attention industry

A Consumerist Manifesto; or Why I Love What I Do.

Why wouldn’t we define ourselves by our possessions? They are a reflection of our tastes, our personalities, our vanities, our obsessions and desires.  They are earned through our labour, shared with our aquaintances, shaped and scarred and stained by our experiences.

I won’t apologize for conscious, careful consumerism, they way I would for wasteful, destructive consumption.  Surrounding myself with things that speak to me, that speak for me, is only logical - truth is expressed in subtext, explanations are what we need to spell out word for word, after we’ve already been misunderstood.

It’s the ultimate vanity, the chief arrogance of the artist, that you can only express yourself by that which you create with your own talents, your own two hands.  The belief that expression is somehow limited to those with the skills, the talents, the words and images and passion that they can somehow force into life.

We all craft a life out of experience and object.  Whether the art of your life is the conversations you have, or the actions you take, you create as surely as the painter, the dancer or the writer.

I don’t have a story for you.  I don’t have art in any standard sense.  But this is my art - the idea, the shift, the hope that my words can shape actions.

Don’t lecture me about the destructive nature of buying, or wanting and desiring and associating ourselves with the things that speak to and at time for us.

We attach meaning to things, so people can use things to attach meanings to themselves, so that people can tell their story in a passive meaningful way.  In the real world, not behind the guise of fiction, behind the protective mask of art that saves us from needing to dissect, address and consider ourselves, the ugliness we can bring.

My things tell a story as surely as my words.  And I don’t just write it, I live it, as do you.  As do we all.