We never just sit with ourself, we are always searching for something else
I’ve been doing a lot of drawing recently, to pass the time and also for uni. And holy moly is it time consuming. To sit there and look at something for so long and draw every little bit of minutiae that the subject has to offer. To sit down for multiple hours and draw the trees in the park, draw then as it begins to get dark. It takes all your effort and concentration, just to capture something that I could so easily photograph with a camera, something that would do a much better job than I can drawing it.But I think that is what makes the drawing so incredibly special, the fact that out of all of our limited time in the day we sit and we choose to do something small, something that an iphone camera could do. Or something that I could go on the internet and find. But in my drawings that I have done they are an expression of me, there is no other thing that can be found that is something I did or you did or anyone did. It is the personification of yourself. In my drawings I can see myself not because im on the page but in the imperfections of it. There is so much depth to the simplicity of it all. And I think that is something that is slowly fading away, with the growth of technology and AI. Things are so airbrushed and enhanced. But I think that takes the humanity out of it and I think that is what makes us feel so incredibly disconnected. We see the performed versions of people one so meticulously cultivated to appease the expectations of others. But in time it becomes so repetitive everything looks the same, airbrushed and manicured to perfection.
And its not just in social media I see it in everything, in the way we date, in the way that we dress, the way that every single fucking wine bar in Melbourne looks the exact same and has the same bullshit on the menu. Can we not think anymore? are we just replicas of each other? All following the same expressionless mould that becomes so overdone it feels devoid of anything even remotely human. The digital age ignited a seismic shift where we value things based on their aesthetics and based on how they allow us to conform to the narrow chambers of trends. Rather than valuing something in its authentic imperfection. What we value now embody planned obsolescence, they aren’t meant to last because the capitalist hellscape that we live in rewards staying up to date and following microtrends. In a hyper consumerist world you can value things for their authentic imperfection because that doesn’t feed the machine instead you must like the thing on a very shallow surface level for around 1-2 months until it inevitably grows boring and you seek out something newer and the cycle begins again. That is what it wants and that’s what it rewards. Well, it rewards you until it doesn’t though. Until you wake up and you realise that you are not just a collection of all the things you own, when you wake up and you see yourself owning 20 silk scarves or 10 bags all for you to just wear the same thing in time (I am speaking about myself here). All those things are just that... things. They do not embody any soul, that comes from the human that wears them, the human that makes it their own.
And I guess its easy for me to criticise the world today, because I don’t know any different. To feel solace in a world that only exists in an idyllic dreamlike part of my mind, where people were cool and unique and shared art and were excited about the future. But I guess I don’t know if that is the reality of the past or just how I want to imagine it. But there is no point ruminating on those things because they will never ever come back, even though it is so easy to complain and mull. When I look to nature I think its so beautiful in its idiosyncrasies, the way flowers look so alien from one another as do trees and bushes. When you look at them they are wonderfully unique. So are we, there is so much depth and knowledge to all of us, one that isn’t perfect but it is true to ourselves. If we all pine to fit a mould we slowly erode ourselves of ourselves. And there is so much more in authenticity.
in time it will wilt, like how the edges are fraying on your quilt