‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.’
e e cummings
For far too long I succumbed to conformity: a government job, a house in the suburbs, weekend barbecues. I struggled to fit in, to find anything in common with acquaintances who talked footy, to neat local heritage suburbia, to not being me.
I’d much rather be in my studio.
It has taken a long time to create the conditions where I can feel that I am properly Simon. Still things to work on, but closer to me than I used to be.
I have found that it is a little alienating, partly because I am an introvert, but mostly because society doesn’t really understand artists. Most people think artists don’t have a ‘real job’, that we are just in our ‘happy place’, and that art is easily recognised copies of nature. So how can I say what I do if I’m asked? How do I describe the work I make to someone not artistically educated? What can I talk about?
The banality of typical suburban life horrifies me. Maybe purgatory is being forced to sit on a chocolate brown velour sofa and eat ready meals while watching the footy with misogynistic mates who debate the merits of holdens vs fords while wearing trackies and drinking West End. Cliche, yes, but I’ve been surrounded by just that in the past.
Am I being pretentious, elitist. I don’t think so, just honest. Why settle? Why drag ourselves from the pub to quiz nights to sports events to barbecues to Friday night shopping over and over again without ever looking any deeper? All the while being told that success is more money and expensive cars and houses, the very things that are meaningless and attainable by only the top few percent of earners.
I think our mundane cheek-by-jowl architecture and lack of green spaces and cheap BigW clothing and car-centric lifestyle all play a part in numbing us. It’s easy, to just go along with the socially-accepted norm. And cheaper. In societies with high costs of living people will always look for less expensive food and housing. The hidden cost is lower health and a disconnect from nature, and a loss of inspiring living environments.
Ignore FB et al, it’s just another example of dumbed-down banality. Died becomes ‘un-alived’, sex becomes s*x. There is little real discussion of important events, instead people post fake things and call other things fake, or spew hate in 15 second bites. AI will just make it worse. It is a soul-destroying cesspit. Being yourself online is, at best ignored, or else trolled.
Society expects certain behaviours, ways of dressing, types of living. It’s so easy to step outside of the narrow parameters and get raised eyebrows. My spectacles make people stare and they are not even very out there. And I live in a moderate western society. Thank goodness I am not a gay or female in an arab country, for example.
I need to express myself in my way, and I am fortunate to be able to do so. I am lucky to live in an interesting environment and have a close circle of friends who share similar sensibilities. So I have the space to be myself.