I'm driving Eastbound on 90/94 from the Irving Park area. It's about quarter till midnight the time when the skyline looks as big as the rockies and as bright as a country cosmos. I realize I haven't even been paying attention to the sight along one of my favorite routes in the city. My head is full of snapshots from the nights conversation: the post-grad, 20-something fear that drives us to want marriage and children, banana republic dresses and pearls against a fresh cut lawn, the ultimate cop-out. Realizing that what we are will never be what we loathed so strongly in College, the loathing that put us in a fit of crazed isolation and half-hearted depression. All those Miami girls with their bouncy hair and Tiffany necklaces and coach bags and North Face jackets that acted so much better than the rest of us, were indeed better than us. With a head full of absolute shit I realize I don't have much room to take notice of much anymore until I see what my brain has been wired to see: a billboard.
LOVE THE ARTIST
A white backdrop with giant red painted letters. There's a model on there, lining the side, but I pay no attention. It hits. What if.
Replace all the billboards with LOVE THE ARTIST and we would. We would love the art, the culture, the thought, the opposite. The investment banker is stripped down to nothing, the artists hold all the glory. I watched the city dissolve. Things could be so much different.
I'm watching Terrance Payne on RTN
http://roadtripnation.com/TerrencePayne
and I'm tired of being compared. Sexy skinny flare leg "The Artist". But shit, they all say screw em. It's time to stop listening to the data monkeys and start loving the artist.
1 comment:
hey,
meant to comment on this quite a while ago. i read the entry and was very moved by it. actually, it was a lil bit of the opposite too: i was moved to sit in complete and utterly still contemplation of your thought experiment. it's both incredibly sad and incredibly beautiful to imagine, the former mainly due to the pure imagining of it...and of course it's long-term residence in that venue.
not long after this, i think i saw some kissin cousin billboards from the mca(maybe), "art is real."
i promptly took it upon myself to do what i could to make a real experiment outta "love the artist." the t-shirt functions as a walking billboard and i've long been with it for that reason. so i made a t-shirt out of it at my t-shirt "company" on zazzle (http://www.zazzle.com/theanswerisart).
so, i've been wearing it around for a while to mostly public indifference, but i thought you might like to know how much your idea resonated with me.
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