honestly, who really wants to share their passion with little kids and old ladies to "give back to society"? no way man.. HELLO the world is complex, we have no space for clean little generalisations.
the danger of cliches is that we hide in gross oversimplifications and neglect the fundamental complexity of human life. cohering to a certain set of "ideals", or marketing yourself as a certain "type" of person [especially the feel good inspirational types] ultimately cheapens your particular individuality. SO WHAT if theyre going to pour money on you? something in me basically bebels to the instinct for conformity: i am not a loud person, but when it comes to originality i have an almost obsessive need to define myself as a separate, ideantifiable entity.
this is a very big long rant, because i DESPISE stereotypes, especially cultural ones. this is not meant to be offensive, but because i am an irredeemable pedant, THE LOUVRE WAS BUILT BY MARIE DE MEDICI [or catherine, either one] no doubt queen of France, but Italian in blood and breed. the mona lisa was also italian. AND the CULTURAL CENTRE OF ITALY IS FLORENCE NOT VENICE WTBH i could die its TRAVERSTY TRAVERSTY hellooooo thats where the bleeding RENAISSANCE started. what happened to the french revolution? why not ingres [personal bias. but ingres was authentically French] FYI milan is only "fashion capital" in italy because of the french influence during the Napoleonic occupation. japanese culture does not consist of disneyfied samurais and gothic lolita girls. [what kind of term is that anyway. it gives a bad name to gothic architecture and to nabokov.] thailand is not about transverstites [fyi, they are the most tolerant of them because of a religious belief: apparently some deity was a hermaphrodite or smth... i cant rmb but YES there are cultural roots. how can you profess to understand anything without seeking out its origins?] WHERE IS THE AUTHENTICITY where is the respect for culture, for LIFE even, sans the glamour, sans the spin, sans the gloss of stereotypes.
[my group was in charge of thailand. wish i could have done Rearngsak Boonyavanishkul insert expletive here he paints insert expletive herex2 beautiful pieces i nearly died over the ones a. eve and u. ed had.. its TO DIE FOR]
the whole problem with today's society is that everything has been cheapened. its been reduced to the lowest common denominator just because its easy to digest, and because it pushes the most money. its utterly disgusting and disillusioning because we run the danger of losing our particular characteristics: the intricacies of culture and even personal identity are slowly being eroded. how many peoprl define themselves as being "roxy girls" or "prada women"? its nothing but a manufactured image. we should at all costs resist the impetus to slot ourselves away into neat little boxes; because in so doing we lose our essence.
thus the disillusionment of the modern paradigm: the relentless search for identity. 'something is always missing" but there is no way that we can locate it within the oversimplified ideas that we are fed [and thus are the most available] because what we need is an affirmation of particularity-- that we are not, after all, mere cogs in the big machine.
my only takeaway from today was the brocade from arab street. that said, i would a million times over rather be in school, talking to my dear girls. [and bob.]
mellie contemplated 11:35 PM
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