Parasite

You know how sometimes one line in a random, meaningless conversation can send you into deep realms of introspection? Or anything, I don't know. The Ray Ban ad? " Have you made it up, have you made it up. "
On ostentation.
They say if you've done it, it isn't bragging. But how true is it? Isn't the purpose of bragging to impress people? Invariably, the average blows-his-own-trumpet or beats-his-own-drum if you're perverted = ) will be disliked and mocked by everyone with half a brain. Human nature is not very conducive to peer-appreciation. Or maybe its just the XX gene. But to be generous with one's compliments? Invasive, threatening, ominous. Also, its a public declaration of insecurity, on certain undefined levels. But we do it anyway. One's own voice praising one's own awesomeness is like flowing honey, soothing to the ear, to the ego. Or maybe you're just into it. In too deep, to care. When you're, and I hate to use the word, passionate about something, maybe talking about it is just pure adulation, pure hero-worship. Of what though? Of the object of that adulation or of yourself for understanding and being INTO something so grand? Its generally the latter. Disturbing.
We're vicarious beings, all of us. Talking about a great author or a divine band is quite casually a pat on the back. Like telling yourself that association makes up for the lack of talent. But talent can't thrive without an audience, can it? We're the lecherous audience. Like parasites, like the tapeworm infesting the stomach of a cow, a part of the cow but a crouching, sublime pest nonetheless. Vicarious. Living through someone else's glory.
Arbitrary trivia. Warming, comforting.
What did early man do will all the food he gathered? Did he put it up on a cave-wall and smugly patronize the other early men? Or did he quietly eat it, satiate his hunger and move onto better, more lucrative avenues. Could we do that? Digest the wondrous constructions of greater men, stash it away in memory, cover it with red velvet and move on.
What he did was, he made edible food out of raw vegetation. Not vicarious. Creation, art.
What I'm trying to do now is go on gathering, go on collecting. Till I can condense it into something bigger, something engaging. Something that can be called art. Or just gratify and quench the thirst for learning, for knowing. The question is, can I do it without being the wretched tapeworm?