Thinking about authenticity. I just ate a piece of cake. The label said that it was ‘Teatime Classic Walnut Cake -Soft Sponge with Walnut crunch, Layered with Smooth, Rich Buttercream’. It was sweet, soft, and bland. Designed not to cause offence, it may be a case of cake forgery. It looked remarkably like cake; what you SEE is what you get. We produce and consume appearances. I haven’t sorted out in my own mind the distinction between an ‘original’ an image, a copy, and a deception, and the nature of the experience that we have of each: maybe we touch all these things in all experiences. It seems something to do with authenticity. My reasons for suspecting the cake has to do with prior experiences, of other cakes and pleasures, against which I measure my cake experiences. My eating of the cake was a ‘real’ experience for me, but if the cake was a forgery, something designed to deceive , what am I really engaged in? I rather liked the idea that food might be ‘forged’. and then I remembered something about simulacra. It is a simulated cake? What distinguishes forgery from simulation? The lovely thing about simulation is the things that it has in common with the ‘real’ that it simulates. It is an honest deception. Forgery is a lie? I haven’t worked for several months now, for a variety of reasons, but I’m creeping up on it. It’s like a growing hunger. I want to squidge paint around on a canvas. The thought makes my mouth water. I’m just a little afraid of doing it for the sheer pleasure of it but I might just force myself. I’m beginning to see more clearly the position of the kind of stuff that I do in the grand design of things. If that seems a pretentious line, either it reveals pretentiousness, or maybe points to the connectedness, and disconnectedness between our everyday meanderings and a bigger picture. The cake cuts us off from a reality by offering a pretence of a ‘real’ experience. Authenticity as a copy?
