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I often look back on the holidays fondly, although I’ve never been the type to partake in lucrative festivities. These days are more or less notable because I finally get a much-deserved day off and the slight signage posted in the stores I frequent. The businesses take no time to remind you, “Ah, I guess it’s that time of year already,” while I waddle off away from the flowers and purchase the same things I always do on the weekends. Holidays aren’t differentiated in a very meaningful way, but the culturally envalued “magic” grazes the surface of my skin ever so slightly.
It’s apparent to pretty much everyone that holidays are simple ways for businesses to bring value to their shareholders, these festive traditions rely on consumers purchasing products to represent that truly care about the current events. The immediate aesthetic shift that “the most obvious forms of commodity fetishism” is telling of this extreme love capitalist aphorism. The blue_eyes, pink_background, inviting_arms, seeps into the regime of love as productive measure, extending it’s arms to reach the one (one) willingly consenting to her electronic hum of love. I think I’m falling out of love or so help me Rinami Himesaki-chan.
Love is for the wicked. The ones who willingly partake in the games are placated by the riajuu, a game where the only winners are those who participate and remain drunk on the societal plunge in romantique’s “Making*Lovers.”. You and I both know that there was never a chance, my Misaki trails off into yonder, and the bubbly ideal girly-kei gyaru is a falsified ideal. To my lonely brethren (and sisters), happy Valentine’s. To any other normie spending brunch with a reservation at 10:00am, have a good morning.
Of course, I say this with a hint of irony, the same poisoning of the water that any shameless self-identifying otaku has when painting themselves in the computations of abjection and impossibly cute young anime girls. We traverse the fantasy of being a righteous and well-informed consumer in so far as the culture surrounding it has transformed into an identity itself! It is as fantasy as any other notion of idealistic identity culture. Making a show out of making a show itself, girl bands (and idol groups) are great at revealing this double-acting exchange.
We are not so single-minded as to otherize an entire group of people and to uphold the tribalistic ventures of our primal ancestors. Artifice is not to be subjected to avoidance because you and I are completely defined by simulacra anyways. But ignoring the extraneous factors and relying purely on the most reactionary and conservative response does fare well for something, I like to think.
sleepless nights (with my display lights)
Rituals, lighting candles under a full moon, breaking bread with a suspiciously heavy pillow, the feeling that you aren’t in the right “headspace” to consume media. I find myself enamored by workflows and food preparation. I can only ever do something when the starting line and finish line are one and the same.
I recorded this video with the same intent as the last one, to let the manic flow go anywhere it needs, to barter for anything with anyone, to just say whatever comes to mind without worrying about the details. In part, it’s my own attempts at this self-bridled sociality I mention, but the answer lies completely in ritual. To do something because some festivity requires it, to have a reason to do anything at all.
Deny in bad faith the reasons you do anything. To become this authentic self, to shed the skin you so invariably consented to wearing, to curate a persona that alleviates and becomes this being, making up yourself without ever stopping. If authenticity is a lie and there is no escape from images, I don’t think the answer lies in a complete disavowal of the subhuman self, but in never staying who you think you are. If you are properly otaku, at least.
Happy Valentine’s.
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