The signals we live by
When you’re wearing a crest or insignia of any kind, something that signals allegiance to a particular team or organisation, this is usually the first thing that captures peoples’ attention. I’ve been wearing football shorts to the gym. On one side they bear my old team’s crest. I often see people glancing down at it in passing. Today I went wearing a baggy pair of tracksuit bottoms that were given to me by a friend in America. Up one side in large lettering is written Highland Park Community Centre. The same thing happened with these. Often, when passing someone, if we happened to look at one another, their eyes would automatically drop to the written words.
I think we are constantly looking to comprehend the world through such signals. Many of us use emblems and institutional branding to prejudge. It’s something we do automatically. These markers denoting involvement with a particular organisation are an efficient way to categorise someone.
A world stripped of these placeholders would be terrifying. They act as foot and hand holds, without which we would tumble into an abyss.
At the beginning of Camus’ The Outsider, when the main character Meursault learns of his mother’s death, he immediately maps out his journey to her funeral. There’s a sudden listing of time and place markers: I’ll take the bus at this time. The distance will be this much. It will take this long, and so on. It’s as if his mother’s passing has caused an unconscious disturbance in his psyche - an echo of the eternal darkness that awaits him - and he’s desperately grasping for supports in the temporal and material worlds.
He must also find the right outfit in order to fulfil the correct role. Meursault borrows a black tie and armband for the funeral. In the context of Camus’ taciturn protagonist, he relies on the clothes to do the talking for him.
In this sudden confrontation with death, Meursault – so often seen as indifferent – unconsciously clings to these external anchors in order to regain his bearings. At this point in the novel, he is at odds with the reality of death. By the end he will come to terms with it. The story begins and ends with a death, the latter being Meursault’s own. But by then, he has come to terms with the end of life, stripped of all its signifiers and values. He opens himself to death’s embrace.
On another level, returning to my experience wearing clothing with different affiliations, another possibility is that it’s simply interesting to read what’s written on people’s clothes, without any prejudging. A logo or text can attract someone’s attention, whether they recognise it from personal experience or are just curious.