BLACK NARCISSIST

Was chatting with a friend over coffee a few weekends ago about cultural matters and somehow we got on to the subject of (Kan)Ye (West) when my coffee companion declared, "You know what would be a good title for a (Kan)Ye album?"

I nodded in anticipation of his answer.

"Black Narcissist!"

It’s not often I admit to being impressed by anything my friend says, but this spontaneous, lightbulb idea of his struck me as genius, though with one posthumous caveat: Lana Del Rey was nearly cancelled for using a similar line in the lyrics of her song “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing”, which some believed referred to Kanye West, though she later denied it.

Suddenly my synapses were firing on all cylinders and I began to think about the 1947 Powell and Pressburger movie Black Narcissus, which was an adaptation of the 1939 novel of the same name by British author Rumer Godden, Caravaggio's Narcissus painting, as well as the Brazilian movie Black Orpheus, which updated the Greek myth of Orpheus to 1950s Rio Carnival.

Given that the long awaited comeback album by Ye called Bully is released at the end of this week (March 27th), I can't help thinking "Black Narcissist" might have been an even more iconic and potent title for the newish project. It not only reflects how so many view (Kan)Ye as a celebrity but also shows a self awareness of his own journey of ego-monstering his way through his career before shattering into a thousand pieces, where everyone now has to decide which (Kan)Ye they choose to hold onto, the (Kan)Ye-verse if you will.

He even wrote a song about this phenomenon called, aptly enough, I Love Kanye.

I miss the old Kanye, straight from the 'Go Kanye
Chop up the soul Kanye, set on his goals Kanye
I hate the new Kanye, the bad mood Kanye
The always rude Kanye, spaz in the news Kanye
I miss the sweet Kanye, chop up the beats Kanye
I gotta to say at that time I'd like to meet Kanye
See I invented Kanye, it wasn't any Kanyes
And now I look and look around and there's so many Kanyes
I used to love Kanye, I used to love Kanye
I even had the pink polo, I thought I was Kanye
What if Kanye made a song about Kanye
Called "I Miss The Old Kanye, " man that would be so Kanye
That's all it was Kanye, we still love Kanye
And I love you like Kanye loves Kanye

In Kirk Walker Graves’s 2014 book My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, in which he writes about the artist’s legendary 2010 album of the same name, he entitles one chapter “The Narcissistic Personality of Our Age”, (though perhaps Trump might steal that title now), and references Christopher Lasch’s 1979 treatise The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations.

"Notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience. His apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which he can overcome only by seeing his ‘grandiose self’ reflected in the attentions of others, or by attaching himself to those who radiate celebrity, power, and charisma. For the narcissist, the world is a mirror, whereas the rugged individualist saw it as an empty wilderness to be shaped to his own design.”

Kirk Walker Graves adds that “thirty-five years down the road, Lasch’s diagnosis reads more like a prophecy of digital life than a critical analysis of Carter-era America, especially with regard to the spell that celebrity has cast over the republic.”

In this way, it makes perfect sense that the two most notorious figures of this current age are both (Kan)Ye West and Donald Trump.

But somewhere during the past few years, it appears that (Kan)Ye’s mirror has shattered. He no longer seems the same man or artist, haunted by his own excesses, perhaps, or finally submitting to Father Time. The few images I’ve seen of him wandering around various cities of the world like an exiled nomad remind me a little of R. P. McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but hopefully, I say this as a fan, he will continue to be true to himself as a man and as an artist with all his flaws, because no one wants a toothless artist, especially as the AI apocalypse threatens to engulf us all in a flood of digital slop.

As Neil Simon once wrote in his play Biloxi Blues, “Once you start compromising your thoughts, you become a candidate for mediocrity.”

Say what you want about (Kan)Ye, this twenty-first-century Ozymandias, this “black narcissist”, he has never been anything remotely resembling mediocre.

I will also concede that Bully is a great album title too.

My own ego isn’t quite so massive as to deny him that.