The Beginnings of Nothing

Andy Warhol is a paradox. He states "I want to be a machine, dont you?"; yet his profession was that of an artist. If he wants to be a machine, something that doesn't feel, why does he spend his time thinking of ways to make everyone else feel and critique their world? He created POP!, in which he took the benign everyday objects of our life, the items we consume both for physically beneficial nutrients and for media driven consumerism, and made them larger than life. He took one object made it big, colorful; he made you stare at something you already knew but that you only realize you know it because you see its faults in an expanded form. Liz Taylor wasn't multi-colored, Brillo Pad boxes aren't two feet by two feet cubic boxes, but they are both things we know and feel something towards. Whether it be envy for stardom, or sadness for what it means to actually use a Brillo pad (you know actual domesticity, cleaning like the modern human does) sadness for labor and gender divisions, whatever it was he was saying "hey look guys we all know this as Americans and it all means the same thing but yet something different". We all know the overarching societal consequences of these things, celebritism and consumerism, but do we know the intimate sides of these things, the things that make us truly human: emotions. For Warhol Campbell's soup wasn't just an american colored can, but a meal that he had almost everyday of his childhood. Campbell's soup wasn't just about 32 different flavors each on a canvas, it was about Warhol taking something so personal and exploiting it so that America would also have to face him taking the sacred and making it profane. Did he do it so that his memories could be immortalized and felt forever? Did he do it because he knew making something small into something large would make it lose its meaning? After all Baudrillard talks about a hyperreality where each new carbon copy is just a less valuable replica of the original, authentic item. So is Warhol just beating his feelings to the ground? All I know is no matter what Warhol felt something everyday, he was never free from the ultimate human struggle, no new/fake persona, no art, no replicated picture, was going to make him stop encountering sensations. Really what it comes down to is I don't completely buy it Andy; but as someone who also lives their life with a Nothing philosophy, I see exactly what you were trying to do: talk, create, be nothing that someone already hasnt/didnt/or isnt. We are all nothing, we are all everything, we are the yin and yang for eastern oriented thinkers, we are Chicken and Vegetable in a can for Americans, we are Andy's favorite meal: bread and jam. We are something, we are nothing.

Man Man sums it up best with "Van Helsing Boombox":
"When anything that's anything becomes nothing that's everything
and nothing is the only thing you ever seem to have

but only time will tell if I'll allow
the scenery around to eat me alive"

Just Potential Energy isn't for me. It is for all of you. For those birds that have flown to other continents for culture and self-expansion. For those of you that I wish i could talk to more often, for those that don't quite get my mind or words. It is for nothing and everything. Maybe it is for me, but only as much as it is for you. We all have a just potential energy in us to share with the world; but sometimes all it is is JUST potential energy that goes wasted. Potential energy sitting,waiting,wishing, so i hope to enlighten you in someway with justice, with words, with "truth" whatever that even means, even though i am constantly searching for it. But maybe its just pot energy, i mean obviously if you know me it is, but i'm hoping to expand that three letter word into something potent and poetic.

Currently listening to: "Modern World" By Wolf Parade