Truth as Screenplay by Trace William Cowen
““I’m really into Kierkegaard shit right now.””
"I'm really into Kierkegaard shit right now."
Once you label Donald Glover, you negate him. If to dare is to lose one's footing momentarily, and if to not dare is to lose oneself outright, then most of us can agree that Glover has been dancing atop a fascinatingly well-balanced tightrope for years now (a dance which includes but isn’t limited to 30 Rock, Community, Childish Gambino, Derrick Comedy, and his upcoming FX series Atlanta). That's an important word here – balance – and speaks volumes as to the appeal and dissension of Donald Glover, the person. Donald Glover, the brand. Donald Glover, the concept.
NAILED contributor Trace William Cowen recently reached out to Donald Glover, the concept, to discuss all things Internet, most things Millennial, and some things Existential. The full text of this conversation can be found below.
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NAILED MAGAZINE: What’s the other half of that “because the Internet” sentence?
DONALD GLOVER: ...anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. The Internet always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
NAILED: But isn't the flip side of the Internet the fact that it allows for people like me to be here interviewing you, or for you to have a career?
GLOVER: If your manager and a beggar and one of your friends came to you at the same time, would you in their presence dare with bold confidence to assert what you want in the world, with bold confidence to assert wherein you seek your comfort, positive that your manager would not disdain you even though you are an inferior, positive that the beggar would not go away disheartened as if he could not have the same comfort, positive that your friend would rejoice in your bold confidence! You know, there is something in the world called an alliance; it is a dangerous thing, because all alliances are divisiveness. It is divisive when the alliance excludes the commoner, and when it excludes the nobleman, and when it excludes the government worker, and when it excludes your manager, and when it excludes the beggar, and when it excludes the wise, and when it excludes the simple soul...because all alliances are divisiveness in opposition to the universally human. But to will one thing, to will the good in truth, to will as a single individual to be allied with everyone - something unconditionally everyone can do - that is harmony.
NAILED: What do you consider validation on the internet? Does a publication like Pitchfork giving you a 1.6 (for Glover’s 2011 album Camp) influence you going forward?
GLOVER: What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
NAILED: On the song “3005” you say you’re scared of the future. Any futuristic thing in particular?
GLOVER: Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality’s cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live. But the life of freedom requires a beginning, and here a beginning is a resolution, and the resolution has its work and its pain-thus the beginning has its difficulty.
NAILED: Do you consider yourself anti-nostalgia?
GLOVER: It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat — as is the case with the better artists. But it does not seem right that they stop with the historical themes already given and, so to speak, think that only these are suitable for poetic treatment, because these particular themes, which intrinsically are no more poetic than others, are now again animated and inspirited by a great poetic nature. In this case, the artists advance by marching on the spot.
NAILED: New shit is scary to people.
GLOVER: Our age demands more; it demands, if not lofty pathos then at least loud pathos, if not speculation then at least conclusions, if not truth then at least persuasion, if not integrity then at least protestations of integrity, if not feeling then at least verbosity of feelings.
NAILED: Based on your more recent public appearances, you seem to be coming from a darker place.
GLOVER: I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself. But, you know, the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.
NAILED: How do you feel about suicide in general? Kurt Cobain was my idol when I was growing up and my mom always used to say, "Suicide is weak, it's selfish." I always hated that she said that.
GLOVER: As do all who suffer from fixed ideas, it has a strong tendency to see espionage and persecution everywhere, and just as rheumatic people feel drafts everywhere, so does it sense pressure everywhere, the misuse of power, and knows how to explain in a satisfying way the feeble signs of life in the public spirit not on the basis that its strength is merely symptomatic and imaginary but on the basis that it is cowed by governments, somewhat as the Busybody explains that he accomplishes nothing during the day, not on the basis that he is fussy and fidgety but on the basis of the many affairs that burst in on him.
NAILED: Do you worry about spreading yourself too thin? Wouldn't your cause have more validity behind it if you only focused on one thing?
GLOVER: One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states). How many people are just adjectives, interjections, conjunctions, adverbs? How few are substantives, active verbs, how many are copulas? Human relations are like the irregular verbs in a number of languages where nearly all verbs are irregular.
NAILED: Do you find that you’ve actually been able to shed some of the haters?
GLOVER: Every person, if he so wills, can become a paradigmatic human being, not by brushing of his accidental qualities, but by remaining in them and ennobling them. The ethical individual lives in such a way that he is continually transferring himself from one stage to another.
NAILED: Speaking of America being fucked up, I watched one of your videos on YouTube and I got a Mitt Romney ad beforehand.
GLOVER: People think the world needs a republic, and they think it needs a new social order, and a new religion, but it never occurs to anyone that what the world really needs, confused as it is by much learning, is a new Socrates.
NAILED: Do you think the Internet is fucked up because there isn't structure?
GLOVER: The Internet can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Because the Internet is available now through Glassnote Records/Island. The accompanying screenplay is available at http://becausetheinter.net/ For more, including information on the upcoming Deep Web Tour, please visit http://iamdonald.com/
[This is a curated piece consisting of altered Kierkegaard quotes and altered interview questions from previously published Donald Glover interviews. Donald Glover did not participate in the production of this text.]
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