More walks – from outside the corporate window to the slaughterhouse fringe just up the road.
The city (an involuntary friend through circumstance, nothing more) leads me to the very garden of degraded sanctimony – a place between lines of smooth marble righteousness and coffee shops filled with the vile pretence of the anonymous ‘metro-denizen’.
THE ‘METRO-DENIZEN’
He who speaks in quasi-camp tongue – a form of metro dialect that has evolved from the wave of new-age masculinity. A fad.
He who accumulates a lifetime of mediocre thoughts in the pointy ends of his brown polished leather shoes.
He who uses a shoulder bag, also made of brown leather.
He who wears a nice watch, and a chest hugging white pinstripe shirt.
From time to time I have to walk downtown and I notice these people on the footpath and about the place here and there.
THE ‘ARTIST’
On this particular day I was walking home. Moving out of the inner-city sanctum of complacently upheld superficiality (‘(s)thuperficiality’) to a more familiar stretch of town, I decided on three words – “kill the artists!”. Well, kill all the ‘artists’ who think they qualify for the title just because they are studying a Bachelor of Arts. And while they’re at it, they can strip themselves of all those bohemian rags that tend to clog up the footpath. Who are they to consider themselves any more important because everyone has to take three steps to the side to avoid their rudely protruding frocks!
I walked in my front door to these thought. My anger was all consuming. They all needed a chill pill and so did I, which smoothed things over for me eventually. Two more morsels from this strawberry flavoured staple and I was plugged directly into the universal source of contentment and understanding. Anger turned to sympathy and sadness at their stranded position ontop of their self-made egoic skyscrapers. I learnt metro-speak (all four vernaculars) in order to communicate with these people I now loved. I was sensitive, trendy and accepted. I spoke with a softness of tongue and lip and made some well-placed comments about the need for more initiative in the Friday food party at work.
I wanted to understand these people. I wanted my eyes open and ears listening to their suffering.
And to the artists I said: it doesn’t matter if you don’t paint or draw. Expression comes from the heart, from the soul. True art needs no medium. Let not your delusions or silly clothes be a hindrance to this for we all have a heart and we all have a soul. Be the truth you think you see.
But you can’t keep eating strawberries all your life. Indeed I woke the next morning (after many phantasmic sub-thoughts), and while devouring my bowl of red wine and muesli I could not help but think…these people really are just fake!
