Source Material is Sexy
Foray 013: who's scared of a little simulation?
Originality is the ultimate turn-on; how you get there is the tricky part.
Bookended by two dual facts, modern life is both awash in trends and categorically unromantic. Blame it on the gizmos and phone screens yes, but blame it on our preference for commentary over actual source material too.
God, what I would give to live a life that could be described as ‘original’. There is, in my mind, nothing better. No higher praise, no better attribute. To wind up at then end of my hopefully long life, content in the knowledge that I lived with my feet on the ground, my eyes on the sun, taking choices and making decisions that were no one’s except my own; that is the ultimate goal.
Just the phrase ‘source material’ sounds so good. Defining source material, like many conflictual things, is a measurement of nuance. I define it along school-terms. The actual text, not the notes. The thought as it came out of your brain, not as it came out of the thrice watered-down hot TikTok take. The experience of making a mistake, not the warning sign. Being at the party instead of hearing about it. The genuine lived reality of your life.
(Merriam Webster meanwhile has committed the original dictionary sin, using synonyms in lieu of actual definitions. What do they have down for ‘source material’? “Basic raw material” and “Parent material”… well done.)
If it comes through your phone - a screenshot of an image of a texted conversation, a 5 second video of a celebrity wearing clothing picked out by her chronically-online stylist, an influencer copying the hairstyle of an influencer who copied the… it couldn’t be more boring. If it adds nothing, don’t consume it.
Sitting on the ferry from Naoshima Island back to Japan’s mainland last month, my phone having been without service and with little wifi for a few weeks, I began to mentally go through the people I follow on Instagram who I don’t know personally. Now of those people, who among them actually provides something interesting? Who contributes something new and novel with their online presence, and who is just a nit-pick of Pinterest and regurgitated reposts? I shall name and shame.
The first people who came to mind were the fashion influencers. They saw kitten heels, they’re wearing kitten heels. Now I don’t follow many to begin with so this was relatively easy. Goodbye Camille Charriere.
A few fashion stragglers were left because I felt, in my core, that they actually do bring something interesting to the culture. How do I differentiate between them and the others? Pretty much just good old intuition and their commitment to the bit.
Brenda Hashtag? She’s committed to the bit. Her black and white closet is a living testament to it. Is it a cut and dry choice? No. Are there doubtlessly others that live and preach a similar style to Brenda? Yes. This is an art not a science, you get to discriminate and see who you believe is genuinely doing something valuable. No one is entitled to your attention.
The definitive thing about source material is that you have to be discriminatory. It is this and not that. It is not relative, it’s not a measure of punctuation and word usage and who is more lauded. It’s a question of who is doing something different, saying something different, living differently. This person is interesting and this one is derivative.
I give you a hall pass to be mean.
This is source material used as a social media sieve, and perhaps a social sieve in general. Like a gold panhandler in the 1800s, you get a lot of dirt. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, especially not to the individuals themselves as they are, after all, just playing a game - the rules of which they didn’t invent and perhaps have little conscious awareness of.
My aggressivity on this is merely a reflection of how insidiously this detachment, this reflection of a reflection, has wormed its way into our lives. I could point at it in so many different places, down so many different avenues. In fact, so much of the political and social upheaval we see right now (from Trump to the revival of ‘trad’ wives) I believe is a genuine, scared and very human, reaction to how detached we have become from the source. I don’t want to be too prosaic but by ‘source’ I literally mean the floor boards, a piece of fruit and your dog. Your anger, your headache, a book.
Jean Baudrillard put his finger on this exact issue so well in his treaty “Simulacra and Simulation”, in which he describes how symbols and images have come to replace all reality and meaning. An image first mimics reality before being replaced by another image which perverts it, this continues on until we come to a space that is composed solely of images with absolutely no link to the reality that once informed them. This is Baudrillard’s “hyperreality”, a place where so many of us unconsciously dwell. A place where all of our inspiration, information and actions are modelled off of our consumption, a poor diet at that.
Try feeding yourself a bowl of graphically rendered steampunk cereal.
C.S. Lewis wrote a fantastic preface to a 1946 translation of “Athanasius: On the Incarnation”, a classic of Christian theology composed in the 4th century by St. Athanasius. In it, Lewis so eloquently speaks to the shyness we have around encountering reality, and old texts, head on. We feel too bashful to look straight at Plato or our neighbour crossing the road. Here is the quote I love so much:
“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”
It is too true. Why are we not going about acquiring our experience and knowledge thus? First hand and in reality?
Simply put: because there are no intermediaries. And if there are no intermediaries, less people can get their hands and opinions in on the process, and if there are less points for involvement and siphoning, then there is far less money to be made and attention to be had.
This brings me back to my mid-ferry thoughts. Cut out the intermediaries. Don’t worship transitory, false idols. Identify for yourself who and what taps into something real and then burn everything else. Unfollow and block. You will quickly be able to get a feel for who is self-satisfied in their ability to copy a tableau so well, and for those who have dirt underneath their fingernails. Different mediums, different people, all foster different rights and wrongs. Exercise your right of choice. Read a really good old book. Eat some dirt.
Now what about you, creative one? You want to put real things out in the world and think living an ‘original’ life is about as good as it gets. I don’t disagree with you, in fact I am by and large in the same boat. Yet, we are caught in another quagmire so beautifully illustrated by the many young, cut and paste creatives cropping up in every major city. Pursuing ‘originality’ as a capitalised 11-letter word is a wild goose chase. So what are we left with then?
The truth, our physical body and the floorboards. That is the source material you have to work with and, believe me, a lot can come from that. You’ll see. Your eyes will only adjust if you look up into the sun.
Thank you so much for reading this week’s substack! I hope you enjoyed it :) I know I sure did. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments below!
Starting this week (August 26) I’m publishing a podcast under the same title as this substack, “Forays” - it’ll be available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, everywhere! Next week’s episode I’ll be expanding on some of the topics I discussed here and adding new tangents. I would really appreciate if you gave it a listen.
If you haven’t yet, I’d really appreciate if you could like this post and subscribe to my substack (both free!), as it helps boost my writing’s visibility. Thanks so much!
See you next week!
xx J
Impeccable title
Thank you Jasmine! An original!