Ceci, n'est pas un tee-shirt

We were sitting on the grass last summer, high as balls, people-watching, vodka-out-of-water-bottle-drinking, self-loathing, and chilling. My pal Kessler was there too, similarly fucked, but self-tanning instead of self-loathing. While sitting and watching the Dumb Summer Hordes pass by, we got to thinking. And as always happens when people think: we developed those things called ideas. In particular, stupid ideas. For tee-shirt slogans. For example:

• I'm without stupid
• My other shirt is a pair of pants
• I'm not that gay
  
• I went to Darfur and all I got was this humanitarian catastrophe
• Pink is the new asshole
• Irony on tee-shirts is gay
  
• Irony on tee-shirts is not that gay
• Michaelangelo > Raphael > Leonardo > Donatello
• Ask me about this tee-shirt
• Emotionally retarded (and single!)
• Do you know the way to San Jose?
• Ceci, n'est pas un tee-shirt

And so forth. The ideas were truly of the low quality expected after an afternoon of beer and sun exposure, but after much discussion (and a detailed flowchart, a summary paper and expert testimony), we realised that it wasn't our fault. Simply put: the medium has circumscribed our ability to fulfill our remarkable potential. Because, let's face it, the tee-shirt is a shitty medium.

It is just a cotton canvas scarcely held aloft by a slacker's slumping shoulders. It's not a forum for deep thought. Textiles generally lack the gravitas to convey meaningful ideas. Especially those made of low-quality cotton or worse, some kind of synthetic blend.

The sun went down and our water bottles were empty. Switching to hastily-rolled joints, Kessler and I decided -- nay, decreed -- that really, we should keep all forms of self-expression off tee-shirts. Instead (and this is where things got kind of fucked up), we sought to unite in protest of tee-shirt aphorisms. We rejected the notion that an item of clothing, a scant fibre ledger, can adequately express any portion of the complex content that is the human condition.

I mean, what is a tee-shirt slogan anyway? Usually a meaningless meme. An attempt at individuality that reveals only a desire for conformity. A throwaway tattoo; it's like a vacuous Twitter, or a Facebook status update, or an ICQ away message (for the ancients among us), or simply: an unheard shout among a million similarly unheard shouts from a million "unique individuals".

And this cry for help on this store-bought rag is an emblem of how pathetic we are. So desperate we are, that we don't define ourselves by the clothing we wear. We let the clothing define us. We are the accessory to the brands we wear, and not the other way around. As far as individuality goes, it's a failure. Collectively, we stand defeated waving an American Apparel brand flag of surrender.

So our (drug- 'n' booze-addled) protest took the form of a uniform shirt. A single design to be worn by those who feel contempt for the notion of catch-phrase fashions, and for sound-bite styles. An anti-tee-shirt. Proclaiming nothing for life is nothingness. And, I remember thinking, after a good four minutes of coughing, this is a shirt that we truly wear, it does not wear us, man. Our shirt was simple, and pure, and honest. It's merely a white shirt, with black block letters (Helvetica, of course), that reads:



Well, that's the tough part. I completely forgot. I've tried to remember and recreate it but I keep drawing a blank. I thought maybe it said "White Power" but that doesn't make any sense. Something about white though. Or power? I don't know. It might have been "Fuck You". It was pretty awesome at any rate.

But Kessler hated it I recall, and we argued about it for forty-five minutes before we got really hungry and went to a pub for wings. We told the idea to a couple of guys we met that night, but one of them was wearing a "Don't Vote for Pedro" tee; it didn't really go over that well.