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Poetry
flaws in the human condition
Blog Posts
100 Works of Art: The Dying Slave
Think how many people look unreal when you look at them. Like background material. Not the normal-looking people, who are just other people going through their lives like you. Normal people have bags under their eyes and probably by their feet. They sit next to you on the bus and they're tired. There are marks on their clothes. They talk on their phones. They smile awkwardly when you move to let them out of the way. They have arguments with their friends. Real people do all of that. They pick up phrase from newspapers and TV and use them relentlessly to give themselves depth when they don't need to, because they're already three-dimensional.
The ones who look unreal are the picture-perfect ones. Not the ones in the bathrooms in the pub with a foot of make-up to make themselves look like this person or that person (Dita Von Teese, Cheryl Cole, it's all the same; we embrace the artifice, the masks, everyone knows when we go home we take off our faces and we're spotty or short or have weird eyebrows). Not the ones who conspicuously costume themselves to go out. They're normal, play-acting at extraordinary, the way we can when the rest of the time we're not controlling the world.
The unreal-looking people who step through the world like touching it would pollute them. Bland half-smiles. Ethical jumpers. Don't talk very much about anything. Already editing themselves for the future biopic. It's hard to work out how anyone could love them. Everyone else, they have life in them, ugly vivid bruise-real life. Not these weird, clear-skinned robots. Prod them. Poke them. Make them swear angrily at you. Prove they're real somewhere under their own conception of their perfection. It's too creepy otherwise.
Do you think your heroes would be proud of you? What adivce would they have for you?
flaws in the human condition
Blog Posts
100 Works of Art: The Dying Slave
Think how many people look unreal when you look at them. Like background material. Not the normal-looking people, who are just other people going through their lives like you. Normal people have bags under their eyes and probably by their feet. They sit next to you on the bus and they're tired. There are marks on their clothes. They talk on their phones. They smile awkwardly when you move to let them out of the way. They have arguments with their friends. Real people do all of that. They pick up phrase from newspapers and TV and use them relentlessly to give themselves depth when they don't need to, because they're already three-dimensional.
The ones who look unreal are the picture-perfect ones. Not the ones in the bathrooms in the pub with a foot of make-up to make themselves look like this person or that person (Dita Von Teese, Cheryl Cole, it's all the same; we embrace the artifice, the masks, everyone knows when we go home we take off our faces and we're spotty or short or have weird eyebrows). Not the ones who conspicuously costume themselves to go out. They're normal, play-acting at extraordinary, the way we can when the rest of the time we're not controlling the world.
The unreal-looking people who step through the world like touching it would pollute them. Bland half-smiles. Ethical jumpers. Don't talk very much about anything. Already editing themselves for the future biopic. It's hard to work out how anyone could love them. Everyone else, they have life in them, ugly vivid bruise-real life. Not these weird, clear-skinned robots. Prod them. Poke them. Make them swear angrily at you. Prove they're real somewhere under their own conception of their perfection. It's too creepy otherwise.
Do you think your heroes would be proud of you? What adivce would they have for you?