Quo Now or Later

We are either confined to or go against some status quo that we seem to quake at the sight of our surroundings.

Updated 02:26 pm EDT, August 26, 2024

Published 01:42 pm EDT, August 26, 2024

Photo Credits

Producer & Fashion Designer: Natasha Tabunova
Model: Ari Aisenberg
Photographer: Flávio Iryoda
Special Thanks: An Wei

Orpheus goes to fetch his beloved, and I go to fetch a ceremonious sweater with the least discernible imperfections from the 9 circles of my closet. I do not spare the sweater a second glance, knowing it would only result in disappointment on its account for a second time. About two cigarettes away from where I am headed, I enhanced my strut for the sake of the pretty curls glued with sweat to the nape of a man I’m about to surpass in the street.

There is no chance to look back and, chivalrously put, drop a glove, as the second the intention to do so rises, it is dampened by a recent conversation I had about what men want – allegedly, it is freedom in one pretty package or another. Don’t take my word for it. It is not for me to decipher what it is that men do or do not want, but the mythological essence of this thought prolongs my walk to the length of three cigarettes in place of two.

The Status Quo: How can we explain to ourselves the social conventions our own kind has cursed (/blessed?) us with?

Roland Barthes reasons that myth (the term used as loosely here as is in his essays) lends a pliable quality to history and molds it into a force of nature. Myths are tools that worship dominant ideologies by disguising the construction of nature.

It is, admittedly, a comforting thought that should I choose one day to disassociate away from my problems and indulge in some variation of absurdism or existentialism, I at least have that velvety fact to fall back on. What, at this point, however, I find more intriguing than breaking up with these myths is the performative quality it results in.

Arriving at the social gathering,

I still cannot for certain tell you what it is, I smell of smoke and thought. By the reaction to my arrival, I gather that the smell must be more of a stench.

Are you a cat or a dog? Would you like someone to play with you or be the one who plays with others?

I’m a hedgehog, I think to myself.

I sit down at the table surrounded by people I don’t know and people I half-know. I put my elbows on the table and support my chin in naive hope it might lighten the weight of my mood. I consider reprimanding myself for my flawed etiquette but let it slide as a reward for my profoundness.

In the medieval ages, people ate at feasts and banquettes; in fear of intruding on their neighbors’ space and knocking over one thing or another, people kept their elbows and any other protruding joints to themselves. As the fashion of these overcrowded affairs died down, the fact remained. Sticking out limbs when uncalled for at the table forever stayed a sign that you were malcontent with the quantity of food at the table or a sign your co-diners were short to your liking.

My knowledge is my armor from the bullshit,

but I always seem to have a spare gut to leave unexposed.

How do we continue to live in a world where it is no longer a secret that we are never our authentic selves? We are either confined to or go against some status quo that we seem to quake at the sight of and our experiences are only of those limited to our interactions with people, objects, and circumstances that are doing the same thing. How does this world offer us any sense of legitimacy? How can we explain to ourselves the social conventions our own kind has cursed (/blessed?) us with?

As a patron of psychological treatment, I can attest that shrinks, in fact, do say that the first step in fixing something is acknowledging that there is a problem quite often. In this case, the problem is perhaps more of a situation, depending on the person perceiving it, and a situation of this size would require an entirely different chronos to be remedied.

We are either confined to or go against some status quo that we seem to quake at the sight of and our experiences are only of those limited to our interactions with people, objects, and circumstances that are doing the same thing

In a frantic search for some sort of hypothetical exit from this hysterical spiral, I am saddened to inform you that I could not find anything of satisfactory quality. All I was left with was Gilles Deleuze. In his text “Difference and Repetition,” Deleuze argues that deviation from the status quo is the equivalent of our identity.

In traditional metaphysics, deviation is treated as an abnormality; in this case, from the cookie-cutter identity society strives for; it is, however, productive to think of these deviations as the only factors that truly imply that you are autonomous, a separate being. Having a 1.0 correlation coefficient implies that you, as an identity, do not exist. Having an all-around -1.0, on the other hand, implies that you are as flamboyant as it gets.

This again circles back to the myth of how we believe our identities are formed. Even in the strive for the perfect correlation, it is unattainable due to nature’s inability to ever be repeated. How we choose to execute our daily performances speaks of our unique experiences down to the atom. We are the constant deviation.

The reason I do not find this answer quite sufficient is that when it comes to philosophical matters of perception, despite my facinations with them, you might as well choose to believe that you are a magical pony and call it a day. In this case, they offer a solution for the self rather than for society as a whole which feels counterproductive in this scenario.

I suppose it’s the most that I could have hoped for.

Our performativity offers us an option to exist in an aion rather than a chronos, which, translated from Deleuzian, could be rephrased to “live in the moment.” This makes performance art, despite my dislike towards it in my own practice, the holiest of all. It accounts for the virtual. Reality encompasses more than what is immediately present.

In other words, theatre can readily convince us that a cardboard tree on stage is that which commenced our banishment from the Garden of Eden, and it would be a variation of reality indeed, not trickery, but a different truth, as it is, in fact, in that particular room, at that particular time, that particular tree.

At the table, I’m slouching in my chair. I don’t want people to think that I’m a bitch, but I refuse to surrender so readily to the performance that I just became aware of and am bound to unconsciously renter the second I lose this train of thought. This is my one-night and one-night-only protest that harms no one besides my image, which, as I’ve just uncovered, functions separately from me and deserves to be punished for its conniving nature regardless.

The repetitive nature of our performance allows for fluency within our development and steadily builds up the self. Like money and power and other widespread myths we as a society agreed upon, the status quo is not inherently evil and should not be blamed for our misuse of it.

My social event has come to an end.

In response to the Althusserian Theory of Subjection, Judith Butler makes a remark similar to that of Deleuze. The repetitive nature of our performance allows for fluency within our development and steadily builds up the self.

Like money and power and other widespread myths we as a society agreed upon, the status quo is not inherently evil and should not be blamed for our misuse of it. We participate in an open-ended interaction with it on a daily basis, and, like any other metric system, it is but a way we do things.

I’m walking back home. I said bye to no one but the doorman who via his politeness forcibly ripped it out of me.

With all the food and theory to digest, I didn’t want to contribute to the development of my identity tonight. Not if I could help it.

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