Kanye’s musings a call for help
Some heartfelt advice to Kanye West and Kim Kardashian: go see a marriage therapist before it’s too late.
But let’s begin with Break the Simulation.
What the hell is that? It’s the working title of a philosophy book Kanye is now writing. This is not a joke: the rapper, fashion designer and award-show interrupter is keen to become a modern-day Plato. Kanye wants to share his insights into the human condition. While this should terrify all of us, it should terrify Kim most of all. You know what kind of man never feels compelled to write a philosophy book? A happy man. At the height of their output, one thing Soren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arthur Schopenhauer shared was functional misery.
Sure, they were unleashing their great minds on the universe.
But they were doing so with battered hearts.
Though Kanye’s past observations suggest his upcoming tome will be rooted in what 19th-century intellects called epistemological solipsism — “My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live,” he once said — his desire to become a philosopher king also suggests Kimye is now in a late stage of emotional drift that neither spouse may detect.
Consider the inspiration for Break the Simulation.
As Kanye explained in a recent Hollywood Reporter story: “I’ve got a concept about photographs, and I’m on the fence about photographs — about human beings being obsessed with photographs — because it takes you out of the now and transports you into the past or transports you into the future.”
If you or I wanted to publish a similar theory, our friends might say: “Yeah, I don’t know. Sounds lame. Not very original.” But think about it. When Kanye red-flags picture-taking within a temporal context, what he’s actually doing is taking a subconscious shot at Kim and their life together.
This amounts to spousal passive-aggression.
Imagine if the Rock’s wife were to cast aspersions on bench pressing, or if Blake Lively were to question the artistic value of a Deadpool sequel.
Without images, Kim ceases to exist as a public figure. She is a curated mirage.
In the past week alone, she has shared 10 bikini shots on Instagram. This is a woman who published a book called Selfish, a collection of selfies. This is a woman who lives vicariously through her own digitally manipulated self.
So here’s a logical deduction: if Kanye is on the fence about human obsession with photography, and Kim is the most obsessed, he’s now on the fence about her.
In that same Hollywood Reporter piece — a Q&A in which Kanye interviews his interior designer, Axel Vervoordt — the hip-hop mogul calls Kim a “Marie Antoinette of our time” and says, “I don’t wish to be No. 1 anymore, I wish to be water.”
I have no idea what he means by either point. But what I do know is when Kanye stops making sense and feels a sudden urge to not make sense publicly — he returned to Twitter this weekend after an absence of nearly a year — it usually correlates with trouble in the enchanted land of Kimye.
Earlier this month, Kim shared a family portrait under the caption: “I don’t think you really understand how hard it is to take a good family pic. This was all we got before all three kids started crying. I think I cried too.”
But the expression on Kanye’s face transcends tears. He looks lost. He looks tired. He looks on the verge of either a nervous breakdown or a mid-life crisis. And when you overlay that image with other things he says in the Q&A — “There’s certain people that you meet and you say, ‘Oh, you’re from the future,’ ” “I feel like Stephen Hawking,” “I’m sorry to be heavy-handed. I’m only 4 years old” — I fear this relationship is doomed without professional intervention.
“A designer told me that my wife was a master of light and I was a master of time,” Kanye says in the Q&A. “How to use time is equal to being someone who can cut a diamond. The ability to preserve time is more valuable than the ability to preserve a diamond because time is our most valuable resource.”
Translation: “Kim and I have different priorities.”
Or just note this last quote: “I wish to be closer to UNICEF or something where I can take the information that I have and help as many people as possible, not to just shove it into a brand.”
That’s a noble statement. But when it comes from someone who basically married a brand, it’s also a cry for help.