A supposedly left-leaning man (name I forget), scoffed at landscapes and portraits (Guardian in hand), then became rather annoyed with me upon daring to point out the vacuity of a well-known street artist’s ‘protest art’, amid the anti-monarchist chants of equally vapid LARPers performing to a juvenile crowd at another one of those English summer, sophomoric, boutique music festivals (surrounded by its own border wall – the irony!).
I assume, Dear Reader, you’ll likewise feel irked by such insolence.
Rest assured, my intention is not to cause offence but, equally, I couldn’t give a flying fuck if I do.
I have bigger fish
To fry.
Orwell foresaw its manipulation of language,
Kafka prophesied its suffocation of the spirit,
Huxley intuited its stratified numbness.
The 21st Century:
As tediously
Conformist
As it is depressingly
Meaningless,
Pervasive
Elusive authoritarianism
Its genius,
Yet
Many seem trapped in a bygone era
Demanding illusions of subversion from facades
By their artists
Do they really believe deposing vassals of the Goblin King
Would change a fuckin’ thing?
Who shall we topple first?
Trump?
Orbán?
Putin?
Biden?
Starmer?
Macron?
Why not try
Rebelling against
That which sits
In your pocket?
Why not dare
Disobey
The all-seeing eye
Glaring through a screen
That sits before you?
Why not find the mettle
To walk alone
Ignoring
The Spectacle?
Its unreality
Has a much greater hold
Over your mind!
Do not demand of art
If you have not
The
Balls
To
Simply delete
And switch off!
Subtlety
Of imagination,
Will usher in
A revolution;
How hard is that?
July 2024
© Percival Alexander