A Cubist Perspective on Life

Les Demoiselles d''Avignon

They say that possession is nine tenths of the law. But isn’t it really perspective that really matters? Cubist painters had no monopoly on the notion that the canvas of life could be seen from unforeseen angles. Your ANS (autonomic nervous system) is affected by stimulae that then go on to trigger a host of reactions and it can be like dark storm clouds moving in on a sunny day. Also there's the serotonin which is flowing in the synaptic cleft between neurons of  of the brain. We take SSRI’s (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) to facilitate the flow of a chemical which has such an enormous effect on mood. The fact is, and it’s hard to truthfully take ownership of something which is likely to make you feel that your feet are firmly planted in the clouds, that you're often a sleepwalker who has little idea of what forces outside the realm of consciousness are creating your immediate conception of the world. The problem is that you're likely to make life changing decisions at moments of great emotional intensity (either of a loving or hateful variety), without having any knowledge that your cup literally runneth over, i.e. you're so filled with one untenable notion or another that there's no way to go but forward or in the case of ending something, backward. You've undoubtedly heard people who're disenchanted with a relationship express disbelief that they could ever have been interested in such an ogre or ogress. Indeed! In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Kierkegaard famously has his character Johannes Climacus iterate, “Subjectivity is Truth.” But what is the truth in all this excess? Is it simply providing the idealizations that allow instinct to avoid the shoals of consciousness? Is it Darwinian natural selection? Or are we all prone to bouts of temporary insanity--a condition that's euphemistically termed, "living life to the fullest."

Je Refuse

Emile Zola

There was Zola’s famous defense of Dreyfus, J’accuse, but now a new screed threatens to be the epitaph of an era, Je Refuse. Passed around the way banned Russian poetry or samizdat was during the era of Soviet repression, Je refuse has become a virtual manual for living or not living amongst denizens of New York’s, black attired, downtown, death absorbed underground culture. Just as Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther provoked a rash of copycat suicides during the height of the romantic era, Je Refuse is creating a rash of revulsion at the pretension and hypocrisy of existence amongst would be literati, fashionistas and galleristas. Je Refuse is a collective scream of agony by these refuseniks at the pretension, grandiosity and narcissism that accompanies virtually every creative act. In particular the seemingly innocuous creative act is revealed to have addictive affects on the brain, flooding it as it does with serotonin--accompanied by an ensuring expectation of celebrity and fame. Such serotonin rushes only place the unwitting creative on a treadmill where he or she is constantly forced to produce new “work” which will in turn unleash the same self-centered expectations and hopes that feed what now has become a habit. Je Rufuse is unflinching in its condemnation of arts and creative writing programs which it calls crack houses, depending as they do on an endless supply of hopeful young artists, writers and fashionistas who are willing to sell both their bodies and their souls in order to satisfy their outlandish needs. This growing generation of art whores has grown so large and demanding that there aren’t enough easels in art institutes, cubicles in writing schools, not to speak of galleries or magazines sufficient to publish even a fraction of their work. Such a buyer’s market where supply so far exceeds demand has created an atmosphere of depravity that threatens to boil over into a caldron of resentment, making Black Friday, the day many American are trampled to death on their way into discount stores look like a cake walk. Signed by over 1000  fictional artists, writers and models, on the eve of a fall season of art openings, fashion events and book releases parties, this spoof which exists only in the feverish imagination of a solitary malcontent, takes on the excesses of creativity (weird clothes, eccentric behavior, terminal uniqueness, self-importance) the way Occupy Wall Street has attacked the inequities of capitalism.