An Unexamined Life?
Life is good. But it could be better.
On friday night I went to first friday art walk after a few stiff drinks with some friends. We somehow fit 6 people in one sedan cab with our cubs full of vodka tonic. It would have been a cop nightmare for the cab if we had caught the attention of any authorities.
It was a really fun crowd, even though my friends new a lot more about art, and dropped all kinds of terms and I felt a little too dumb to comment on some peices, or ebarrassed to say I liked the ones they had already ripped apart - which seemed like it was all the time. During the course of the night, one of my friends had much to drink and bought a framed photograph of a can of sardines for $125 which I really hope he didn't regret the next day ; ) He also told me that it's his life goal to by the age of 40 have a home full of originals. But what stuck with me most was when he said that his dream profession if he could be doing anything and living his dream life would be being an art consultant.
There are many reasons why this struck me as interesting....the main one was that when I thought about it I realized that I had no idea what my dream life would be....let alone how I might go about trying to acheive it. And the more I thought about it the more this bugged me. How many of us are not living our dream lives? And why aren't we? Shouldn't that seem really sad to us?
I mean I was born very lucky in a place where you can basically acheive your dreams so I have no excuse. I never screwed up permanently - yet, knock on wood - by doing something like getting pregnant or committing homicide over a pair of cute wedges. And life is short and we only get one - shouldn't it be our dream life? I don't want to die knowing that I wasted my one chance.
.......to be continued.........with some more things figured out I hope.........
posted by chinchilla @ 8:50 PM
3 Comments:
First, I don't even know what an art consultant is... someone who acts snooty and dismissive of other people's work? Wait, that's an art critic...
The statement about the dream life being an art consultant is a little vague and spur-of-the-moment, details-smoothed-over-by-liquor kind of thing, and the decisive grandeur you witnessed could very well be an alcohol-inspired delusion. It sounds quite like a wish that a trickster djinn will screw you over with. Don't you mean you want to be a successful art consultant? 'Cause what do unsuccessful art consultants do - find deeper meaning in dumpstering for food? But how successful do you want to be? There could be a lot of pressure on the top, paparazzi, jealous rivals, jilted lovers, high expectations, stress... Assuming you figure it all out but there isn't a semi-malevolent spirit about to grant your wishes, what happens when you can't follow up on that or you find, in the process of following up, that it's more work than it seems and pesky little details crop up?
What's the classical response that cute little white boys give when asked about what they want to be when they grow up? A firefighter? Then you learn that you need to be built like a brick shithouse and that your slight case of asthma won't cut it, and that you have a 100% greater chance of testicular cancer than the population average, and some fire departments won't be too keen to have your friend Jamal join up while others think it's a grand idea to do chores with an apple up your ass 'cause hazing builds teamwork. Oh yeah, and it's also really hard work!
We'd say the little boy's firefighter dream is based on an absence of information and the exaggerated image of a heroic role model (I'm not saying firefighters aren't heroic, 'cause, you know, testicular cancer! holy shit!), but I don't think it's that far off our own dreaming; when we ask the kid and we ask ourselves, it's all about the desire for certainty, for a clear goal we can aim for and not waver, knowing that things are good there. We need heaven, in other words, but heaven has been debunked some time ago, so we need a heaven on Earth and that's really tricky.
Or, you know, something.
Hey - I'm not talking about the goals we set for ourselves as kids. My friend has an art history background and needs to go back to get his master's, but instead he's here allocating shoes. I think he'd be great at it and Denver is full of people with money. An art consultant is someone you go to when you don't have the art knowledge, but kinda know what you want and you're also interested in something that will gain value over time - they help you buy a piece that's right for you - kind of like a personal shopper.......
Of course one could argue that if that was what he'd rather be doing, then he'd be doing it,and that maybe going into his new career with a ton of grad school debt (I know all about that) is scary enough that it's not really his dream life, and that his fantasy is unacheivable unless he finds a generous sugar daddy (yes, daddy)......so what does that mean?
The firefighter kid thing was a metaphor; I meant that the dreams people set out for themselves as adults are not that much different from the kid who wants to be a firefighter but doesn't know it's not all riding around in cool trucks and posing in sexy calendars.
Sure, your friend could be a good art consultant and maybe he'd be happier, but that glosses over the details, like there being less pressure allocating shoes, probably, and the shoes are less likely to follow you home, no doubt? There are more peers around the office (for better or worse) with whom to share disaster and success, and then, as you pointed out, are all the startup costs and risks. Once all that is summed up, the happiness difference between allocating shoes and being an art consultant may be not as significant...
I'm not trying to be a bitter, hateful wretch - dreams are dreamy and good, and I happen to have one or two that completely cannot be realized but they persist... but I'm trying to say that you lacking a clear vision of a better, alternate you isn't some sort of character flaw that you should dwell on.
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