Essay

I’m a pessimist, a “glass half empty” kind of guy. I find myself hating everything but I don’t worry about it, I am actually quite optimistic about my pessimism. I believe it serves a purpose. The human race has gotten complacent in its old age and our marvels of modern science do nothing but serve to make our lives more sedentary and open for consumption. People succumb to this rather easily seeing as how overloaded our daily lives are; we are under the impression that the world owes something to us and we should have the ability to sit on our widening asses as information penetrates our skulls. But the truth is that you have to work for it.

This is how Republicans get elected to office, the medium of film gets turned into a 2 hour daycare for our brains, and art gets lazy. I don’t believe that I am as harsh on the world as everyone else is just sheepish. When I think about Mason Gross’ visual arts program I am overcome with a sinking feeling in the core of my stomach. Was it all worth it to come here? Sometimes I feel we don’t let people grow, but rather allow them to surround themselves with copies of themselves to help dig a pit they can never get out of. That’s the heart of the problem, where is MY copy?

I deal with this issue primarily in the live section of my thesis by means of a conversation with my harsh subconscious. However, it will not become a therapy session between me and my brain for all to bare witness, but rather a loving jab at my own deficiencies to better understand what has happened to me over the last three years. My performance will be as light hearted and sarcastic as the actual conversations within my head, and this is to both show how I really am and to not hit the crowd with some heavy shit.

That’s what I think I have in common with Tony Oursler. There can be a message in humor that doesn’t need to be bogged down with drama even if you are appealing to a viewer’s emotion. However, where Tony is dealing with existentialism I am dealing with my boiling hate for most people. I rarely apologize for it, though, because I know I am not alone but rather just overwhelmingly vocal about it. Every time you see a slob at the bank and hope they don’t get ahead of you, I’m there. Every time you see someone with more piercings on their face than skin and want to shake them like a rattle to hear their jingling mistakes sound off like wind chimes, I’m there. The difference is that my bar is obnoxiously high to the point where I only occasionally find myself even remotely uninterested enough to not point out someone’s flaws to myself. When I see someone with a fitted baseball cap, I rage. When I see a white guy eating Chinese food with chopsticks, I rage. I am almost always at a point constant fist clenching, white knuckle aggravation in any setting where I have to see people’s stupid faces, and the reason behind it will be dealt with in my all-encompassing thesis project.