The work to which the following aphorisms respond.
Kevin Jay-Z's groundbreaking 1000-song album, We Found You.
Kevin Jay-Z, also known as KJZ, sits across from me, casually checking one of three gold Rolexes on his wrist. He’s on the phone with Kanye West. I look out at the New York skyline from the hotel penthouse windows.
“Sorry about that, just doing some business” Kevin Jay-Z says. He is wearing a large cloak covered in diamonds that stops just before the ankles. A combination of facial hair and Gucci shades obscures almost all of his handsome features.
Several months before, I had sent Kevin Jay-Z’s people an email asking to do an interview; three days ago I received a response with a location, place, and time. KJZ’s phone, a yet-to-be-released iPhone 11 Pro Max, vibrates on the table; I can just see the name “Kim K.”
“I’ll get that later, no worries.” KJZ casually turns the phone over, leaning back on the rich leather sofa. I spend the next forty minutes asking KJZ questions, all of which he responds to with a nod or a headshake. Occasionally, women in designer dresses and/or thin lingerie appear from one of the many rooms in the penthouse, peek over, or come up and rub KJZ’s shoulders. He does not seem to notice. Over the speakers, his latest album, We Found You, plays.
***
In his work “On Love: Hiram, Superposition, and Immolation” Jan Von Stille writes:
“Melt, freeze, melt, freeze: Each is a midpoint: The melting point of any material, at the right pressure, is the same as the freezing point. At any moment that one of the two processes occurs, some part of the material is melted, some part is frozen.”
In his master-work song “Chain So Fye,” KJZ raps.
“Girls wanna marry me and I be like why, cus my chain so fye.”
Why ever freeze in love when you have an infinite calling wrapped around your neck? Why does there need to be a midpoint in a constant fire. The fire, not being passion, care, or penetration, is instead the affluence of my chain. Do not mistake this for an attempt to define love, it is a rebuke of the sentimental categorization of the un-definiable nature of love. For in all the glamor of immolation, be that the immolation of categorization or of reaching a conclusion of the same manner, why do we have to quote Nietzsche, Bataille, Denon?
***
When asked his opinion on Nietzsche, KJZ responds:
“I like that he went crazy in the last few years of his life. I respect everyone who goes crazy. I do think it’s impossible to know anything. Opinions are baseless and completely circumstantial they don’t interest me at all. This idea informs a lot of my work and why the subject matter is muddy it’s because I don’t believe in any subjects.”
On album closer “Eleven” he says over dark melody:
“Some of my happiest moments in life occur around AOL instant messenger I will create a new category on my instant messenger buddy list. I will call it ‘People I like who don’t like me back’ and I will move your screen name into that group, and I will invite you into my house and show you. And you will say, If I don’t like you, why did I come over. And you will look at my face, and I will have an honest answer for your question. I will tell you you came over to be polite.”
Be ready to question the methods presented. If we are rejecting the use of Nietzsche, Bataille, Denon, why then can we quote Kevin Jay-Z? Do we not owe it to the actual lover to free ourselves of all quotations? To cast aside the looming hand of the idealized gods of knowledge, to instead seek answers in the modern god, the poet in a sports car. KJZ does not have an idealized love, a love that seeks to be defined or undone. There are no subjects, there are only lists, the movement of a packet of digital space condensed and formatted in a massive database storage unit. No declaration can be made to whether or not love can be set under the microscope. No man can say that love burns the face of the planet until only charred bones remain. Would KJZ accept this as anything but what it rejects, would he place any value in its existence? No! No!
***
“Love permits no definition: No critique may describe its boundaries but that which describes the ever-shifting boundaries of human experience en masse.” -Jan Von Stille
“Love is the action of the philosopher’s stone: The lovers are at once lead and gold and, upon exiting the spiral, can be neither: Love places them on the heights of despair and of joy, which two heights, we may confidently say, are the same summit.” -Jan Von Stille
“All my women simple, all my cars are foriegn, I got issues”- KJZ on “Issues”
“All my diamonds shine just like you” -KJZ on “Hang”
I would never say to you, “I would never say to you.” Jan Von Stille wears the mask of a man who will tell you nothing about love, but he opts to tell you everything he can muster. KJZ wears the mask of the movie viewer, the opulent masses, every new love a clip we will forget about before too long. He reveals to us nothing but that which we already know; in the caviar of our erotic ecstasy is nothing but the ordering of another plate. My women and my cars, my men and my airplanes. When the pendulum of online blog discourse swings back, digs itself out of the all in all out approach, do not be left with your feeble love organ swinging in the breeze. The organ itself may be blessed by Nietszhe, rubbed by Bataiile, but it still belongs to whomsoever it attaches itself firmly. Instead fasten your Rolex around your wrist. When you come upon a beautiful lover, when you are aroused to completion, play the next track. None of these are commands, they are properties.
***
“Holographic rich girls, holographic rich girls, got Benz, never had sex, Pac Sun Limited Edish” -KJZ on “Holographic Rich Girls”
“Note that, though the Loved One may differ from their conception, this does not mean that the love itself is not real, or that it is illusory.” -Jan Von Stille
Throwing a dart at two big signs that read “Real” and “Illusory.” I am fucking the hologram: I have had sex with thousands: I am a virgin: I have never had sex. We are buying the rarest pieces of Brooklyn Streetwear. At 2am we walk out of the club holding the hand of a face. Holographic Rich Girls. At the altar bows the man with a dictionary, when he attempts to enter the hologram he becomes flacid. He will press the button on the display, the contact of his finger on the plastic the only thing that he can allow himself to impress the word “love” upon. Burning the dictionary does not disavow his previous ownership. Holographic Rich Girls. Boy Scouts declare that they have freed themselves from illusion but the tents they live in still allow for masturbation. They are not virgins. We should know better than to watch the sex act with our glasses pulled to our noses declaring which parts constitute reality. Wake up in the morning with no previous memory of the oil baron’s twenty-something heir you finished inside. You have maintained your virginity. Holographic Rich girls.
***
“All winin’, cross country, y’all running, all city, all state, all bank, all winnin’, marathon, jewelry on, all women.” -KJZ on “Cross Country”
“I wanna be brand new with you, can I get brand new with you, we could get new.” -KJZ on “Hotel”
“To ask, ‘What is love?’ is to deny the very existence of the constantly ascending summit upon which we seek to burn.” -Jan Von Stille
We do not need to ascend to a summit when we can be content here on the ground. I buy a new piece of climbing equipment every week for fun. I have jet-packs, ruby-encrusted climbing boots, ropes made of steel. Do not call me a materialist. KJZ runs from New York to LA, he does not have time to hike, he has a private jet that flies overhead. His partners are all the women of America. Writers Google “Nietzsche, What is love?” Nothing needs to be defined or undefined when each encounter is written in a new language. KJZ has a brand new plane for each one of his trips, the lover inside his plane does not have a name. He recognizes her as nothing and she recognizes him as nothing. Where is the ideal in the new? Do not say it is in the newness, as newness too can grow old. Newness is just an accumulation of dollar bills. But we do not stack them into a mountain, we spread them across the planes, fields, as we move. No, there are no mountains to climb at all, only mountains to avoid.
***
“I hit the bitch, holy matrimony.”-KJZ on “Hotel”
Not to mention the sentimentality of it all. One time I ejaculated in the mouth of a woman with curly hair, afterwards she begged me to hit her. I did not spend any time debating. We are married. I have many wives. But is this not love, everything is love! Maybe I just wanted to brag. The greatest poets of our generation wish that they could receive head in Balenciagas.
***
“Time don’t exist, but this Rolex on my wrist don’t tic.” -KJZ on “Hotel”
“Love is ‘the infinite misunderstanding: That which I love, over which like a lark I cry my joy to the sun, that I should speak of it in demoralizing terms.’” - Jan Von Stille
Raise your fists at me. Say, “you have done what you have spoken out against, is love not the fiery chain, the countless diamonds, the Holographic Rich Girl?” None of these things are anything, they are the shining accumulation of air. KJZ has no idealized love, KJZ has no love to be idealized, KJZ worships no mountain, KJZ has opulence. Jan Von Stille gives a linguistic love, lays it out as he takes it away. KJZ checks his watch because he is bored, he wishes he did not have to read this, and that it was not written, but he is not worried because there is no time. No past and no future, no endless array of dichotomies and anti-dichotomies. There is nothing but the movement of the data packet, the drive from nightclub to home, the jet plane flight from Los Angeles to Dallas, Texas.
***
As I stand up to leave, Kevin Jay-Z does not look at me. “Thank you for your time Mr. Jay-Z,” I say to him. He swivels his head just a little to look at me, lowering his glasses to the bridge of his nose. “Sorry who are you again?” he asks me, “I don’t do photographs.” He tosses me one of his gold watches casually, replacing it with another one from his pocket. As I try to turn the gift down, he picks up his buzzing phone. “Hey Kim baby,” he murmurs, “What are you wearing?”
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