Loafing
i’d like to revive
the art of loafing
as an accepted
method of living.
i’d fight against the
notion that success
& ambition are the
only measures of a
good life. people
should only do
what makes them
happy. down with
the misery &
drudgery of
contemporary
life! more free
time, more
leisure. let’s be
bored once in a
while! let’s do
nothing for a
change & have
no goals or
desires or wants.
let’s wander the
streets aimlessly
on foot with
nowhere to go
just looking,
observing, feeling
& thinking. let’s
sleep when we’re
tired! let’s get out
of the daily grind!
work is not the
only means of
purpose. there are
many ways to live
& loafing should be
one. we do not
need to always
be doing. isn’t
living, being
enough? down
with buying &
selling & branding
& hustling &
killing ourselves
trying to get
ahead. happiness
does not lie in
things, in goods,
nor in technologies
but in living! in
being! in making
love & eating
well & thinking &
wandering &
reading & finding
good art. out
of the offices!
out of the cars!
the highways are
murder! the
universities are
killing us! t.v.
is still the
enemy! pop
culture is still
an embarrassment!
down with
conformity
& narrow mindedness
& outrage & being
offended by
absolutely everything!
it’s time to
rediscover our
spirit of loafing!
Against the prevailing notions
medication nation
lost to the consumer
nightmare & conformist
attitudes suffocating
the oppressions
of an economic
system built to
thrive on inequality
& exploitation
the rise to rise
against the prevailing
notions of state &
of innovation &
monetary policy
(unreliable /
boom & bust
a mentality so
utterly opposed
to health,
to safety,
to security,
to the true
freedom
from want
& from fear)
a naïve & utopian interpretation
beholden to free market dogma
a religion of sickness
of blindness
(dog eat dog / winner take all /
the very goal the
stratification & the despair)
do not call a move away
from markets a delusion
but instead recognize the
possibilities of a new
understanding
a new method
in which a new
world may emerge
in which money
& unnecessary products
& technologies are not
the supreme goals &
the grand measures
of success
where, instead,
being able to live
freely
& purposefully
the measure of
life, liberty
& happiness.
JOshua Martin
Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is the author of the book Vagabond fragments of a hole (Schism Neuronics). He has had pieces previously published in The Vital Sparks, Breakwater Review, Ink & Voices, The Free Library of the Internet Void, and Paragraph Line. His films have screened at various film festivals including The Pineapple Underground Film Festival, New Filmmakers, Film Al Fresco, Views from the Underground, and The Shooting Wall Film Festival.