The tired cliché of misery and insubordination, of a lonely protagonist in some darkened recesses of a balcony or a room, smoking cigarettes has always appealed to me. Partly for the allure the scene tries to invoke, and partly for the tiredness of the metaphor, of this usage of a cigarette to imply a sense of mystery, of the distaste of reality that needs to be mediated by an instant rush of nicotine to dull the senses, to alleviate the senses to the rush of sensory information. In the endless litany of cultural signs and Instagram poetry, where the cigarette is reduced to a symbol that lacks any meaning, I often wonder what this little act signifies. This dangling cigarette between the fingers, this double impermanence, of the burning cigarette and, of life. I never wanted to write about this, for both the overabundance and pretentiousness of elevating a self destructive act, to something broader than it is. Yet, as I often loiter at the peripheries of disillusionment, in little parties, across tables, smoking in this self awareness of killing oneself in little doses, I often wonder what Beckett might have thought as he inhaled this smoke, or as Swadesh Deepak kept burning his lungs or as Albert Camus posed with a cigarette in one hand and ruined years of young existentialists; if there is an awareness that comes with smoking cigarettes—not the very act, but the moment where one is acutely aware of the barter between life and death, where the weight of consciousness becomes so overbearing that one, although aware of the imminent death, chooses to approach it faster.
#9 On Smoking Cigarettes
#9 On Smoking Cigarettes
#9 On Smoking Cigarettes
The tired cliché of misery and insubordination, of a lonely protagonist in some darkened recesses of a balcony or a room, smoking cigarettes has always appealed to me. Partly for the allure the scene tries to invoke, and partly for the tiredness of the metaphor, of this usage of a cigarette to imply a sense of mystery, of the distaste of reality that needs to be mediated by an instant rush of nicotine to dull the senses, to alleviate the senses to the rush of sensory information. In the endless litany of cultural signs and Instagram poetry, where the cigarette is reduced to a symbol that lacks any meaning, I often wonder what this little act signifies. This dangling cigarette between the fingers, this double impermanence, of the burning cigarette and, of life. I never wanted to write about this, for both the overabundance and pretentiousness of elevating a self destructive act, to something broader than it is. Yet, as I often loiter at the peripheries of disillusionment, in little parties, across tables, smoking in this self awareness of killing oneself in little doses, I often wonder what Beckett might have thought as he inhaled this smoke, or as Swadesh Deepak kept burning his lungs or as Albert Camus posed with a cigarette in one hand and ruined years of young existentialists; if there is an awareness that comes with smoking cigarettes—not the very act, but the moment where one is acutely aware of the barter between life and death, where the weight of consciousness becomes so overbearing that one, although aware of the imminent death, chooses to approach it faster.