My assignment; the mere name of two objects tethered by an ampersand. Like any post-modernist seems willing to do, I could just discard the two ideas and invent any number of creative self-fulfilling projects for myself, claiming that the discarding creates an infinitely possible canvas more valuable than the original assignment itself thus fulfilling the assignment. Creation through destruction, freedom through disobedience.
No, it’s not in my constitution, my training. I’m too curiosity-riddled, too eager to pick up an object when given it and turn it over in my hands, navigating the boundaries with the ridges of my finger.
The problem with an infinitely possible canvas is that you may never start. You may stare blankly at a grocery store wall of Crest toothpastes in every possible combination of whitening, tartar control, cavity protection, breath-freshening, gingivitis-fighting, flavor and color only to realize that there is an entire shelf next to it filled with the same combinations for Colgate. And then again, there is another store chain with the same two shelves next to each, but maybe they have more combinations and different brands. You may think you could quit school and buy a house in Alaska with whomever you’re madly in love with at the moment and brush your teeth five times a day. But you don’t. You stay in school and buy the same toothpaste you did last time from that store you always go to. Or maybe you did switch, because of some commercial or recommendation from a friend or because you read this and would really like to prove me wrong.
Well, I’ll tell you right now I’m not right. But down to the itty-bitty nitty-gritty widdle-kitty of the question: there IS an infinitely possible canvas in front of us, we could choose, insofar as we believe to have choice, from any number of actions at this exact point in time. So what is stopping us?
It’s too big for me. So much choice and possibility is overwhelming. In the movie Adaptation, Meryl Streep’s character says, “There are too many ideas and things and people – too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.” I don’t know much about passion, but it certainly is a filter that allows you to look at a small slice of infinity, narrows your vision. Humans just can’t conceive infinity, we can’t even wrap our minds around it. We use every grand metaphor in our lingual arsenal to describe it, and even then we are only very narrowly moving toward comprehension. I find myself choosing and reaching out when I have input, when I have reason to change. Choices trace back to reasons, which when compiled in the most complete state, form a truss of circumstances and cause-effect reactions that build the road in the direction we see, a la butterfly effect. Of course, the factors that lead us to what we know as decisions are near if not infinite themselves, and thus conceiving our choices as the formulaic direct output of a bajillion-zillion paper-maché wing flaps is impossible by the sheer elusively ominous presence of infinity.
I know somehow that I function as a function, if you will, on an input-output basis, although that function evolves as any number of other outputs affects it. And who’s to say how many inputs there are. See, the sheer idea of infinity again gouges this metaphor from the inside out. So I guess all I’ve really gotten at this time is the art-i-choke heart of this Peer Pressure Project. I’ve asked someone to give me an input in the form of an assignment of any sort. Based on the output, can I perhaps translucently gaze back at the factors that caused me to get from assignment to product, input to output, A to B? Figure out my ingrained cause-effects system, like a transfer function? Maybe if I document it along the way. Step-by-step iterations. Hence this and subsequent posts, though I don’t mean to blog. And like I said, I will be starting with fish bowl & cigarettes.
(Chris)
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