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Culture

Posted on June 24, 2010October 17, 2022 by David Barker

Culture is not an industry. It is not a sector of the economy. Culture is a condition. It is the social trailings of my solitary consciousness. I can no more keep myself from creating than I can keep myself from breathing. Culture can’t be mined or drilled or smelted or fired. If I shrink-wrap it and put it in a box … well, I might as well shrink-wrap my dog. I can try to possess it in that way, but I’ll end up with a corpse. My culture is a living breathing creature. Imagination at play. Prophecy in rage. Grief in tears. You cannot colonize it. You cannot plant a flag in it and claim it in the name of anything. You must simply accept it, the same way you must accept that everything you think and do will end in dirt. Like a politician, or a captain of industry, you can greywash it, but it will come back with teeth.

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