Stuff

You need to clean up your stuff. Yes, you, who just left that pile of books on the floor of a bookstore. And you, who decided that a retail shelf was the best place to leave your coffee cup. And definitely you, whose wrappers and cigarettes and unidentifiable discarded belongings found their way onto the sidewalk where you so unceremoniously abandoned possession of them.

We live in a cultural pigsty of STUFF. Stuff that holds low value, combined with people who value themselves so highly they can't be bothered to pick up after themselves leaves us with a constant, unedited, overwhelming mess. As someone who has and does work in retail, I'm tired of picking it up. The little specific instances I spend so much time putting away is endemic of a culture that puts no real value on the quality of an item. A mass produced, bargain bin, two for one sale culture where it doesn't matter if you leave that shirt on the ground, you can buy three more in five minutes and do the same to them. The constant churning out of low quality stuff teaches us how to treat things, and the desperate beggar mentality of retail allows people to act out that compulsion of disrespect because they are constantly cleaned up after like an unwell child. (Actually, I was taught better than that when I was a child.) *

The way we treat our things is encouraged by two ostensible major mindsets. First, there are the sections of people who have money to spend and want people to know it. They have cash, and no idea what they are spending it on. Is the word luxury in the title? Yes please. A designer label? They'll take two. Even though there is a lot of money being spent, no one has the class or respect to actually care or consider what they are buying. A classic example? This bag.

It's Louis Vuitton. It's a celebrity coup. It's 42,000. And it's incredibly ugly. Accumulation of stuff as status with no thought.

The second group is one that runs from the common deal finders and bulk buyers to the more extreme hoarders. No one seems to choose just one thing when they can get a second for free-even if they have absolutely no need for that thing. The triumph of stuff rises as the respect with which we treat our possessions falls. The easier it is to find, the more likely we are to have it, accumulate it, destroy it, and buy it again.

Now, I'm not saying that stuff isn't important. "Things" are part of all of our lives, and that’s fine. Maybe it is some kind of spiritual accomplishment to be prepared to renounce all our worldly possessions at a moments notice, but I'm not ready to hang my hat on that peg yet. The reality is that stuff can be good-it connects us, amuses us, holds inspirations and memories. Stuff is tools, aids, creations, monuments. Stuff is not experience, or relationships, but it can mold the rest of our lives between those other things. I just wish we, as a culture, could exercise some critical thought towards our stuff and the stuff we need, and the value we place on it against and over other things. If we understand and work to attain the stuff we have, appreciate its value, then hopefully we will learn to treat our things better and just live better all around.

So clean up your toys, or you won't be allowed to play with them anymore.



*Maybe if we better learned the ideas of respect and responsibility there would be more progress from a government and a company in a certain environmental crisis. But that’s a whole other post.

Cleaning

Overcome by an intense need to organize and purge documents this last week. I have, for as long as I can remember, been consumed by a need to collect and accumulate pictures-magazine pages mostly. (I have other collections, but that seems to be the most cumbersome and becomes quite overwhelming ). I had been in the habit of absorbing glossy pages for what could perhaps be best described as a sort of lifestyle osmosis. Like I didn't trust my own mind to independently develop a sense of style. Seeing random images brought a sense of inspiration that for some reason I didn’t feel strong enough to remember without saving the pages. It was interesting to see what I was drawn to in the past-which images, ideas, fashions, etc that I wanted to incorporate at the time. Like an historical timeline of inspiration. What inspires someone really does say a lot . Finally in I found myself surging through pages of random mags rejecting pretty much everything inside. Suddenly the images don't live up to the ideas in my own mind-I want to create a real life and experiences instead of looking at some projected image. I know what I want my life (and my own personal style) to be and its not a flimsy editorial.

So from now on no more wasteful magazine consumption, I'm only reading things with legitimate cultural value, high fashion coverage/point of view, or valuable information. Goes to my current focus on the importance of editing.


Cleaner mind, cleaner home…and less of a fire hazard.

Energy

I'm trying to understand the idea of art, what it means to foster it and to be a part of it. The role of a creator and appreciation and criticism of creation. There is so much unnecessary worry, so many distractions, so much anxiety and frustration that obscures the real power of the individual in art. Its hard to find anything real behind the false idols of tribute and self congratulation. The solipsism of denial. Somehow a few ideas emerge.

I used to be completely terrified of the idea of non-existence, an almost constant all consuming worry with no resolution. Eventually I got distracted, or the fear subsided, but it always remained, quelled and dormant beneath the more corporal anxieties that took precedence. Perhaps that fear urged me on in an academic pursuit of religion and philosophy, essentially the dialectic of nothing versus something. But the something was never enough, not sufficiently satisfying as to scar the darkness of nothing with so much light that it became an unrecognizable fear. (Of course I was always loathe to accept anything without energetic, sincere and scathing logical and reason, or at least something like it, so there always existed an appropriate tension between curiosity and unrelenting standard of proof* which fueled my search and, at least in my opinion, lent some sort of legitimacy to my modest discoveries.)

If it seems like this is a digression, well, that’s because it is, a bit. Not into a statement of biography that might send my dear readers into a tangential story about the gory details of my murky cosmogony (not because I lack confidence it its interest, I simply lack the will to synthesize all of that into such a miniscule statement, albeit one that has already grown beyond my intentions. ) I simply mean to impress the sort of friction constantly in the back of my mind, a dance of being and nothingness (to borrow a phrase from Sartre) that has lead us to my modest point.

Basically when I feel the most anxiety about any idea of the fragility of art or self I consider my place as a kind of universal being. We are all made of stardust billions of years old. Cosmic legacy. No myths, no figurehead, no language or sign or symbol. Those will always fall short. So what remains? Energy.

Art creates energetic connections….can’t see them but they remain. Art is unchanged raw dynamic energy, carved out by the artist to be a testament to a moment in time-as such, it cannot remain going forward, but it does remain as a link in the energy chain its own presence necessitates, a moving on to build forward. Recognize the continual process. That constant onward motion is life energy so the creations themselves are vital to the kind of energy that moves forward. (Creations referencing the past too much either strain the energy of forward motion or move back, creations that critique illuminate the present create an increasing forward momentum.) Are we going lightning speed, contributing to our own momentum in an interstellar space train, or sludging forward with feet in wet concrete? Think about progress. Worship at the altar of dynamism. You are raw unchained energy and you can create positive or negative connections. It doesn’t seem like it but it is up to you. You might believe you are a product of turbulence and confusion (like most art itself) but it doesn’t matter. You have insane potential and can do and be whatever you want. Further than static creation, art is the vitality of experience when you allow yourself to sink into the moment.** Love energy, art energy, sin energy, fear energy, life and death and rebirth energy. Realize dynamic connections and thrive on them.

Energy reverberates. Energy never dies.

*This is something I'm certain I'll never be cured of.

**Great art is difficult.