November 15, 2009

Sometimes I think we’re a Ghost Generation. Mostly because I feel like when people look back on us in a few decades, there won’t be anything memorable about us. One could argue technology and Obama; but that was really our parents' doing. I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel like those things belong to us. We'd also be a Ghost Generation because there are few of us actually trying to start a movement. Majority of people are content in their Taylor Swift music and their “See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil” approach to politics. The minority that is actually willing to argue and fight and make an impact are essentially ghosts. Gertrude Stein coined the term the “Lost Generation” in reference to the people that lived through the First World War and lived their lives disillusioned and lost. I wonder what Gertrude Stein thinks of our generation. I wonder if it rings a bell of familiarity for her. Sometimes I wonder if we’re not just all carbon copies of the 20s & 30s Lost Generation. I feel like I’m friends with Hemingway. I feel like I used to go to high school with Matisse. Ezra Pound called me earlier. He was stuck in traffic. I just left John Dos Pasos a wall post on facebook. I just see a lot of potential here. There seems to be potential pouring out through the pores of everyone I know. So much art. I wonder if this is because I’m a hipster. (I won’t even lie right now. As much as everyone I’m friends with would deny it, we’re all hipsters. Though, through no fault of our own.) I know there are some hipsters who try really hard to stay pop culture savvy and sharpen their pretentious words in the dark; but there are some of us who are just in it for the love of it. Some of us actually love literature and quote Faust free of arrogance. Some of us really do understand Duchamp's conceptual art without needing wikipedia! My photography teacher always used to talk about his art and everyone would call him arrogant. I think that’s just a job hazard when you're an artist. If you don’t believe in yourself, if you can’t sell your image to your own brain, no one’s going to care about you. You’re just going to be a ghost to the world. I think people should stop studying economics and law, and learn to be real salesmen before all of us really do become a Ghost Generation.