nothing in this world is as kafkaesque as mitski’s working for the knife. the line of ‘i used to think i would tell stories but nobody cared for the stories i had’ was basically how kafka lived through his writing career. the part where she goes on about her career through the ages of twenty, twenty-nine, thirty, as if it never ends, followed by the line ‘that i’m living for the knife’. the knife as work itself. the knife for capitalism. the knife as the raw hopelessness at never achieving to balance economic stability, general happiness, and the artistic pursuit. living for work, literally. the main character in kafka’s metamorphosis lives for the knife. and then dying for the knife. dying for work. dying for economic stability. dying for capitalism. dying from feeling like an object, a machine, something to be consummed by the system and that’s that. plus it’s so horribly dull it’s not even tragic. working living dying for the knife. the forced dedication the misery of exhaustion the artistic hopelessness. mitski understood kafka better than any of u
