Dick and the Twins in Duboce Park I’m weird, I like weird things, I like weird people. I appreciate weirdness as an aesthetic. When people say, “That’s weird.” with a negative inflection, I always reply “Awesome, weird is a good thing.” I was taught this very important lesson by my first girlfriend who loved to embrace weirdness.
I like the absurd or things that seem out of place. Contrast. It makes for a more interesting life tapestry. Many of the best things in life, including people, I didn't like at first because they struck me as weird. Like eating an oyster. But then, as you get to know it more, it becomes love.
And I'm not exactly talking about embracing weird things as a form of delusion or total escape. You don't have to come untethered from reality to be weird. I'm talking more about weirdness with intention. Some would call it eccentricity. And it takes courage to be weird or eccentric. Because conformity tends to be the norm in social groups.
John Stuart Mill said, "Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained." This quote is one of my favs.
Stay with me, I'm getting to the point of this post.
I’ve gone through phases of my life where I’d say I was probably doing some kind of performance art. For much of the 2000’s I wore a Dick Cheney mask to parties, gatherings, festivals, gigs. It’s a long story, but I went to go buy a George W. Bush mask for Halloween at the Halloween store on Haight Street and they were sold out. The clerk said we do have a Dick Cheney mask left. “Wow, I said, that’s even creepier. Perfect.” I am the number one all-time consumer of Dick Cheney masks because I've lost many. A very wise friend at Burning Man once put a caribiner on my mask so I wouldn't lose it. I digress.
For a while I went through a phase where I had a plastic rat, named Shelley (named after the poet Percy Shelley). I made Shelley part of the band I was in called Pono and I would take pictures of Shelley with famous musicians or people. Here are some of those pictures. I'm proud of these pics and my embrace of weirdness. And kudos to these fairly well known people who embraced weirdness allowing me to take pics of them with a plastic rat. Embrace weirdness my friends, it makes life more colorful. It also allows our human uniqueness to surface. It adds to layers to the mosaic of humanity and it's fun :)
I like the absurd or things that seem out of place. Contrast. It makes for a more interesting life tapestry. Many of the best things in life, including people, I didn't like at first because they struck me as weird. Like eating an oyster. But then, as you get to know it more, it becomes love.
And I'm not exactly talking about embracing weird things as a form of delusion or total escape. You don't have to come untethered from reality to be weird. I'm talking more about weirdness with intention. Some would call it eccentricity. And it takes courage to be weird or eccentric. Because conformity tends to be the norm in social groups.
John Stuart Mill said, "Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained." This quote is one of my favs.
Stay with me, I'm getting to the point of this post.
I’ve gone through phases of my life where I’d say I was probably doing some kind of performance art. For much of the 2000’s I wore a Dick Cheney mask to parties, gatherings, festivals, gigs. It’s a long story, but I went to go buy a George W. Bush mask for Halloween at the Halloween store on Haight Street and they were sold out. The clerk said we do have a Dick Cheney mask left. “Wow, I said, that’s even creepier. Perfect.” I am the number one all-time consumer of Dick Cheney masks because I've lost many. A very wise friend at Burning Man once put a caribiner on my mask so I wouldn't lose it. I digress.
For a while I went through a phase where I had a plastic rat, named Shelley (named after the poet Percy Shelley). I made Shelley part of the band I was in called Pono and I would take pictures of Shelley with famous musicians or people. Here are some of those pictures. I'm proud of these pics and my embrace of weirdness. And kudos to these fairly well known people who embraced weirdness allowing me to take pics of them with a plastic rat. Embrace weirdness my friends, it makes life more colorful. It also allows our human uniqueness to surface. It adds to layers to the mosaic of humanity and it's fun :)
