Big [B]Other: Reaction

February 20, 2003

Reaction

Sometimes when I'm very down and depressed, I see the world i live in like it is a total deja vu: I look at myself like I am reading a comic book. The cloth separating the reality of the world and the nothing that makes up the universe, seems so thin in those days that one tiny gesture, the wrong gesture, could tore the cloth and everything would be gone.

Creating art (mostly writing, or doing stuff with color and graphics) usually helps in those circumstances. Having any other intense experience (from making love to watching a great movie or play or work of art) usually helps too, but less than creating art.

I do not believe in the zombie program Pods mentioned, though I do believe we are much more animal than we like to think we are. We are an amazing species, but we tend to forget much of what is so amazing to us, because at the time it seems so normal. (Remember one of my posts with the quote from the Golden Bough about the registration of the living gods and the rules they have to follow: This was going on in the 19th century - it is for real).

We are an amazing species, we can believe in so many things, we have the power to see stuff that is not there. Art can show us new paths, show us other realities, art can let us watch the world through other peoples eyes. Art could be a creative force that can help us cope with the future, and hopefully helps us create a better world.

Anyway, I try to keep some sort of faith in the human condition, but I refuse to watch the news: I want to go hardcore terrorist as soon as I watch too much of it. (In Germany one of the supposes Al Quaida members is convicted using a law that was intended for the Rote Armee Fraction in the 1980’s, I hate the cynicism of history).

Posted by Jeroen Goulooze at February 20, 2003 12:45 PM

Comments

what do you mean, jeroen? we aren't living in some kind of fake reality like a comic book or a cheesy snuff soap opera? maybe i read too many existentialist literature, but i like you, also am in the fringe of becoming a hardcore terrorist the whole 24 hours of my life. and then sometiems i do, and that's when i basically do that thing people usually forget to do: live, exist, choose. i don't know if creating art is the only option, sometimes art seems like such an uptight activity. i would call it simply do what we want to do, be ourselves, exist the whole 24 hours of the day. look at the war that's going on outside, and remember that's the product of the fears and paranoias and power trips of a small fraction of humans who are able to impose their concept of reality via media, and everything else.

let's not react, let's act. let's exist.

hugs from the other side of the atlantic!

Posted by: fran on February 20, 2003 01:43 PM

Once every two years or so, I get in the state mentioned in my post. Living is then postponed until later (for a week or two). The strange thing is that I then have to rediscover certain things I can only discover by creating something without a plan. Usually I do work with a plan.

But now I'm fine.

Creating art might be uptight, but designing a plan to create something beautifull that can be given to the ones you love or the ones you think are beautifull is a nice thing to do.

Posted by: Jeroen Goulooze on February 21, 2003 01:22 PM