Buy More Stuff

With Christmas less than a week away, it’s Buy More Stuff season!

Trying to define or describe Buy More Stuff is complicated.

Call it street performance, call it culture-jamming, call it schizophrenic capitalism at its finest, Buy More Stuff looks like a very polite protest attended by earnest, young, well-dressed professionals. Here and there, a head of bright pink hair or particularly prominent facial piercings make you wonder exactly what slice of the Seattle populace these protesters might represent.

The group stations itself in the heart of the shopping district at peak hours of holiday gift-buying frenzy with their iconic signs and fliers. Their message is clear, succinct, and limited to a few phrases: “Buy More Stuff!” “Hurry!” “Or else they’ll run out of stuff!” “Or you’ll run out of time!”

Passersby stop, confused.

Some ask who the protesters are working for: Does the mall pay you to do this?

> No, just here to get the message out. Buy More Stuff!

Some are angry: What are you, like, die-hard capitalists or something?

> No, just want to encourage everyone to Buy More Stuff!

Others are sure they’ve seen through the irony: You’re being sarcastic, right?

> No sir! 'Tis the season to Buy More Stuff!

My favorites are the smug passersby who act like they’re in on the joke. They smile or raise an awkward fist in solidarity with what they’re reading as a progressive, performance-art commentary on the state of American consumerism. They get it. They're hip. And then they walk into Macy’s. To Buy More Stuff.

Freud describes the phenomenon of “disavowal” as a compromise made within the human psyche when it becomes necessary to believe two contradicting things at one time. I don’t actually believe that something bad will happen if I say “Macbeth” while inside a theatre. And still, I never say it. And I chide anyone who does. Disavowal.

We accomplish the act of disavowal by splitting our ego in two. One part serves what Freud calls the “reality principle” and the other serves the “pleasure principle.” Hence the “there are no calories in cookie crumbs” scene of disavowal. I know better, but I do it anyway. The fantasy is not actually believed. But it’s not not believed either.

The Buy More Stuff protest is so potent because it takes aim at the fantasy-producing disavowal at the heart of the western capitalist project. We know that stuff will not make us happy. We know that buying more stuff will not fill the holes in our lives. We know that buying more stuff for our loved ones will not make them love us more or defend us from abandonment. And yet, we walk into Macy’s.

The embodiment of sobriety and reason in their three-piece suits with professionally lettered signs, the Buy More Stuff protesters are not ironic. They are not, in fact, trying to get people to Buy Less Stuff through some sort of reverse psychology street ministry.

Instead, Buy More Stuff asks us to hold our fantasies accountable. In doing so, the protesters reveal the sometimes uncomfortable disavowal that is subtly taking place within each of us as we indulge in the pleasure principle of consumption.

Now excuse me, I have to go to Macy’s…

Alternative Economics

In Vajrayana Buddhism, there's a preliminary practice sometimes prescribed to those of us who need help developing generosity. You hold in one hand a gemstone, a gold coin, or, nowadays, perhaps some small and surprisingly valuable piece of technological equipment like an iPhone. Slowly and simply, you pass it from your right hand to your left, then back again. You give. You receive. You give again.

In addition to rehearsing the baby steps of generosity, this practice is also a beginner’s guide to letting go. It’s the kind of letting go that doesn’t end in utter loss, disappearance, or death. It’s peek-a-boo light. It’s Freud’s fort-da game where the spool never rolls too far away.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the psychoanalytic description of subject-formation. How we become the selves we feel ourselves to be. According to Freud, "the ego is the precipitate of the abandoned object cathexis,"(On Narcissism). In other words, who we are is a collage crafted from our emotional attachments to people we've loved and lost. It's my policy to take Freud with a grain of salt, but this description rings true. On quiet days I can feel the people I've loved moving around inside my psyche, or at least the familiar rumblings of their memories.

But the loss part is hard to stomach. Must we lose people we love to build our own individual subjectivities? I'm lucky enough to still have vibrant, loving, living parents and ongoing, caring relationships with many of my previous partners. I know that nothing lasts forever, but I here I am, enriched by their existence. Haven't these people nested themselves into the muddled montage of my self-image without being completely abandoned or lost?

I don't think the economy of the heart burns the same fuel as the economic engine of late capitalism. I don't think gain and loss need be tied together in such mechanistic union. I believe there is a way to lose without catastrophic trauma and other foundations to build upon than the corpses of those lost.

To me, performance seems like a version of this Buddhist practice of giving from one hand to the other. The communication -- even communion -- possible in the performance event challenges the gain/loss model of giving and receiving. Transformation rather than exchange can take place between subjects. If the energy of this could be harnessed, we might find that perpetual motion machine dreamed about by theoretical physicists. I imagine the heart and psyche pay as little heed to the laws of thermodynamics as they do to systems of economic modeling.

First Impressions

As mature, compassionate, considerate adults, we're encouraged not to put too much faith in our first impressions. Judging a book by its cover is bad form.

But I find in directing theatre that paying attention to my first impressions is essential. Most actors know that their audition begins the second they walk in the door. Playwrights know that the professionalism of their title page --even their font!-- will reflect on their script.

In my directing seminar at Stanford I was recently asked to read a book of short plays by Beckett and pick one to direct. As any fan of Beckett knows, his plays are dense and can take a long time to fully digest. The book arrived late in the mail and class was rapidly approaching. I found myself speeding through these impossibly complex plays, searching for a foothold on what they meant, wondering how in God's name I'd choose without really understanding.

Then I flipped by one in particular. Words and phrases started jumping out at me: "love," "age," "a gleam of tooth biting on the under," "all dark no begging /no giving no words." I had no idea what it meant. And as a PhD student, I really like to know what things mean.

But class was looming and it was time to commit. I grabbed this first impression with all my strength and proclaimed my intention to direct Beckett's radio play Words and Music for my first assignment.

Sometimes it seems like the rational mind can justify anything: "No, it's good that the scenic carpenters messed up on the construction of the banister, the wobbliness symbolizes the fragility of the entire society!" First impressions, like the reflexes that help us pull our hand away from a hot stove, don't allow the time for justification. The reflex arc moves energy and information from your body straight to your spine and back (bypassing the brain entirely) in order to take quick action.

In terms of aesthetics, who can say what instant personal psychic calculus results in that reflexive flash of interest? Why did this play feel hot in my hands when the ones before and after it just confused me? All I know is that when I went home that evening and read the play thoroughly, I fell in love. It's deeper and stranger and funnier and harder than I'd have guessed upon first impression. But the challenge feels like the right challenge.

I've found that trusting this flash of interest, of desire, of excitement --however subtle-- often puts me on a path that my rational mind only partially understands. Careful consideration is important and the ability to question one's initial assumptions is certainly key to being a good human being, but I consider it part of my artistic practice to attend to that flashing fish of desire as it breaks the surface of the lake.

Parapraxis: through, beside, beyond...

The word "parapraxis" was invented by Sigmund Freud's English translators in the 1930s as a latinate (and therefore official-sounding) replacement for the German term Fehlleistung, which simply means "faulty action." More commonly known as a "Freudian Slip," common parapraxes include slips of the tongue, mistakes in writing, odd moments of forgetfulness, and misplacement of objects. These faulty actions, while accidental, are perhaps not as faulty as they seem, as they can bring to the surface wishes or attitudes previously held secret in the unconscious mind.

Looking at the word from an etymological perspective, its meaning becomes slipperier. The heart of the term invokes the Greek word "praxis," which means practice, action, or simply "doing." The other Greek word for action or deed is slightly more familiar: "drama."

The prefix "para," can mean any number of seemingly contradictory things, including "through," "beside," "beyond," and "contrary to." It is this last meaning Freud's translators had in mind when they coined the term -- as in, "Contrary to my desired action, I said my mother's name in place of my girlfriend's while we were making love."

The other interpretations of "para", however, are equally provocative. Parapraxis interpreted as "through practice" invokes the development that can take place through dedicated, regular training in a specific method: "Through practice, I have gained new insights and abilities."

"Beside practice" makes me ask what else might be needed in addition to the required training: "Beside football practice, players are encouraged to take ballet lessons to increase their agility on the field."

"Beyond practice" implies that there is an edge of action beyond which something else transpires. Thinkers might argue that beyond practice lies its contemplation, or the theory that can arise from it.

As a theatre-director, all of these meanings thrill me. I believe deeply in the power of practice. Doing something regularly and with dedication (through practice), while being open to additional, complementary modes (beside practice), and extrapolating from what you know towards the unknown realms of what you don't yet know (beyond practice) is a potent recipe for growth and change.

But no degree of dedicated practice will keep you from occasional slips!

For me, art-making depends on embracing these slips as essential and exhilarating parts of the process. While embarrassing, parapraxes open doorways to meanings you didn't know you meant. Actors are encouraged to learn to trust their actions and reactions onstage. So too directors can learn to trust both the measured steps of their well-considered choices as well as their accidental responses to the world around them.