So I’ve thought of some more ideas about how to use the objects you encounter in your daily life as symbols and myths to learn from, which I first brought up here: Tarot of the City.
I talked with my friend Jodi about this idea and we got started discussing first impressions. Doesn’t it seem like when you first meet someone, because you are limited in what you know of them, you can’t help but build a story to fill in all the gaps? I was thinking that that’s probably one of the major appeals of having a one-night-stand. Some people may prefer living inside of the fantasy they’ve created, instead of having it spoiled by learning things about the person that break down the myth.
So that would mean that sluts are really just creative mythmakers!
Alright, so two ideas I came up with:
1) This is a little dreamy, but I thought it would be neat to do some tagging of traditional tarot card murals all over the city so that people walking down the street could see that the city itself is there for us to relate with in a symbolic way.
Better yet, we could nail frames up to particularly hot spots in the city, and rotate giant tarot cards on a weekly basis. Depending on where you have to travel in the week and which cards you happen to pass by, people could interpret their own randomly generated reading. Oo, what if we put them in designated bathrooms all over the city, more of like a secret underground thing? That’s it, I’m taping up tarot cards to bathroom stalls.
2) I also thought it would be neat to do readings based on television commericals. Each ad would be a symbol for you to meditate upon.
Here’s how it works: you ask a question before each break away, and then if say a soap commericial comes on, you can try to figure out how images of purity and external beauty(etc.) play into what you’ve asked. Make sense?
So I tried this the other night, of course asking about girl issues, and since it was so far into the evening the ads were strictly car commercials and phone-sex-lines. I was a little bummed that it was so repetitive, but then again, it’s strange how those two symbols are both major dilemma’s concerning the girl I’m currently interested in. I hate talking on the phone because of the lack of intimacy and awkward discourse – and transportation and distance are major factors in what’s wrong with the situation. Of course it’s much deeper than that, but still, it helped spell out the problems that I was having difficulty consciously understanding.
There are some obvious problems with this approach – sometimes the commericals are two quick to actually have time to ponder their implications, so maybe it would be good to write them down with some free-assosciations and then think about them later. Also, some commericals just might be completely devoid of meaning. But actually, the more I think about it, that seems highly unlikely and the whole point is to work you mind and try to connect dots – so fuckit, what does the Ronco Food Dehydrater have to do with your dead grandma, only you can figure that out!
Another major bonus to this whole process is that instead of allowing commercials to work on you in a passive way, you can assume control over them and use them to your advantage.
If you’re so inclined to try it, leave some feedback on how it worked out for you.