Category Archives: creativity

On making bread

Posted on by

I know I can buy a loaf for less than it costs me to make a loaf, but I don’t care. There is something transcendental about mixing water, yeast, salt, and flour and kneading it into a loaf of bread. Bread has always been a synecdoche for all food, for wages, for a living. Bread is a central part of Christian symbolism and a major part of worship. The transformation of wheat into bread is mysterious, complex, and fills me with wonder. As a small child I watched my mother make bread, knowing full well that she was repeating the lessons she learned as her own mother made bread, who was repeating the recipe and actions that her mother had taught her. I came to making bread later in life, but I had learned my lessons. I believe that making bread is a tradition that should be honored, not forgotten. I don’t mind getting messy, or getting out the bread board, or spending time with my hands in the dough. I don’t mind that it takes hours to get a loaf mixed, kneaded, and baked. I don’t measure anything exactly. I love the idea that no two loaves are ever exactly the same and that I don’t have to “wonder” about how many weird and dangerous chemicals have been added to the bread to keep it soft and fresh for weeks. I love to let the bread rise under a dishtowel while I do something else. I don’t kid myself: I am not an expert baker, but I assume that bread has been made this way for many millennia, and I love being a part of that tradition. Bread is such a fundamental part of the human condition–the variations are almost infinite. Sometimes I had cinnamon, other times cardamon adds a different twist to the taste. Whole wheat flour gives the bread a nutty flavor that is best savored slowly. Kneading bread is a nice workout, therapeutic some days because you can really put your whole body and spirit into pounding, folding, and working the dough. The best part of making your own bread, at least for me, is the sense of accomplishing something original, creating a new thing with my own art, my own recipe, my own energy and effort. There are so few things over which any of us have any control, but baking bread, at least for a moment, can give any of us the illusory feeling of power and control. Yet it is not a complete mirage because at the end of the process you have a couple of loaves of bread that you can slice and eat and enjoy. The process of bread-making is an odd interplay of dry ingredients interlocking with water that creates a whole new thing when fire and heat are added. Who would suspect that flour, with a little coaxing from yeast and salt, could be turned into a crunchy, springy, nutty, moist, chewy phenomenon that can light up as a midnight snack or help wake up a sleepy day beside a cup of coffee? I like my own bread toasted with a little real butter on it. My own bread is nothing like the bread you can buy in a store. My loaves are not perfect, a bit crusty, unsliced, doesn’t come in a plastic bag with a twist-tie closing off the open end. Making bread grounds me in a way that my digitally mediated existence doesn’t. Currently, my bread has been divided into two loaves which are rising in the oven just before I bake them. They’ll be ready around midnight.

On making bread

Posted on by

I know I can buy a loaf for less than it costs me to make a loaf, but I don’t care. There is something transcendental about mixing water, yeast, salt, and flour and kneading it into a loaf of bread. Bread has always been a synecdoche for all food, for wages, for a living. Bread is a central part of Christian symbolism and a major part of worship. The transformation of wheat into bread is mysterious, complex, and fills me with wonder. As a small child I watched my mother make bread, knowing full well that she was repeating the lessons she learned as her own mother made bread, who was repeating the recipe and actions that her mother had taught her. I came to making bread later in life, but I had learned my lessons. I believe that making bread is a tradition that should be honored, not forgotten. I don’t mind getting messy, or getting out the bread board, or spending time with my hands in the dough. I don’t mind that it takes hours to get a loaf mixed, kneaded, and baked. I don’t measure anything exactly. I love the idea that no two loaves are ever exactly the same and that I don’t have to “wonder” about how many weird and dangerous chemicals have been added to the bread to keep it soft and fresh for weeks. I love to let the bread rise under a dishtowel while I do something else. I don’t kid myself: I am not an expert baker, but I assume that bread has been made this way for many millennia, and I love being a part of that tradition. Bread is such a fundamental part of the human condition–the variations are almost infinite. Sometimes I had cinnamon, other times cardamon adds a different twist to the taste. Whole wheat flour gives the bread a nutty flavor that is best savored slowly. Kneading bread is a nice workout, therapeutic some days because you can really put your whole body and spirit into pounding, folding, and working the dough. The best part of making your own bread, at least for me, is the sense of accomplishing something original, creating a new thing with my own art, my own recipe, my own energy and effort. There are so few things over which any of us have any control, but baking bread, at least for a moment, can give any of us the illusory feeling of power and control. Yet it is not a complete mirage because at the end of the process you have a couple of loaves of bread that you can slice and eat and enjoy. The process of bread-making is an odd interplay of dry ingredients interlocking with water that creates a whole new thing when fire and heat are added. Who would suspect that flour, with a little coaxing from yeast and salt, could be turned into a crunchy, springy, nutty, moist, chewy phenomenon that can light up as a midnight snack or help wake up a sleepy day beside a cup of coffee? I like my own bread toasted with a little real butter on it. My own bread is nothing like the bread you can buy in a store. My loaves are not perfect, a bit crusty, unsliced, doesn’t come in a plastic bag with a twist-tie closing off the open end. Making bread grounds me in a way that my digitally mediated existence doesn’t. Currently, my bread has been divided into two loaves which are rising in the oven just before I bake them. They’ll be ready around midnight.

On the blank page

Posted on by

Many people fear writing as if it were some arcane art in which only especially initiated adepts were allowed to work. Still others doubt that they have any talent at all, and they don’t want to make a fool of themselves, or that they don’t really have anything to say. They see the blank page as a challenge, not as an opportunity. The blank page stands before all of humanity as a monument to immobility. The difference between writers and non-writers is simple: writers don’t think about the shame of failure or that others will think their words boring or superficial. I have read things that I consider boring and superficial, but I have seldom come across anything that should never have been written at all. Some people will stare at the blank page and feel defeated before they even start because they fear failure, yet they have given themselves over to failure without even having tried. Writing is just words, one right after another, forming sentences, ideas, arguments, but if you never try to write, the blank page is a barrier, a wall you will never climb or pull down. Some people cannot even get past the first word, much less the first sentence. When I have thought my work trite or vacuous, there have been times when I have thrown things away, but for the most part, if I just keep writing, letting the words march across the paper by themselves, I can always go back and edit, throw away the crap, polish the good stuff. The blank page is filled with so much opportunity, so many possibilities, so much creative energy that you must yearn to fill it with discourse, poems, essays, conversations, descriptions, arguments, explanations. Bad writing is always a possibility, but if you never write at all, you are wearing cement shoes and won’t go much of anywhere. I see the blank page as a page already filled with ideas, metaphors, similes and a host of other poetic tropes which are all willing to clarify an to confuse perhaps both at the same time. Words are dark, no question, but we are all playing with the dictionary, so why not split open the dictionary and let the words run wild? The blank page stands up to the creative energy of the literary arts. All the best writers that have ever lived have always lamented the fact that there is nothing new to write about, so if we accept that premiss as a given, then we can stop worrying about whether Seneca or Ovid or Horace wrote about it two thousand years ago. I know I was born late, but there is nothing I, as a writer, can do about that. I accept the blank page as my traveling companion, and I am willing to work hard to fill up that page, sometimes with greater or lesser success. Thinking about the blank page just makes me want to write all that much more, and it also makes me care less about whether anyone likes what I write or not. I have no control over how anyone reads my writing–whether it moves them to cry, or moves them to snicker. I can’t even be sure if they understand what I write, but then again, do I understand what I am writing either? Or if I read this little ramble in two or three years, will I still think the same? Or will that ever matter? Once this is written, it is its piece of art over which I have no control, and that is really what the blank page is really all about, whether we have any control over our work, our ideas, or our lives. The answer is “no”, but then again, this page is no longer blank.

On the blank page

Posted on by

Many people fear writing as if it were some arcane art in which only especially initiated adepts were allowed to work. Still others doubt that they have any talent at all, and they don’t want to make a fool of themselves, or that they don’t really have anything to say. They see the blank page as a challenge, not as an opportunity. The blank page stands before all of humanity as a monument to immobility. The difference between writers and non-writers is simple: writers don’t think about the shame of failure or that others will think their words boring or superficial. I have read things that I consider boring and superficial, but I have seldom come across anything that should never have been written at all. Some people will stare at the blank page and feel defeated before they even start because they fear failure, yet they have given themselves over to failure without even having tried. Writing is just words, one right after another, forming sentences, ideas, arguments, but if you never try to write, the blank page is a barrier, a wall you will never climb or pull down. Some people cannot even get past the first word, much less the first sentence. When I have thought my work trite or vacuous, there have been times when I have thrown things away, but for the most part, if I just keep writing, letting the words march across the paper by themselves, I can always go back and edit, throw away the crap, polish the good stuff. The blank page is filled with so much opportunity, so many possibilities, so much creative energy that you must yearn to fill it with discourse, poems, essays, conversations, descriptions, arguments, explanations. Bad writing is always a possibility, but if you never write at all, you are wearing cement shoes and won’t go much of anywhere. I see the blank page as a page already filled with ideas, metaphors, similes and a host of other poetic tropes which are all willing to clarify an to confuse perhaps both at the same time. Words are dark, no question, but we are all playing with the dictionary, so why not split open the dictionary and let the words run wild? The blank page stands up to the creative energy of the literary arts. All the best writers that have ever lived have always lamented the fact that there is nothing new to write about, so if we accept that premiss as a given, then we can stop worrying about whether Seneca or Ovid or Horace wrote about it two thousand years ago. I know I was born late, but there is nothing I, as a writer, can do about that. I accept the blank page as my traveling companion, and I am willing to work hard to fill up that page, sometimes with greater or lesser success. Thinking about the blank page just makes me want to write all that much more, and it also makes me care less about whether anyone likes what I write or not. I have no control over how anyone reads my writing–whether it moves them to cry, or moves them to snicker. I can’t even be sure if they understand what I write, but then again, do I understand what I am writing either? Or if I read this little ramble in two or three years, will I still think the same? Or will that ever matter? Once this is written, it is its piece of art over which I have no control, and that is really what the blank page is really all about, whether we have any control over our work, our ideas, or our lives. The answer is “no”, but then again, this page is no longer blank.

On cathedrals

Posted on by

It’s not that I’m an expert in Gothic cathedrals, but I do know my way around all that stone and stained-glass. I don’t have a favorite, but I like Salamanca a great deal. León has the best stained glass. Segovia is such a late Gothic that it isn’t really Gothic at all. Burgos is total class, and Seville is monumental. There is little question that all of that carved stone heaped up in such a way as to create a sort of enormous stone cave is impressive. The vaults, the aisles, the alters, the choirs, the organs, the chapels all add up to an impressively chaotic and fractured version of reality. The cathedrals raise their stone arms up to heaven in a imposing array of arches, vaults, columns, and flying buttresses. This is supposed to be a big house, God’s house. The Gothic cathedral is built with an underlying theme–the pointed arch, which is used thematically throughout the entire building. What is difficult, at times, to stomach are the multiple layers of decoration which have been hung on the inside of the cathedral like so much ugly makeup. Cathedrals are really about lines of force, the harnassing of stresses, gravity, wind, and curves, and how all of those intersecting lines add up to a massive pile of stone. In the end, the cathedral is not the natural or logical outcome of the building process. Form and function are at odds with each other from the initial corner stone to the final key stone, and the laws of physics will be trying to pull down that stone roof even before it is put into place. The Gothic cathedral is a metaphor, then, for the struggle between man and stone to create an anti-natural structure based on the creative genius of man and his imagination to challenge those same laws of physics that are used to make those stone arches stay in place. Cathedrals are a living paradox of contrasting laws of nature where man has choosen to put his alters and proclaim his faith. I could do without most of the Baroque, Roccoco, or Neo-classic decoration and just roam the unadorned aisles as bovedas and arches sore above my head, knowing full-well that the columns and buttresses are all working overtime to keep the stones off of my head. Elaborate interior decorations do not speak to either my faith in God or my faith in man. Regular blocking, clean curved arches, and colorful rose windows tell me more about the art and skill of the tradesmen that built the place than the awful aesthetics of those who determined what would go into them at some later date, centuries after the builders had left. Today these stone monstrosities are a tribute to persistence and craftsmanship that is both forgotten and unappreciated. Unfortunately, many of the Gothic cathedrals of Europe are now located in regional backwaters that have long ago lost their importance as centers of power or eclessiastical greatness, and local parishes struggle to keep the lights on and the stone roofs from caving in. Cathedrals, at least to some extent, are anachronistic dinosaurs leftover from a time when building a big building was a big deal that not just anyone could do. Today, the Gothic cathedral is dwarfed by massive sports arenas, megalithic sky-scrapers, and gravity defying bridges that the medieval stone mason might have dreamed about, but never built.

On cathedrals

Posted on by

It’s not that I’m an expert in Gothic cathedrals, but I do know my way around all that stone and stained-glass. I don’t have a favorite, but I like Salamanca a great deal. León has the best stained glass. Segovia is such a late Gothic that it isn’t really Gothic at all. Burgos is total class, and Seville is monumental. There is little question that all of that carved stone heaped up in such a way as to create a sort of enormous stone cave is impressive. The vaults, the aisles, the alters, the choirs, the organs, the chapels all add up to an impressively chaotic and fractured version of reality. The cathedrals raise their stone arms up to heaven in a imposing array of arches, vaults, columns, and flying buttresses. This is supposed to be a big house, God’s house. The Gothic cathedral is built with an underlying theme–the pointed arch, which is used thematically throughout the entire building. What is difficult, at times, to stomach are the multiple layers of decoration which have been hung on the inside of the cathedral like so much ugly makeup. Cathedrals are really about lines of force, the harnassing of stresses, gravity, wind, and curves, and how all of those intersecting lines add up to a massive pile of stone. In the end, the cathedral is not the natural or logical outcome of the building process. Form and function are at odds with each other from the initial corner stone to the final key stone, and the laws of physics will be trying to pull down that stone roof even before it is put into place. The Gothic cathedral is a metaphor, then, for the struggle between man and stone to create an anti-natural structure based on the creative genius of man and his imagination to challenge those same laws of physics that are used to make those stone arches stay in place. Cathedrals are a living paradox of contrasting laws of nature where man has choosen to put his alters and proclaim his faith. I could do without most of the Baroque, Roccoco, or Neo-classic decoration and just roam the unadorned aisles as bovedas and arches sore above my head, knowing full-well that the columns and buttresses are all working overtime to keep the stones off of my head. Elaborate interior decorations do not speak to either my faith in God or my faith in man. Regular blocking, clean curved arches, and colorful rose windows tell me more about the art and skill of the tradesmen that built the place than the awful aesthetics of those who determined what would go into them at some later date, centuries after the builders had left. Today these stone monstrosities are a tribute to persistence and craftsmanship that is both forgotten and unappreciated. Unfortunately, many of the Gothic cathedrals of Europe are now located in regional backwaters that have long ago lost their importance as centers of power or eclessiastical greatness, and local parishes struggle to keep the lights on and the stone roofs from caving in. Cathedrals, at least to some extent, are anachronistic dinosaurs leftover from a time when building a big building was a big deal that not just anyone could do. Today, the Gothic cathedral is dwarfed by massive sports arenas, megalithic sky-scrapers, and gravity defying bridges that the medieval stone mason might have dreamed about, but never built.

On Dalí’s mustache

Posted on by

The only thing that I will ever have in common with Salvador Dalí is the mustache. In fact, even say that, that we have our mustache’s in common is a lot of wishful thinking, hot air, and posturing. Actually, it is a mustaches which keep us apart–his a scandalous handlebar, mine, a conservative brush of gray that barely reaches my lip. In fact, we have nothing in common at all unless it is our love for the surreal, the absurd, and the fractured. Born in different parts of the twentieth century, he has fifty-five years on me, a different mother tongue, and our birthplaces are six thousand miles apart, but we both have mustaches. Dalí is uber-famous for his outrageous, if not outlandish, paintings and art, which reflect his fractured, discontinuous, and illogical view of the general, received view of regular society. His rejection of convention is a complete rebellion against the conservative values of a general neo-liberal hyper-consumerist society. In other words, he takes all the markers of society and throws them into the air, disregarding where anything might land. His complete disregard for propriety also leads him to sport a mustache that was as surreal as any of his work. Since I am not a plastic artist as was Salvador, my mustache is pretty plain. Dalí was as much a happening himself as was his work–dripping clocks, jumping tigers, a skull morphing out a a matador. Though one should always separate the artist from the art, in the case of Dalí, the artist is just another work in progress. I would like to think that I might understand Dalí in some way, having learned Spanish and having learned to live with the Spanish, but I’m afraid that his work transcends all of those boundaries in broad ways. The problem, however, with both the mustache and his paintings is the same problem that any work of art has in the age of mechanical reproduction, which turns the work of art into just another part of consumer society, nullifying its unique nature and voiding its value as a creative venture. The mustache is iconic of something incredibly unique, but the industrial society consumes everything in its path as if it were a hoard of locusts, which is both the reality and the tragedy of capitalism. So even being rebellious is a useless objective because even rebellion turns into a commodity which may be manipulated, bought and sold independently of its meaning, which then falls to zero. Today, a retrospective of Dalí’s work might signify many things, but it most certainly signifies that Dalí has become a commodity, that surrealism is a commodity, and that his outlandish mustache is a commodity. Yet, I would still love to believe in the spirit that informs the art of Dalí, independently of how various societies have conventionalized the strange nature of the man and his work, still exists and means something outside the boundaries of accepted behavior. Tomorrow I will still have a mustache, and it will still be the only thing that Dalí and I have in common.

On Dalí’s mustache

Posted on by

The only thing that I will ever have in common with Salvador Dalí is the mustache. In fact, even say that, that we have our mustache’s in common is a lot of wishful thinking, hot air, and posturing. Actually, it is a mustaches which keep us apart–his a scandalous handlebar, mine, a conservative brush of gray that barely reaches my lip. In fact, we have nothing in common at all unless it is our love for the surreal, the absurd, and the fractured. Born in different parts of the twentieth century, he has fifty-five years on me, a different mother tongue, and our birthplaces are six thousand miles apart, but we both have mustaches. Dalí is uber-famous for his outrageous, if not outlandish, paintings and art, which reflect his fractured, discontinuous, and illogical view of the general, received view of regular society. His rejection of convention is a complete rebellion against the conservative values of a general neo-liberal hyper-consumerist society. In other words, he takes all the markers of society and throws them into the air, disregarding where anything might land. His complete disregard for propriety also leads him to sport a mustache that was as surreal as any of his work. Since I am not a plastic artist as was Salvador, my mustache is pretty plain. Dalí was as much a happening himself as was his work–dripping clocks, jumping tigers, a skull morphing out a a matador. Though one should always separate the artist from the art, in the case of Dalí, the artist is just another work in progress. I would like to think that I might understand Dalí in some way, having learned Spanish and having learned to live with the Spanish, but I’m afraid that his work transcends all of those boundaries in broad ways. The problem, however, with both the mustache and his paintings is the same problem that any work of art has in the age of mechanical reproduction, which turns the work of art into just another part of consumer society, nullifying its unique nature and voiding its value as a creative venture. The mustache is iconic of something incredibly unique, but the industrial society consumes everything in its path as if it were a hoard of locusts, which is both the reality and the tragedy of capitalism. So even being rebellious is a useless objective because even rebellion turns into a commodity which may be manipulated, bought and sold independently of its meaning, which then falls to zero. Today, a retrospective of Dalí’s work might signify many things, but it most certainly signifies that Dalí has become a commodity, that surrealism is a commodity, and that his outlandish mustache is a commodity. Yet, I would still love to believe in the spirit that informs the art of Dalí, independently of how various societies have conventionalized the strange nature of the man and his work, still exists and means something outside the boundaries of accepted behavior. Tomorrow I will still have a mustache, and it will still be the only thing that Dalí and I have in common.

On a peak experience

Posted on by

Perhaps some things are meant to be shared, and maybe peak experiences are some of those things, but many peak experiences are experienced in the solitary halls and passageways of the mind. What we have in common are the mundane, humdrum experience of the daily grind–alarm clocks, traffic, grocery stores, ringing cellphones, deadlines at work, crabby clients, upset co-workers, television, the weather, eating fast food, delayed flights, lost baggage, coughing, whatever. You know what kinds of experience crowd your daily calendar, making life a grinding experience where you sweat and worry and do the same thing day in and day out, and you have no peak experiences, you don’t make it to the mountain much less climb it. I am not a literal mountain climber, but I find both the actual experience of mountain climbing and the metaphor of climbing a mountain, leading to peak experiences to be both intriguing and inexplicable. The “peak” experience occurs when you make it to the top, and you are filled with that pleasure of having accomplished something difficult and the pleasure of the sublime view from the top. The literal and the metaphoric mix indiscriminately and endorphins are released into the brain and the pleasure center explodes with joy. We are in a constant fight against the mundane that invades our lives at every turn, turning us into dystopic apocalyptic zombies who have no hope for a better, brighter future than that which is offered by the big box retailers who constantly tempt us by “rolling back prices” or exponentially larger sales via Black Friday frenzy and similarly conjured false experiences which are meant to enhance our consumer experience. What is lacking here is the personal, the individual, the unique which makes each person a person and not just another statistic to be manipulated by cooperate giants who despise the individual and love the mass of sheep who flock to the stores to take advantage of those new lower prices. Peak experiences in life have nothing to do with buying anything. Every person, every individual has the ability to have their own peak experience whenever they want, but going to the store is the antithesis of the peak experience. Only by searching out that which makes us all unique can we explore the passions that will bring about a peak experience. Passion, emotion, creativity, vision, imagination, all of which exist only in the mind have nothing to do with physical objects. It is our objects, frequently, which enslave us in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Money, gold, silver, trophies, electronics, automobiles, buildings, entrap us, snare us, throw us into prisons of our makings, dragging us further and further from even the possibility of a peak experience. Only by shedding the desire for material possessions can we begin to explore a life which might take us to a higher level of the human experience ruled more by beauty, art, creativity than the mundane daily grind of deadening routine. I think the current with dystopic and apocalyptic literature is a direct reaction to the extremely unsatisfying consumer society which has replaced real experiences (peak experiences) with simulacra such as shopping or digitally mediated communication or perhaps the most horrific simulacrum–shopping for digitally mediated communication, which completely cuts us all off from each other, rendering us helpless to create with another person on any level, cutting us off from all peak experiences of any kind. Shopping is not a peak experience, but for those whose lives have been reduced to buying things off of the shopping channels, life is shopping, shopping is life, and no peak experiences are allowed because nothing experienced through simulacra can be a peak experience. Just ask Mildred Montag.

On a peak experience

Posted on by

Perhaps some things are meant to be shared, and maybe peak experiences are some of those things, but many peak experiences are experienced in the solitary halls and passageways of the mind. What we have in common are the mundane, humdrum experience of the daily grind–alarm clocks, traffic, grocery stores, ringing cellphones, deadlines at work, crabby clients, upset co-workers, television, the weather, eating fast food, delayed flights, lost baggage, coughing, whatever. You know what kinds of experience crowd your daily calendar, making life a grinding experience where you sweat and worry and do the same thing day in and day out, and you have no peak experiences, you don’t make it to the mountain much less climb it. I am not a literal mountain climber, but I find both the actual experience of mountain climbing and the metaphor of climbing a mountain, leading to peak experiences to be both intriguing and inexplicable. The “peak” experience occurs when you make it to the top, and you are filled with that pleasure of having accomplished something difficult and the pleasure of the sublime view from the top. The literal and the metaphoric mix indiscriminately and endorphins are released into the brain and the pleasure center explodes with joy. We are in a constant fight against the mundane that invades our lives at every turn, turning us into dystopic apocalyptic zombies who have no hope for a better, brighter future than that which is offered by the big box retailers who constantly tempt us by “rolling back prices” or exponentially larger sales via Black Friday frenzy and similarly conjured false experiences which are meant to enhance our consumer experience. What is lacking here is the personal, the individual, the unique which makes each person a person and not just another statistic to be manipulated by cooperate giants who despise the individual and love the mass of sheep who flock to the stores to take advantage of those new lower prices. Peak experiences in life have nothing to do with buying anything. Every person, every individual has the ability to have their own peak experience whenever they want, but going to the store is the antithesis of the peak experience. Only by searching out that which makes us all unique can we explore the passions that will bring about a peak experience. Passion, emotion, creativity, vision, imagination, all of which exist only in the mind have nothing to do with physical objects. It is our objects, frequently, which enslave us in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Money, gold, silver, trophies, electronics, automobiles, buildings, entrap us, snare us, throw us into prisons of our makings, dragging us further and further from even the possibility of a peak experience. Only by shedding the desire for material possessions can we begin to explore a life which might take us to a higher level of the human experience ruled more by beauty, art, creativity than the mundane daily grind of deadening routine. I think the current with dystopic and apocalyptic literature is a direct reaction to the extremely unsatisfying consumer society which has replaced real experiences (peak experiences) with simulacra such as shopping or digitally mediated communication or perhaps the most horrific simulacrum–shopping for digitally mediated communication, which completely cuts us all off from each other, rendering us helpless to create with another person on any level, cutting us off from all peak experiences of any kind. Shopping is not a peak experience, but for those whose lives have been reduced to buying things off of the shopping channels, life is shopping, shopping is life, and no peak experiences are allowed because nothing experienced through simulacra can be a peak experience. Just ask Mildred Montag.