Gesamtkunstwerk

ss2 pelita, wee hours of saturday morning. we were talking about t-shirts. my t-shirt, actually, bought from the curve on recommendation from shyng!. and my cousin foo told us of this t-shirt, which apparently ran into 3-digit US dollars, which he would've bought, simply becoz of the picture. what exactly prompts this irrational urge, when all there is is just an image, when hey, an idea is just an idea, and in this case, can be readily appropriated and plagiarized?

got me thinking about t-shirts. i don't suppose it's just the influence of the industry i work in, where "trend" and "dated" are bad words, where we're constantly looking for timeless designs and longevity and legs, but really, look around. the trends these days are downright ugly.

u know what i'm talking about. the tattered hems, distressed sleeve-ends. u see these on early-20's people, or those later teens whose tastes are starting to dip toward misinformed "sophistication". prints of rampant lions on heraldic crests. spatters and splotches like a half-hearted pollock impersonation. worst of all - on polos with green and pink stripes, or shit-themed variations of those hues. they're downright ugly and yet... getting cliched. this is just wrong.

there is another trend. that of younger teens, gravitating toward a misinterpreted notion of contemporary design. messy, graffiti-influenced graphics. of doodles with vague semblances and wild lines, banked on extreme asymmetry. done nicely, these are usually ok to my eyes, they look nice. that's 1 part of Design achieved, at least - they look nice. but. some of these like to incorporate cryptic (read: stupid) slogans. just for the sake of the presence of some typography, and bad typography at that. stupid words simply outbalance whatever visual appeal there is.

to illustrate, let me tell u of a giordano t-shirt i would've bought - the picture was a low-battery symbol which i would've loved to wear to work on a friday. but as i picked it up, it unfolded itself to reveal some no-brainer words (and in gaudy reflective silver too, i think) underneath, which was an instant turn-off, making me drop it and walk, never looking back. total waste of a beaut visual.

now there is a third "trend". i put this one in quotes becoz i do not think it's a trend at all. it has longevity and timelessness. t-shirts with a clean uncluttered design. with strong graphics, a visual that makes sense, witty words that make sense. that function pretty much like an ad, effectively saying one thing and saying it well - a pun, a parody, a joke, something provocative, that makes u smile, think, wonder, reminisce. with 2 parts Design achieved - it looks good, with a purpose. a social statement.

i remember dangerfield's "put your fucking collar down", and another with a classic children's-book-print of a loving mother patting her boy's head: "now remember johnny, only retards wear their collars up!" - this was, i'm sure u can guess, in response to the trend of polo collars increasingly being seen turned up. wtf's with that anyway, huh? anyone?

so back to foo's much-lauded overpriced american t-shirt. it was a christmas-themed cartoon-rendered design, simply executed, a very apt social statement, saying so much in so little.

santa nails jesus to the cross. i like it.

it took 2 months. to get off "early" for once. to be able to say for the first time, "i went to meet my friends after work". doesn't matter that we just sat around for half an hour, closeted in second-hand smoke. and then played an unfulfilling hour of pool, still cloeseted in second-hand smoke. doesn't matter - it was a new sensation and therefore a new definition of a Friday Night. how sad is this? am i a workaholic - becoz i like work, or becoz i've nothing else to devote myself to, or becoz i feel lazy to divide time between my devotions? and did u realize those are all very sad options, in descending order?

saturday - not that i'm proud to say this, but i now believe in alcohol.

sunday - 2 movies, on the suggestion of smartka (in return, she is going to review food outlets at the curve d'sara, so that we may yet avoid her wrath at those culinary travesties she is so keen to shoot). tired like a dog, i fell asleep at 9pm.

monday - woke up at 5am after horrible dreams of unsatisfactory performance at work. this phenomenon was once cited by pickers, who sits next to me, but i did not expect it to hit me so soon. even my unconscious mind does not let me forget. the workaholic's weekend is short.

anyway, after "the beat my heart skipped", which is about the piano and the Dark Side, i am bloghopping when i find this. snatched from travelune, a song apparently called "defying gravity".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqWWJJ_96yY

ok a bit slow on the uptake, but they killed eden mccain
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

there's been a couple of things in the past 1 week. or from another perspective, 1 long saga. or 1 short saga, it's all very subjective. but all in all, it was a trip, a mindfuck worthy of truly potent drugs, except i was completely sober and sane throughout.

i'd been slungshot through a whole spectrum of colourful feelings, while enduring a workday ending at 6am in between. from awkwardness to feeling unfamiliar ground to numbed gnawing, to a totally unprecedented blackhole-stage depression, to liberation and relief (and now, a new sensation of guilt). 1 week.

very new stuff - and the key to new is just to do it. sometimes u never know until u've gone. very confusing stuff - and the key to confusing: is plain.

self-delusion is pretty plain.

the spell to break self-delusion is pretty plain truth. half-truths, unconfirmed truths and vague truths too, are sometimes still lies. sweet lies. if it's hard to stomach, there's no point dressing it up. scrape the sugar coating away. swallow it raw and bitter as it is. plunge into the deep wells of depression, talk to your shrink, and bounce back better than before.

it's a necessary trip which is best done sooner than later. u have to unload a heavy heart for it to be light again. u have to break it completely to mend it again. and u have to lose it completely too, before u find it again.

and that's the plain truth.

"Only those who go too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S Eliot