The other night I went to a… actually, I’m not sure what you’d call it but it was a birthday for a magazine. An artsy event in which you stand in a mostly blank space amid piles of artistically placed newspapers, rub shoulders with artsy people and eat cheese by the wheel with big chunks of bread torn off freshly baked loaves while trying various wines, scoring numerous freebies and generally congratulating editors etc on how fabulous their magazine is 12 issues in. At least, I think that’s what you’re supposed to do.
I was there with a couple of friends listening, looking and wondering what it all meant and as confessional presentations were given in the dark, I came to see that as well as being a celebration of the magazine, this was a celebration of philanthropy. Many of the people speaking had given up their fancy pants jobs in fancy pants places where they earnt enough money to buy fancy pants so that they could make a difference to the world beyond. In the words of one of the speakers who was a furniture designer, he had come to realise that “the world really didn’t need another chair.” And you know what, it is true: there are already lots of chairs.
regainingparadise 