We crave comfort, we crave companions. We have wants and we have needs. We stitch together narratives like we sew fabric or staple sheets of paper (or flesh, for that matter).
Landscape is a mindset. Portraits are a mind frame.
A blanket can become a vessel. A toy can become one, too. Each can be converted into a receptacle. Each can become the comfortable companion we crave.
The streets are malls of ideas and emotions. You can get as thrifty as you want. How bizarre, how bazaar.
The gallery is mostly walls of ideas and emotions. You can get as lofty as you’d like. No loft? Zoloft.
Depression is ours to own. We feel it, we see it, we know it, so we own it. But what about our pets, our properties, or our bank accounts? We can project our depression onto anything we want, and we often do.
This is a form of consumption that can become corruption. But it need not be. Trash is not inherently disgusting; what once was discarded can soon be fresh. Bad ideas can be transformed into learned lessons, misplaced emotions can be corralled into productive conversations, failed relationships can inform future ones.
History teaches us that we shouldn’tbe bound by society’s rules. Personally, I don’t want to be depressed anymore; I don’t want to be a part of this particular society anymore. I want to believe in a newly stitched narrative – one in which the good and the bad are equally exposed, but in which we are all actively pursuing connection, to ourselves and to each other.
- Keith J. Varadi, May 2026