Individuality Study
James Bowden
- This picture makes me want to die of cuteness every time I see it. There’s a train. There’s my child
brother. His oversized shirt commands *stand by me* as the train speeds toward the onlooker, perhaps it
begs, though the thick bubble font suggests otherwise. The train, coming right through his belly. - Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil[, for You are with me];
- David Foster Wallace has this line, or I should say David Lipsky gives him this line in his live-in interview
piece, about his worldview falling apart. Postmodernist crisis. How he felt better than everyone for seeing
through the delusion, but much worse because he couldn’t function under those premises. I used to laugh
at the caption to the far right side of the IQ bell curve graphic: “yours to lose”. I admit that I found Ethan
Hawke more likable than Jude Law in Gattaca. Suddenly, I am the uselessest person I know. - And so it turns out there is no such thing as evil: just nothingness. All bad, just misdirected intensity.
Intensity: somethingness. No such thing as valley or shadow or death: just lack. No lines. All, this. - So we have only lack. Well, that’s alright, darling: Ikea sells lack for $14.99, and that ought to tide us
over for a meal or two, though no more given inflation. All I’ve ever wanted is a roof and some food
anyway, with some consistency guarantee. Guarantee—that’s where this insecurity began! As if anything
could be enough to fix anything with absolute certainty in this [economy] - And so we are left to beg for a train. A crane? Anything to pierce this silence. Have you read Waiting
for Godot? I know I am loath to be given a train. Instead, I ask for you. - Can anyone be both the light & what reflects it? I ask. I ask, I ask, I ask.
- I do admit singularity. I do admit need. The question, then, is: where does the light begin? from whence
does it come? me, or you, or John Steinbeck, or every suicidal writer, or Mariah Carey? Probably
commercialism. Naïveté in any form possible. Have you seen people on Black Friday? The way their eyes[ light up]–
Based on a real image, and plenty of references. I don’t quite feel like explaining at the moment.