i miss the idea of less

I miss the idea of less. Less things. Less stuff. There seems to be a lot of stuff now. More than ever before.

A thing is popping up on my screen as I write this. A thing I added to help me. ‘You’re supposed to use the word ‘fewer’ for countable, quantifiable objects’ It’s telling me. Another thing I have to swipe away. I dream of less.

I’ve tried to live in a smaller world than that around me. I’ve put up booby-trapped EMPs around my hobbies to deactivate some of the cacophonous noise that surrounds all of us, trying to decrease it to a functional, consumable amount. We preach ‘Quality over Quantity’ as we rapidly deplete all resources surrounding us, like a tornado attacking the inside of a Walmart, a groundswell of Doritos and pool toys whirling around frantically in the home essentials aisle. There’s so much of it. I watched a television show the other day, it was good but it was old. Everyone’s already moved on to something else now and our memories can’t think back that far. I believe it had a name and I vaguely remember enjoying it, but now I’m left stimulated by something new, something to escape. Don’t you dare ask me to give thoughts on it, Opinions, the dirty things.

We’ve become stranded, our visas impounded and forced to face a reality that’s become more hostile by the day. So we use our other visas to dull everything. We can no longer submerge ourselves into new worlds at the expense of someone’s artistry, but instead, use a combination of the senses to not go anywhere. To stay put in a zen of static, a savasana of comatose consumery.

I have a hard time keeping up and so I’m left behind. Things happen and I don’t feel as though they happen to me. This idea of less that I crave is one that brings with it isolation and solitude. Small talk gets harder & niche. The culture train has left the station. To do the heinous act of revisiting a piece of art is to miss out on something else. For every film I go back to, it’s at the sake of one that I miss out on seeing for the first time. The conveyor belt doesn’t stop for those who stop to smell the paper mâché roses.

And so, I can’t make myself happy. Like so many of my cohort, I’m faced with something in my life that I can adjust myself to adequate effect, but instead will blame and try to change everything around me to meet my needs. Y’all need to stop. Let’s stop making. We can continue on our merry way of consuming feverishly, but let’s do one thing at a time. Everyone will catch up on Holt’s planets and see all the Predator films. We’ll all experiment with acid jazz and learn the fundamentals of architecture. Expressionism & the Beat Poets. We’re gonna catch up on everything and talk about it. Pieces will be thrown from the temporal graveyards and we’ll discuss every little detail. I can’t figure out the right amount of new media that should flow through the tube so I’m blocking the pipe. Nothing new until we can appreciate everything before it.

Books will be read, poems ingratiated with love and phones will be scrolled but it will happen separately. No of this watching one thing while listening to another while scrolling with your thumbs. Relax, we are on our own schedules. Don’t keep up, head back. Head up, head forward while looking backward. The shoulders of giants rusted, Atlas on a tea break.

Our art imitating life has lost it’s colour. The orroborus has choked and we’re being self referential to the nth degree and our vapid vain visage frowns back from the mirror. The sad clown of democratzed media has it’s makeup washed off. Disconnect and unwind. Believe me it’s amazing, and crotchety.