Thursday, March 26, 2009
SO WHAT?!?!?
In Japan or Germany, there'd be a term for this sort of mentality, which is "the expression of unpleasantness just to upset people". This is in the soul of most boys & American society & women especially try & beat this out of them. This harmless expression of nastiness. When i was a kid, my favorite graffiti was enormous swear words that would appear with no flair, no style, just giant letters saying "FUCK" & "SHIT" on the sides of liquor stores & the like. People who don't get this, who think that all unpleasantry is some sort of degradation of the human soul don't understand much on this earth. They must close their eyes when they see dogs gleefully eat cat shit, or when a mother fish eats her young. Or don't think too hard when they hear about all of the dinosaurs being wiped out in a relatively short period of time & the giant mammals doing the same much later. Having fathered two rambunctious boys, i learned that women giving birth frequently shit during contractions! I immediately thought that a good comic would be that they mistake the shit for the child, throw away the actual baby & raise the shit as their own. The actual human child would then grow up & seek vengeance, killing the shit child in school. The human child would then be slandered as racist. Something along these lines. When you hear these idiots speaking about "art" or about "beauty" they speak in terms that betray their completely & utterly limited faculties. Their hatred of actual existence. I've begun to run into people again who believe in "positivity" as their central motivation & expression. These are the same people who tried to send my little brother into psychiatric evaluation for drawing a picture of the devil in grade school. Who banned my zine from the anarchist centre for defending the word Bitch. NO, YOU A BITCH. End.
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6 comments:
I think the terms are so degraded today: Beauty has become "pretty", "goodness" has become "nice", or "positive".
While I agree that lots of people who would uphold these older notions of beauty might not like the idea of reveling in the profane, they definitely understood it, or had to take it into account. Have you seen those illuminated manuscripts with like talking asshole creatures on the margins? To me, laughing about shit/piss is not the same as rolling around in it. The purely profane is boring, imo. It needs to grate against the sacred.
I'm writing a thing right now that asks what we mean when we say something is "natural". It should be finished in a few days, but it seems like "nature" is used as some kind of utility, just like "nice" or "positive" means not interfering or making anyone upset. Yes, shit and pus and veiny cocks are "natural", but that doesn't make them good or bad.
A drawing of a pile of turd with sunglasses on is funny, yes, but only because we live in a culture that's so deracinated and shitty that "nice" is a value to them.
I think the urge to draw a big cock on a wall for a kid is actually good; it's raw, creative energy, but I don't think indulging in it as an adult is the same thing. It's nostalgia, for me at least, when I think about that sort of thing. I like the idea, but it's not in keeping with who I've become.
But yes, I still have to smile when I see one.
I totally agree about the contrast & clash between the sacred & profane in order to create something of interest or something of excitement. However, i also think things are of a similar value on their own.
About ten years ago, I thought this whole discussion was over, in that i was so far beyond it that i didn't care. However, having moved to an entirely different locale & engaged with a segment of society that i hadn't previously spent time with since i was in grade school, i've come to see that the war still goes on with the children. My central point in this doesn't really concern the world of adults, which is how it is, the cultural wars are constantly going on in the world of children & in the schools & the media.
I read the most recent piece you wrote about nature & natural, i haven't found the correct words to comment on it yet, but i thought it was interesting & a good thing to ponder. My friend Danny Shoup just wrote a blog piece that addresses a similar issue. He's an archaeologist.
http://archaeopop.blogspot.com/2009/03/archaeology-in-fiction-naked-and.html
The distinction between natural & artificial is real, but i don't believe they should be posited against each other. I feel the same way about grossness & beauty. They are their own things & should not be pitted against one another. Beauty & the grotesque are embodied in a piece like Bosch's Garden of Earthly delights.
- I took the post down, after leaving it up for about 5 minutes. It lacked clarity. I think it might've loaded to Google Reader though.
I'm with you when it comes to the kids, for the most part, especially when it comes down to being against this notion of "positivity". It's about smothering the real in order to make the parent/adult feel better about themselves.
This is really lovely. Thank you.
so, when my son farts loudly into a chair, stands up, leans into where his ass just was and inhales his own fart, he's just doing it for the pure joy of it? I know he does it because he wants to, not to gross me out. I find it fascinating.
Clint, thanks. Jen, i think getting off on smelling your own farts is probably part of the getting negative attention or casting yourself as a clown thing that certain personalities do... so it is a relationship thing, between you, Liam & the fart. But, knowing Liam, he'd probably do the same thing if he was alone in a cave.
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