Creativity Quote by Boyd Rice

It lands like a shrug with teeth: a declaration of peace that still keeps a blacklist. Rice frames himself as post-conflict, almost monkishly above grudges, then immediately reintroduces the social sorting mechanism that grudges usually serve. The humor is in the over-clarification of "No, seriously" and "really" - the linguistic equivalent of insisting you're calm while gripping the steering wheel. He wants credit for emotional restraint without giving up the power to exclude.

The intent reads less like confession than posture. "Ill-will" is an old-fashioned, moralized term; it suggests he’s graduated from petty dislike into something cleaner, more principled. But "I just ignore" is not neutral. Ignoring is active: it redraws boundaries, denies recognition, and signals that the speaker controls the room by deciding who counts. In art-world and subcultural contexts - where Rice’s career has often been entangled with provocation, taboo, and deliberate friction - this is also a survival strategy. When your persona attracts controversy, you can either fight every critic or curate your attention like an exhibit: selective lighting, selective silence.

Subtextually, it’s a miniature philosophy of social power. Hatred requires intimacy; you have to keep someone close enough to react. Ignoring is colder, and often more punitive, because it refuses the other person the dignity of antagonism. The line pretends to be about emotional health, but it’s also about control: I’m not wounded by you; you’re simply background noise.