To Be Perceived

Jan 27, 2024

You cultivate an online persona. This is new territory for you, but you have no idea this will become a norm, a common part of life. Inside a cramped computer lab, the first whorl of your digital thumbprint begins to form in junior high. Memories of this moment are fuzzy, but the emotion of excitement is distinct.

Myspace is the next step. You painfully curate your page with a surreal wallpaper, hip-hop music, and your top eight friends who you believe to be the realest of the real. You sincerely believe you’re friends with Tom. You’ll never forget his white tee, that shit-eating grin, and the whiteboard behind him. You post low-quality pics of yourself, posing thoughtfully, hoping you look cool and maybe your high school crush, a wispy artsy Canadian girl might like and comment. She secretly smokes cigarettes and has an undying love for snails and seems so relaxed in this chaotic world. She likes your photos and even comments. You’re over the moon, but this validation, this dopamine spike is fleeting.

The rest of the whorls fill in and the contours of your digital face begin coming into focus on Tumblr. This is where you store your teenage consciousness. You post poetry, real hiphop, fashion, half-naked women, memes, various kicks, books, art, and some of your music. You’re a rapper or at least you hope people understand this with your Melos, your wooden necklace, and baggy jeans. You hope Kanye signs you.

Your identity is in flux. You’re not just a rapper. You’re an artist. You’ve been one since you popped out of your mother’s womb. Hiding in your room, scribbling on sketch pads with graphite pencils, surrounded by comic books, you create a safe haven. A space free from the alcohol-smeared hands of your father who wishes you would just shut the fuck up and be quiet. No one knows this except a few friends at school, maybe some of your top 8 on myspace, but the platform becomes dry and loses its glamor.

At some point a major identity shift occurs, and the tectonic plates of your artistry shift across the board. You’re a senior in high school and you’re determined to become a comic book artist. The very best. You think you’ll be the next Chris Bachalo, the next Joe Mad, the next Michael Turner or maybe even the next J. Scott Campbell. You draw larger-than-life men with impossible musculature and bad bitches with ridiculous curves. However, you feel a sense of internal friction here, disconnected from your intuition, you ignore it. You have become accustomed to ignoring your emotions in general, especially the bad ones. You are a depressed Capricorn after all, a true representation of the Devil tarot archetype.

You go online, searching for comic book scripts, but there aren’t many available due to legal reasons, you guess. There are a couple from DC and Marvel—all superhero related. These aren’t the type of stories you want to draw, these aren’t the types of comic books that make your heart sing. You want to draw something that Grant Morrison, Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Mignola or Warren Ellis would write. Something cool, something with meaning.

You find a couple of indie scripts by an unknown creator. They seem okay. You draw pages and realize the script suck and you say to yourself “I can do better.” Driven by your ego, a mischievous daimon, and undeniable taste, you write your own damn script and you realize this process is fun and exhilarating. You write more and more and the ideas start coming non-stop. A creative dam has broken. Even when you’re standing there at work, inhaling the scent of sawdust while staring at your stained orange apron at Home Depot behind a cash register, random scenes and dialogue seem to come out of thin air. This is exciting and makes you feel alive.

The internet doesn’t know about this change, but it will. The rapper aspect of you shrinks to some degree as well as the traditional artist. The writer inside you is blooming, taking up space in your body and mind. It bleeds into your social media slowly, but surely. You’re writing prose poems and flash fiction. Your art teacher encourages this new passion even bringing in a friend of hers who writes on the show Lost to speak to the class, but mainly you. You’ve never seen Lost, maybe snippets of the first couple episodes, but you respect him all the same.

You post said prose poems on Thomas Ligotti Online, a forum celebrating and discussing the work of Thomas Ligotti. You’re deep in the forums while you’re devouring cosmic horror in your free time. You bother writers like Ramsey Campbell and Gary McMahon and Simon Stranzas with your fiction. Campbell gets annoyed and politely asks you to stop sending him stories, McMahon says really kind words about your work and encourages you to submit them to magazines and Simon Stranzas helps fix the kinks in your writing.

You join Bizarro Mondo, another forum of like-minded weirdos and post more short stories. This time you’re gaining traction and people fuck with your work. You’re in college now and the dorm manager makes everyone in Hollygrove (the nickname of the dorm floor inspired by Lil Wayne), create a Facebook so you can make a group and become closer. It’s a good idea. Everyone grows close and you embrace the platform despite being opposed to the idea of Facebook for years. Here you post more pics, but now you have photographer friends who capture your essence, you make jokes, you post books, and you express yourself more freely than ever before.

Around this time, you join Twitter—you love the idea of 140 characters. You let tweets fly as well as DMs. This is different. This is thrilling. You still promote your music especially since Def Jam Recordings follows you, but your music career is dead in the water. The only issue is you don’t know it. The passion isn’t there anymore. You don’t draw anymore, that part of you has shriveled up and died and you’re cool with it.

You join the Navy just like your dad and your dad’s dad. Some paths feel pre-arranged and carved out just for you. The overwhelming smell of the ocean makes you nauseous, but you gain your sea legs. You’re a Sailor now. You lean deeper into Twitter, but you miss Tumblr. Nostalgia clutching your jaded heart. Facebook begins to lose its attractiveness and old people are flooding the site. Your dad gets into fights with random people online, angered by ignored friend requests. You basically desert Facebook.

Twitter is where you can be found. Twitter is where it’s at. You meet girls off Twitter sometimes and make out in a beat-up car. You promote books and make sales. You promote short stories and meet some of your literary heroes. You come to find out that some of these heroes are lame and desperate for validation. They don’t match their online persona or your inflated projections. They’re only human. Flesh and bone.

You work with better photographers and slowly gain a sense of fashion, posting doper photos. More people begin to learn who you are. Mainly a writer. You allow another aspect of yourself to come to the forefront, your spiritual side. You’re a palm reader, a tarot reader, an intuitive. You’ve been one since you used to hide occult books checked out from the library under your bed.

Erykah Badu follows you on Twitter. Yoko Ono follows you. A multitude of spiritual women follow you and you can’t help but feel a surging attraction to them, feeling like they’re different, more tapped in. You go on dates with some of these girls, you sleep with some of these girls. Your reputation as a solid tarot reader becomes enormous. Some of your posts are going viral, people are signing up for readings. You help a lot of people, but it is draining. You wish these people would buy your books, but they don’t. They perceive you as a tarot reader, not a writer. You must fit into the space you’re most valued. It’s capitalism, baby.

You’re stressed and frustrated. For marketing purposes, you lean into the tarot reader angle and stop posting your writing and books alltogether. Those tweets get zero traction, but it’s eating away at you. You desert all your social media platforms for various reasons. You’re consumed by a relationship, you’re consumed by other people’s thoughts and promptings of who you should be. You’re having an existential crisis that would make Albert Camus blush.

You don’t know who the fuck you are and people only view you as a tarot reader. You continue giving readings and making spiritual posts. This feels inauthentic because this is only a portion of Grant Wamack. Where is the writer? Where has he gone?

You know he’s been writing, but not submitting, not publishing, not engaging with the community. You leave a toxic relationship and slowly begin finding yourself again. You post what you want to post. You slowly stop posting tarot and you feel liberated. You’re a writer, you’re making a comeback. People even ask how you made said comeback. People believe you are prolific. You don’t think you’re prolific, but somehow you become prolific. Funny how that works.

Things have changed on social media. It’s hard to gain traction. People don’t see your tweets or IG photos/reels. The algorithm has taken over every platform thanks to Tiktok. You’re frustrated, but you persevere and trudge forward believing that your personality and authenticity will shine through the bullshit.

You kneel and pray to the algorithm. You carefully craft content. Tweets. Reels, graphics. Offerings for the algorithm.

You join Substack after Elon Musk buys Twitter and things feel like they’re going to implode. People flee to Bluesky and Mastadon, but you decide to stay even though the site isn’t as fun as it used to be. In the writing community, there are witch hunts every other week, identity fishing, and a group of writers claim that you shouldn’t write about sex anymore. Fuck that you say, you make the sex scene in Black Gypsies nastier, drawing on your own experiences.

The blue checkmark ceases to matter on all platforms. The playing field seems to have been leveled. You feel the need to create online real estate so you join substack. You write posts, you gain followers and it feels good. You crack your heart open and spill it across the white space and you’re happy with the response. Still, you’re not sure if you’re being perceived in your totality.

You create a Tiktok, prompted by your friends and a trusted astrologer. You want to level up, you want to connect with people on deeper levels. You want to sell books. You reflect on how you used to detest tiktok, the time suck of an algorithm and how children in China aren’t even allowed on the app. You push these thoughts aside and think about the bigger picture. It is a tool for self-expression and promo, nothing more, you tell yourself.

You look up at the Leo Full Moon, lunar light washing over your hands, coating your skin in a brilliant sheen. You wonder how this planet, this crater-crazy satellite would perceive you if it had eyes, the capacity to see, to take you into its orbit…

Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva

Horror in the High Desert 2 manages to be better than the first one. It feels more intense, creepier, and much more tense. The atmosphere in the found footage is cloying and made me forget where I was for a moment. That sweet suspension of reality. The narrative itself is kinda scatttered and loses focus similar to the first one. I wish Dutch Marich would get a co-writer to help him bring some cohesion and focus to his scripts. Still, a frightening entry in the series and comes highly recommended.

Intuitive Mentorship

I recently started mentoring a young intuitive and it’s been a gratifying experience. I almost forget how much knowledge I’ve gained throughout years, but it’s nice seeing someone grow and strengthen their raw abilities. I’ve decided it would be cool to take on a few more students, but I have to feel them out. If you’re interested, shoot me an email at grantwamack@gmail.com and I’ll see if you’re ready. Keep in mind this will be multiple lessons over the phone with homework and accountability and this is a paid service.

Writing Updates

I’m having a lotta fun with Project Bunny Bloodbath and easing deeper into the narrative. Also, I’m moving deeper into research. Stuff like the difference between Kentucky Bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, and fescue grass. Which grass makes the most sense for region and more importantly, which grass would make sense for the book. Exciting material, I know…

Currently Watching: Love, Death & Robots Season 3 & True Detective Season 4 & Ballers Season 4

Currently Reading: Cosmic Horror Monthly #2 and Pedo Island Bloodbath by Duncan Ralston & Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis and All Your Gods Are Dead by Gary McMahon (reread) & Churn the Soil by Steve Stred

Currently Smoking: CLSCS Pre-roll

Listening: The Danny Brown Podcast, Back from the Borderline, The Higherside Chats, Agitator, Mutual Aberration Society, Victory Light, and Lost Xplorers

Key Glock is the black John Wick? I can’t imagine how much this music video costs, but I’m extremely happy it exists. I’ve had this track on repeat for weeks and this music video really brings the hype energy of the track to life. Well done.

IAMDDB comes through with some beautiful vocals to match the serene visuals of what one can only assume to be Ibiza. Warm, sensual afrobeats productions provides the perfect backdrop for this tropical cut. Makes me miss Spain like a mothefucker.

It’s rare that you ever see the younger crop of rappers actually freestyling in real time, but Rx Papi isn’t your usual rapper. He floats on this tense beat while he sips a mystery liquid from a Dunkin Donuts styrofoam cup and his chain swings. Amazing…

It seems like certain rappers have been stepping up the quality of their music videos and I love it. Travis Scott takes one of the best tracks from his most recent album and shows him feeling caught up between two women he loves. The Cactus Jack branding is a nice touch as well.