Gruen Transfer - The Gruen Transfer is named after Victor Gruen, the man who designed the very first shopping mall. The term describes that split second when the malls intentionally confusing layout makes our eyes glaze and our jaws slacken...the moment when we forget what we came for.
I watch movies like 'Born into Brothels' or 'I know im not alone' the Michael Franti documentary or even 'Turtles can fly' & it brings me closer & closer to something I feel inherently with in me.
I walk into shopping centres (if I have to) & the gruen transfer accosts me. I feel dirty & somewhat stupid. The slow moving faces that waft past me speak in silence...buy.buy.buy.buy.buy.
I hate consuming. I fight internally & externally to remove myself from the 'proper' capitalist manner I am surrounded by. I don't always succeed. Its hard to be part of a world that is designed to spend everything it earns. Its mentally & emotionally debilitating being part of a nation conditioned to always need & told to always want. It is painful to have no acceptable alternative other than one that forces me to lie to myself & ignore my own innate ways
Im not a huge fan of Slum Dog Millionaire, to me, when a white british woman writes a novel about tragic & heartfelt losses she knows nothing of then makes a lashing off of the movie just because the producers spent nearly as much on the advertising as they did the filming, it epitomises the arse-about modern day capitalist mode of operation...having said that, there is a part in that movie where the children are sitting atop a train going...well...nowhere. They dont own a stitch, they do not have a home to go to...they fly through the air unencumbered by needing & wanting, Hurling forward. Free.
I watched this scene & my heart surged to explosion. It had little to do with the emotional pullings of the children at that point.
My heart felt freedom.
The realities of living as a homeless child in an impoverished nation are of course far from freeing & it only speaks as to the desensitised & lavish ways of the western world that some spoiled dirty hippy might call that freedom.
I look around my house, I see the walls that harbour the fixes of a horder. Clearly there were a few days I did not succeed at not consuming.
I look around my house & I see the hours that I slaved away at a demoralising job in order to adorn a house I was indifferent to with things & stuff I didn't need.
I will not consume.
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