Style Cycles 2

         One of the strongest manifestations of the Perversity of Fashion is seen in teenagers, and I don’t just mean their susceptibility to trends.  My generation of teen (coming of age in the 1990s) wore baggy or boot cut jeans; one look at the current crop of kids and you see skinny ankles everywhere.  It was barely conscious, but my group of teens was reacting to/rejecting the tapered ankles of the 1980s, and the new teens are positioning themselves against the pants of my day.  This is part of the fashion cycle in general, but seems more intense, direct and necessary in adolescents. 

         In the June 2010 issue of The Atlantic there’s an article by Caitlin Flanagan about the modern “hook up” culture teens are experiencing (“Love Actually”).  This article chiefly discusses the cycles and changes of youthful sexual experience, but it refers to the adolescent fashion reactions as an example of teen cultural transition, and I thought Flanagan expressed it with remarkable precision and insight.

         She writes: The answer lies – as does the answer to so much teenage behavior – in the mores and values of the generation (no, of the decade) immediately preceding their own.  This tiny unit of time is always at the heart of what adolescents do, because as much as each group imagines itself to be carving new territory out of nothing more than its own inspired creativity, the youngsters don’t have enough experience to make anything new – or even to recognize what might be clichéd.  All they know is the world they began to take notice of when they turned 12 or 13 ; all they can imagine doing to put their mark on that world is to either advance or retreat along the lines that were already drawn for them.

         Wow.  Caitlin Flanagan got it spot on and said it so well.  

Style Cycles

         it’s been interesting so far to observe the turning of the gears as the cycles of fashion and culture roll along in my lifetime. 

I believe in what I call The Perversity of Fashion.  Another term for it is The Cycles of Style.  These cycles are always moving away from what was in place before them, so it’s a constant emergence of what’s currently unfashionable transitioning into the vanguard of the cool: thus the perversity, as something bad is always being chosen as the new good.  It’s not as easy as it sounds, though.  Everything currently ugly and out will not be rising to the world of chic; this perversity of coolness requires an editing process, something some individuals seem to have intrinsically and others will never develop.  And fashion, if predictable in its perversity, spreads beyond it to something indefinable: the zeitgeist, the bubble, the collective unconscious.  This is even more difficult to chart. 

         I’m using fashion as an illustration (it’s visual and obviously trendy), but the wheel turns for everything, certainly for any sort of culture.  Words, thoughts, lifestyles, memes.  Pop culture may move the fastest, but the wheel turns for all culture.

Journals Past 2

         Revisiting my journal (reading as I type it) from when I was 17 and 18 has been like discovering a window or a wormhole to myself at those ages.  I was still an adolescent: I was rather dramatic and a lot more anxious and negative than (luckily) I am now, but I was also often surprisingly mature (verbally anyway – it’s apparent that I already had a strong relationship to the written word).  Reading these missives from the past I’m occasionally struck by how wise I could be.

         I was more melodramatic, and while this may be typical of a teenaged girl, it is also one of the parts of myself back then that I’m learning from now.  Because, at 18, I saw the world as a symbolic place imbued with significance and double meanings.  I suppose life has made me more cynical, and there was a time when I eschewed “magical thinking” (though, honestly, never completely obliterated it). 

         Reviewing my life at age 18 – an intense transitional time - now, at another transitional time, I am almost envious of my ability then to see life as significant and even magical.  Granted I’m happier and more together now and the magical thinking of that time was born of desperation; any envy it causes me now is probably just twisted nostalgia.  But if nothing else, it’s so cool to actually get to see clearly and revisit these paradigms my mind shifted away from so long ago.  

Journals Past

         I kept a journal when I was younger.  I still do, more or less, but somehow the journals I wrote half my life ago carry a different significance.  This vintage text (the first book stretches from 1993-5) isn’t exactly a scribbled, scrawled mess, but some of it is, and it’s all written in different pens, some of which are fading.  Years ago now I thought it might be a good idea to retype my old journals.  It’s a different experience reading something typed than hand-written.  They feel psychologically distinct; the method of delivery can affect the reception, the reading.  So I’d been thinking of typing them up for a long time, and I finally started doing it about six months ago.  I had not read the journal, beside a rare quick glance here and there, since I initially wrote it, and revisiting these old entries has been illuminating.

         One fascinating revelation regards the strengths and weaknesses of memory.  I’ve always known (don’t we all) how malleable and untrustworthy memory can be, but it’s so interesting to actually see how this has played out it my own life.  My memory is pretty good.  But naturally there are things I recall in the journal and then there are things I don’t.  Most often I’ll remember some but not all of a situation; I’ll remember events yet be unclear on the context and continuity.  The best is when I don’t currently recall something then reading/typing the entry will bring the memory back.

        

Retail Memory

          I’ve had a plethora of different retail and service jobs in my life.  In this kind of “profession” a lot of different people pass through your workspace.  Some customers stand out in your mind - you’ve made an actual connection with them, or just through some idiosyncrasy of memory.  But then there’s the humanity that passes through your life, sometimes frequently, but whom you only vaguely recognize if at all.  Obviously you don’t have time to pay close attention to every detail, especially when you’re working. 

What I’ve always found interesting – and it may just be my own brain for all I know – is the way my memory works in this situation.  Because there have been many times – and this spans back over years of different jobs – when I won’t recognize the customer’s face at all but then my memory will be jogged when I see their bag, wallet, jewelry, or some such insignificant  marker. 

         Why does my brain recognize and remember material objects over human faces?  The human brain, looking at something unrecognizable, will often see faces and other visions of humanity. Pattern recognition.  Maybe memory is different; maybe it’s too much to ask it to store all those people.  So I recall material objects before the people they belong to, who I’ve obviously spoken to before or I wouldn’t recognize their objects.

Writing about frustration about writing (it's a palindrome!)

          One of the hard things about being a novelist is the difficulty of sharing your art with others.  Even in the best of circumstances – a willing reader who wants to read your book – it’s going to take them a little while.  Then you have the people who say they want to read it and don’t, and they feel guilty and then you feel sort of guilty . . . I’m not complaining about these potential readers.  Reading novels is a niche activity; it always has been, and it is more than ever in this super modern world we live in with all its distractions and devices.  If anyone actually wants to read my book I am grateful. 

         My gripe is based on jealousy.  Jealousy of the practitioners of every other art form.  A visual artist or a musician, it takes someone 30 seconds to look at or listen to their artistic output – okay, I get that chances are the looker or listener still won’t give a shit, but at least in that 30 seconds they got an idea of what that artist does.  As a writer you don’t even have that.  You’re lucky if your work exists as an abstract concept for most people you know. 

         This is why, a few years ago, I quit writing for probably the third time.  The frustration had built to such an extreme, I felt that writing was pointless and no one cared.  Living in L.A. exacerbated this.  Los Angeles is shallow and technology-driven and everyone’s reading screenplays, not novels.  I stopped writing altogether, tried to throw myself into visual arts.  It lasted about a year.  It was forced and false and after a while of repression I could no longer deny that I wanted to write novels.  I was like a drug addict who put my all into quitting but was unable to resist the lure of old habits. 

         Now that my first mystery novel Gossip Kills is out for readers to find if they care, the frustrations have eased a little.  At least I have something for people to read if they actually want to.

Skulls Are Evil

         There was a customer in the store I work at, with her son who was probably 7 or 8.  The son was looking at some buttons (buttons as in pins, brooches) with slightly irreverent cartoon images on them.  The kid wanted one of these ($1 each!) and the button he chose had a rather heavy-metal-looking skull on it.  The mom clearly found it distasteful or tacky.  So when the boy asked for it she said no, but her stated reason was, “skulls are evil.” The kid of course pressed her, but she held firm and kept repeating that skulls were evil.

         From my eavesdropping position behind the register I was shocked.  Skulls are evil?  I kept waiting for her to qualify this with, “Of course you have a skull, it’s under your face and over your brain and it’s an important thing you need to live; while biologically natural, skulls are sometimes used to represent death and evil things, but this is only part of the story.”  But no.  The mantra continued: “skulls are evil.”

         I found this to be lazy and pathetic parenting, and decided the woman had something of a weak mind.  Especially when she allowed the boy to buy his second-choice button, which was a cartoon image of a mushroom cloud.  A mushroom cloud.  And she didn’t blink.  I was floored by the ignorance and the irony.  I can only assume she couldn’t identify a mushroom cloud or didn’t know what it represented.  I know it’s hard raising kids and you have to pick your battles.  But really.  Skulls are evil?