Pleasure in Denial
November 4th, 2005,All day, while editing photos and taking liberal email breaks (shame on me!) I’ve been thinking about how we live in a per-order world. I listened a little more to George RR Martin’s Song of Ice And Fire series on audiobook last night, and I keep wanting to skip to the good storylines. Especially now that several characters I’m extremely interested in have…..
And here I am again, right back at the same thought. Spoilers are an example of what I’m taking about. Intellectual Property theft is what I’m talking about. Per use song sharing, per phone ringer downloads. This is what I’m thinking about. It’s all tied up in my head somehow.
The thing is, it was NICER back when I wasn’t getting my way all the time. As much as I complained, I enjoyed the cliff-hanger feel of having to wait until next week before watching the latest Farscape in a way that renting the box set of Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars didn’t give me. It was nicer when I took in a musician’s work an entire album at a time, rather than just downloading the one good song I’d already heard.
There’s a new Leisure Suit Larry game out, and you can download a R-rated version. It’s a bit of a disappointment in the same way that the availability of Nude Sim Skins was disappointing. As much as I wanted to see my hot little Sim-ette strip naked and shower, there was a part of me that was equally glad that I could not. The Sim Skins were created by some horny freak, somewhere out in the internet. But the LSL game’s developers put out the nudie-version in response to customer demand.
Thing is, men have always wanted to look at titties. Only, now we’re no longer bashful about it. We want tits, we want them anywhere you can put them, and we’ll tell you if we can find a place where some more tits would fit.
In a very real way, our entire culture has become an homage to premature ejaculation. We don’t want you to give us any kind of buildup. We don’t care if it would be more enjoyable to add a little suspense. Suspense makes us want, and we’ve been getting our way for so long that we can’t bear suspense. We’re hedonists, every last one, and we want whatever it is we want right now.
I don’t know whether this is a cause of, or caused by the rampant intellectual property theft that’s become a common staple of our lives. But it definitely seems like a factor, one way or another. I know, I know, I’m an idealist. I worry about what should be or could be rather than face what is.
But I’d like to think that my photography contains, to some measure, the delicate sensibility that I feel is lacking in the rest of my life. That while I reveal nudity, I do not garishly show it. I would like to think that there is a measure of the storyteller’s tongue in my mechanical eye, an ability to reveal things at a pace that is enjoyable seductive.
It goes back to an old philosophy I used to espouse quite vocally. It’s not about the rest of the world, it’s just how I handle my little corner of it. Right here. I’ve drawn a line in the sand, and I’ve set down the rules for my little kingdom.