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September 01, 2003
Volume 32: Lemonade
The reason all the gear from that particular company is in one box is that I found it scattered, and decided I'd put it together so she could decide at once if she wanted to think about that job or not. As jobs went it was a good one until it went the way of all jobs. Then they found stachybotrys mold in her office walls, which partly explained her disenchantment. Then her insurance company bailed. If I were her, I'd find a mug with their mark about as long-term viable as a set of collector tractor tires made of sponge cake.
I didn't throw them out because they're not mine, and then the subject came up again in reference to teeshirts. I threw out a lot of junk last May when I found out I had so many allergies -- empty Altoid boxes, business card CDs, about five hundred press releases in those plasticized trade show bags, that sort of thing. I replaced my large white desk with a tiny silver metal one from Ikea, to minimize the clutter and thereby reduce the dust. The stuff I kept was mostly important, like engagement rings and Chanel No. 5.
Yet, since then, whenever I go to Niagara Falls, I have the urge, translated to intention, but not yet into action, to buy a white plastic fridge magnet with 'NIAGARA FALLS' in thick black italics with a useless red thermometer on the side. I can visualize the magnet, feel the way it feels in my hand, even see the slanting afternoon sunlight, partly blanked by mist, in the plate glass store window. I do not know why I want one of these. It's not for kitsch. It's not lack of other mementoes. I took lots of lovely photos. Somehow, though, the mass-produced plastic -- the corporate money, the commitment it represents -- keeps calling me. I HAVE PROBLEMS WITH COMMITMENT PLEASE SOLVE IT FOR $1.29 PLUS TAX.
How can something machine-made ever mean more than something I made with my own mind? I suppose since I am so much aware of advertising, that when a campaign works on me, as Niagara Falls does, the novelty alone makes it that much harder to resist. I have a Mac. Rockport shoes. Clinique moisturizer. A Zippo lighter -- two, in fact. One was a gift engraved with my initials and various feathers and it leaks so I never use it. I prefer the beatup one from Vietnam. I theorize that all these things are good. However, I know enough to know I can't entirely divorce myself from an appealing brand strategy. I know its purpose is to attract those who want to impress others while confirming their own existence in a world increasingly promulgating projects with no obvious completion or even theoretical product. Those who want to broadcast that they have money and specific taste -- to indulge in visual name dropping. All I want to know is, where do I fit in that clan?
David Kelly wanted to know the same thing, and one way or another, the Iraq marketing campaign killed him. Somebody fingered him as the guy who said the British intel was "sexed up" and (probably) either Kelly couldn't take the pressure or (unlikely but possible) somebody else knocked him off. He became like one of us wandering Comdex shoving Department of Defence stress balls in our 3Com bags, not even looking at what we're picking up, because the dissociation is so great that one memory was splitting into smaller and smaller fractions until eventually, there is not even one complete one. There were not enough NetZero thin mints at a hundred Comdexen to save Kelly.
Stephen Jay Gould dedicated much of his last book to the humanities versus science dichotomy. Given the material nonexistence of what's produced by both sides, it's not surprising that ideological branding should be so deep rooted and damaging to all intellectual cultures. The less demonstrable the benefits, it seems, the more extreme the results -- culminating in the most dangerous daydream of all, organized religion -- which is, of course, the underpinning of what killed Kelly. He got too close to unreality and he became unreal. So perhaps it's not such a bad idea to keep a physical coffee mug. Maybe I should order that magnet over the internet.
Posted by gtaylor at September 1, 2003 11:11 PM
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