The horrors that should scare you the most, are the ones that are real. The ones we see every day. The algorithms push them into our safe spaces, our homes. The news rarely shows us something positive & even if they did, we are so exhausted we struggle to celebrate the small win. We swipe by with our thumbs, we virtue signal, our behaviour treats it as disposable. We feed it.
We curate an echo chamber that we are trapped in, so our bubbles aren’t burst, & we aren’t blinded by the realities of this cruel world. We support people that don’t even know us & never will, yet our friend calling out for help through their silence is ignored & dismissed as desperate for attention. The artist you know worries about affording their rent because you spent your money supporting an influencer who treats you as disposable instead of buying a ticket to their one person show. We feed it.
As we feed it their pedestal rises towards the heap we have created because of every trend we have followed blindly, bought into, outgrown of, or thrown away because our second place is now our first & our third. Our complicity is so heavy that we struggle to find a bin that fits our greed, so we leave it to be taken away by birds we call flying rats & waters that run polluted. Towards the sun their pedestal grows as nature is destroyed & dies in the shadow of their greed. We feed it.
I am complicit, you are complicit, & that complicity is feeling heavy right now. We don’t want to admit that this deity, a false god, an invisible man, the 1%, is what we worship. We have been initiated into a cult without consent & when we take, we give our consent away.
The blood on our hand’s treacle’s down from the top & it filters through all of us. Through a mass of opinions that we believe are right for us. Are we scared to admit that we don’t agree with these opinions that lead to a standard of how things are done? Will admitting it make us realise our complicity, that is too heavy, it would be too hard? Too hard to stare into the eye. The deep eyes of The Disposable Deity.
What do we do when everything is gone? When every resource has been used & there is nothing left? Everything comes from earth, even you. Everything is returned to earth, as are you.
The real horror is that we are heading this way as we worship this deity that takes because we keep giving. We worship them every time we use something, unaware of our worship.
It has a grasp on us that is so tight that the fear of living without it makes us question if we would survive. It has us in a trance walking this beautiful earth, distracted by how we are destroying mother nature.
The worship spreads like a cancer as silent whispers are passed loudly between communities. It moves us further away from our third place as we sap it dry of its preciousness, thinking it is infinite & that mushrooms will eat all our problems away.
We protest to give voices to beings that have none, yet we place them on our plates and complain about how they were cooked. We fill our bellies & we can’t even give the last ounce of respect they deserve, their final resting place; a bin. We shout that the waters are infested when they naturally defend but forget we infest the waters.
We buy one, we get one free but forget the one we have is free & we treat mother earth so cheaply. There is no plan B for the 99%. We need our waters more than they need us and our cycle of take, take, take, is slowing down the most important cycle that guarantees our survival.
When every drop is taken & the 1% have flown to their death we will be left behind, looking up at nothing but the offerings we gave to The Disposable Deity.
They leave us! We are left with the ringing of a white noise in our ears as their chaos ensues! Their greed left behind has divided & conquered.
We struggle for food and water finally living the nightmare of those just wanting to make a better life for themselves. A life where it is safe to simply exist. We show our greed when rubber boats float as the desperate sink to the depths below.
We can stop. We hold all the power. The power of the deity stops when we accept the invitation to exit the game. A game designed to destroy. To feed Hunger, Anger, Loneliness, Tiredness. HALT!!!
Take the invitation to see the ego grown by our worship of the Disposable Deity. Look inwards and allow ourselves to see that the ego doesn’t matter when we are hurtling through space on a magnificence that is more valuable than a quick fix. A fix that won’t fill a void left by the lack of love needed.
When you find the love in yourself, you will see the love needed to heal this world.
When you break the cycle of trauma, clarity shines the way to change.
One action is better than no action.
The road to success is always under construction but make sure the foundations are on the shoulders of good intention.
To change you must shed the cocoon of worship for The Disposable Deity.
Costume Vision Word by Chris Garner aka The Madame @themadameofficial
Photography Editing by Antony Edwards @hey.canitakeyourpicture
The costume was made using a collection of makeup wipes that were collected over the years of doing drag and are the prints of my face when it was time to take it all off. The costume also included old tights that were worn by myself and too damaged to wear again.
As a result of seeing my actions and the effect on the planet I swapped my “decomposable” makeup wipes for reusable makeup towels that can be washed after use and any old tights that are no longer wearable are recycled appropriately, some used tights are repurposed into new materials or products.