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• Plamen Chetelyazov
• Plovdiv
• Bulgaria

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Censorship

We are primitive beings with censored life.
Our genes are primary carriers of the existential restrictions. Healthy or sick, beautiful or ugly, slim or fat, talented or talentless, brave or coward. The genes determine whether the party doors will open or close in our face. Everyone has a destiny. You can not find it on the pages of a thick book in heaven or hell. Our destinies were embedded in our bodies.
The initial tool of censorship are the parents. They teach us what to eat, when to bathe, sleep, laugh and cry. Then they determine whether we are Bulgarians or Macedonians, Christians or Muslims, Communists or Fascists. Mom and dad distinguish bad from good, weird from normal, scary from useful. And so the parents dress the primitive human nature in social adequacy, they stitch the kids in it. The uniform coalesces with the human body and we can not feel it. That is why over the years most of us never take this costume off, not even to wash or patch it. All our life we hide the emotions and the impulses in the deep pockets of this garment, embarrassed by the nakedness of our minds. Like any dress this also becomes small, goes out of fashion and eventually stops suiting us.
The next red pen is the mass media. In the very moment when a baby look at the aggressive monitor right up to the end the human seeks these images which are teaching him how to get pleasure. It defines concepts like looser and leader, cool and shitty, success and failure. It indicates to us what we should strive for and what we must shun at any price. It tells us what a good life is and how we can buy it. It explains us what love is and who is not worthy of it.
Then we find a job. The job censors our freedom, inserts it into a schedule, consumes it through the workdays so we can chew the cud of it during the weekend.
We are least common multiple of the primitive instincts, musty education and vicious media reality. And our time is running out because Death censors our very existence.