Moby book, "And Then It Fell Apart"

Here's a story about a guy who gets everything he could ever want and is still a miserable, unhappy cunt. Is this common among successful entertainers, or do only the miserable and unhappy entertainers write autobiographies detailing how they're fucked up?

Moby understands that most guys use non-monogamy as a way to fuck around while retaining a chick who wants monogamy, "Kelly and I were boyfriend and girlfriend, but we had an open, non-monogamous relationship. She dated other people, or so I assumed. And I dated other people, as I well knew. In fact, everyone knew that I dated other people." Kelly gets tired of this because his SMV is much higher than hers because he's a famous musician (and for that reason alone). Like some high-status guys, it seems he realizes that being poly is a decent way to keep a primary chick who he likes around while also having the ability to play the field.

Since then I’d fallen hard for two other women, and would have been happy to be in a monogamous relationship with either of them – except that even making plans to go on a second date made me panic. So I’d given up trying to date seriously, and had embraced being a promiscuous drunk on tour. It wasn’t the most spiritually or ethically sound behavior, but at least I wasn’t panicking.

I don't get the panic attack via dating thing. Is it real? Is he full of shit? It seems like an awful lot of cover if he's full of shit, though.

I find this book unusual because Moby's feelings about "success" in his world is a bit close to some of my feelings about the game right now.

In the early 1990s going on tour had been novel, and I had been an enthusiastic evangelist for the nascent rave scene. And then for a few years, after the success of Play and 18, it had been exciting, a perpetual road-trip party with huge concerts, unceasing drunkenness, and almost effortless promiscuity. But lately touring had turned into a routine, one in which I played in smaller venues to smaller audiences who just wanted to hear older songs.

Or call it "flat."

Suddenly everything seemed flat – the hipsters, the lights, the levity – as if life was just a staged photograph in a bad design magazine. I was sad, but underneath my sadness I was angry and disappointed. I’d been given the kingdom, and I’d squandered it.

I'm not that anhedonic, though, and I don't have the drinking/drug problems Moby does. His manager has enough partying at some point, "We walked to the limo. Sandy was usually unflappable, but he looked angry. 'I’m not sure I can keep doing this, Moby,' he said." I get him.

It's also true that casual sex can become less exciting over time,

These women were beautiful, and they wanted to have a threesome with me. But it felt rote, as if we were playing scripted parts: the debauched musician, the Park Avenue lady drinking away her sorrow, and the wide-eyed burlesque dancer from a small town outside Reno experiencing all that life in the big city had to offer.

This is the psyche's sign that it's time to change lanes.

There are Red Pill moments, like with this hot divorced chick at a New York City party,

“They’re all bitches,” she said, gesturing at the room full of soft money. “A year ago they were my best friends. Now they won’t talk to me.” “Why not?” “I got divorced, and now they’re all afraid I’m going to fuck their husbands.”

They're not bitches. They're wise. This is why some hot chicks have trouble making and keeping female friends. Smart chicks try to keep their man away from single hot women, as a form of damage control (guys will often do the same thing). When hot chicks say they have trouble making friends, it can be a sign of damaged personality... but it can also just be chicks wisely mate guarding.

Drugs are dangerous because used well they can enhance and make magical the human experience. Used poorly, they try to fill a hole in the soul, as Moby tries to use them... and it doesn't work.

I woke up alone, in the parking lot of the Lowry hotel in Manchester. The women were gone, the bus was cold, and I felt like gray death. There were empty vodka bottles on the floor.

This is fame, fortune, etc. But Moby can't take those things and build something on top of them, it seems.

I had money, status, and huge swaths of pristine land. But the increasingly noisy and demanding truth was that unless I was drunk or having sex with a stranger, I wasn’t happy. And although I had decided that I was a spiritual person, I never actually did anything spiritual.

Chasing happiness is foolish. You have to chase a goal or a skill or whatever that is challenging to reach but not impossible to reach, a goal or skill that you can make some progress towards every day. In the absence of such a goal people become listless. Guys who can't get laid do well with game because it has a goal and it has some ways you can make small progress every day (eat well, talk to chicks, develop new hobbies, hit the gym and watch those numbers improve, etc.).

This guy has some serious emotional problems that he never manages to address. I wonder how many guys in the community, are similar: effective on the outside (Moby is an effective music maker), totally fucked up on the inside. Seems like it'd be useful to ask... what if you get whatever you're striving for? Humans aren't happy in stasis... if you get everything, you'd still have to develop a new goal/purpose. We have to have a purpose, and we have to develop new ones, otherwise we stagnate and die.

This is not a typical book about the game or about how to manage your psychology and the psychology of other people. Moby doesn't talk about writing the big songs, which is a strange omission, like a book about game that says nothing about approaches.