I have been having trouble writing recently and realized that a large part of this was due to boredom. I had been fighting this boredom strongly by struggling to find a topic of interest. A typical response. I would begin writing on a topic and quickly become bored with my words. What finally broke the flood gates of possibility was realizing that rather than fighting the sense of boredom I should embrace and explore it.
Boredom is a large and general feeling. What I am feeling is something specific. Aesthetic boredom.
In a way this now shifting relationship to boredom dovetails with my previously mentioned exploration of the color gray. Boredom, and its regular companion malaise, is a symptom of the post-modern condition. Having access to anything one might desire makes any decision fundamentally arbitrary. Once a decision has become arbitrary its force and impact in one’s life is radically diminished.
Aesthetic boredom works in a similar way to any other kind of boredom. As choices become arbitrary their value is gone. Living within a world where a candy bar and a five star meal are of equal weight would seem absurd. Yet this is the effect of aesthetic boredom. Pink, gray, blue, bright, dark, soft, or hard are all of equal value and thus become useless. Much of the problems I find in contemporary art stem from this. Anything is possible and as such there is no danger or risk. Without danger the essence of art becomes no more.
The only authentic response to boredom is not struggle but surrender. Rather than striving for the “right” choice one must rein in the very impulse to act. When all actions are equal the only event of any weight is intentional non-action. Thus the essence of boredom becomes radical non-action. The films of Jim Jarmusch are one vector along this potential.
An exploration of boredom immediately shows the inherent contradiction contained within it. Any exploration of boredom is an act and thus suffers from the very critique this manner of boredom sets upon the world. While at once self critiquing it also highlights the pervasive and unavoidable nature of boredom in contemporary western culture.
Like an exploration of the color gray shows us the many and varied possibilities contained in so simple a thing so too does an exploration of boredom show the vitality and possibility inherent in that mode of being. For boredom shows us an ever expanding palette of opportunities that is in fact confining while severe limitation gives us limitless potential.
I would like to avoid the word ennui here for a few reasons. First, are various connotations with 20th century discourse which I find largely misplaced. Second, is the etymological root of vexation which has a more active origin than I am interested in. Third, and finally, is the fact that boredom is an English word and as such has a more direct resonance in my experience.
Ennui takes on metaphysical characteristics well out of proportion to the mode of being I am experiencing here. Boredom has a plainness to it while ennui contains within it pretensions of an almost performative nature. Boredom is by definition strictly non-performative.
The non-performative nature of boredom begs the question how it may be presented in a performative medium. Is such an action even possible? What would it look like? What would it sound like? Or is it in fact an inherent contradiction to conceive of such a thing? If it is true that performative boredom is inherently contradictory then performance may well be the condition necessary to transform that mode of being into something else.
