Man and His Machines

I think it is very endearing how hard we humans try to reproduce what we can already do, but with cables and semiconductors rather than flesh and blood. To me, it is a love letter to mankind and its achievements.

As hard as we may try, a robot could never truly replace a man. Who I am—or who any of us truly are—is for another post, but while humans are not all that mechanically different from a robot, a robot is not conscious and it cannot think. In the same way, I can never be a robot no matter how hard I mod myself or try to improve. I am prone to error despite endless amounts of training and tuning. We spill and cause stains. We multitask inefficiently. We get tired and lazy and take shortcuts. Because we are wired this way, we live every day dying in little ways, using up little pieces and parts of the world around us, ruining things in the process, sometimes even ourselves.

My Favorite Boots

My favorite boots are ones I hunted for. I searched for quality boots for months because I heard Doc Martens moved their manufacturing and the quality went to shit. The ones I ended up with are sick. I've probably walked several hundred miles in them; I wear them 80% of the time. Inevitably, they’ve seen it all. I've spilled food, drinks, vomit, motor oil, dirt, blood—the list goes on. There’s a layer of grime building up on them from all of that, so I feel like I should probably clean them up soon. It feels almost disrespectful to wear them to the office like that. Yet, I feel like cleaning them would wipe away all the life that has fallen onto my shoes. I lived in these bad boys and killed them a little in the process. They still look good (black hides a world of pain), but they are not as pristine as they once were. Scuffed up, dirty, worn. They live life with me, a rushing river, and die in the process.

This reminds me of Kinfolk Issue 13, where they share that some groups of native people intentionally introduced imperfections into their work to keep themselves free from the poison of chasing perfection. It reminds me of kintsugi, Golden Goose shoes, and hand-dyed, sun-faded vintage tees. I think about Maison Margiela's unfinished seams, jazz, and shitty tattoos. To me, it seems that people like lived-in imperfection, although we often live aiming for a much higher standard.

I Am

I think what I am trying to say is that I am wildly aware of robotics/automation, and I find what separates me to be my small, anomalous imperfections. I find them endearing because they are so integral to what I am—and what our man-made creations are not. The grime on my kinda-ruined boots is a sign of a happy monkey running around in the world the way a bot never could. My ruined nail polish and stained sweater remind me that life is about living, and the things around me will carry the proof of it, dying in the process.

I'm not actively trying to ruin shit but I love living and finding the mark of it in everything I own. I just fucking love life.