“Those things will kill you.” As a general rule, mostly anything that offers the slightest bit of pleasure can have this warning attached to it. Only the pace of death’s footsteps differ from vice to vice, he never actually stops though.
In fact, just as many things that offer no pleasure whatsoever also have the irritating side effect of, eventually, killing you. Yet, when you drag yourself out of bed too early in the morning (not enough sleep will kill you) pump yourself full of caffeine (which will kill you) just to function at some ersatz level of normality, at a job whose daily stresses and demands pile micro aggressions onto a lifetime’s worth of stress and general malaise, (which will kill you as surely as a bullet) there isn’t a peep to be heard. No one ever points to a briefcase, or a nametag, or a tray of extra large double espressos and feels the need to point out, “those things will kill you.”
Everything is killing us anyway. Just as in Greek mythology, when the lyre of Orpheus, just for a moment stopped the boulder of Sisyphus and Iaxon’s wheel, maybe every spark is a moment’s respite, reclaimed from the ceaseless grind. If it’s true that every one takes a day from your life, well, one less day pushing a rock for no reason. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
Photography: Tommy Boudreau & Linnea Circosta
Models: Goodwin & Anna Correia
