Grunge: an Honoring of Entropy

how grunge embraces and commemorates death

I used to coat my freshly designed nails with a clear coat of nail polish — to protect them. I learned from one woman or another that it would help the polish stay in tact for longer. Chipped nail polish — like so many smudged, messy, ripped, or torn appearance modifiers — seemed to indicate class difference. Or at the very least, a lack of respect for one’s outwardly appearance.

However, my mind always delighted in the way that using my hands and going through my day to day life would change and deteriorate the patterns on my nails. So at some point, I stopped trying to protect them because I knew they would not last long anyway.

Instead, I took delight in their impermanence and their physical nature. Entropy is beautiful; death and deterioration is beautiful.

“If the price of existing is impermanence, sign me up every time.”

Brennan Lee Mulligan as City Park Maple Tree, The Seven, Episode 3

Every item deteriorates & breaks down in its own unique way dependent on its unique physical & chemical makeup as well as the external conditions it faces. The holes and stains on treasured objects are imprints and markings of the life they’ve led.

Grunge, to me, is about a commitment to an object. It is a vow to truly and wholly commit oneself to the object you own; to continue to use it even if it’s tired, even if it has changed. Because after all, you have changed with it.

The favorite sweater that you thrifted in high school which is torn and tattered over half a decade later. The wear directly parallels your own — the transformation and destruction of the ego, ideas, and illusions of self you used to hold as a teenager versus the shattered yet clear vision of the self you hold now. You have endured and this object has endured at your side, on your body, protecting you, and serving you. Do we not owe them the same devotion that these unspeaking pieces of our lives and our worlds have shown us?

to me, grunge is about seeing the beauty in entropy

loving & honoring the patterns of deterioration

taking joy in death

Grunge finds beauty in the decay of our natural, fibrous, refined, and processed counterparts of our life. Grunge celebrates the resilience of the lives of objects and condemns the endless perfectionism, professionalism, prim and proper, pristine virtues that late stage capitalism & planned obsolescence parade.

Grunge embraces death and rebirth. It gives new life to old objects that other systems and aesthetics would send to rot in towering, polluting, overflowing landfills.

Grunge reveres the magic and power carried in old and ancient things. It honors entropy by accepting the embodiment of its unending force. Grunge honors death by transforming its energy, finding new and innovative uses for whatever new shape and body the materials may take.

If you find yourself wanting to honor the objects around you: take care of them, hold onto them, repair them when you can, and change their use when you can’t.

Honor them by keeping them. 

Honor their life, their death, 

and whatever else they become. 

Embrace the grunge.