THE FIRST PYRAMIDROME.

PYRAMIDROMING INTO REALITY: THE GREAT LIFE-QUESTS OF THE 20-SOMETHINGS

Here in America in 2009, college-educated youth represent a unique group of people. Our hopes are high, as we have been taught since the beginning of our existences in the importance of the “American Dream”. We are (for the most part) hard workers, knowledgeable in the arts and sciences, interested in politics and the weather. Some of us like to cook, and are even good at it, while some of us are talented at microwaving and shoveling plain noodles through ketchup. Regardless, the 20-somethings of the early 21^st century are an astounding bunch. Computers have connected us in ways that allow most of us to presume we have about 300 or so friends… maybe more. Anything we want to learn about we can find instantaneously on the Internet, and we’re used to fast pay-offs. This is our culture, this is our breed: we are successful before we have accomplished anything, and we know more than we could ever hope to figure out. Many of us are depressed or depressing; many of us search the stars on clear nights to feel smaller than our egos, to get perspective, to feel better. We all want something; we want to find what we want. In my words, we are PYRAMIDROMING– we are slowly and accidentally forging our vaguely structured lives into something like adulthood.

So what, per se, does it mean to pyramidrome? Well, let us start with the pyramid itself, an ancient motif symbolizing structure, spirituality and accomplishment. Probably most of our minds jump quickly to the ancient pyramids of Egypt, built by millions of slaves over the course of hundreds of years. In essence, the Egyptians were doing (much more slowly and pompously) what each of us must attempt to do in our daily lives: build something of meaning– a symbol, if you will, for our own accomplishments. Our pyramids are what we build during our lives, starting with a flat and unimpressive foundation and ultimately becoming a pinnacle of light, shining majestically from a zenith of achievement.

According to a completely random and unreliable source that I found on the Internet: “When building a pyramid a certain sensible sequence of events must be maintained. The large stones can only be placed at the bottom. The foundation must be built before the top.” Generally, this is the way we are taught to view our lives–one step at a time, one foot in the right direction. We all went to college to build a really thick, massive and bedazzled block to serve as the cornerstone of our pyramid’s foundation. The first layer is more or less built, and we have a little height now from which to gaze about at our surroundings. Looking out, I see a vision that has all the color and all the vagueness of a late impressionistic painting. Ah, it’s beautiful, but what the hell is it?

According to the same unreliable source that I already quoted, one of the main risks while building your “pyramid of development” is what might happen if you take the wrong course of actions in your life, i.e. your pyramid develops a defect. The site (ok, fine, I’ll tell you the URL.) also features a really nice graphic to help explain what might happen if we fuck up and do everything wrong and build terrible, horrible looking pyramids. The graphic is a black and white pen drawing of a half-built pyramid with jagged chunks of rock crumbling solemnly to the ground. Oh, it’s so poignant–really the perfect representation of exactly what we’re all afraid of: TOTALLY FUCKING UP AND FALLING APART!

Okay, so now you get the pyramid part of pyramidrome: it’s all about the basic structure of our lives and the ways in which we work from the ground up to construct something meaningful over time. Yeah yeah yeah, so what about the “drome” part? WELL, I am really just SO glad you asked. As a little but of a self-acclaimed scifi lover, I have to go all out and draw everyone’s attention to the movie Videodrome by David Cronenberg. If you haven’t seen the film, I’ll sum it up in one sentence or less: a sensationalist TV producer figures out how to psychologically fuck people up by getting them addicted to this hypnotically weird, sex-torture show. In essence, the movie leaves you with one of those creepy “what the hell?” feelings where you start to question everything you’ve ever known about media, the government and everything in between. So yes, the “drome” part of pyramidrome is a bit of a reference to Videodrome in the way that we are all controlled by this weird quest for the perfect pyramid, even though we don’t have any idea where it is or what it looks like.

Ultimately, PYRAMIDROME is intended to exist as a blog about existence, most specifically in the sense of building our futures, one day at a time. Many of us are currently in very weird transitional stages, and our pyramids are looking very hazy and haggard. I think we should stop caring about this so much, just a little bit. Every day I am trying to look at the big picture, and allow my pyramid to be built with many small blocks of enjoyment rather than huge, thousand-ton blocks of money, fast cars and rock stardom. I want to collaborate with other people as we work to be happy pyramid builders, sharing good moments and the things we’ve learned through one of our weirdest places of interaction: the Internet. Also, art is central to the general aesthetic of PYRAMIDROME, as I believe making art is really one of the only sure activities that helps our pyramids look good in all types of weather. So yes, here we go, let us PYRAMIDROME ourselves into the FUTURE! We are all doing things, and maybe if we write about it enough, we’ll figure out why what we do matters.

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