Existence (surprisingly, verb) def. Beyond red streaked shopping lists and short change at the gas station; somewhere between fresh laundry smelling of floral ersatz and a musty old book in the attic; shining stridently under the intermittent fluorescent gaze of a cheap tube, twinkling in a deserted subway; hewed into fragments and then swept away by a rickety ceiling fan in a seedy hotel room; lying crumpled, entangled in metal clips and tape, in a paper bin by the side of a polyesterene desk in a back office; amidst a forest of furtive glances and blatant stares at a jaunty night club; reflected in the slant of the eyes of a complete stranger, in the eyes of someone known, as the sun shines off them; without a background score, without rhyme. Almost without reason.
Mere description is glorification enough.
Let’s get started. A stone is a stone is a stone. It can’t be anything else. Moreover, it doesn’t have to fight to be a stone. Human existence, au contraire, is a moment by moment struggle to be, rather than a complete, inexorable reality. It is colorful, but it is by no means as glorious as it is made out to be. Existence is what man makes it. What he wills it to be. There is no higher purpose to existence than just existing, the Big Guy notwithstanding. This idea, at the outset, is scary, to be frank. Once you accept that you alone are responsible for what you do , and more importantly, what you are, not culture, not societal norms, not age old wisdom, nor any other man, you begin to realize that your hold on things isn’t all that sure. Your own radical freedom and the spartan awareness of your death overwhelms you. Sure, we bounce the idea around all the time, spewing nonchalant words that apparently seem to be saying the same thing. But we never really intend it in the same vein as this. There’s always the possibility of falling back upon some higher being, or a make believe charter of events , colloquially called fate, in case something goes wrong. Believing in existence per se, for its own sake, is sobering in one sense, and takes courage, in others.
Now, as Sartre would have you known, we don’t particularly appreciate the idea of a bare and meaningless existence. Human nature, that, to somehow view our own selves and existence as having profound implications. To avoid eye contact with this new realization, we create devices. Devices to distract, and to augment the illusion. Religion, for one. Reason, for more than one. A man named Kierkegaard believed reason and rationality was a mechanism people used to counter their existential anxieties. And how ? If I can believe that I am rational and so is everyone else, then I have nothing to fear and no reason to feel anxious about being free.
In the light of the afore detailed, sample this: kitsch/pop art has more reason than does haute. I can see where we wander into seemingly blasphemous territory, but consider reason as a form of an existing pattern. Something your mind is accustomed to. As a perception to a sense that satisfies the clamors of that sense. Something that doesn’t evoke a ’Why’ or ‘How come’ response. Something that you’re so used to it doesn’t even challenge your intellect. Like food. Herein lies the crunch. By the above token of reasoning, creations of art that have a semblance of familiarity and reason in them would be more agreeable to human nature. More easily accepted. Less demanding of thought . Well rounded justifications provided, only second hand perception needed. No rough edges, no shaky doubts. No Jean-Luc Goddard, or a T.S Eliot, or even a Tchaikovsky, for that matter. Popular culture is a fabric made out of our own fears. There’s no point in asking why people like what they ‘like’. Because there’s no honest answer. And till that moon shines, JK Rowling will be the queen bee.
