Creativity Quote by Lydia Lunch

Optimism usually arrives dressed as a sunrise; Lydia Lunch shows up with a blackout curtain and calls it hope. "I'm completely optimistic - I know the end is coming!" works because it yanks a feel-good word into the gutter and makes it confess. The dash is doing the heavy lifting: a bright setup, then the punchline that detonates it. Optimism, in Lunch's mouth, isn't faith in progress; it's the clear-eyed relief of certainty. If the end is coming, at least the suspense is over. At least the rot has a schedule.

The intent reads like a provocation aimed at any culture that sells positivity as a moral duty. Lunch came up in the late-'70s/early-'80s New York no wave scene, where ugliness was an aesthetic and sincerity was often expressed through abrasion. In that world, cheerfulness can feel like propaganda and despair can feel like honesty. Her line turns apocalyptic thinking into a kind of emotional agency: if you expect collapse, you can't be manipulated by promises of "soon" and "better". You're already inoculated.

Subtextually, it's also a joke about survival. The end can mean the end of a system, a relationship, an era, a self-delusion. Calling that "completely optimistic" frames destruction as possibility, not just doom: endings clear the stage. Lunch isn't asking you to smile through catastrophe; she's offering a punk coping mechanism for late-capitalist fatigue - laugh, stare it down, and refuse the consolations that keep you compliant.