I'm just mindblown right now at what has become of the world today. I was watching a youtube video just recently, and it brought me back to a topic I discussed on my Magnum Opus series. It regards what an expert is in essence. On the record, I talk about how people who are considered connoisseurs on a subject, in the times we live in, don't even talk in depth about that very thing. This album was completed in 2014.
Fast forward to 2024, I'm watching a video of a youtuber I admire, who has someone on as a guest who is considered a calisthenics guru. Now, I have been heavily into both weight training and calisthenics throughout my life. I have trained people at times, and have trained at a very high level. But due to my "status", I get no respect as anything near a guru. That's besides the point. Calisthenics is the art of using body mechanics and weight to train the body from head to toe. You master how you can get the most out of your body and maximize its potential using only resistance and body weight. I've done countless maneuvers and created some of my own. I'm literally watching this proclaimed diety of the discipline talk about how one of the secrets to doing impressive upper body movements is that they don't work legs to keep their weight low. He then stumbles through each lower body workout looking like a fool. So what this idiot is referring to are the videos they desperately put up across the web for your clicks and likes, that show them doing flag poles, handstands, v-sits and other gravity defying moves. They want to generate a wow from you and get revenue. The last thing they actually care about is creating a maximized body, and because they attach themselves to the discipline of calisthenics and have your respect, that equals mastery and supremacy of the discipline. Wow!
I have a program, one of the many I created, called "Road Work" which entails jumping jacks, burpees, and mountain climbers. There are 3 other moves in the workout, but the last three I listed are core calisthenic maneuvers. When the heck did body weight movements only entail working your arms and back and nothing else? That's because these "gurus" lock in on the simplistic stuff that catches your eye, and choose to call that the entire essence of calisthenics. This is disgusting. There is a word called comprehensive. A big bro of mine posts instagram shorts of boxing, medicine ball workouts, and other full body moves. We used to train together years ago at work. What we do is calisthenics. But beyond just this topic, this is what has happened to society today. Every single thing has become watered down. If you just google any topic or subject right now. The exhaustive list will show you the most superficial and basic approach to it compared with what used to be available several years ago. A colleague of mine said that this could be due to the deep dive into AI and preparing the net and the infrastructure for that to be the authority on information in the near future. Either way, this is very bleak. People have been conditioned to think very shallow on every single topic or not at all, and avoid depth in all forms.
A somebody who craves depth when I get into something, this makes me very put off by new ventures. I find that I just do a lot of digging in the crates and look backs at old works, because if not, you can actually start to forget how to do a deep dive into studying something. That is very scary, but necessary to mention. I think I might start to cover deep dives on topics as a series on one of my outlets or host it myself. You see, another issue I have is that in this age of censorship, the internet and its algorithm constantly search for ways to block out and cancel the uninitiated. I've seen celebrity content creators post some very questionable material that is left online and called educational, yet when I do a music video for black history month depicting the history of African Americans and how it is celebrating their victory and creating what I call "Day of the Free," Youtube takes it down and calls it offensive. They do the same thing with an instrumental jazz jam session I did in the same vein. We've gone from the Information Age to the Age of Suppression. They don't want to hear that, but it's true.
My next wave of initiatives is going to be creating a way to host content on a new and less enterprise level. Perhaps it will catch on, and become something, but I don't like the idea of slowly being indoctrinated and silenced. Also, after the longest drought of my career, the next record is finally in production. I feel like the forces of the world did not want me to make another album. Every time I was inspired to the point of waking up with concepts, several things would happen that would kill any chance at a recording session or even laying down tracks. Now, I forced it, and once I get the process started, it's only a matter of time. It usually takes getting 2 tracks for the album done to solidify the record happening, and that has just about happened, so haters, stay tuned. LOL.
