Charlie loses touch -- too much affirmation

Too much affirmation can be a bad thing. Consider Charlie Rose, urbane, cosmopolitan, famous, rich, and yet in his pitiful attempts to reach out to other people he exposes himself, like maybe a baboon, the so-called ‘shower trick.’ He’s not the only one. As a ploy to win friends this disarming gesture is fairly crude. We don’t know who’s gone along with it, but sometimes people complain publicly, and in this incandescent moment, in a blinding flash of social awareness, it seems wrong. Actually none of it makes any sense at all. 

Rich and famous used to be enough, influential friends, the best seats, and romance should be so easy. On the DL, many professional services are available, well, just about everywhere, and everyday, everyone so much wants to be your friend, including comely career-climbing nubiles, so why? Why behave like a drooling inmate jerking open his robe at a state facility somewhere? Of several possibilities that come to mind, none seems healthy or wise, or in any way fulfilling. Ordinary people suspect it’s a sickness.

Too much affirmation, too much deference, too much phony butt-smooching day after day can make a person ill. The person with power begins to lose touch, begins to see others as fawning sycophants, which, around them, they mostly are. Along with all those privileges, they also feel the weight of everyone’s expectation, their judgement, their jealousy and resentment, whether it’s there or not. I’m guessing here, of course, but we have examples of power corrupting. Military officers of a certain rank can openly declare creationist belief without fear of contradiction from any college educated lieutenant, diving toward mandatory retirement, they won’t know why. Those constructive criticisms in the suggestion box just might be taken personally in the front office, it’s risky.

Does any of this apply to the state of art these days, don’t see how. It might be that some folks are overly impressed with rich and famous, nodding and smiling at openings for ugly, repulsive visual effronteries claiming to be art. Art can be open-robe crude these days, and not all that grand to look at, either. It’s a matter of losing touch, simply by concentrating the power to judge in the hands of too few. They congratulate themselves endlessly, grants and awards, and they sell stock in a bogus house of cards, touting an extrapolated, cross-referenced, mostly imaginary collector value for art, instead of considering inherent worth. 

Damien Hirst and his ilk are carnally despoiling the ultra wealthy, a deliberately painful public groping, preying on their gullibility, their innate competitiveness over trifles, and their inability to relate to the rest of humanity, what they think or feel. It’s right there in the tank with his decomposing goat, a desperation to ingratiate almost beyond human understanding. Live with it, and look at it everyday why don’t you -- pardon, my outrage brims over. It’s just that we’ve tolerated these abuses for so long. Let’s all demand a bit of decorum from our art, at least an attempt at charm, and for sure a willingness to relate back and forth. Candlelight isn’t necessary, but maybe a little intelligent conversation, a bit of time to get to know each other, and things ought to work out fine.