My friend asks me about consumerism. How I keep getting fantasies of consumerism. Its hard to explain, and so I mumble some response about wanting a large open kitchen. I ramble about having book shelves, she drops some name of a fancy furniture store and I have to ask to clarify. She asks me about pillows, we are getting basic, I say I don't know, I like pillows, but I don't like the ones just for decoration on the bed. It is some mix of aesthetics and functional need that I can't explain.
Aesthetics:
I tell her that sometimes when I am doodling, I let the lines go where they want, but at a certain point I look at the whole, and suddenly the lines, the colors, begin to desire a direction. They simply can't go that way, and if you force them they will ruin the whole. Sometimes you have to let the colors layer to build a texture worth making, and sometimes you have to let the empty space have its place.
When I walk into a space, I want to be comforted by it. I want it to charm me. I want it to fuse some of that aesthetic beauty energy through my eyes, and finger tips. I don't have the picture, until it asks me for direction. I don't know the names or value the objects in themselves, I am attracted to their shape, their shade, their feel. The same pillow that might call out to me at Target would not look good in my bedroom, I have the wrong color pallet, the wrong set of angles. The space gives direction, try to mesh your style with the wrong space and it will come out frustrated, I've always lived in frustration. I desire the comfort of a well crafted space.
I've been living functionally, with scraps and piles jutting every where. I want a space, where everything has a place, and if there is a messy room or closet where the scary things heap, then I'll know thats its story. I have a dozen tapestries, throw cloths, pictures and paintings to hang, and if they have their place to shine then I would like to display them. But if it isn't time. I'll continue to hide them away. But wouldn't it be nice to have a space.
Consumerism:
And then there is the drive, that little buzz in the back of the mind, your eyes drawn wide, and then narrowed, and then enlivened again with the next step. When I find myself in a market of any kind, (given the right mood) I scan and devour, take it all into the imagination, flare and hold back my grin. But again this is not knowledge of value, or craft, I'm simply consuming. Each item is it's own idol. Each thing, a world of possibilities. So I step down the wrong aisle and am smacked with a vision, a story. And some are dismal -the countless wall decorations at a thrift store that once adorned some elder's kitchen, unwanted by the children, or the grand children. Or cynical -what plastic molding machine cranked out a trillion of these, folding the oily toxic and poisoning our modernity. Or enthralling and imbued with a vision of timelessness, the indigenous craft in the market, reminiscent of the thing in a museum in Britain.
And in the mallshops of America, or the mallshops in India, there is a radiance to the lighting, and a stacking of trinkets, and I want to buy these meaningless things despite knowing full well I'll forget them. And its funny knowing that, because I can recognize it isn't alway their worth or beauty that calls me, but the desire to be part of their story -which says nothing but that they are an item of mass commercialism, to be bought by a person who looks and acts like me, will be carried home in plastic bags, pulled out and immediately recognize that I'll never treasure them as much as in that story -of purchase.
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