Letters to Jay-Z, Inception, and Cigarettes

 I started wearing the patch two days ago in an effort to quit smoking. Apparently, it makes you have REALLY vivid dreams, aka nightmares. It’s some lucid dreaming, inception shit. So the first night I had been an accomplice to murder and the whole dream was basically me having a panic attack until I woke up at 4:30 am, and can I tell you, I’ve never felt so happy that I didn’t kill anyone before in my life. Last night I had some weird dream where my family decided to get someone else to be me, and I slowly started to become invisible. God, that was weird. Weird dreams aside, the point is I’m waking up super early. So I naturally check the news aka refresh Buzzfeed incessantly, and there was a really interesting article today about a man who has written personal e-mails to Jay-Z for the past few years,  and the e-mails are embedded with some tracker that allows the sender to know if, when, and where an e-mail has been read. You know the rest, man notices e-mails have been opened, e-mail locations are opened at the same time Jay-Z is known to be on a yacht in France, etc. etc., frequently enough where the chance of coincidence goes down, while the chance that Jay-Z has been reading this dude’s personal e-mails to him for the last few years goes up.

The author of the article I guess attempted to verify the authenticity of Jay-Z’s alleged personal e-mail account, and was unable to either verify or deny it. Honestly, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it was at least some kind of personal e-mail account of Jay-Z’s. I interned at Zone 4 Inc, and a lot of times I had to find publicist/ representation contact info for a lot of celebrities or big wigs, and it was shockingly easy. Personal e-mail addresses aren’t a far stretch off.

Anyways, I’m trying hard to not provide a summary because you can read the original article for that, but for what I think about it.

I think a lot of people might think this guy is weird. Let’s clarify about “personal” e-mails: He wasn’t writing weird shit like “hey I’m outside lol”. Sometimes he talked about himself and his family, a lot of times he asked questions of Jay-Z because he felt Jay has risen to a powerful position in the Black community and wanted to hold Jay-Z accountable for that. Wanted to create a dialogue. And I agree with him. If you are going to be a public figure and make pubic stances on issues, you have the right to be questioned by the public community, as well as be admired.

So here you have this guy who, for all intents and purposes, is ordinary.  UNLESS you consider convincing the biggest names in NBA to privately meet with him to check out his basketball skills based solely on some 5-minute Youtube video and his wife cold calling people ordinary. Because he did that too.

Yeah, this guy keeps getting more badass the more you read the article. So he ends up quitting his job and starts calling himself a writer, and wants to publish these e-mails as memoirs of sorts. If you’re a writer that’s totally the greatest dream ever, for you to write whatever you want whenever you want, for a long time, and then just have someone publish it as your “memoirs”. That’s literally selling your diary. Why do you think I have this blog? After about three years I’ll just shoot this bad boy over to Random House and I’m set for life.

It didn’t end on such a happy note, as the publishers want Jay-Z to respond or they aren’t interested. But at this point, the story will garnish so much attention Jay-Z will ultimately respond, or it won’t matter because the story has already become a public sensation without it.

I am obsessed with this man, on so many levels. Inception levels. For one, because I greatly relate to him and admire his conviction. There’s a lot more I want to include but I think the original author did a really good job so read it because there is a lot of really good shit in there.

I was inspired in a lot of ways by it, I like anyone that is making an attempt to ask questions people don’t want to ask while still being thoughtful. I like anyone who has the balls to say, just because you are a celebrity doesn’t mean you are better than me. I like anyone that is or feels different from other people but doesn’t transfer that to a feeling of inferiority. His name is David Johnson and I think he’s brilliant.

“If someone says it’s weird or creepy, I say they’re not trying hard enough in life. The reason why you think it’s creepy is because you’ve never suffered before.”

-David Johnson

Original Article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/tracking-the-biggest-star-in-the-world