Our Recycled World!

Our recycled world.

And then there is music about music. Songs about other songs. And bands really trying to be other bands. And movies about movies. And movies about TV shows, and TV shows about movies, and novels about TV shows and movies, and movies about novels and about TV shows and movies, and don't forget comic books made into movies, and TV shows, and grand multiple movie franchises.

And then there are restaurants that are about being a restaurant. Fast food joints that are about serving things that are something like food. They resemble, remake actual real food into a sort of faux facsimile. And there are vast hollow chains spread across the land, chock-full of products that resemble other products, except, not as good, not as well-made, not really good stuff - crappy stuff that breaks and falls apart and disintegrates and clutters up our lives, but always at the "best price."

And it turns out that we are very sophisticated in our tastes and we actually grow to like stuff that resembles other stuff. We like the copies of copies. It makes things familiar but slightly different too. We think we are smart and discerning and we get really good at tracking how things become other things, and where they are derived from, and what spawned them, and we get joy and pleasure in our great, smart understanding of our recycled existence.

When we come up against something truly authentic, original, challenging, something that doesn't fit the template, it's very off-putting, and really we want to kill it or ignore it, or bury it. It's the kind of stuff that shows us maybe we don't know what we think we know, and maybe what we know is wrong. And we laugh at the idea of "authentic," and "original," and think that they are not important, or just the same old thing pretending to be something else.

It's a nicely contained, well-insulated existence.