Of the many kitsch and quirky clues that allude to the oddly eclectic style of the previous elderly tenants of my Brunswick East home, the most perplexing is the black chandelier bejewelled with fake crystals that keeps me company in the master bedroom. My initial distaste for the eccentric light-piece has since been replaced with an affectionate acceptance as the bizarre aesthetics by which I’m surrounded act as a sharp rejection to the hyper-stylised uniformity that oppresses me in so many other areas of my life.
Baroque, humongous and frankly quite jarring chandeliers suffocate the living rooms; dainty petal-like accessories feminise the lights in the smaller bedrooms; and of course, the 1970s porno-esque, sultry, black light shade in my room, all paint a very strange picture of the Italian couple who lived here for most of their lives. In a world where Ikea MALM sets breathe down our necks whispering sweet nothings of efficiency and affordability, I’ve come to grow incredibly fond of the hodge-podge clusterfuck of my aggressively retro abode.
If the message wasn’t already abundantly clear, the refreshingly incomprehensible design choices in my house have affirmed to me that unapologetically individual style and instinct is slowly becoming a thing of the past. A world that once birthed revolution and renaissance has become bastardised by conformity, with no aspect of our lives left unscathed. Not our homes or communities, nor our hearts or minds.
Ultimately, the twenty-first century has been plagued with a fear of flirting with the unknown.
A fear that paralyses, a fear that second guesses. A fear that disconnects us from the elation of absurdity and the exhilaration of chance. A fear that takes us away from authentic art and music and like a dodgy Sat Nav in a rental car, keeps taking you places you’ve already been.
In my opinion, it started, as it always does, with global capitalism. Yes, yes I can genuinely feel the eye rolls from the other side of the screen. But I’m afraid there’s no other way around this one - it really is the root of this specific evil that I’m trying to demonstrate.
On the seventh day, God made Jeff Bezos.
Once society got to the stage where you could go anywhere in the world and find the same 3 t-shirts in the same 3 stores, we began to operate with a certain level of what some might call comfort but what I would describe as blindness. A blindness to our sense of intuition. A blindness to our own sense of individuality. In effect, a blindness to our own sense of humanity.
It started with the McDonalds and the H&M’s, it persevered strongly with the internet and the iPhone and it solidified its grip with the For You pages and the algorithms. Gradually, step by step, as we evolved (or devolved some might argue) the human race became more and more reliant on the constant stream of things around us rather than our own instincts.
Today, Gen Z can barely do anything on the fly. We search up the menu before we go out for dinner. We confirm a basic level of attraction by ‘matching’ before going on a date. We ask what time are you getting to the party? What are you wearing tonight? What drinks are you taking? We watch videos on how to find our personal style. We read articles on 20 lessons I learned in my twenties. Those of us who grew up watching makeup tutorials now feel like we need one for everything as we’ve become obliging hosts to an obsession with being reassured - so much so that we are now suffering from an insecurity epidemic.
I’m not saying that all technological advancements are bad; I love google maps and being able to check stock availability online. However, the oversaturation of information and choice has left us in a paralysed state of Sisyphean ennui where we remain stuck in the safety net of our echo chambers, reluctant to leave for fear of disappointment.
The Coachellafication of it all
Though I must affirm that it's not our fault, nor is it my intention to get preachy. I’m merely frustrated for our generation because our right to self-discovery has been abused and taken advantage of by people who want to sell us things. Even the things that used to invigorate individuality - music, art, literature - have become sucked up into the machine, leaving us with barely any avenues of interest outside of media consumption.
The same handful of artists are catapulted into our Spotify algorithms and we listen to them obediently. DJs are pressured to play the same hook of the same songs in order to keep the audience’s attention. In Australia, major festivals uphold the revolving door of Triple J royalty (I’m looking at you Dune Rats) because people won’t take a chance on artists they don’t know. Overseas, as exemplified by Kneecap at Coachella, performance has been stripped of its ties to protest, with a warning of expulsion sent to all those who would think of doing the same.
Yet another Keith Haring t-shirt, print, bucket hat etc. is sold to us which we proudly display because we think it's ‘art’. Books with aesthetically pleasing covers are widely discussed on ‘book-tok’ and photographed next to perfectly placed cups of coffee and granola.
True artistic discovery and expression is under threat thanks to the great and sad contradiction of technological advancement where something that could’ve made our world so much bigger ended up making it so much smaller.
No one knows what it means to be sexy
One of the grossest side effects of this cruel sickness is our loss of sensuality. In a world where everyone is striving to be hot, we’ve forgotten that the true essence of desire stems from the ecstatic rush of possibility. We’ve lost the love of tension, the arousal that lies in the unforeseen. We’re not holding our breath before we kiss someone for the first time, we’re thinking about how we’re going to tell our friends about it the next day.
Sensuality, in its purest form, is a lost art, and its absence is making us jaded and depressed.
We’ve replaced a lust for life with a lust for like as our cruel social environment has skewed how we perceive ourselves and others. When did we all decide that attractiveness is confirmed by how many people move their thumb slightly to the right so that the little love heart under your instagram story glows pink? The purely visual metrics by which we measure our appeal denies ourselves the pleasure that lies in stimulating all of our senses to incite a more complete, fulfilling and rewarding sense of self.
Delicious food and crisp drinks and nostalgic smells and fresh sheets, all of these sensory delights transcend hollow validation. But this isn’t a food or drink or linen magazine, so let’s chat about how music can expand our world past the superficial comfort of conventionality.
I’m of the belief that sensuality doesn’t just start in the bedroom. It starts when you walk into a club and the faint beckoning call of the bass sends butterflies swarming in your tummy. It starts when you listen to songs that used to accompany you on the way home from school and you feel a crushing sense of pride towards your own ontogenesis. It starts at pres when you gather around a kitchen table with your girls and scream the lyrics of your old-school favourites. Self-love isn’t sealed in a bottle of skincare, it blooms when your stomach hurts from too much wine, laughter and jazz. Foreplay doesn’t start when you take your clothes off, it begins when you catch the eyes and knowing smile of that stranger across the dancefloor.
When we spend half our lives with our nose pressed up against a screen, it’s very easy to miss these small things that seem insignificant on their own, but when added together for 80-odd years, lead to a lifetime full of pleasure.
We could stop filming at events. Put an end to our waiting with bated breath for the right time to capture the perfect snippet. We could be forced to go searching deeper and harder for our next summer soundtrack rather than accepting the Turkish Delight (Tik Tok songs) from the White Witch (evil record companies). We could do things because they feel good, not because they look good. We could draw and write and sing and play even if it felt weird and even if it looked bad.
Would we?
Could we?
Should we?
Maybe we should all give it a go and find out.
Fuck around and find out
I’m not saying that everyone born in the 1960s was crazy, confident and cool but that they just went through life figuring it out - something which our generation has been robbed of the chance to do. When it seems as if everything’s been predestined for you, you begin to lose your willingness to participate in the great unknown and instead fall victim to the inescapable human tendency to stick to what you know.
We’re less likely to take a chance on something because we’re afraid it won’t live up to the perfection we see on our screens. We don’t bother indulging in more epicurean pursuits because we think that online validation is enough to confirm our worthiness. Well spoiler alert: IT’S NOT.
I don’t know what the answer is but I know that radical self-pleasure is a good place to start. No, I don’t mean that kind of self-pleasure (though knock yourself out by all means), I mean the kind where you fill your life with unapologetic delight. Don’t ask for permission, ask for more!
Tired of streaming services giving you the same bunch of songs? Find a gig at your local watering hole and go. Get yourself knee deep in the process of discovery! Don’t just get to the event for the headliner, show up for the emerging talent that’s opening or closing. Chances are they’ve put more practice and care into their set than anyone else on the lineup.
If we spent half as much time investing in our relationship with the arts as we did thinking about how we look, our lives could become so much richer. And once we start flexing the muscle that strengthens our intuition and solidifies our sense of self, it will get stronger and sure enough we’ll become a force to be reckoned with and a breath of fresh air. Everyone wants to be ‘that girl’, so go out and be her!
The purpose of this article isn’t to get everyone to throw their phone into the Yarra river and sing Kumbaya - it's to encourage anyone reading to question their need to question. How many times a day do we seek reassurance rather than a) figuring it out or b) proceeding anyway without knowing, and what kind of beautiful situations could we find ourselves in if we went with the latter?
A life filled with as much music, art, food, reading, writing and saying yes as possible sounds like a good life to me. A simple exercise in detaching ourselves from the comfort of conformity could lead us into a greater realm of possibility full of more meaningful connection, deeper artistic exploration and of course, plenty of hideous chandeliers.
There are so many stories waiting to be told, all we need to do is simply give ourselves permission to start writing.
