Category: think

If you were forced to wear one outfit over and over again, what would it be?

Probably jeans and t-shirt but i would be very worried because this would mean the world had turned into a very dark place.

The relationship between fashion and totalitarianism reveals itself in how authoritarian regimes consistently target personal expression through dress. Consider how the Nazis required Jewish people to wear identifying badges, or how Mao’s China pushed everyone toward identical blue and gray uniforms. These weren’t just practical policies – they were deliberate erasures of individuality that made dissent and difference immediately visible.

Totalitarian systems understand that clothing is one of our most intimate forms of daily self-expression. When you control what people wear, you’re not just regulating fabric and color – you’re regulating identity itself. The uniform becomes a constant reminder of the state’s power over the most basic aspects of personal choice. It eliminates the small daily acts of creativity and self-determination that keep individual spirit alive.

Fashion, even in its most mundane forms, represents a kind of micro-democracy. When you choose your morning outfit, you’re making decisions about how you want to present yourself to the world, what mood you’re in, what activities you’re planning, even what weather you’re expecting. These tiny choices accumulate into a larger sense of agency and personal autonomy.

Authoritarian regimes also weaponize dress codes to create and enforce social hierarchies. The Khmer Rouge’s black pajama uniforms weren’t just about conformity – they were about breaking down previous social distinctions and creating a new order where only party loyalty mattered. Similarly, school uniform policies in their most extreme forms can prefigure more serious restrictions on personal freedom.

Perhaps most insidiously, fashion control works because it feels so trivial that resistance seems petty. Who wants to die on the hill of wearing colorful socks? Yet history shows us repeatedly that these “small” freedoms often serve as canaries in the coal mine. When societies begin restricting personal expression in dress, it’s frequently a precursor to much more serious erosions of liberty.

The psychological impact runs deep too. Getting dressed each morning is an act of self-creation, a daily ritual where we compose ourselves for the world. Remove that choice, and you’ve damaged something fundamental about human dignity and self-worth. The enforced sameness creates a kind of learned helplessness that extends far beyond clothing.

The relationship between fashion and totalitarianism becomes even more chilling when we examine its manifestations across history, literature, and film. These examples reveal how clothing control operates as both symbol and instrument of oppression.

Historical Examples

The interwar period saw a proliferation of “shirt movements” across Europe Shirt Movements in Interwar Europe: a Totalitarian Fashion – fascist groups that expressed their ideology through colored uniforms. Hitler’s Brown Shirts, Mussolini’s Black Shirts, and Franco’s Blue Shirts weren’t just practical clothing but visual manifestos of authoritarian identity. These uniforms served multiple purposes: they created instant group identification, intimidated opponents, and transformed political rallies into military-style displays of power.

Nazi Germany provides perhaps the most systematic example of fashion as totalitarian control. The regime didn’t just require Jews to wear yellow stars – it regulated clothing across society. The Hitler Youth had specific uniforms that emphasized conformity and militaristic values. Women were encouraged to abandon cosmetics and “foreign” fashions in favor of traditional German dress that supported Nazi ideals of motherhood and racial purity.

In Mao’s China, the blue and gray “Mao suits” became virtually mandatory, erasing centuries of Chinese sartorial tradition. During the Cultural Revolution, wearing anything remotely Western or colorful could mark you as a counter-revolutionary. The uniformity wasn’t accidental – it was designed to eliminate visual markers of class, regional identity, and individual taste.

Literary Explorations

George Orwell’s “1984” remains the most powerful literary examination of totalitarian clothing control. In Big Brother’s regime, Winston Smith lives “a sordid dehumanized life devoid of all the traditional sources of happiness” Slavery in Modern Clothing in Orwell’s 1984 – Crisis Magazine, and clothing plays a crucial role in this dehumanization. The Party members wear identical blue overalls, while the telescreen constantly monitors even the most private moments of dressing. Julia’s small act of rebellion – wearing makeup and fixing her hair – becomes a revolutionary gesture precisely because it asserts individual identity against the state’s demand for uniformity.

Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” uses clothing as a central metaphor for totalitarian control. The red robes and white bonnets of the handmaids aren’t just uniforms but symbols of reduced humanity – they transform women into walking wombs while stripping away personal identity. The color coding extends throughout Gilead society: blue for wives, green for marthas, creating a visual hierarchy that makes resistance immediately visible.

Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” explores how even subtle conformity in dress reflects deeper intellectual conformity. The firefighters’ uniforms with their salamander symbols and the identical leisure wear of the general population mirror the mental uniformity the state seeks to impose.

Cinematic Representations

Film has powerfully visualized fashion’s role in totalitarian control. Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927) presciently showed how clothing could divide society into rigid castes – the identical work clothes of the underground laborers versus the elegant fashions of the surface elite.

More recent films like “The Hunger Games” series use fashion as a central element of totalitarian critique. The Capitol’s obsession with extreme, ever-changing fashion contrasts sharply with the drab, practical clothing of the districts, illustrating how fashion can become both a tool of oppression and a symbol of decadent excess.

“V for Vendetta” demonstrates how uniform iconography can be reclaimed as resistance – the Guy Fawkes masks transforming anonymous conformity into anonymous rebellion.

Subtler Controls

The most insidious examples often involve seemingly voluntary conformity. Corporate dress codes, school uniforms, and social pressure to dress “appropriately” can prefigure more serious restrictions. Even democratic societies wrestle with how much clothing choice to allow – from debates over religious dress to workplace appearance standards.

The psychological impact appears consistently across these examples. When totalitarian systems control clothing, they’re not just regulating fabric – they’re conditioning minds to accept that the most intimate daily choices aren’t really choices at all. The person who accepts that the state can dictate their morning wardrobe has already surrendered a crucial piece of mental autonomy.

What makes these historical, literary, and cinematic examples so disturbing is how they reveal the progression from small restrictions to total control. It starts with “reasonable” regulations – safety, unity, tradition – and gradually expands until the very concept of personal choice in appearance becomes foreign. The uniform becomes not just what you wear, but who you are.

Who understands Me but Me

They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine,
they lock my cage, so I live without going anywhere,
they take each last tear I have, I live without tears,
they take my heart and rip it open, I live without heart,
they take my life and crush it, so I live without a future,
they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends,
they stop up each hope, so I have no passage out of hell,
they give me pain, so I live with pain,
they give me hate, so I live with my hate,
they have changed me, and I am not the same man,
they give me no shower, so I live with my smell,
they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers,
who understands me when I say this is beautiful?
who understands me when I say I have found other freedoms?

I cannot fly or make something appear in my hand,
I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble,
I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love,
my beauty,
I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears,
I am stubborn and childish,
in the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred,
I practice being myself,
and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me,
they were goaded out from under rocks in my heart
when the walls were built higher,
when the water was turned off and the windows painted black.
I followed these signs
like an old tracker and followed the tracks deep into myself,
followed the blood-spotted path,
deeper into dangerous regions, and found so many parts of myself,
who taught me water is not everything,
and gave me new eyes to see through walls,
and when they spoke, sunlight came out of their mouths,
and I was laughing at me with them,
we laughed like children and made pacts to always be loyal,
who understands me when I say this is beautiful?

Who Understands Me but Me by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Most people, and I am, obviously, most people as well, don’t fully understand how much their perception of reality is shaped by their own emotions, biases, and past experiences. The line between “knowing” and “feeling” is far blurrier than we often acknowledge. Much of what we consider “knowledge” is deeply entangled with emotion, intuition, and social conditioning. This is why debates over facts can feel so personal. They can even seem existential.

Accepting that much of what we “know” is provisional, socially shaped, or emotionally charged is the first step toward clearer thinking. But, at times, taking this first step just feels too much of an effort.

 The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

References

Cargo Cult Science

by RICHARD P. FEYNMAN

Some remarks on science, pseudoscience, and learning how to not fool yourself. Caltech’s 1974 commencement address.

Self love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting

Dear Nadine,

I haven’t written letters in so long that I’m not quite sure how to do this.

If you have made it as far into the future, I suppose you have managed to survive the anxiety and anger you were feeling when everything around you defied a logical explanation. Maybe you have learned that things are not as extreme as you perceive them. Although, being a Leo, I’m intrigued how you have managed to curb your tendency to overreact.

If you have made it as far into the future, I hope you have outgrown therapy or, at least, have found a therapist that does not seem to need help more than you do and, managed to open up and allowed yourself to be helped.

If you have made it as far into the future, I hope you danced as much and often as you could and that you have managed to read all the books you wanted to read and kept your to read pile always high.

If you made it as far into the future, I hope you have understood how to deal with the pain of losing loved ones and that you have kept your friends close by. I hope that living alone has not been too much of a burden and that you have enjoyed your freedom.

If you made it this far into the future, I guess you have mastered your horrible tendency to procrastinate. Maybe you followed through with all your plans and are now living in some Greek island surrounded by blue.

I hope you have always carried with you all the songs that have helped life make sense and that your inner soundtrack keeps growing.

I hope you have not gotten lost inside yourself. I hope you still remember.

I hope you have kept the passion and that you have not become indifferent to people, to beauty. I hope you still believe that elegance is a form of resistance.

I hope you have never stayed quiet in the face of injustice, that you have helped others and, that your world is much better than the one right now. I hope you haven’t given in.

I hope you have owned your choices and that you have always insisted on being the Sun and never a black hole.

Even if you do not look like the AI projected version of yourself, I hope your eyes keep showing that your name is Hope instead of impossible.

I hope you still like poetry even if you have never managed to write a single line of verse.

Dear future self
By JP Howard

If  I should ever forget you,
this is my love note to you

You were loved
You were somebody’s lover
You were loving
You held parts of all the women you loved,
somewhere deep in your generous heart

You were heartbroken
You were a heartbreaker too, girl
Sometimes you were heartache
Your heart never grew heavy though,
I remember that about you

You were silly
You were giggles
You were somebody’s Mama
You always wanted to be a Mama
Mama was the greatest title you ever had

You were jealous as fuck
You were selfish
You were sad
You held other folks’ sadness,
especially Mama’s sadness
You buried that deep in our heart

You were swag girl
Leo charm and confidence
Couldn’t nobody crack you up
as much as yourself

You were cute and you were vain
You wore lipstick under your mask
during a pandemic
because you were cute and you were vain

You loved your family
Your lover loved you for decades
Sometimes you would ask yourself,
How I get so lucky, girl?

You loved people
You were at home on a stage in front of a mic,
sitting with community in a circle,
or talking one on one with a friend
for hours on end in a coffee shop

You were a poet
You are a poet
This is your love poem to yourself, Juliet

References
Henry the V, Act 2, scene 4

Whatever you say

Say nothing


For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.

So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of slowly dying.
The day spent hunting pig 
Or holding a garden-party,

Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.

Philip Larkin, Nothing to be Said

Forever alive, forever forward

In a collection that’s grown to nearly 200 pairs (I couldn’t write on budgeting even if I was paid to do it), choosing a favorite seems almost unfair although not difficult.

When I look across what I wished was a carefully curated kingdom of footwear but it’s probably just a sign of some kind of derangement , my eyes always land on the same pair: my custom Converse All Stars emblazoned with Walt Whitman’s timeless words, “resist much, obey little.”

The customization process was simple enough—Converse’s website, a font choice, a color scheme that wouldn’t overshadow the message. But the impact was anything but simple. 

Whitman’s phrase—tucked into his poem “Caution”—spoke to something essential in me. A reminder that blind conformity is the enemy of growth. That questioning authority isn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but a necessary component of being and feeling alive.

“Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.”

I received them in April 2024. In May I took them to New Orleans—my soul city. There’s something poetic about first breaking in shoes dedicated to resistance in a place that has itself resisted time, tragedy, and homogenization. Walking as if dancing, feeling the rhythm of this marvellous city, breathing music from morning to night, watching the white canvas collect the character of a city that refuses to surrender its identity—it felt like a perfect baptism for both the shoes and for me. I always feel more alive in New Orleans. I always feel I get to be myself anew.

They carried me through heartbreak in Greece, they were with me in Wembley to celebrate life with a friend that took me to see Bruce Springsteen and 60 thousand people whit hungry hearts, they got to see Ian Astbury who no longer is my teenage crush but can still stir something when singing about paradises in shattered dreams. They take me to work when I’m feeling disappointed and a bit defiant.

They remind me that authentic self-expression isn’t always comfortable, but it’s always worthwhile. That small acts of personal courage accumulate into a life of integrity. That sometimes the loudest statements are made in the quietest ways. That  resistance sometimes it’s as simple as a daily choice to live by your own compass.

References

Song of the Open Road

Walt Whitman’s Caution

Living

In Oliver Hermanus’s “Living” (2022), we witness a remarkable cultural translation that spans continents and decades. The film, starring Bill Nighy in a masterfully restrained performance, reimagines Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece “Ikiru,” itself inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” This layered adaptation creates a fascinating meditation on bureaucracy, mortality, and the search for meaning in one’s life.

I watched this movie last Monday, January 6, and since I couldn’t come up with any New Year’s resolutions, I figured I’d use this movie as a bit of a wake-up call during that time of year when SAD usually kicks in, leaving me feeling as bare as a dormant tree. It will serve as a reminder that there is more to life than killing time and adjusting your reactions to whatever is thrown at you.

The film transposes Kurosawa’s narrative from post-war Tokyo to 1950s London with remarkable precision. The setting shift illuminates fascinating parallels between Japanese and British societies – both deeply hierarchical, bound by tradition, and struggling with the weight of their own formalities. Where Kurosawa’s film depicted Japanese bureaucracy through the lens of post-war reconstruction, Hermanus explores British civil service during the dawn of the welfare state.

The film’s portrayal of working life in 1950s London is meticulously crafted. The film’s opening credits sequence serves as a masterful visual overture to its themes of conformity and class structure. Shot from above, we witness a mesmerizing choreography of dark-suited men crossing London Bridge, their bowler hats creating a hypnotic pattern of black circles moving in mechanical precision. This aerial view transforms individual civil servants into an abstract pattern – a visual metaphor for the system’s absorption of individual identity.

The sequence pays homage to the famous “Umbrella Scene” in Kurosawa’s “Ikiru,” but recontextualizes it for 1950s London. Where Kurosawa used umbrellas to suggest the anonymity of bureaucratic life, Hermanus employs the bowler hat – a quintessentially British symbol of middle-class respectability. The camera’s careful composition turns these hats into a kind of musical notation, with the men’s movements creating a visual rhythm that echoes the mechanical nature of their working lives.

The credits themselves, appearing in a clean, period-appropriate typeface, float above this sea of conformity. Their precise placement and timing work in concert with the movement below, creating a multi-layered opening that establishes both the film’s aesthetic restraint and its concern with systems and structures.

As the sequence progresses, we begin to distinguish Mr. Williams among the crowd – a feat that becomes significant only in retrospect, as we watch him gradually break free from this uniformity throughout the film. The way he emerges from this abstract pattern of hats and suits foreshadows his journey from anonymity to individuality.

The Public Works department where Mr. Williams (Nighy) serves as a senior civil servant becomes a microcosm of British society. The carefully arranged desks, the ritualistic shuffling of papers, and the precise adherence to tea times all speak to a system where order masks stagnation.

Costume designer Sandy Powell crafts a visual hierarchy that speaks volumes about social status and personal transformation. The film opens with a sea of identical bowler hats and dark suits flooding London Bridge – a powerful image of conformity within the civil service. Mr. Williams’s bowler hat serves as a symbol of his position and the rigid system he inhabits. When illness forces him to leave it behind, its absence marks the beginning of his transformation.

The subsequent adoption of a Borsalino hat represents more than a mere change in headwear. The Italian-made fedora, with its softer lines and continental associations, symbolizes Mr. Williams’s gradual liberation from the constraints of his former life. This subtle costume change speaks to a broader rebellion against the suffocating propriety of British bureaucracy.

The precision in costume extends beyond headwear. The gradual loosening of Mr. Williams’s tie, the eventual unbuttoning of his collar, and even the slight dishevelment of his usually impeccable suit all chart his journey from rigid conformity to a more authentic existence. These changes are particularly striking against the unchanged appearance of his colleagues, who remain locked in their sartorial prison.

Wearing Existence: Costume as Existential Metaphor

The costume design in both “Ikiru” and “Living” serves as a powerful visual metaphor for the existential journey that Tolstoy first explored in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Each film uses clothing to express both the weight of social conformity and the gradual awakening to authentic existence, though they do so through distinctly different cultural vocabularies.

The Uniform of Non-Existence

In both films, the protagonists’ initial costumes represent what Tolstoy called a life lived “most ordinarily” – a form of spiritual death disguised as propriety:

– Watanabe’s dark suits and hat in “Ikiru” reflect the standardization of post-war Japanese bureaucracy, where Western business attire represented both modernization and loss of traditional identity

– Mr. Williams’s bowler hat and precisely tailored suit in “Living” embody the British civil service’s rigid hierarchy and emotional suppression

These initial costumes serve as armor against life itself, much as Ivan Ilyich’s dedication to propriety served as a shield against authentic experience.

The Gradual Undressing of the Soul

Both films use subtle changes in costume to chart their protagonists’ awakening:

In “Ikiru”:

– Watanabe’s gradual dishevelment mirrors his breaking free from social constraints

– His hat, initially perfectly positioned, begins to sit askew

– The loosening of his tie reflects his loosening grip on social conventions

– His final appearance in the swing scene, where his clothing moves freely in the snow, suggests a return to childlike authenticity

In “Living”:

– The loss of the bowler hat marks the first crack in Mr. Williams’s facade

– The Borsalino hat represents not just rebellion but a conscious choice of a new identity

– The subtle relaxing of his suit’s precision mirrors his internal liberation

– His final outfit maintains dignity while suggesting comfort in his own skin

The way each film handles this sartorial journey reflects deep cultural differences:

– Watanabe’s transformation involves a more complete dishevelment, reflecting Japanese culture’s understanding of liberation as a form of surrender

– Mr. Williams’s changes are more subtle, suggesting the British capacity for rebellion within conformity

– Both contrast with Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, whose physical deterioration serves as the primary metaphor for his spiritual transformation

Class, Clothing, and Authenticity

Each film uses costume to explore how class structures inhibit authentic existence:

In “Ikiru”:

– The contrast between bureaucrats’ Western suits and the working-class traditional clothing

– The young office girl’s modern dress representing post-war freedom

– Watanabe’s final dishevelment as a rejection of class-based propriety

In “Living”:

– The precise gradations of suit quality marking civil service ranks

– The young woman’s colorful clothing suggesting life outside the system

– Mr. Williams’s Borsalino as a subtle sign of continental sophistication challenging British class rigidity

The Final Garment

Both films end with powerful costume statements:

– Watanabe dies in his loosened, snow-covered clothing, suggesting a final liberation from social constraints

– Mr. Williams’s final appearance shows him in his modified uniform – the Borsalino replacing the bowler – indicating that true liberation can occur within, rather than in rejection of, one’s social role

These costume choices echo Tolstoy’s message that awareness of death can lead to authentic life, but they do so through carefully chosen cultural idioms. The Japanese dishevelment and the British modified propriety represent different paths to the same truth: that genuine existence requires shedding, or at least transforming, the uniforms society demands we wear.

Beyond the Physical

In all three works, clothing serves as a metaphor for what Tolstoy called the “fictional life” – the life lived according to external expectations rather than internal truth. Both films use costume design to visualize what Tolstoy could only describe: the gradual awakening from this fiction to authenticity.

The genius of both adaptations lies in recognizing that this universal journey must be expressed through particular cultural languages of dress and deportment. In doing so, they make Tolstoy’s abstract existential concerns tangible and immediate, showing how the great questions of existence play out in the minute details of how we present ourselves to the world.

The Existential Thread: From Tolstoy to Kurosawa to Hermanus

At the heart of “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” Tolstoy poses a devastating question: “What if my whole life has been wrong?” This existential inquiry echoes through both “Ikiru” and “Living,” each adaptation finding its own cultural language to explore this universal concern. The visual grammar of both films serves this central question, though they approach it through distinctly different cultural prisms.

Tolstoy’s novella examined this question through the lens of 19th-century Russian society, where Orthodox Christianity and aristocratic values shaped the understanding of a “proper life.” Kurosawa translated this inquiry into post-war Japanese society, where questions of purpose became particularly acute amid reconstruction and changing values. Hermanus relocates it to 1950s Britain, where class structures and emotional restraint created their own form of spiritual imprisonment.

In each iteration, the protagonist’s awakening to life’s true meaning is preceded by a recognition of social performance. Ivan Ilyich realizes his life has been lived “most simply and most ordinarily and therefore most terribly.” Kurosawa’s Watanabe finds that his decades of stamping papers have produced nothing of value. Mr. Williams discovers that his perfect embodiment of civil service propriety has been a form of living death.

Visual Languages of Awakening

Where Tolstoy used precise prose to dissect his protagonist’s spiritual crisis, both films employ careful visual strategies to externalize this internal journey:

– Kurosawa uses stark contrast and dramatic weather to reflect Watanabe’s emotional states, with snow and rain serving as powerful metaphors for cleansing and renewal.

– Hermanus employs the gradual softening of visual rigidity – from the geometric patterns of bowler hats to the free-flowing movement of children in the playground – to show Mr. Williams’s liberation from social constraints.

Both films share a crucial understanding: that the answer to Tolstoy’s terrible question lies not in grand gestures but in small, meaningful actions. Watanabe’s playground and Mr. Williams’s park represent more than public works projects – they are physical manifestations of their creators’ breakthrough to authentic living.

The Weight of Time

All three works deal poignantly with time’s passage:

– Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich realizes too late that his life has been misspent

– Kurosawa’s Watanabe races against time to complete his playground

– Mr. Williams’s measured transformation suggests that even a brief period of authentic living can redeem a lifetime of conformity

Cultural Translations of Truth

What makes both film adaptations remarkable is how they maintain Tolstoy’s essential truth while speaking through their own cultural idioms:

– Kurosawa expresses it through the lens of giri (duty) transformed into meaningful action

– Hermanus finds it in the British capacity for quiet revolution within seemingly rigid structures

Legacy and Memory

Each work concludes by examining how others remember the protagonist:

– Tolstoy’s mourners are primarily concerned with promotion opportunities

– Kurosawa’s bureaucrats briefly celebrate Watanabe before returning to their old ways

– Hermanus’s colleagues maintain their reserve, but with a new understanding glimpsed through their constrained emotions

Yet in all three versions, there’s a small group who truly understand the transformation they witnessed. This understanding becomes a kind of torch, passed from Tolstoy’s pages through Kurosawa’s lens to Hermanus’s camera – the possibility that one life, properly lived even for a short time, can illuminate the way for others.

In the end, “Living” accomplishes something remarkable: it takes Tolstoy’s existential question and Kurosawa’s humanist answer and filters them through the precise visual language of British society, creating something both culturally specific and universally resonant. Through its careful attention to visual detail – from the geometric patterns of bowler hats to the free movement of the final scenes – it shows how the great questions of existence can be explored through the smallest details of human behavior and social custom.

The film reminds us that the search for meaning, while universal, is always experienced through the particular – through specific hats and suits, through precise ways of moving through space, through culturally determined ways of showing or hiding emotion. In doing so, it achieves what great art should: it makes the universal deeply personal, and the personal universally understood, making you question (again) what is after all the purpose of living.

References and stills

Scene by Green Ikiru

Scene by Green Living

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (full text via University of Minnesota Twin Cities)

Learning about Movies episode 78

I’d rather stop

IMG_0275

This is not a good photo. I couldn’t get out of the car and attempt a proper photo, the letter box stands right by a traffic light and words on walls and urban equipments tend to vanish quickly, so you get them when you spot them.

Pause and reflect on the [your / mine]  path 

That’s how it reads to me. That’s what’s lacking, the time to stop and try to see the direction.

It’s only human

Our century is so shallow, its desires scattered so widely, our knowledge so encyclopedic, that we are absolutely unable to focus our designs on any single object and hence, willy-nilly, we fragment all our works into trivia and charming toys. We have the marvellous gift of making everything insignificant.

Nikolai Gogol (1809 – 1852)

Shallow

One too many

Eyes blinded by the fog of things

cannot see truth.

Ears deafened by the din of things

cannot hear truth.

Brains bewildered by the whirl of things

cannot think truth.

Hearts deadened by the weight of things

cannot feel truth.

Throats choked by the dust of things

cannot speak truth.

Harold Bell Wright, The Uncrowned King

And yet, there is no amount of self help books, “keep it simple” formulas or declutter instructions that will tame the maximalist in me.  

A euphemism for self-indulgence most probably. 

Glitter

Back to black

I have a closet just for black clothes. I also have another one for all other mainly dark colours and reds but these never feel so true to myself as black does. I can’t remember why I started wearing just black but for a long time it felt like the most stylish and comfortable solution to the morning rush of getting dressed. Chic, sophisticated people tend to wear black,  so I’m told by a million glossy magazines, books and film imagery.  Apparently, I also tend to look smarter dressed in black.  I can always try to project the existentialist intellectual that lives in me since my teenage years. I grew up during the post-punk, Gothic 80s and have never managed to be Goth even though I still nurture a special admiration for the whole commitment that kind of aesthetics entails. Some of my most glorious errors are a nod to this sumptuous dark world.

Albeit all the experimentation and character creations around my “cinematic self”, I have never been truly convinced that my clothes could become the visible form assumed by the way I chose to define my public persona. At least not in the sort of spectacular, larger than life way I envisaged.

As a spectacular sub-culture, Goth provides a unique insight into the experience of extraordinary “self-authorship” because of the dramatic and unconventional nature of the external self-constructions of individual identity through dress and personal grooming. Whether or not you are drawn to the “dark side of the human heart”, it is almost impossible to remain indifferent to the dramatic manipulation of appearance and the fantastic narrative that accompanies Goth fashion as an illustration of the  extraordinary dimension the stories one writes for oneself can attain, allowing space for the creation of a “historic utopia” as far removed as possible from everyday life.

As superficial as it might seem, fashionable self-construction is not only about “the look”.While designing an aspirational self, fashion “props” allow the individual to construct a personal “bricolage” which gives the access to their extraordinary self via their ability to transform, and in some cases contest conventional social categories through their glamorising discourses (Thompson and Haytko, 1997). While this might not be a characteristic of the Goth subculture alone, both its cultural pervasiveness and the recurring concern with the distinction between authenticity and depth on the one hand, and a fascination with surface and performance on the other, make Gothic a postmodern archetype of “stylistic resistance”. An is this very stylistic resistance that perpetuates its fashionable allure.

Late capitalism produces the desire for an aura that is felt to be prior to or beyond commodification, for a lived authenticity to be found in privileged forms of individual expression and collective identification. For as long as goth seems to answer that desire, it will thrive as an undead subculture: forging communities on the margins of cities, suburbs, campuses and cyberspace; defying constraints on gender and sexuality; and imbuing the stuff of everyday life with the allure of stylistic resistance.

Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Michael Bibby

While Goth as a subculture has not faded away, the increasing heterogeneity in styles and fashion and a world that seems to no longer produce a coherent dominant culture or the cultural values against which resistance might be expressed, have transformed subcultural style in an ideologically vacant performance of over substance (David Muggleton, 2000). The incorporation of a subculture in mainstream society through commodification is not exclusive of Goth but its enduring resonance with contemporary fears, desires and anxieties might have exhausted itself: where once Gothic provided a space in which the dark dreams of the Enlightenment could be realized, now it simply exposes the void at the heart of an advanced consumer culture. The seemingly inescapable Gothic now functions as the perfectly protean postmodern commodity

All of the varied elements that once defined street style are now high fashion’s greatest source of inspiration. At Jun Takahashi’s Undercover and John Galliano’s Margiela in particular, they have been incorporated in dazzling and inspiring ways. But sometimes the embrace of street chic comes across as a mere flourish tacked on to spice a bourgeois brand with a bit of danger, to make a woman with a coddled existence feel a bit more in touch. It is an attempt to buy cool.

Robin Givhan

By taking the style, trends, dress, music etc of the subcultures and popularizing them so that they lose their exclusivity and gradually become mass-produced commodities made available to all, the mainstream cultural industry dilutes or annihilates specific meanings transforming authenticity in “ready to wear” commoditized lifestyles subject to the same cultural logic of “self-help narratives” and consummerism impulses. Being authentic, as La Agrado would say, does not come cheap and  you are all the more authentic the more you resemble what you have dreamed for yourself . And this is a rare gift.


References

P.S. While I am selling my 80s vintage gothic errors, a part of me is still reluctant. But then I am not sure if “Gothic Chic” is authentic in me.

Radical Authenticity