WINDOW WORLD

(FOUND PHOTO, courtesy Misty Harper, great collector of objects and fictions. . .)

"Window World" is a fantastic logo I once saw on the side of a truck. Plenty banal, it advertised a window company, eager to install professional sturdy windows in homes and businesses world wide. . .

but, I thought the phrase was brilliant. . .it fits a larger understanding of our shared reality which is becoming quite imprisoned inside windows. we live our lives inside. . .but gaze outward through computer screens, windshields, bay windows, glass houses, corporate buildings, the endless lenses of cameras, etc. . .and I suppose a problem with that sort of 2-dimensional exterior, is that it can be so easily manipulated. we start to believe the screen version. . .or the image projected inside the window, instead of going out there to see (and touch) for ourselves. we become fearful and disconnected with the actual outside, and yet in love with it from an unconsummated distance. . .fiction is more dramatic and exciting than hard-knocks reality, anyway. who would want to live outside, unprotected. . . staring inward with the rest of the derelicts on the other side of the glass?



In an interview about his new book called The Disappearance of the Outside , Andrei Codrescu spoke to the same idea . . .that we now live in the interior. surprisingly, Codrescu traces our migration to the interior to the 1970s. but, I thought this migration was directly related to the introduction of the internet. curiously, when you look at the visual fiction of the 70s, the wildness and nature are very present (e.g . . .). that's interesting.

(more later. . . . . . . . .)