Show Him The Fruits

Show him the fruits

There’ve been a few responses to/reblogs with tags on my post about DIY clothing embellishments that basically boil down to ‘I’d love to do this but I’m scared it’ll turn out bad/I’m not a good enough artist’. And I get it, I really do! I also want my art things to turn out nicely. But also…making it badly is sort of the point of punk DIY. 

Listen. We live in a world that would dearly love to charge you a subscription fee for breathing. The bastards are doing everything they possibly can to figure out how to turn art - stories, visual art, music, textile/fibre art, sculpture, crafts and creations of every kind - into a neat, discrete, packageable commodity, a product they can chop up into little pieces and stick behind a paywall so they can charge you for every drop of it you want to have in your life. 

The whole sneering idea that ‘everybody wants to be some kind of creator now’ and anything less than absolute mastery right out the gate is somehow shameful and embarrassing is a tool those bastards are using. It’s a way to reinforce the idea that only a set group of people can create and control art, and everybody else has to buy it. 

But art isn’t a product. Art is a fundamental human impulse. Nobody is entitled to a specific piece of art (which is where this message gets skewed into pitting people who love art against the artists who make it, while the bastards screw us all and run away with the money). But making art belongs to everybody. We make up songs and dances and stories, and paint things, and make clothes, and embellish them, and carve flowers into our furniture and our lintels and our doorframes, and make windows out of tiny pieces of coloured glass, and decorate our homes and our bodies and our lives with things we make and make up, simply for the love of beauty and of the act of creation. Grave goods from tens of thousands of years ago show that ancient hominids gave their dead wreaths of ceramic flowers, tattooed their bodies, beaded their shoes. Making things for the sake of beauty and enjoyment is one of the most ancient and human things we can do. 

The idea that we can’t, that we have to buy shit instead, because art is a product and you have to have the bestest prettiest most perfect product, is the enemy of joy. It’s the death of culture. And it means that, instead of whatever it is that you cherish and enjoy and value, you get whatever inoffensive (and to whom is it inoffensive?) bland meaningless samey-samey crap that the bastards want you to be allowed to have. What are you missing and what are you missing out on, if you don’t make or modify or decorate anything for yourself, if you don’t think you can because the product at the end won’t be polished or perfect or marketable enough? What do you lose? What do we lose? 

It is a desperately vital and necessary thing for you to make shit. For you to know that you can make shit, that you don’t have to just lie back and take whatever pablum the bastards want to force-feed you (and charge you through the nose for). That the bastards need you more than you need them. 

Become ungovernable. Be your own weirdly-endearing punk little freak. Paint on a t-shirt. Sing off-key in the shower or at karaoke night or at open mic night. Make up a story where you get to meet your favourite fictional character and you guys hug or fuck or punch each other in the face. Make art. Do it badly. Do it frequently. Do it enthusiastically. Do it for love and joy and creativity and fun and the spiteful joy of thumbing your nose at some smug motherfucker with a Swiss bank account who wants to track your heartbeat and location for the rest of your life in order to automatically pump AI-generated beats matched to your mood into your earbuds for a small monthly subscription fee of $24.99/month. It is literally the only way we are ever going to have even a chance to save art and our own lives from the bastards. 

So. Paint that t-shirt. 

(Also support artists where you can, and buy your music from Bandcamp.)

Passenger trains in US vs Europe (image is making the rounds among U.S. transit advocates today)

Do it

Anyway if this post reaches 30000 notes I'll sit down and professionally film a Goncharov movie scene you can send to people who claim it's not real. This is completely serious, I've made movies before and I'm willing to do it for the memes.

Based on a painful overheard discussion at the store (”and then when they’re done boiling, I add a little salt to the carrots and maybe put pepper out in case anyone’s feeling spicy! My mom always served them like that!”), this needs to be said for whoever needs to hear it: you should be roasting and seasoning your vegetables, your family convincing you it is acceptable to boil them and serve them with only salt is a lie and a curse you are obligated to break.

ROAST AND SEASON YOUR VEGETABLES.

Boiling them pulls nutrients out that you then pour down the fucking drain, it drains away all the LITTLE TASTY SUGARS INSIDE, whereas roasting both LEAVES nutrients in and caramelizes the sugars into deliciousness.

ROAST YOUR VEGETABLES.

Boiling them is a crime, I don’t care who told you you needed to tolerate mushy unflavored vegetables, they were wrong, they lied to you, .

ROAST YOUR VEGETABLES AND FIND JOY.

Oil. Seasoning (NOT JUST SALT, SALT IS CONSIDERED DEFAULT). Minced garlic (buy the big pre-minced tubs if you don’t have time or physical ability and tell those saying you can’t to fuck off, no one should be denied the deliciousness of garlic). Shredded cheese if you want - Parmesan gets nice and golden. Mix. Roast at 400-425 until crispy. Maybe squeeze some lemon juice on it. Done.

ROAST

YOUR 

FUCKING

VEGETABLES.

GUESS WHAT? ALL THE VEGETABLES I THOUGHT SUCKED AS A KID WERE BOILED. YOU KNOW WHAT’S DELICIOUS NOW? CARROTS. CORN. TOMATOES. FUCKING ASPARAGUS. GODDAMN PARMESAN ROASTED CAULIFLOWER. I HAVE NEVER MET A VEGETABLE NOT IMPROVED BY ROASTING. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE.

ROAST YOUR VEGETABLES AND BREAK FREE.

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks