Overheard Starbuck

"How do I make things mine? For example how does a pop song like 'Yellow' after hearing it once become mine forever and another song, say, 'You're Beautiful' means absolutely nothing no matter how many times I hear it?."
---"I always wondered why Paul Klee and not Marc Chagall."
"Why am I interested in scruffy impassable mats of weedy plants and not more stately conifers?"
---"Given all the images and the variety of things to mull over--the sense of ownership for example of one pop song versus another-- isn't the real mystery in the choosing itself? In the speed and certainty of the rightness of our selections and our ability to stick with these favorite things for more than a few minutes?---For a lifetime?!"
"What if we aren't in complete control of this process of choosing? Of how we decide which found things we call ours are ours?"
---"You're not talking about phermones or marketing chemicals again are you?"
"No, I might be talking about gravity, the weight of things. The way mundane objects and ideas can influence the dreams and behavior of human beings everywhere."
---"Can you inagine somewhere in America today demographically ideal men or women whose fantasy lives are uncluttered by objects and ideas, like weeds or conifers, that promise no steady profits for advertisers and retailers?"
"There could be in the US and on our military bases overseas thousands of such ideal consumers. --How many years have Republicans controlled this country?--Individuals and families who can only think in terms of brandnames, products and prices. So that for example those oddly attractive plants in the empty lot on the way to the train station are not fully perceived, certainly not appreciated, until these consumers somehow if ever make a connection between them and plants one can buy. All manner of things without price-tags have ceased to exist, simply diappeared."