Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Thoughts on 37,000-year-old graffiti.

One of the extraordinary things about our species is how utterly immutable we are. That is we really don't change, through wars, revolutions, upheavals, new technologies, etc. Another thing that stays the same is the number of people who have no ability to read history so they spend their wind and time proclaiming that all is new, different and everything that went before is dead.

Just recently researches have found 37,000-year-old cave drawings in a rock shelter in France. These are the "oldest evidence of any kind of graphic imagery." Many of the images depict images of the female vulva. In other words these cave drawings differ, in all likelihood, very little from what we see in public restrooms and on subway walls.

Yesterday, I went scuba diving with my wife and kids. There was a couple on the boat from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The boat anchored in water that was a vivid turquoise, the likes of which you see only in travel magazines. I turned to one of the Brooklynites and said to him, "It ain't exactly the Gowanus Canal, is it." He turned to me and with all the gravity of a confirmed Leninist he replied, "Someday."

Listen, for as long as time exists the will be graffiti of female vulva scrawled on walls. And for as long as time exists the Gowanus Canal will be a sewer.

All the blowhards saying this is dead and that is dead and this will change everything, remember this: very little ever changes.

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