically insisting on a better future. With MONTERO, he’s already building it for them.
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Mauri Ora.
“It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.”
The legend himself, Jacques Yves Cousteau.