Cut Me to the Quick

let me try and see if I can relate to your point of view in an attempt to persuade you that "I AM VALUE ADDED"

there was a point in my life where I had Marxist sympathies. I had supported the first invasion of the Persian Gulf, but found myself without means to move out of my parents house and was being berated like most 18 year old boys experience. As a result I was frustrated with the economy and became a Marxist sympathizer. This period lasted from 1991 to 1996. I have since realized that my parents had plenty of money and they were abusing and hazing me to further their own sense of pride towards a political philosophy they shared in the 60's and 70's that had failed and most of their friends had left the ideas my parents still held dear. It was rather bourgeois and my parents are now senior citizens and they still hold the same laughable leftist opinions. As I began to explore my art I found my work and ideas were decadent by leftist standards. That leftist ideology was oppressive... just as my family had used their values to haze me when I was 18... I found that artists the world over had been oppressed by the Leftism that my so called bohemian parents had adhered to. Around 1996 I lost a belief in being "right"... and by 2006 I had become what many describe as being a conservative... but what I would prefer to describe as common sense. What changed me was the concept of quantification. Quantification is not a quality of capitalism, but rather a concept of the "left". value in Marxism is never changing and is a slave to other people's value. I think you take pride in objectifying other people because you want to mock me by providing a value (it alludes to my Marxist past) ... but the problem with art is it does not exist in those rules. It is excess. It is leisure. It can not be fairly bought and sold and understood. It is regrettable that it is... but the people who try to quantify are not coming from a school of thought based on relativity, but rather they are thinking in terms of a very concrete value based on their own opinion. Don't try to quantify what I do. It is not for you and I think what you are trying to say in a strange way is that you see no value in me as a person. I would have to beg to differ and I would also like to remind you that we are all art... and there are somethings that you do that I don't like but I wouldn't dare put a value to it. I don't ski for instance or enjoy going fast down hills, but rather enjoy the struggle going up the hill.