In the following BBC clip, lifted from today’s ephemera, the sculptor and artistic luminary Antony Gormley shares his wisdom on matters ecological. “Dispense with your socks,” says he. “This is a time of global warming. Through our feet we can begin to feel it.” This is no doubt because “our feet connect with our brains” and “engage with time.” And what’s more, “through our feet we can begin to be one people, standing through gravity on one Earth.” Yes, standing through gravity, united in our socklessness. Go barefoot for Gaia, people. It’s “an act of solidarity.”
Careful, dear readers. That’s the white heat of insight. It burns mortal flesh.
(h/t, Simen Thoresen.)
If you remove all the pink, socialist BS about global warming and solidarity, he makes a decent point, which is that it’s nice to go barefoot sometimes. Within reason. As a youth, I used to go barefoot all over Portland in the summer time – one of the few cities with a downtown clean enough to do so. It really is kind of liberating. If you do it often enough, if gets easier. On the other hand, there are lots of good reasons humans have been covering at least the soles of their feet for thousands of years. And some people should always cover their feet, as a favor to the rest of us.
So don’t let your reaction to a British twit artist prevent you from occasionally experiencing the joy of barefootedness.
MaxPSI, please scroll up and read Anna’s response to SoleMusic…Do you actually think that the rest of us have no clue as to what it is like to go barefoot? Really, what’s your point?
I’m involved with a preschool in a fairly affluent area, and I swear some of the children have never been barefoot outside their homes. (I feel certain that they’re all barefoot at all times inside their homes. I understand this hygeine measure; I don’t enforce it in my house, which I think is probably OK since I no longer have babies crawling around on the floors, and since I live in the ‘burbs and pretty much have to drive everywhere, my family and I aren’t tracking in NEARLY as much grossness as we’d get on our feet in the city.) Of course, these are very young children; presumably someday they’ll embrace rebellion and take off their shoes outside when their mothers aren’t looking.
Oh, P.S.: the tremendous quantity of goose poop in my yard tends to deter my kids from going barefoot there at certain times of year. Goose poop obstacle courses: another of the joys of barefootedness (which, honestly, I do love – I’m a pedicurist’s nightmare in the summer).
Orion,
Google ranks this post on Gormley as #13 when you search for barefoot parasite. The higher-rated entries are all medical-related.
Also, ‘Gormley barefoot’ produces only twice as many hits as ‘Gormley parasite’.
-S
I speak for the hookworms. I speak for the hookworms, for the hookworms have no tongues.
“No way is this not a parody. No one, I mean *no one* can be this fucking asinine.”
Oh yeah?
“Gormley doesn’t do messy beds or bisected sharks. But he did once propose a 12-metre-high ejaculating man for the waterfront at Seattle. The figure was meant to give an 11-second ejaculation of sea water every five minutes. “I intended it as an ironic comment on the male figure in relation to the whole idea of a fountain, because everyone knows the fountain is a male fantasy of permanent ejaculation.””
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3444837.ece
Sounds asinine to me. Sorry, I mean “ironic”.
Sock the infidel! He offends the Temple of Sockology! Socks of the world, unite!
Allow me to rephrase on behalf of Mr Gormley:
“People with comfortable, upper-middle class lifestyles like mine can reconnect with mother-Earth by going sockless around our stylish designer apartments or well-ordered, clean and safe places of residence.
This allows us a wonderful smug connection with the Earth-mother while freeing us from actually doing anything constructive whatsoever. It also makes a wonderful conversation-piece at dinner parties”
As you can tell, I think this is a proper winer of an idea.