Context vs Bubblegum

I go to bed this eve, the very tiredness that accompanied this morn stays with me still. Can’t shake it, can’t contemplate it, can’t correlate it…

Days like these ask the question of life, love and all its peripheral plug and play add-ons. As easy as fast food and just as effective and wholesome.

The humorous, sarcastic, less made for TV version of myself, reminds me how dramatic reading this will one day make, As a child of 24, trying to string it all together in my spare time. Lacking the ambition to truly reveal all that stirs within, but never short of a whimsical quip to trivialize such thoughts in a forum.

Henry David Theroux wrote of himself making a trip to the woods to live life with vigor and essentially, truly personify and animate that very term… life. Personally, he may have meant that all he needed was to step out for a few minutes, synchronize his heart beat with the flickering leaves dancing to the anthem of the wind, or maybe to settle his thoughts that insisted on jumping around like ecstasy filled teenagers or maybe, in fact, those are my wants.

The question begs itself all too often, who is flying this plane? With everything from made-for-TV movies to made for TV friends, getting into character has become part and parcel of what we are, even scarier, it’s become integral to who we are!

How on earth did such farcical behavior and insincere gestures become a societal norm? Easy, commercialization. Everything from VD’s to brands of humor have been, well, branded. People dressed in suits are described as “very Bond”, those appreciated for their sense of humor/intellect/wit, can only be done so as a novel case, or likened to something less ordinary and mainstream. Essentially, it’s going to become so passé offering more than the average. In effect, inferring that being specifically and specially different would make you a sheep.

Pink is the new black, reading meaningful literature is the new cultural norm and knowing yourself, yet still exuding confidence has become standard issue overalls.
The nerd in the corner of the class is no longer a minority and thanks to John Cusack and Hugh Grant, bumbling wit, means they have also become charmingly attractive. Like an indie band that only she knows of, a girl articulates the glory of her unquantifiable attraction to Dexter.

People get on with moving on faster because they get on with falling in fake love faster. Closure is no longer premium and the concept of “internal growth” deemed highly overrated and in some instances, negligible.

In a society where 40 something’s find themselves wanting less and loving more, 30 something’s find themselves, 20 something’s find their careers and teenagers find orgasms, bubblegum culture grows in strength as its packaging morphs to fit to size any age or cultural or gender grouping.

How does context even stand a chance with that? Maybe I over-romanticize the matter of unrequited love or even love lost or arguments about right and wrong or why David Beckham should have stayed at Real Madrid, but the Context vs Bubblegum war forges forward. We, as living, breathing, semi-coherent beings need to wind back the megabytes, channel our energies into what used to matter, what will matter and what does matter… now… to you.

The transition will by no means be something easy, with little thought placed on the why and too much on the how. A long and winding road awaits. I implore all ye that pass, do so with caution, hesitation and massive amounts of contestation. But chin up, so long as the want to know more, be more and feel more is inherently coded in our default processing, hope is with us. If Chandler and Monica can make it, so can we!