enjoy perturbment and dislike dick

(5 minutes)




chris kraus’s i love dick has been feeding my thoughts this past week. i’ve spent my days practicing my millinery skills in a small shared studio next to leicester square with my boss, who has patience for my mistakes and is kind to me, but i don’t think i’ve really made an impact on her. realistically, i am untrained in sewing and base most of my practice in this field off improvised rules and hopes that she won’t notice. she does, but doesn’t say much. i need to be pushed. 

this whole turn-off-field for me has be born out of a search for self confidence. recently, quite a few de-moralising interactions - some just, many unjust, has led me to question what it is i value about the people i know. for now, decoding this has indebted me down the path of being a semi-self inflicted social pariah. i can summarize my tensions through dick, inspired by kraus. i love dick is a epistolaric documentation of obsession, hedonism and humour. kraus, and her partner sylvère lotringer, a valued theorist and critic, communicate their unsolicited fantasies of love, life and desire to the seemingly unwilling recipient, dick. the phycho-sexual obsession to any unsympathetic reader is dark, twisted and confusing in its purpose but, to someone that understands her sentiments, it provides comfort and relatable humour. i guess i see myself in kraus. confused and engulfed in a fantasical world that only she has promised to herself through farcical possibilities. to her they are tangible, and hence spill out in letters to dick. a practical vessel that, if sent, give her emotions value because they are proof they exist. the transparency is inticing, but the vulnerability is awkward. to me, it is the purest evidence of unhinged, perturbing desire. its gossipy, informal and scandalously based in sincereity - a rarity nowadays. and i like that and am jealous that she can show this side of her. which leads me to my own reflection on value. one of the best connections to make with someone comes from being perturbed. usually this is shared through gossip. it is a good way to build a sentimental acknowledgement that both parties are in agreement with each other - if i find something wierd and you don’t, then it is awkward. if we both find something weird, it is convenient. and actually, re-affirming. one starts to believe they are right and ego’s grow. i like that feeling, it feels good. so do you. it is what makes us confident, we have value in what we have to tell. 
 
the reason i have become a sort of social-pariah is because i haven’t found that solace in a shared perturbment with as many people as i had before. thats not to say i haven’t been gossiping with people - of course i have and so have you, its more that i am finding the value in my beliefs that were lacking before. i didn’t mean to get here, and perhaps didn’t want to get here, but here i am. and whats good is i like it. i don’t like dick. dick, is a valued social character - a success in his field of work, normal, independent but also just, well, good. he lives, alone, but is not estranged. this desirable to kraus and lotringer because it perturbs them, they both feel like weirdly attracted to a world they know isn’t theirs. their world is one of involvement. luckily for them, they can share these beliefs with each other and live quite openly with their fantasies. their acceptance of their petrurbation and embracing it is inspiring. it shines a light on desire as the purest form of human vulnerability, exposing all the things one feels dissatisfied with and mixing it with what ones ego believes they deserve. dick, to me, represents the shallowness of social anxiety and the futile idea that morality can be absolute, as though being right or wrong is even comprehensible. sorry dick. that is harsh. but it made me realise that, gossip is the playground for morality to be explored. it is the social experience of valuing ones own beliefs and deciding how to show them. 

i guess now, i feel as though the morality practiced in conversations i have had over the past year or so has not been flexible or, to be blunt, challenging. ideas have bounced around in empty echo chamber and the fear or being wrong has formed a false sense of progression. arguably, this passivity of absolute morality allows a burdensome friendship to float in shallow water. it wants to sink, there is not much holding it up, but, if we both agree that something peturbs based off morals that we believe to be absolute, we can bob along quite quaintly. there is no personal value in that because there is no individualism. will you say something you don’t quite believe? or perhaps admit to something you feel wrongly sympathetic toward? if yes, then you are willing to perturb your listener and that shared source of discomfort you were talking about will shift from the focus to you, and ultimately, you will become the source of gossip that others will adopt in their conversations from that moment onwards. its never ending and thats fun. so this is where i am now, i would like to value myself by adopting a sort moral particularism. changing and rotating my belief system, being hypocritical or sincere. partly for a challenge, partly to see what happens, partly because it is self destructive, partly because it permits “bad” behaviours and so finds comforts confusion but ultimately it is way more interesting. it allows for learning and growth instead of being trapped in a cycle of stale absolutism that is there to please and pleasure. 

a cynical way to summarize my shallow ideas on self-value and morality on a sunday morning. and somewhat egotistical. but true. and ever changing. but it is the practice of pushing that gives one value - and so for now, i will keep improvising my sewing skills and confidently know that i don’t and will not know the absolute of sewing. because the right or wrong way to do/be is farcical. experiences only exist in the awkward and undesirable in between. that is where value is.