I was helping an interior designer the other day, I came in and out of the process a number of times. What I found difficult was how there were so many options in play, possibly 30 different options, maybe more. Our last interaction was the hardest. By this stage after coming in and out of the session I suddenly felt overwhelmed and felt it was all unnecessarily complicated. Then out of nowhere from what seemed like a chaotic heap of possibilities four colours paired in an unexpected way and I said “that is it”. The interior designer was probably the most stressed as they were in a fit of anxious sorting for hours.

It got me thinking about chaos in general. Maybe even wars are defined by the same logic, imminent death, the pairing back of life and hardware until there is a moment of clarity. A clear winner. All of the complications, the distractions, the possibilities are culled. I could say the same with graffiti. From all of the chaos comes a small amount of refined skill. Most of it then would seem unnecessary but really it is the stuff that seems not to work, to be pointless that defines what is important. In a way to destroy things, to deface, is a way of organising reality. Who the winners will be is played out of the madness.

I was reading something about Lacan and his view of the 1968 revolutionaries. He said you are simply looking for a new master, why not employ shame instead? Not in those exact words mind you but to that effect. So people who claim to hate the system would then be placated by another system? What would that system be if not just another stand in? Really all of the emptiness is a barrage of too much. I sometimes feel in western capitalism there is nothing actually there at all. That is how you can create something. Hip Hop for example didn’t exist until somebody created it. In fact there was always a need for any subculture to exist.

In Marxist terms it was about an economy, creating something from an excess that didn’t even exist. There was nothing for certain people and they had to make something. Yet the emptiness continues. The need to create. What it can boil down to is the decoupling of survival into pointless artifacts. At least that is something else I read and it makes sense, a short moment of pleasure is sometimes all people need. When I think of suffering for example I think of certain people and things in life that I was more than glad to bear as that was the cost of familial and other relations. I was kind of glad to suffer although when it ended I was in some ways more aware of the suffering after the fact.

There were of course always moments of pleasure. I mean now I see that any relationship or social interaction is varied because the human condition is never static. It always moves with clear bounds. You are in a way creating your own reality at all times and at its core your reality is always human. Even if you have any ailment, joy, or anything that can be described and at times indescribable moments you’re somewhat at the mercy of your species. So why do we feel the need to pair things back? To find that moment of clarity? Does it really help? Is it just a lack of understanding of a holistic reality? In the world we have lived in for hundreds of years we keep reality at bay at all costs. We feel we don’t need it anymore.

I feel that it is just propaganda although I am the last person to try and step out of the system. The system though is always collapsing and empty so what am I really holding onto? The supply chain? The mountain of scrawl and illusions that keep me distracted yet interested? I am as much a product of this system as anyone else and I can’t point the finger at anyone and think that will get me off the hook. You can hate it, you can love it, agree or disagree but at the end of the day some systems may be better than others but when you’re driving over the cliff just to spite ‘the other’ you better hope you have a soft landing.