Me: “Wishes are cliché”
Me too: “Wishes are universal. Universality means something is as close to factual as it gets, in terms of the fabric of human subjective experience. Or consciousness, anyway.”
Me: “Cliché is cliché and means people are numb to it.”
Me three: “Either that or you are just contributing to a stream of metaphors that are commoditized and ubiquitous and are uninventive”
Me too: “I think being inventive as in completely unique is overrated and impossible.”
Me: “Oh, it’s possible”
Me three: “You just suck”
Me: “Bah”
Me too: “I wish there were another word for wish”
Me three: “If you use a thesaurus that’s lame”
Me: “Be real. Own it. If you mean wish, then say wish.”
Me three: “What is exhausted about the term, anyway?”
Me: “Connotations maybe? Greeting cards, new-age propaganda, religion… there is something unfair about the notion of the wish and definitely problematic about them being granted”
Me too: “I’m not interested in the granting of wishes, more in the idea of gathering them into a whole. It’s the collection of them that appeals to me. The collectivity of these individual wishes”
Me three: “That’s vague. You are just using people to create an excuse to get rid of your collection.”
Me too: “Yes, but so what? I’m doing it with respect and as a way to acknowledge the subjective value of my collection. I’m trying to see myself as less singular. Like one of the matches in a collection of single match matchbooks.”
Me: But who cares?
Me too: “That’s always a problem. I’m also trying to give a moment of pause for people, and perhaps an outlet for their wishes/dreams.”
Me: But you don’t feel superstitious – like they will come true, right?
Me too: I don’t think so, no. But I think the gesture of that is lovely.
Me three: Wait are making an inventory of wishes?
Me: “What if people are supersticious and attach a kind of spirituality to offereing up their wishes? Is it false hope?”
Me too: “I hope not. I’m still a vehicle for them in that case. I will do my best to authentically wish their wish”.
Me: “What if the wishes are hateful?”
Me too: “I will not wish them for real”
Me three : “What? By saying that you are admitting to thinking you have some power in this process of visualization. If you “really” wish for the wishes you deem as good or safe but only fake wish for the ones that are negative, then it means you think the act of wishing as a ritual has some power”
Me three: “So, you need to wish them all equally, realize you have no power to make wishes come true, and maintain some objectivity.”
Me: “Censorship is not what I want to be a part of this”
Me too: “What are people getting for the wish they give you anyway?”
Me three: “It’s a chance to believe that my wishing for their wish might be proactive in some way and it’s a chance to express something dear and have it recognized via another person.”
Me too: “Who cares, though?”
Me: “That has to be up to the contributor and the viewer. I can’t care for people and sometimes one can only care so much about anything.”
Me three: “It has to strike you in the moment”
Me: “I wouldn’t mind being a genie for a day.”
Me too: “But what does that say about hopes and dreams? I’m not interested in false promises?”