2017 TO ETERNITY

In 2017, we thought about the world being lit by a constant sunrise.

2018-2020: We do believe that a better future won’t depend on flying cars or cyberdogs. Nobody is talking about flying cars, everyone is talking about burritos.

What’s next? A lack of interest in new experiences, perpetuated by closed borders and geographical displacement. This is the happiest future, but not what we had in mind: It’s just you, being “free” (for a time) of the obligations and expectations of the experience economy.

There is no revolution, there is no utopia, there is just you, microwaving ramen, watching the dust collect up at the edges of the picture frames, with the lights off. There is no outside, there is only the light at the bottom of the microwave.

We have folded ourselves inside a single fan account of Slipknot.

NEO-BEATNIKS

Style in the purest sense is not about what you wear but what you could wear.

There are no beatniks anymore because there are no beats — beats being what the swinging sixties was all about: someone slow-dancing to jazz at a party.

But Jazz has evolved into punk and then pop, and now it’s unravelling and getting processed into loops for DJs. Beatniks are just ugly frat boys.

Once the beat died, the beatniks had to change too. A beatnik can now only be a kind of empty vessel, an aesthetic equivalent of a hollowed-out tree in the middle of a sunlit meadow.

Once the community became disconnected, the beatniks had to separate from the culture and make a silent co-existence. In the absence of the beat, the beatnik became a negative force, a kind of uncomfortable, awkward sounding board.

CLOTHING

As poor a consumer of clothes as I am, I still almost always end up on the Internet, debating the comparative merits of one piece of clothing over the other.

And I am not alone.

Clothing has become the ultimate battleground for non-clothes horseplay. Just as politics can be exhausting, fashion is an exhausting topic of conversation (which is why we are always quick to embrace a new generational shift).

But what may be hyper-aware from a superficial perspective becomes meaningless from a deeper perspective.

We can’t escape the burden of being interested in things.

ON FORMALITY

Formal clothes are easy to read and appropriate to the situation.
Informal clothes are difficult to read and inappropriate to the situation.

Formal clothes are the result of a decision-making process.
Informal clothes are the result of a decision-avoiding process.

Formal clothes are worn to be seen.
Informal clothes are worn not to be seen.

Formal clothes are owned by the same people who wear them.
Informal clothes are owned by people who do not wear them.