Often we meet and greet people on automatic gear. There is no eye contact, no hugs, not even a hand shake. We talk but it’s all rhetorical speech, we have no intention to really know how the person is doing, what is making him/her happy or miserable. We blame it on our scarsety of time, not without it being true; the age of information has sucked our lifes to the scary times described by the genius Charles Chaplin on Modern Times. We live mechanically, working to surviving and surviving to work. Social Media have very little to do with socializing and even less on being a media, it is more like a dead end burden we feel obliged to attend and respond to. We are being slaved by our cepllphones. Special moments have been neglected to second or third priority, if at all a priority. We now get emotional by watching tiny videos on tiny screens, just before continuing all the meaningless compulsory activities that took over our days and lifes. It feels like we have no choice. We are exhausted and it feels like everyone else is living a better life that the one we are. It is difficult to choose what we want when we have to do what we must. The new phone, the new car, the new next thing that will grant us the new debt, but not the peace we should be gaining. Most of us are not even struggling about the fancy things, the majority of humanity is still trying to figure out where they will sleep tonight or what their next meal will be, if it will at all be. Where did we go wrong?
And how to step out of this madness?
Few of us have the luxury to plan ahead. Only for today I know what to do: I will paint. And tonight, for sure, I will watch Modern Times. It seems that the fella knew what he was playing about. Art has the answer, and hopefully it will redeem us.
Art: Goof old days – 30×40 – 2023 – In exhibition at Naivistit Iittalassa.
Luciana Mariano ©
luciana mariano 