An Ampoule of L'Occitane

by Sterling Davis

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​   O how I love human oddity! I am a connoisseur, of sorts. While others dabble in idle philately or the superaddition of rare wines, I worship a different Pope. In my dark arts atelier, I study strange loops. Even as a child, the heavy notion of aberration became a sort of monomania for me. So naturally, when an informant of mine told me of a strange, fantastical woman living at the bottom of the stony riverbed, I repressed my feelings of schadenfreude and sidled on over to investigate.

    I parked my car at the edge of the riverbed and sat. It was quiet, too quiet. As if something unseemly was about to happen. Every blade of grass was staring me down exactly. I emerged among a glitter of cormorants. The air stunk of atrocity. I was there on dangerous business. Suddenly, like a bombflash, I descried a small personage, some very ancient goddess, pushing a shopping cart in the milky updraft. Her hair shone in the pellucid, oozy light. Examining her visage, it was at once very old and very young. Very ugly and very beautiful. So lurid! So enigmatical! Her raiments were very odd indeed. They appeared undeniably common. But the material was of the finest gossamer. Her pantaloons were covered with holes. But they seemed oddly intentional. I felt like I walked into a terra incognita.

    The shopping cart she trundled had a strange luminosity. And her wares, duffle bags mostly and old trunks, seemed well-connected, well-heeled. Then, like awaking from some vaporous dream, I discerned the truth. The shopping cart was no mere shopping cart at all. It was Balenciaga. Of the latest season. Composed of a beautiful crosshatch silver palladium. The old bags were the finest couture. A shocking Louie Vuitton assemblage in a tasteful understated canvas. I summoned the words to speak.

    "Are you, uh, homeless? Or luxuriously so?" I asked, helplessly.

    After a moment, the old goddess raised her great lips and began to speak.

    "Oh no, my dear. Quite the opposite. I am exceedingly wealthy."

    I felt stymied.

    "You may be wondering about my luxurious squalor."

    I was.

    "Well, I believe everyday life should be art. The luxurious squalor of my life is the ultimate artistic statement. You see, it's everything. High art and low art. The black humor. The pastiche. Not to mention, the delicious irony. It is very postmodern."

    My humanist education had neglected Postmodernism.

    "I don't get it," I said.

    "Beauty is not harmony. Beauty is disruptive. Beauty is transgressive. Art is the annihilation of dailiness. And beauty is what gives you energy. The history of art is one of successive waves of revolt against conventionality. Now, in our present moment, the highest value in art is novelty."

    At this, I let out a great chuckle.

    "You seem to be a great potentate. Why on Earth would you want to look poor?" I asked.

    "That's simple. The poor want to look rich and the rich want to look poor."

    "Where's the dignity in that?"

    "Wealth doesn't give you dignity," the goddess announced. "Even the poor have dignity. What gives you dignity is individuality."

    "I know precisely what this is," I said with heat. "It is the deification of everyday life!"

    "Why not praise our present moment? All previous art has been a retrospective cast. Which is inherently imitative. At least art today is trying to do something new. I say let the present be present! Which is in itself, a novelty. All art today is either irony or parody. And this irony delegitimizes all authority, including tyranny."

    "I completely disagree. Artists aren't exactly human. And if they're any good, they're anti-human. All art is violence."

    The goddess shook her wise locks.

    "You are right. All art is political. All art has a philosophical orientation toward the nature of things. But art affirms life."

    "By destroying tradition? As you suggested earlier, the question every great artist asks today is, 'How may my art most completely break with tradition?' If you ask me, that is a nihilism!"

    "[...]"

    "And don't get me started on your elitist preoccupation with luxury. Not everybody can afford a $600 dirty t-shirt! Are they less individuals? Or are only the rich individuals?" I said, growing exasperated with this lugubrious goddess.

    "Wrong again," the goddess said condescendingly. "Luxury products aren't valuable because they are expensive. They are valuable because they are the works of great artists. When I wear my $1,200 Vetements sweatshirt, it is like owning a piece of high art. But much more practical. You can wear it, use it. Fondle it. It doesn't hang, distantly, on a wall. Or in a case.  Like previous forms of high art. It can become a part of everyday life. Art nowadays is everyday life."

    "I'm not convinced."

    "Take my skincare products, for example. I adore L'Occitane. I may not be beautiful. But when I wear my L'Occitane cream, I feel beautiful. L'Occitane makes one of the most mundane tasks, your daily ablutions, into a beautiful, affirming, luxurious experience. What's wrong with that?"

    "The deification of everyday life," I said.

    "You're right. The deification of everyday life," she said.

    "Where is this all headed?" I asked, after an interval.

    "The ultimate telos of capitalism is not fascism, but fun. Some great magnate, motivated by the love of glory, money or luxury, may invent a technology that will allow us as a society to move past scarcity, thereby creating a society where everyone can enjoy the good life. Creating a post-scarcity society should be the aim of all great thinkers. That, coupled with democratic government and the triumph of individuality, will be heaven on Earth."

    "The deification of everyday life?" I asked.

    "The deification of everyday life."

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Sterling Davis is a poet and screenwriter. Davis is the Publisher and Executive Editor of Poetries in English Magazine.