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"Daythief"

“Have a productive summer/winter/week/weekend...” they always say. But what about the joy of doing nothing – daydreaming, or day-thieving? What about slowing down, I mean, really slowing down? Our resistance to pause and reflection is like a bad love affair. Boredom is a luxury only the old-world aristocrats and underprivileged city dwellers can afford. Who else?

“I would prefer not to,” says the protagonist Bartleby, once a dutiful and productive employee but recently taken on the habit of responding to his boss’s requests with “I would prefer not to”. He does less and less work. The employer’s attempts to reason with Bartleby prove to be pointless. One day, the employer ar- rives at the office to discover that Bartleby has moved himself in.

It’s always a fun response whenever you feel like opposing the most mundane of things. Another character, a stray cat bathes in the warm late-afternoon sun; turning over to its other side just to record the passage of time. Oh, there goes another eleven hours, meow..

Being the new romantic that SKARULE is, she contemplates how the ongoing safety measures and along with them, the ever-present longing and boredom, shape our actions and behavior, turning them into power structures in their own right. How may doing nothing be more fruitful than doing something? How do I wait better, productively, yet calmly?

words by Zane Onckule