LeoDV
02-14-2003, 07:03 PM
This is a true story, about trying to think for myself, and questioning authority one day after the next.
Don't expect to read about anything grand, anything that will at least attempt to actually liberate me from this self-consuming Leviathan that is the society we live in. I do simple deeds of deconstruction, a little bit of anarchy here and there. I try to tell myself that I'm putting that one grain of sand in the mechanism, that one that will make it grind one day, overheat and, hopefully, explode, but in reality I'm just too much of a coward to go all-out.
With that little bit of a prologue, let me tell you about how I tried to do the same thing as TOOL but on a much, much, much smaller scale.
What symbolizes our society more than the daily routine of going to work to consume to work to consume to work and die? And within that routine, what better symbol is there than common transportation, the subway? We've all seen those accelerated videos of masses of working men and women streaming through the hallways and in the trains to and from work, where whatever little identity we had is totally consumed in an ever-moving colorful mass of nothingness.
At the subway station I get off at to go home, there are three doors that you have to walk through to get out in the open. I don't know how it is in other subways around the world (I'm in Paris (yes Paris France)) but in this particular line you have to actually push the door to get out (which isn't always the case). Anyway, at my subway station, one day the door in the middle refused to work as well as it did.
As I walked up the stairs, I could see some business woman pushing it once, giving up and moving on to the next. Then, as networked automats would, the crowd split in halves and everyone started streaming through the two other doors. You can expect what I did, I tried my hand at the middle door, and it wouldn't give in. I took a step backwards and rammed it with my shoulder, at which point it easily gave in, the mechanism was just a bit rusty, and it could be (relatively) easily opened after all.
For weeks I kept pushing my way through that door while everyone left out through the easier doors, until someday someone filed some form and some workers were dispatched to oil the door up or something and it went as smoothly as the others, and I stopped caring about the whole thing.
Until, yesterday, I came home and found this time the right door had been surrounded with flashy green and white tape.
Everyone was walking through the other doors and I reached through the tape and pushed the door. It opened without resistance. I muttered something about Franz Kafka and stepped over the tape, walking through that door, and climbing my way through more tape on the other way. Sure, it was easier through the other doors, but that kind of statement is my way of de-guilting myself about being a productive, consuming member of this society I claim to despize.
Anyway, tonight I come home, and I see some pieces of torn off green and white tape, only to see it replaced by more red and white tape. I tried the door again and again it functioned perfectly. I cursed and then began to tear the tape off. I walked out the door and began tearing off more tape in a quite comical way since the long bits of tape were spiraling in the wind and I depserately tried to grab it and tear it all. When I finally did I spun round and saw that a cashier or something (guy who sells tourists three day tickets in garbled English) had been staring at me from inside his bulletproof box.
I had been planning to anyway, I walked up to the box, still clenching flashy ribbons of tape, and said "The door works perfectly fine."
"Who are you to tear off that tape?"
"Who cares, the door works perfectly fine."
"The tape's been put there for a reason. You don't know what it is."
"Do you?"
A beat.
"You can't tear that tape off like that."
"Why not? All that matters is if the door is working or not, not that some guy who works here had a reason to put tape around it."
"You don't know why that tape's been put here, you can't tear it off."
For some obscure reason I felt like I was talking to a wall so I walked off, throwing the tape in a trash can. As I walked away I heard him say that next time action would be taken.
That's five minutes you'll never get back, I'm sorry I wasted them. It's just some French guy rambling about doors in the subway.
But I like to think it's also a symbol. A symbol of what TOOL want us to do, and more importantly a symbol of what I think we should do (they may be great, but I'm not doing something just 'cause they tell me to), that is, some playful and ironic deconstruction of authority in the little things.
At least for a start.
Don't expect to read about anything grand, anything that will at least attempt to actually liberate me from this self-consuming Leviathan that is the society we live in. I do simple deeds of deconstruction, a little bit of anarchy here and there. I try to tell myself that I'm putting that one grain of sand in the mechanism, that one that will make it grind one day, overheat and, hopefully, explode, but in reality I'm just too much of a coward to go all-out.
With that little bit of a prologue, let me tell you about how I tried to do the same thing as TOOL but on a much, much, much smaller scale.
What symbolizes our society more than the daily routine of going to work to consume to work to consume to work and die? And within that routine, what better symbol is there than common transportation, the subway? We've all seen those accelerated videos of masses of working men and women streaming through the hallways and in the trains to and from work, where whatever little identity we had is totally consumed in an ever-moving colorful mass of nothingness.
At the subway station I get off at to go home, there are three doors that you have to walk through to get out in the open. I don't know how it is in other subways around the world (I'm in Paris (yes Paris France)) but in this particular line you have to actually push the door to get out (which isn't always the case). Anyway, at my subway station, one day the door in the middle refused to work as well as it did.
As I walked up the stairs, I could see some business woman pushing it once, giving up and moving on to the next. Then, as networked automats would, the crowd split in halves and everyone started streaming through the two other doors. You can expect what I did, I tried my hand at the middle door, and it wouldn't give in. I took a step backwards and rammed it with my shoulder, at which point it easily gave in, the mechanism was just a bit rusty, and it could be (relatively) easily opened after all.
For weeks I kept pushing my way through that door while everyone left out through the easier doors, until someday someone filed some form and some workers were dispatched to oil the door up or something and it went as smoothly as the others, and I stopped caring about the whole thing.
Until, yesterday, I came home and found this time the right door had been surrounded with flashy green and white tape.
Everyone was walking through the other doors and I reached through the tape and pushed the door. It opened without resistance. I muttered something about Franz Kafka and stepped over the tape, walking through that door, and climbing my way through more tape on the other way. Sure, it was easier through the other doors, but that kind of statement is my way of de-guilting myself about being a productive, consuming member of this society I claim to despize.
Anyway, tonight I come home, and I see some pieces of torn off green and white tape, only to see it replaced by more red and white tape. I tried the door again and again it functioned perfectly. I cursed and then began to tear the tape off. I walked out the door and began tearing off more tape in a quite comical way since the long bits of tape were spiraling in the wind and I depserately tried to grab it and tear it all. When I finally did I spun round and saw that a cashier or something (guy who sells tourists three day tickets in garbled English) had been staring at me from inside his bulletproof box.
I had been planning to anyway, I walked up to the box, still clenching flashy ribbons of tape, and said "The door works perfectly fine."
"Who are you to tear off that tape?"
"Who cares, the door works perfectly fine."
"The tape's been put there for a reason. You don't know what it is."
"Do you?"
A beat.
"You can't tear that tape off like that."
"Why not? All that matters is if the door is working or not, not that some guy who works here had a reason to put tape around it."
"You don't know why that tape's been put here, you can't tear it off."
For some obscure reason I felt like I was talking to a wall so I walked off, throwing the tape in a trash can. As I walked away I heard him say that next time action would be taken.
That's five minutes you'll never get back, I'm sorry I wasted them. It's just some French guy rambling about doors in the subway.
But I like to think it's also a symbol. A symbol of what TOOL want us to do, and more importantly a symbol of what I think we should do (they may be great, but I'm not doing something just 'cause they tell me to), that is, some playful and ironic deconstruction of authority in the little things.
At least for a start.