From the Enjoy More Files

Consume Less, Enjoy More. That is the point of this blog (get it, CLEM?) and is my miniscule response to consummerism. Now it is easy to bat consummerism around as the evil that did us in as a society, with its evil twin greed, but that is a symptom of an underlying problem. The problem didn't just pop up over night so its hard to say when it started. It's sort of like when the doctor asks you when you first noticed that rash, or what was the first day of your last period (sorry guys, didn't mean for the gross out but... well, grow a pair, we've had to listen to your fart jokes for years). There is a dissatisfaction creep that we collectively have tried to fill up with bigger fancier cars, bigger fancier houses, bigger fancier vacations the result of which is mostly just bigger fancier stress.

But what is that dissatisfaction that sends folks wandering aimlessly around the mall? I believe it is that we have lost a sense of connection to our communities. With suburbanization came all sorts of suspicion and fear - isn't it fear that sent many fleeing cities? And with the fear came interaction between humans only when it was profitable. Now there are exceptions, of course, New Orleans famously for example. But if you could be a giant with a magnifying glass over us and look down at our movements (like a kids with ants - don't burn us! Eeeek!), you would see that we go out to work, to school, to shop and then we rapidly all retreat to our homes.

We have forgotten how to do civic life.

Obviously this phenomenom begs a larger discussion, which I hope people are having all sorts of places in all sorts of ways, and hopefully trying to figure out ways to fix.

Well here is my own little tiny participation in an attempt at a fix. Entertain Locally. Yes, eat locally, buy locally, now whats about y'all get out from in front of the TV set and entertain each other? In June some local actors and some LA folks will be putting up a couple of one acts at a local art gallery where we have been reading plays for small audiences who got to vote on which they liked the best. The votes are in and so we'll now put on a show! Hope you all can make it, or make one of your own.

More details later. Watch this space!