The Philosophy of Andy Warhol Reader Response

Warhol starts off talking about how people should live in one large empty room, clear of all the clutter that people tend to collect. He says that everything should be locked away and stored somewhere else. That if you can't get rid of everything you should have a closet for your things, but a separate closet, "So you don't use it as a crutch too much."(31) He states an example that if you lived in New York you should keep your closet no closer than New Jersey. He uses that logic that nobody want to, "feel you're living next to your own dump."(31) Other people would be more bearable because you wouldn't know all of the exact contents, that knowing about everything that is in there and thinking about it too much could drive a person insane. He continues to say that everything in your closet should be thrown out at some point and expire like food. Warhol states that the best thing to do is to have a box for a month, put all your stuff in it, then lock it up and send it to your closet in New Jersey at the end of the month. Try to keep track of everything but if something gets lost, well then that’s just a little less clutter in your life. He started with trunks and such but soon found that he was looking around for better things so now he simply uses a cardboard box. He says that he hates to be nostalgic so he half hopes that everything will get lost anyway, never to be seen again. His other way of thinking is that he really wants to save some things because he might need them again sometime.
I thought that this article could be referring to a couple of things; first to the clutter of thoughts that fill our brain, and second to the clutter that fills our lives. He says that we should all have a big empty space, a clear mind without being crowded by all of the stuff we store in our minds and pour over and over, taking up brain space. He says that we should keep things while we need them, but that at some point they should be sent away to free up the space. Eventually though he says these things should all be thrown out. Sometimes he even wishes that things would just go away forever, and that he wouldn’t ever have to think about them again. At the end he contradicts this way of think though by saying that he does really want to keep some things there, to use later. There are things that you don’t want to forget. I think he could also be talking about the clutter that people tend to have, making our lives chaotic. Clutter made up of; everything from our work, our busy social schedules, the things that worry us, bills, and all the material possessions that one tends to accumulate in life. All of these things are taking up space in our lives, making them more hectic. And while the chaos can be overwhelming at times, even preventing us from progressing in life, sometimes it can be useful to tap into it and pull from it ideas, memories and new projects.