My embrace of Dadaism

This is not a pipe.

Some of you may know this, but it's been an odd half year for me. I have undergone what I can only call an existential journey that has very powerfully effected my day-to-day life in both positive and negative ways. At times it has been enjoyable, but other times it has been terrifying; descending into the depths of relativism ("everything = everything else" WTF?!) and trying to smash my brain around the dualistic nature of the universe got so tiring that I had all but accepted nihilism, not out of agreement with the movement, but out of surrender.

But today I awoke with a strange new perception on my bedroom, my duplex, my street, and the rest of the world around me. It is absurd. Why do bad things happen to good people? There is no 'why,' it's just absurd. And since no matter what I do there's nothing I can do to stop that fact, I may as well just accept the world for what it is and enjoy the consumate beauty that exists within it.

That's right: Dadaism is, at very least, the point my existential crisis has taken me to for the time being. For those unfamiliar with Dadaism, Wikipedia tells us, "Many Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois society had led people into the horrors of war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest 'against this world of mutual destruction'."

So from this movement we start to see art that represents that idea of enjoying the world as it is, despite it's obvious foibles. A great example of this is René Clair's short film Paris Qui Dort, "Paris is Asleep" where several young people awake to find that everyone and everything other than themselves in the world has frozen in time, so they go out and do all the things they couldn't do before, such as having a picnic lunch on the Eiffel Tower and much other silliness. (It's a 30 minute silent film in case any of you brave souls want to watch it)

Silliness. That's what I want. I've never had any problem being serious when I knew the time was right, I usually push people to talk about their problems more than they probably want me to, so without letting go of my understanding that there will always be pain in the world I embrace the silliness that goes right along with it. I embrace Dadaism.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to go have lunch on the Effel Tower.

---

---

---

(Since I don't expect anyone to make it all the way through "Paris is Asleep," here's a shorter Dadaist film by Hans Richter called "Ghosts Before Breakfast." I highly reccomend watching some of it at least.)
The flying hats are priceless :) though message may be a little lost today.