There are two types of people in this world:
Romantics, who love humanity but are delusional by nature, and refuse to accept it for what it really is.
And rationalists, who mostly hate humanity, mostly because they understand it better- the greedy self serving, self perpetuating nature of life, and humanity as a whole.
Perhaps we are all a little of both.
I think bureaucrats are likely over represented in the later category, and artists the former. I probably lean heavily towards the delulu romantic perspective on things, because only a beautiful world is a world worth living in, in my opinion- and only romantics see a beautiful world.
Not that art is required for beauty, nor beauty required for art, but one commonality between art and romantics is the striving for transcendence- the idea that we can reach beyond our limits into something divine and magical. An appeal to a type of inner deity.
When I am in the mood to create things, it’s often with the purpose of stimulating specific feelings inside myself. Feelings that require external stimulus to occur. I look for this stimulus in life, everywhere, all the time- and when I don’t find it, I forge it myself.
When an idea grips me, the most important thing to me is to make it some kind of a reality- it doesn’t matter how short-cut, or rushed, or half baked it ultimately is- as long as it is close enough to the idea in my mind that it stimulates the feeling I’m after, then it’s more than good enough for me.
I’ve seen artists get consumed with a type of perfectionism and obsess over something until it’s destroyed, or just abandoned unfinished. To them the art is an extension of themselves, and completing it for public consumption prematurely feels like an ego slight- or a failure to do justice to one’s self or abilities.
I take the no fucks Ed Wood approach.
My good buddy Gary is more of a rationalist. We got on the subject of meaning and nihilism over eggs benedict last weekend. His politics are hard to describe but lets just say he’s left wing, radical, and a conspiracy theorist- with a fresh and recently added side of racism that I find quite disappointing. I worry the trendiness of jew hatred in left wing circles over the last few years has been a gateway for actual Nazis to get their foot in the ideology door of people’s minds. Going from screaming “Free Luigi!” to listening to Nick Fuentes is apparently a much shorter path than one would think.
On the subject of “meaning,” I mentioned that I could generate it myself all day if needed. In a vacuum I could retreat into my own mind and spin worlds and fantasies and be just fine with something to do, feed on, and pursue. Creativity as a kind of everlasting gobstopper of forward drive and motivation in life- a cycle of contentment and curiosity until the physical ability for one or both expires.
He mentioned that he can’t do that. He appreciates the creative efforts of others, tremendously, but is not creative himself. His only source of meaning, he said- the only thing that saves him from Nihilism, is a responsibility he feels to people in the future, to conserve all the great and epic things that humanity has accomplished- by way of warning people about AI, and government over-involvement in our privacy and data collection, and convincing people that Karl Marx had at least one great idea, and that Capitalism is shit, and maybe mercantilism is worth a shot again.
If that’s what he needs to keep going in the rational world of dark greedy bastards, I support him all the way. His friendship means more to me than just about anything, including his new found racism and too-online-too-often conspiracy theories.
Believe it or not I haven’t even gotten to what I came here to talk about, though all of that needed to be said beforehand.
An idea struck me while driving around at work the other day. I do a lot of photo transitions that span fifty, or a hundred years- but I have a ton that I took myself that are now twenty five years old. Which isn’t nothing. I’m getting quite old now, old enough that grown adults could look at my early adulthood and have complete culture shock.
The photos I took are interesting because I took them with a very good camera, in black and white film, at a time just before cell phones came out- which was still well before smart phones with cameras and social media and all of that. There was internet, but it was PC’s only- tied to a landline desk- and more like a fancy encyclopedia and chat room for nerds than the marketplace we know now.
I dusted off my old scanner and scanned the photos I wanted, ran to the old cafe that was my entire young adult world, did a quick one-take of the modern footage I needed, went back home with some video editing software, and cranked out the thing that I had in mind as fast as I could.
I can’t stop watching it. Like the smell of rain, it sends me back to memories and feelings that haven’t seen the light of day in some time. In my teens and early 20s there was this coffee shop in town that I just loved. The owners were a couple from New Orleans who were into blues music and very laid back and intelligent. They decorated the coffee shop in old new Orleans style, roasted their own beans, and played mostly jazz and blues during business hours. As an aspiring beatnik photographer, the place was just my vibe.
I got a job there during my senior year of high school, which went on to pay the rent, bills, and tuition at my first apartment in this little community college town- until I finally quit all of that and moved to North Carolina when I was 22, with my brother.
It was what we refer to now as a “third space.” Privately owned by people who, God bless them, were OK with a bunch of young adults using it almost as a second home. There was this small back room with tables and an indoor pay phone, bathrooms, and a back door that lead out onto a smoking deck with a beautiful view of the bay- just one tenant in a larger very old building downtown.
At some point after I got my car, when I was 17 or so, I started going there and just sitting there with my coffee by myself- soaking up the atmosphere, playing with my camera, or reading a book. There was no social media at this time. And no cell phones, unless you were Zach Morris.
Eventually other people my age, wandering the wilds in a similar fashion, would also sit down in the little back room with me, and chit chat. We would step outside after a while and share vice (cigarettes), bonding further. A snowball effect ensued, creating this kind of social gravity- people would come to be around other people, a mix of strangers and familiar faces- mostly familiar faces.
I’d be sitting home, cut off from the world other than the Television, and decide “I need to see people. Talk to people.” I’d drive there, walk through the door- and immediately get greeted by ten familiar and friendly faces. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.
This went on for me at this place for seasons upon seasons. Summers making salads in the hot sweaty din of the packed cafe, taking extra time in the walk-in cooler fetching ingredients to cool off. Cool off season autumn mornings in that same walk-in smoking doobies before making up giant omelets for breakfast.
That lack of an ever present internet “collective,” always filming, always there to correct your ignorance, or instantly satisfy any material need- was such an interesting vibe. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows as people who weren’t there, or overly nostalgic people might paint it. There were entire afternoons of complete boredom, trapped somewhere with only the sun beams filtering through the slats of the blinds to entertain us. Want and inconvenience at every corner. An accurate level of loneliness, when alone.
But it did create this feeling of first person adventure- an independence; a comfort in navigating around the world alone for the most part, without much need of aid. And without the weak saccharine socialization we get from social media or texting, having to go out and have actual face to face interactions with people to acquire the socialization we need to maintain sanity fostered good social and communication and expression skills.
And it generated camaraderie. And humor. Laughter. Romance. Drama. Weird arbitrary missions to come together around. What more could one want? I can still hear that blues music on the speaker. I can smell that mix of coffee roasting and burnt toast. The smell of autumn and Marlboros over top of that. The autumn vibes. The winter vibes. And the summer vibes, which I loved most of all. All the hanging plants and tree branches heavy with life and green, sashaying in the merciful intermittent breeze. John Coltrane howling along to the heat.
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