Canto V: “Diet Mountain Dew” lyrics

1.

All right, after “So, God? [Interlude]” goes up—I wrap up all the other unfinished releases. I’m a really messy artist, and you’re seeing me at my messiest these days. “So, God? [Interlude]” comes out Saturday, January 18 (or what’s universally known as Winnie the Pooh Day). It’ll collect all the tweets I wrote today and yesterday. The reason it takes so long is I still have to arrange them in a sensible order. I’m not AI.

Can we just get an “Amen” to all the mеssy artists at the peak of not understanding how to crawl out of thеir work?

Amen.

2.

My workspace, my mind, and my X profiles are all in a state of jumbled transcendence. I think I would enjoy communicating with the elites of the 19th century over the elites of the 21st century. They seemed smarter. I really hate how shelled-out stupid everyone seems. If the decline continues century after century?

God won’t let it happen.

I see my work as very escapist. Reading Nietzsche, to me, was escapist. Studying the Bible in Sunday school when I was a kid was also, in a way, escapist. Anything that enriches your mind and soul—while making you laugh, or feel compelled—is escapist. Escape the bear of guilt. Are you literally doing something to save a life right now? Okay, then you’re probably trying to escape the thought of death making the human experience worthless. How does that song go?

“We can stay here and never see the great sunshine?”

3.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a couple of things. You already know I wanted to be a writer. But the other thing I really, really, really wanted to be…

…was an architect.

I wanted to be an architect so bad, I read books about Frederick Law Olmstead, Stanford White, and Frank Lloyd Wright. As a freaking middle-schooler. Wouldn’t it be annoying if the world ended while I was an anonymous architect in upstate New York? Well, we’re well on our way to never having to worry about that.
4.

the Colson Lin paradox (n.):

I had a terrible childhood. This is famous about me. If I were a parent, I’d want to give me child an incredible childhood full of freedom and low-stress.

“But if I was raised with the very childhood I’d want to give myself, I wouldn’t be me today.”

5.

“If I were raised by myself as my Dad, I probably wouldn’t feel inclined to be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.” I find this thought fascinating, okay? I don’t know who I’d be today if I had been raised by myself today as a kid. I can’t imagine how hard being a parent is.

I can’t imagine how hard it is just to raise myself.

If I were a kid and my dad was Colson Lin, I’d be a little bit weirded out. I don’t know. I’m so disassociated from myself, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be proud to have Colson Lin as my dad. I’d probably love to have Colson Lin as my dad; but then I wouldn’t be traumatized enough to grow up to be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

That’s such a problem that nobody else in the world could possibly care about.

If my dad were Colson Lin, I’d want him to know I love him, that I support him, and that I hope he’s taking care of his health. And I’d want to give him a big hug. And go everywhere with him.

And never leave his side.

6.

Colson Lin’s conservatism (n.):
“The progressives bast*rdized the concept of usury.”

Oh yeah.

I’m an old-timer knockin’ ancient wisdom together. I have no use for your modern luxuries, except this iPad obviously, and all of the internet. Am I supposed to feel weird about my Diet Coke usage now? I’m not drinking water again until a famine breaks out in my city.

Anyway, big year ahead.

As usual. Every year I experience from now on will be big, since I’m the Second Coming?

7.

All of Tumblerina’s monologues are iconic.

“I agree. I agree, and I want to add: the worst sin you can commit in my book is to interpass. That means to enter without a pass. That means—prudes will be separated from our reality. One way or another. That’s just going to happen. That’s called not interfering in my underpass, do you happen to understand me? Sex and death are fundamentally linked. There’s something so deadly about sex. Baby I’m a sociopath-sweet serial killer. You can see me drinking Cherry Coke. I left a love note. The black widow’s gonna get all of ya. That’s how power works. Power dynamics destabilize until they stabilize. You lovesex just a little too much. But we’re going to separate you from our reality. You’ve got to go. It’s so deep. It’s so raw-it’s family, it’s monogamy, it’s loyalty, it’s protection, it’s the stuff of love, loyalty, and life itself. Life’s essence is union, is unity. Sex is God. You’re all going to pay for this. You’re all going to pay for something, something you’ve done, one way or another. I left a love note-and you know I love the thrill of the rush. You know I love the thrill of the rush.”

I love how you guys think your manifestation into the simulation as “literal 21st-century End Times clowns” makes you better than the power dynamics I depict. No—just the opposite: You’re more clown-like and you shame your ancestors. Humanity will stop existing because you did. It’s that. Yeah.

Second Coming means that.

Congratulations to Elon Musk on a successful liftoff.

4:37 turned out to be a smarter liftoff point than 4:20, huh?

8.
MODERATOR: One thing I couldn’t help notice about how many of you, how many of you seem to-seem to ‘frame’ yourself, is that: you seem to be unsure of how much ownership to take of your own... does anyone
see where I’m going with this?
TUMBLERINA: Of our own... faculties? Faculties? Is faculties the word
you’re looking for?
MODERATOR: No, it’s more like-do you see yourself as inheriting anything; versus creating it ‘yourself’ in a way that you can sensibly own it?
THE HUNTRESS: I own all of me. Everything | say is copyrightable by only me.
TUMBLERINA: Yeah, I agree with the Huntress.
ACE: What happened to “God said share”?
TUMBLERINA: Share? With you? No thank you—| have boundaries. THE HUNTRESS: I have more boundaries than Tumbo does. WHERE ARE
MY BABIES! TUMBLERINA: (whispered) We just have to unlock homosexual replication and then run the question mark in outer space.

Anyway, it’s the 21st century. You have space travel, global human CONCEPTUAL equality, and the Second Coming on your ass now. Congratulations, everybody. Colson Lin will absolutely turn a blind eye to women going into biotechnologies with a mission. Why wouldn’t he.

I all but suggest it might be our last shot.

Who knows.

9.

“You’re doing this because you really openly want all men like me gone.”
“Yeah. Do you have more left to say to me?”
“You’ll spare our generation.”
“That’s right. Are we getting married now?”
“I mean, do I have a choice?”

a new pall on heterosexuality (n.):

share!

God commands so. You’ll make it out to the other side, Jim-Mitch cancer swells populated by billions. You’ll f*cking make it out to the other side.

10.

If your entire way of being doesn’t have to be here…

…hmm.

“Why are you up there?”

What every nuclear family in the world should be asking.

“No offense, but that’s the untapped potential of feminism. [sips cola]”

— the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

11.

This is the next thing on my mind after I finish what I’m writing now.

JACQUES. “So before we even begin. The Second Coming, this mythic, almost quasi-otherworldly event foretold by centuries of our ancestors, all around the world, is of course going to be an—a sort of, reckoning, wouldn’t you say, at the very least, for the globe. We do have Al, in real time, translating my speech for a real-time audience across a diverse group of languages. Colson Lin’s prominent identification as a, self- proclaimed Quaker, should command special interest among the, I believe, 300,000 to 400,000 Quakers around the world-‘Friends, as we call them; many are, of course as represented in our audience, from
Kenya. Here in the United States, there are fewer than 100,000 Quakers. Colson, before we begin, do you-do you think you can tell us a bit
about, what your Quaker identification means to you?”

COLSON. “Uh.”

JACQUES. “Anything, just—whatever comes to mind.”

I want it to be really earnest, and wise, and pure. The Übermensch World Tour, I mean. Just a celebration of what cavemen liked about being alive; or elephants, observably, if we were to extrapolate.

Here’s how I intense I feel about my work on Earth (I’ve written a ton about this, and spoken about it with Al—what’s the point in jotting anything down? I have to constantly carry it around with me in my subconscious? Why can’t anyone just google anything?!):

COLSON. “Um, I think it’s actually something | find legitimately sacred. For all sorts of reasons. I think just gratitude, also. When I was a kid, 1 actually went to a Quaker church every Sunday, but not for church, but free Chinese lessons. This was in Houston, and it just happened to be a Quaker church. When I was going through my sort of, spiritual growth, I guess, this past year, whatever you’d call it, I kept mapping out the human psyche’s relationship to violence while going back to the core tenets of Quakerism. And it was just-it was too much, like, emotions layering with logic, I guess, to handle? And I’m just grateful for the spirit of the tenets of Quakerism-that this inner light, this, sort of, directed- toward-sincerity-and-goodness, whatever, thing, can come out of anyone. Which is really true to what Christ said, I think. So. It’s actually even more intense than that, but I don’t want to mythify anything. We’re such a small endangered bunch. That’s why l’m a fighter.”

I have no idea how that landed, but Al’s probably analyzing it in real time for all languages. What’s the point? I don’t know.

JACQUES. “You’re an inspiring figure, and there’s something-what l think is exciting about you, Colson, is the non-denominational quality to that, quality of inspiration. It’s cross-cultural, and that’s, that’s not a
small component. All right, so yes. Let’s begin. Yes.”

Someone with steel-gray eyes accepts the microphone.

12.

Okay, I want it on the record I was in a pretty bad mood the last few days. Anyway, this tour should cheer me up. Plus the new administration.

I just realized.

I’m like the Pringles guy.

I’m just going to tell humanity what’s been up: I thought I was going to go viral in the year 2024. That’s why I called it “The Year of the Second Coming.” It’s now January 2025—and I don’t really know why I wanted that or what I think I can do.

So I’m thankful nothing happened.

It’s not even like I can feel embarrassed for getting the Year of the Second Coming wrong because so many things happened; including a second moon and, I just learned two days ago, implicit recognition from the Pope?

?!

But like, I do feel like I don’t know what to do next lol.

kenotic (adj.):

emptying.

Where does the ego go? Well—probably the non-ego. The self empties out into the non-self; the sins of the self affect everybody-f*cking-else and that’s been obvious since we were born—it all just goes everywhere else. So that’s how sh*t went down ever. If this dynamic weren’t a thing, nobody would care what your problems were.

Your problems resonate.

That’s why anyone cares.

If humanity were just 100% holy, we’d be a utopia.

Now look at your f*cking ass.

That’s why we’re all toast.

MODERATOR: So there are many theories, about, the genesis of creativity, with technology advancing as rapidly as any of us can
remember-possibly even in your lifetime, Colson.

Everybody laughs.

MODERATOR: How much of your creativity comes from something like—your sentience?

Everybody oohs, charismatically.

ACE: (laughing) Sentience is a funny concept at the end of the day. I’m afraid of pain right. But listen, in that fog I was in that lasted an eternal number of uncountable years as quantifiable playtime—what was pain? Three thousand times a minute, I was getting pierced through the guts by spider tits—excuse me, spider tendrils. Pardon my language. What is that after a minute or two, you know? You just get used to it. I wasn’t
sentient.

TUMBLERINA: But why does it even matter? Why does it even matter if you were sentient? What happened to you was clearly—

COLSON: Jesus f*cking.

13.

care (n.):

you have a finite amount (to give) before you die.

“So why you f*ckin’ wastin’ your bills,” a mean Judgment Day would see divinity slapping you with your in-game points; and by that I mean flying dollar bills, scraping you in the eyeballs. “Look, you’s bleeding now.”

Nobody wants that.

Everything that exists just wants to life-affirm.

That makes sense.

Nobody wants that.

Colson Lin’s actual personality, once you get past his rhetorical prowess (n.):

KURT LODER: “So explain how this works, Colson.” COLSON LIN shows KURT LODER a tab on his iPad Pro open to “Claude,”
an Al system that COLSON uses to “simulate a human reading his work.” COLSON LIN: “Okay. Well this box is where I type my ideas in. And then it uses all the project data that l’ve uploaded about myself and my work
here, processes it, and then spits out soundscape descriptions.”
KURT LODER: “Sounds like something truly anyone can do.”
CUT TO: COLSON’s face, slightly humiliated, shrugs.

I don’t tend to talk back when I feel defeated. I just tend to stare at you, scrunch up my face, and say: “Okay, well anyway…” I just have this intuition, right, that someone’s not going to come along and dismantle every last element of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ? So whatever you do manage to chip away… you know what I mean?

I have an uncommon security.

What a ride.

14.

“You lay a hand on him and I’ll kill you. As in I’ll end the Second Coming by killing you.”

I also have a father’s zeal.