Hercules Segers: Still Life with Books (c. 1618–1622)

Gallery Statement: While Segers’ stack of books looks unassuming enough, it is entirely original, and may even be the earliest still life in European graphic art. While still lifes frequently feature in 17th-century paintings, they are rarely found in black-and-white (in prints).

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" … they'd never before achieved anything even approaching Enough."

NextWorld seems to contain no Enough. It seems insatiable whether focusing its appetite on the trivial or monumental; it can never get Enough. It wants without regard to availability or means. Using the old addict's excuse, it claims to want what it wants, as if wanting were adequate justification and also as if wanting occurred beyond or before volition. NextWorld seems a victim of its wanting, wanting filling the role of both demon and god. It might be the religion. It is the force behind the non-existent throne. It always was communicable as Hell, perhaps precisely as communicable as Hell, though not everybody seems equally susceptible. I could write an encyclopedia describing the characteristics of those for whom wanting is most disabling, except I wouldn't want to add to the already voluminous literature on the subject. We know who they are and are far too familiar with their dances. The Nazis were famously insatiable. So were Mussolini and his fascists. They each became voracious because they became bottomless. When there's no real answer to the question of how low can you go? a certain kind of gravity seems to take over. One can gorge at every meal, every opportunity, without ever experiencing Enough or even approaching it.

After twenty or thirty years, when vampires seemed to dominate literature and film, we managed to manifest a genuine infestation. Make no mistake, NextWorld is a vampire's heaven filled with innocent victims. It genuflects to an eternal urge for dominion and to inflict humiliation. The dominion always falls short of overwhelming itself, though, inadvertently inflicting a uniquely staggering humiliation upon the victimizer. The vampire might live forever but will exist in a purgatory of his own making. His urges will drive his actions beyond all reason, and he will eventually find it necessary to carry out his ritualism alone, in almost total darkness. He will prove incapable of mastering even that meager adaptation. Each fresh victim leaves him just as unrequited as he felt before dispatching him. The meaninglessness of dominion slowly has her way with him. Whatever's not a choice seems destined to produce such meaninglessness.

Before the fall, though, some might envy those who seemed to possess so much. One might wonder what drove them to accumulate so much more than ten thousand inheritors could ever use, but visions of the rough equivalent of sugar plums trouble their sleep. The billionaires and oligarchs cannot help themselves. They ride a siphon that ultimately came to dominate them. They know only subjugation from within their seemingly all-powerful positions. Their acquisitiveness amounts to an addiction much worse than any spawned by the Fentonol crisis and ultimately every bit as deadly. It consumes from the soul outward, then from the spirit back inside. Inside, it finds a reassuring hollowness as if everything might actually have been meaningless all along. Anyone seriously considering themselves master of any universe is already lost. Every universe has a special place for those who believe themselves to be others' masters. It's the same place everybody else ends up, though the oligarch's journeys vary from the ones everyman travels.

Satisfaction was never guaranteed for anybody who already achieved. If the wanting never recedes, the relief experienced from a job well done can't emerge. If each accomplishment insists upon a fresh target, those sharks never sleep. Should they rest, they would sink toward the bottom of a bottomless ocean, one they alone inhabit. Those cursed to live without Enough will never know true love. They might manage to marry one of those iconic beauties. Those often prove to have clay feet and fake boobs, spurring another search for an Enough that probably couldn't exist under those conditions. One finds true love by getting found out. It's an embarrassment more than an accomplishment. It's a gift only partially sought. It arrives in different than anticipated guises. It seems the cruelest curse sometimes, especially when it starts slipping away. Requited love evolves into something different, as must everything sought. Once caught, the search for sufficiency suspends. One exhilarating chapter ends, and another more subtle one begins. Churning produces butter that no longer requires nearly as much effort to exist.

NextWorld seems an unrequited place. It seems overwhelmed by its own aspirations. It seems essentially incapable of success. It seems built solely for opposition. It possesses no defenses. It hunts like a dog chases cars, untroubled by what might occur should it succeed. It has no master plan because it never managed to master its urges. It could not reduce its passions into anything likely to attract a broad base of supporters. It manufactures its own inevitably superior opposition. It designed itself to be an underappreciated minority and seems bound and determined to remain in that role for all eternity. Its very identity seems underpinned by the notion that it was denied existence. It was prevented by the imaginary Deep State from taking its rightful place, whatever that might have been. Their vision perceives only an endless horizon. Ask the least of them how it might be after they win the war they incited and watch their lights dim. It might not have ever occurred to them that they might win. Their vision of success never stretched further than the beginning of the war. I imagine they never imagined that they might eventually experience Enough conflict since they'd never before achieved anything even approaching Enough. They couldn't recognize it if it wore bells!

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz