WelcomeOrnament & ethnicity & identity are crimes
What used to be on this page is now: here.
In the 21st Century, anybody who decorates anything, belongs to an ethnicity or has an identity is either a criminal or a degenerate who has not yet committed his (her, other's) crime. Or else maybe they are still living in Victorian society.
"All social customs are shared hallucinoses aka social psychoses." (Wilfred Bion)*
We have art and sciences. We produce meaning, not just consume it. Primitive and uneducated people need to give meaning to their lives by mourning the dead; we make new meaning by creating it in our daily living each day. If life is a restaurant, we cook up the menu and serve it. Those people are dumpter divers.
Like Robert Rauschenberg's junk collage art or Marcel Duchamp's "L.H.O.O.Q.", it is perfectly fine to use existing symbolic material as long as you don't believe it. Recycling is good, especially used Supreme Deities and religious and political Leaders.
So what do I (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) mean by "ornament" and why does it concern me so much?
Entertainment is ornament. I did not want my days to be chronically banal but occasionally spiced up with diversions: I wanted my daily work to be richly rewarding to my spirit, every moment, day in and day out.
One meaning for "decoration" is:
a medal or award that is given to someone for doing something brave or honorable (such as fighting bravely in a war) (britannica.com)
Don't make me do something I have little or no interest in and then like a trained seal, throw me a fish. Give me meaningful work and then the work itself will be the "medal", all the time, not a diversion because when I'm being diverted I remember what I will have to go back to what I don't want any part of.
Holidays are ornaments. Sacraments are ornaments. Vacations are ornaments. They all return you to the same damned thing they got you away from. Time off, too. Leisure is untimed time, where you don't haveto go back to the damned thing you needed a respite from. What I want is to want to be where I am.
It's very simple: I want and need a good life, not a banal life with makeup on it. More ornament: Women's makeup. Of course there are exceptions here, if the person has suffered disfigurement from illness, accident or other misfortunes. I think "sexy" lingerie makes a woman's body look repulsive: I don't want to touch icky lace. Ornament is crime: it hides the theft of my life.
Then thee were the interminable group meetins at work where the fop manager liked to hear himself speak and he brought in Dunkin Donuts: not even as high quality as the Greenies dog treats we give my wife's dog. And the employees liked them. I did not. Just don't make me attend the interminable boring meeting. Not attending the meeting at all would be real, not a decoration of the disgusting thing I did not want any part of. If I knew how to do the work, just let me do it and if I didn't I wasn't going to learn how to in the damned meeting. Dunkin Donuts are an insult for persons with taste but they had none of that so I didn't want any part of them, either.
But what one usually things of as ornament is more like makup on a woman than vacations on a job. It's permanent. Veneer is this kind of ornament. Or fashionable clothes. or hubcaps! Let's hear a big cheer for full wheel hubcaps! Hubcaps! Hubcaps! Rah! Rah! Rah! Full wheel hubcps are an extra cost option on low end models! Go hubcaps! — Hubcaps on stamped steel wheels. Hubcaps, hubcaps they're so true; hubcaps tell us what to do; hubcaps help us all to be: better Mouseketeers! Go, hubcaps! ~ What's real? (a) Stamped steel wheels wih no hubcaps, (b) Wire wheels, (c) Alloy wheels.
So waht are those people in George Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (above) doing? Does the young male wearing the odd black hat want to fuck the young female with the parasol? If yes, why not just get on with it? Maybe the female does no know she can "come", o ths thinkks that copulation is just going to be her job and the product will be babies, so she's being very careful to advertise to get as well endowed (in the purse not the crotch) a male as she can and hs put ou an RFP (Request For Procurement)?
How deprived was my ((BMcC[18-11-46-503])) childhood?
Let me make a little caricature, like saying that Richard Nixon had a Pinocchio nose when in fact he only had a big nose and was a liar.
Somebody hands me a hammer, a nail and a picture in a frame with a hanging wire on the back. I look at them. They must be something (every thing is something). Maybe I think the picture is pretty. But the person who handed me these things thought I would use the hammer to drive the nail into the wall and hang the picture on the nail. False assumptions.
Let's say I like the picture and look at it holding it in my lap. The person takes the picture and places it against the wall. Oh, so a picture can go on a well, so I don't hav et hold it in my lap to look at it. I like that idea.
Next the person holds up the nail to the wall and shows how it could hook on the wire in the back of the picture. I see: you could hang the picture on the wall with the nail. OK.
Now the person shows me that you can drive the nail into the wall with the hammer and then hang the picture on the nail and it will stay on the wall. Ah! I see: A hammer is someting I could use to drive a niail . A nail is something you can hammer into the wall and it will hold up a picture you hang on the nail. I think I've got it!
A caricature, but, like Richard Nixon being drawn with a Pinocchio nose, it's really close to the sad truth of my childrearending. Guess what I would like to apply this parable to? Erotic pleasure. What's that? I did know what having my father insert an syringe up my anus and inject a lot of soapy water was like. I did know what my mother picking my acne pimples on my face was. I did know what being tested in school on facts I had to memorize for homework the nite before was. I was not entirely ignorant. Damn them!
* * * * * * *
Let me try this another way. When I was in 11th grade had they honestly said: "Here's a blank check, kid. Now write out your education. Put up or shut up!" They might well have won.
Why? Because I did not know enough (I call it: "ignoranced", plus: intimidated wihch discouraged experimenting which might lead to learning things....) to even have an idea what I lacked but needed. (I was a poster child for the simplistic philosophical notion of the child's mind as a tabula rasa (blank slate), and nobody wrote anything of value on it, although they did write things on it like "Get in the car for your father to take you to the barber to get your hair cut.")
Asked what I wanted, I might well not have come up with anything or merit by anybody's standards, for surely if I couldn't even articulate: "Stop hurting me. Lay off!", how could I offer a comprehensive vision of the future?
By age 39 years, I was able to go up to a teacher before a class and ask if I could write an essay on a topic in which I had a passionate interest instead of, repeat: INSTEAD OF doing the assignments. And since this wa a quite remarkable teacher, the answer was: "Go do it!"
But even here I was only beginning to make progress. Today, reading the teacher's remarks on my paper from now almost 40 years ago, I see the teacher seemed to be offering me further help for advancing my cultural self formation. But, back then, I still was too ignoranced (but also too: intimidated!...) to pick up on this. If the teacher returned the paper to me today wth such a comment, I'd immediately pounce this possible oportunity. Now: What more am I still too ignoranced to be aware of?
Other than chance encounters,
we can only encounter in reality,
what we have previously encountered in fantasy.
(Gordon Hirshhorn)
POMO
Post-modernism (aka: "POMO) disgusts ms. Prof. Noam Chomsky has said that postmodernist theory is either nonsense or obscurantized trivia. The world has long been full of toadies. But postmodernism takes it a step further: instead of just quietly trying to get away with admiring the Emperor's new clothes, postmodernism proclaims everythig else is no good. Postmodernism is not dreck trying to pass for quality; postmodernism asserts only its dreck is quality, or in Mr .Venturi's words: "Less is a bore." The world's largest banana split made as an advertising promotion by some company (a POMO PROMO)? would be the best dessert ever in the history of the world. Postmodernists do not just disagree with Mies van der Rohe: they condemn him and other modernist architects for the crime of trying to raise the "taste" of the masses. The right of the people to stuff their faces with Donkin Donuts shall not be abridged!
Postmodernist theory is just words, and I argue that they just talk the talk but not walk the walk of their own theory: Do they avow that the meaning of their paycheck is impossible to determine so they will not cash it but maybe use it for toilet paper or feed it to the cat (I have a cat who in reality eats toilet paper)? I think not. If their doctor tells them they have cancer do thye avow the meaning of that is impossible to determine so they do not seek treatment for cancer? Again, I think not. To see a POMO building not by Mr. Robert Venturi, a grand allusion to 1940's Amerikitsch (POMO CZECHO DECO: The Fred and Ginger Building): click here
