After a prolonged absence, Kanye West reactivated his Twitter over the weekend and has since posted a number of inspirational and reflective extracts. Turns out the tweets aren’t just random musings from one of entertainment’s greatest provocateurs, but rather pages from his philosophy book being written and posted in real time.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kanye revealed plans to write a philosophy book called Break the Stimulation. “I do believe that all time is now. The future is here now, the past is here now,” he explained, adding: “I’ve got a concept about photographs, and I’m on the fence about photographs — about human beings being obsessed with photographs — because it takes you out of the now and transports you into the past or transports you into the future. It can be used to document, but a lot of times it overtakes [people]. People dwell too much in the memories.”
Over the last few days, he’s expanded on his thinking via a series of postings shared to Twitter. “Some people have to work within the existing consciousness while some people can shift the consciousness,” he tweeted on Sunday. “Often people working with the existing consciousness are jealous of those who are more in touch and they become hard-core capitalist in hopes of creating the illusion that the value of money is worth more than the value of time and friends.”
He added on Tuesday, “Fear often causes people to be manipulative. Be transparent as possible. Stop setting plays. Stop playing chess with life. Make decisions based on love not fear.”
On Wednesday, he began his morning by tweeting: “When you first wake up don’t hop right on the phone or the internet or even speak to anyone for even up to an hour if possible. Just be still and enjoy your own imagination. It’s better than any movie. You have the best ideas. Other people’s opinions are usually more distractive than informative. Follow your own vision. base your actions on love. Do things you love and if you don’t absolutely love something stop doing it as soon as you can.”
Kanye then revealed that these musings and the others to come are actually taken from his aforementioned philosophy book, which he is “writing in real time. No publisher or publicist will tell me what to put where or how many pages to write. This is not a financial opportunity this is an innate need to be expressive,” he explained. “I will work on this ‘book’ when I feel it. When We sit still in the mornings We get hit with so many ideas and so many things We want to express. When I read this tweet to myself I didn’t like how much I used the word I so I changed the I’s to We’s.”
Read the first pages (?) of Break the Stimulation: