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[richardp]

Right.

I don't know Brand New's music, but there's something else to consider too: How would my response make the victim feel, and how does it make OTHER victims feel who have been hurt in similar ways? In fact, I really should have made this the very FIRST thing I mentioned, cause we have to think about this from their point of view. Like, if someone raped you or assaulted you, how would it feel to see tons of people talking about what a great person he was? How would it feel if you had already told people about what happened and they still thought the world of your abuser. To me, it's gonna feel like everyone values this person's creative output more than they value you as a human being. Now imagine instead that people are like "Wow that is fucked, I'm so sorry to hear that, man FUCK that guy forever." That would, hopefully, make you feel like the world is not an absolute fucking nightmare filled with people who don't care for each other. Hopefully.

So yeah, that's another thing I think about. EMPATHY. How do the people who are most hurt by this feel? With the writer Flannery O'Connor, I question myself because I think, "How would a black person feel about her? If I say 'Oh I love her work' is that gonna make someone else feel like shit?" Likewise, many years ago my mom was beaten up horrifically by my father on a regular basis, and so was I. If we encountered someone who knew all about it and was like "That's terrible, but still, your dad is such a great dude! He's so funny!!" I would feel like "Come on, where are your priorities? Do you not care about what he did?" And so, when I think about whether I should be cool with Miles Davis or not, one of the things that makes me doubt myself is that I think, "Yeah, but how would how would his ex-wife feel if she was right here and she saw me jamming out to this music? What would my own mother think if I was like "Yeah, it's too bad he beat the shit out of his wife, but man, what a genius musician!" For that matter, I'm a grown man who used to get pounded and beat on as a little child, so how does it feel to enjoy the music of a man who is similar to the very person who fucked me up so much? Like, does that mean I'm full of shit? Am I inadvertently contributing to the very culture of gross, rotten masculinity that harmed me?

And yet...we like what we like, right? I like Miles' music. I like the sound of it. I especially like On The Corner and In a Silent Way. I can't deny that they sound nice to my ears. So what am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to reconcile all of this fucking shit?

Again, these are fucking DIFFICULT questions, and I don't know the right answers. This is just some of the shit that passes through my head sometimes.

I've been thinking about the empathy part all day. For instance, I am pretty positive that at the end of the year, when all is said and done, the new Brand New album will top my AOTY list. And when I start posting that online, I keep wondering who is going to be super pissed off that I put that? Is anyone going to be genuinely offended? How many times am I going to have to defend my choice? I'm sure that a few of my friends probably won't ever listen to Brand New anymore, but I just hope those same people recognize that my personal choice to not let what he did affect how I listen to the music, is not a decision that supports the accused, but one that, I guess you could say, refuses to give the accused the power over me to stop enjoying the music for my own personal reasons. If that even remotely makes sense.

I think a lot of these allegations warrant the extreme reactions they've received, ESPECIALLY Weinstein. But please do correct me if I am wrong in saying this, but some of the situations could definitely be forgiven if the person accused has genuine interest and aspiration to right the wrong, and find growth from their own actions, you know? If you're genuinely willing to learn from your mistakes, seeking forms of therapy, and reaching out to those they've hurt in the past, if they go about it in an honest way, and not "oh I'm going to go to rehab for two weeks and be better", than we the public genuinely forgive them? Or are all of these people too far gone, beyond unforgivable?