Skyscraper Stalactites
I'm a tomb raider from heaven, I'm spelunking for office supplies
Dear reader,
The things that I am going to write about have come to my attention. You have been warned.
HARASSMENT ARCHITECTURE
A window washer plants skyscrapers in giant pancakes on the earth. As they shoot up he swings between them, scrubbing the windows mid arc with expert strokes. He is fearless. He is Tarzan. He is a Modern Artist. Obviously, he is listening to dubstep on his walkman.
Hating on “modern art” has historically been a very popular if lazy way to score points with the proles, a national pastime and to be sure extremely American. “Art? It is just blocks of color, it doesn’t MEAN anything!”1 I think it is just the bully impulse: trying to gain status by shoving down others, especially if one feels one can pull down someone of perceived higher status.2
To be clear, this doesn’t mean modern art doesn’t suck and definitely most “art” is just a pretext for money laundering, but I say that the particularly modern styles are tarnished not by nature but by the downward pointed earth: A society in cultural, moral, epistemic and intellectual freefall. The Chinese have a concept of neijuan, or involution, which is when society spirals inward, eternally increasing in friction, increasing complexity without improving quality. A society in such a tightly wrapped state will suck at everything. The issue with The Big Red Square On A Canvas isn’t that its low effort (art quality isn’t predicated on effort), its that it isn’t visionary. Novelty is a perfectly respectable domain of art, as is atmosphere.3 What we are seeing in modern art is that “artists”4 are using art to create novelty that isn’t novel, and atmospheres that aren’t even atmospheric.
Proverbs 29:18Where there is no vision, the people perish
I don’t believe modern architecture is bad; its mostly just glass geometric shapes and I think geometry is cool. It can, however, be very one note, and this is the problem! Even brutalism, brutalism, widely acclaimed as the worst architecture of all time, I think it can be done really well! It just… isn’t. Because there’s no vision, and no effort, behind it. I think a lot of these designers see that big shapes made of glass are something “the big architects” do, and so they make a big glass shape, because they want to be a big architect, and the end result is that these buildings become monuments to Satanism5 because your soul changes to match your face.
HISTORY
The little one got out of his bed to wake us with the complaint “There’s a baby dinosaur, papa!” and he wouldn’t give it up, so I advised him to feed it, as maybe it was hungry. Well luckily he had strawberries in his pajama pockets (which don’t have pockets) but we are now learning a hard lesson about feeding unwanted visitors as the baby dinosaur has returned every night. Its in the stairway. Its in his bed. It wants food. It wants to read his books. He can’t sleep with the baby dinosaur causing such a racket, its a real mess. I have checked and home depot doesn’t even sell anti-dinosaur spray, no idea what we’re going to do I don’t want to adopt it we can’t afford to feed a whole dinosaur even if its just a baby
TOM SAWYER
There’s a house near us on the daily commute that had a pride flag on their white picket fence. They’re signaling loyalty to their nationalism, its cool, whatever. But then, last year, they added a Black Lives Matter flag. a few months ago, they added a “Stop Asian Hate” flag.
I like to think of that house, in the post-apocalyptic future. Washed out paint, bombed out houses, litter and debris everywhere, rusted metal implements wasting away in the yard, but the bumper sticker fence still stands, twelve or more flags of the various proliferated causes which were multiplied by increasingly fevered activists as society spiraled inwards to decay.
I hate to act like politicians are people least of all Canadian politicians but at least one high status mannequin has breached the 11th character of the LGBT Necronomicon, meaning society is in the 11th hour6. Mannequin researchers are working on this problem relentlessly. Should they ever acquire the 12th it will summon an Elder demon,7 mark my words.
BONUS
you little rascals, I know how you people love bonuses
Not everything means everything, of course. You’re allowed to set your tolerance levels wherever you feel comfortable. Full disclosure, I love the Box People:
“If I’m not competent at anything else, I’m at least competent at insulting people!” ehh, I think you are just too lazy to find value in modern art, I don’t think that’s bad but I don’t think its something to be proud of either. Don’t begrudge people who’s bounds are more expanded in an area than yours.
I believe modern art has a lot of virtue, even the “poorer” pieces, in the right environments. Museums are blank enough spaces that each art piece can fully command the atmosphere in its vicinity.
Politicians, or at the least politician-spirited people.
Satanism, Marxism, the worst of capitalism, no worthy pursuit happens in these places
I’m not a prepper but you should have food storage, the destruction of the wicked may very well be a slow burn.
and not even a cool demon, not a Lovecraftian elder god, just the same unenergetic (and decelerating fast) sludge. An elder gay