Against Publicizing a Way of Life
a reprint of an email post from: rcktmrtn@hotmail.com (rocket martin):
everything from personal zines and web diaries to books and features showing off
underground sex scenes. it lets people see you passive and packaged in whatever
representation you’ve given yourself. they can turn you over in the hand,
examine you and leisurely come to conclusions about you life and your
differences. you are non-threatening, user-friendly, and unable to fight for
yourself. they judge you before they even know you and you life becomes and
“idea” about which to have an opinion. A wise man said “you can kill and idea,
but you can’t kill the person behind the idea.”
we live in a time where if you haven’t done something, you’ve probably read
about someone who has. every possible “lifestyle” is pre-tolerated and digested
in a mediated form before there is ever real contact. and it makes real contact
seem boring, unsurprising and definitely less seductive. you have that “been
there. done that” feeling about everything. people are less interested in
people because they feel they already know everything, every “way to be,” and
they spend more time & energy trying to “peg” you than really getting to know
you.
one the other hand, it creates heroes and fosters competition between ways of
life. people feel their lives have to “measure up” to the lives they’ve heard
about. some people never get to do anything because they’re thinking about all
the people they want to be like.
and i’m not against all media, just the representation of, not our ideas or
fantasies, but our very lives. people need to experience you as the kinetic
physical warm body that you are. our interactions can’t take place in idea
headspace–we need the real thing.
so whether you’re a nomadic punk or an idealistic college grad wasting in the
web, don’t vaccinate people against your life.
don’t publicize.
