The sense of being trapped, having no where to go, this absence of freedom, of opportunity, and the consequent cloud of depression that threatened me, was always hanging above me. From the earliest moments of awareness a child begins to form, this certainly was one of the first ones to solidify. The landscape and the visitor’s impressions, even my own scarce memories of Holland are in stark contrast to the spherical impressions of Dutch popular culture. I grew up in an era where popular culture started to dominate culture more and more aggressively. As a child my mind was opened up early by progressive programs made by an educated and cultivated strata of culture bearers who were liberating an old culture of taboos and stigmas, guiding the masses to the paths of enlightenment, where education was a privilege still, but no longer for my generation. My own generation though grown up with enlightening progressiveness longed so strongly for common and simple happiness that it embraced mass entertainment wholeheartedly. Don’t misunderstand me, I know that this layer of society still exists no where so alive and vibrant as in the Netherlands, but its medium has changed from mass media like TV and radio, to individualized medium like the Internet. Of course these technologies are no longer restricted to any location or nation. I am unsure if I have become cynical or if I simply grew to detest mass entertainment versus individual progression. Is this contrast artificially created, do I misinterpret the aesthetics that exist? Yet, I escaped, I squeezed out of a golden cage of our era, gold? Or gilded? Copper? I love the Netherlands, it’s landscape, I love Amsterdam, I even love the sight of many people, but I detest most conversation, most attachment, most sentences, most spirits, though I love words, I love the mind, I love the body, the physiognomy and physics of the same girls that I hate to get intertwined to, close to for too long, I love, I love, but I cannot love forever. I am a stranger. Alas, of course, growing up from being an under cultivated child, to becoming an educated young man, I outgrew perhaps popular culture, and I have no clear view of my own position. But I clearly see the view from my perspective.
A golden cage of our era
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