5 Bumperstickers
An interview project that offers glimpses of American culture and society, by asking people about bumperstickers.
5 Bumperstickers
Jurell Eddens - Disobedient Goods & Apparel
The episode delves into the hidden narratives encapsulated in bumper stickers, exploring how they reflect personal identities and societal beliefs. Through thoughtful conversations, we dissect various stickers' meanings, emphasizing the need for self-definition, cultural understanding, and humility in our shared human experience.
• Discussing personal perspectives on bumper stickers
• Analyzing environmental messages in bumper stickers
• Exploring cultural identity through stickers
• The call for adventure in daily life
• Embracing wildness vs. control in lifestyle choices
• Philosophical implications of humility and self-perception
• Creative expression through self-therapy stickers
• The broader narratives conveyed by everyday messages
Disobedient Goods and Apparel invites you to explore our creations at disobedientgaco.
https://disobedientga.co/pages/about-us
.
Welcome to the 5 Bumper Stickers, an interview project that offers glimpses of American culture and society by asking people about bumper stickers. Hello, jurel, so do you have a bumper sticker? Or did you ever think about putting a bumper sticker behind your car? Is there like something like that, really like a sentence or a concept that defines you, or a little bit like explains, like how you see the wall and whatever that says hey, that's me.
Speaker 2:No, no. Ever since I started driving my own car, I've never wanted to have a bumper sticker on there. I've always thought that it was a label and I didn't want to have a label on my car. I would even scrape the logos off of like the decals off of my cars?
Speaker 1:Is it because you wanted to be? You know, like, you say, like anonymous, and you know like to not really yeah, kind of. Because in case something happened like a rap or something like you got in an argument with somebody then they identify you. Not like that.
Speaker 2:To like, I think, for my kid self. I was thinking you can't control me or you don't own me, and so, like scraping the name tags or the labels off of my belongings was like my way of marking it as my own.
Speaker 1:Three hugging of marking it as my own Tree-hugging Dirt-worshipper. So this one tree-hugging I mean you can imagine. A guy hugging a tree. I did hear that it does give you a feeling of you know, but why would you put this behind your car.
Speaker 2:Sure, I see it when I see that bumper sticker, tree hugging um dirt worship, or it's it. It's the quintessential northwestern hippie.
Speaker 1:Um, so they there's to saying that they love nature and and they are in tune with nature is what I see, because Eugene, like here where we are, is it where the hippies came from California. They came and they kind of is it a hippie town? You consider Eugene, you know?
Speaker 2:I think it's a little bit of that plus also like a lager ruggedness, of that, plus also like a lager ruggedness. But when they say you know tree hugging and dirt worshiping, I think more so it's like a environmental appreciation.
Speaker 1:They don't want to cut the tree Right, right, right, like even more than them saying that they're a hippie or it's more than.
Speaker 2:It's just that they're saying we love nature and we're in tune with the environment.
Speaker 1:So maybe, in tune with the environment, we could go to this one that it's really tied to the land where we live now that it used to be owned by other people. Right? This one says I am indian thing you wouldn't understand. Or maybe I pronounced it uh, that it's I am an indian thing you wouldn't understand. So does this one. What do you think that this one they want to express this for sure is somebody that is a native american.
Speaker 2:No, sure I I think quite simply, if I'm understanding it right, they're just saying that people outside of Indian culture wouldn't understand what this person is going through or what their experience is.
Speaker 1:You gotta, you gotta Experience something To really understand it. You gotta Be able to Listen to us and come with us, celebrate with us, to understand, like who we are, before you say, hey, you guys Are like this Right From outside.
Speaker 2:Correct. That's what I'm seeing, that's what I think that says.
Speaker 1:Fantastic Backlap. We are going To try something Backlap. So this one buckle up Do I pronounce it right? Buckle up, we're going to try something. So this, like you're driving this guy like.
Speaker 2:He's inviting you to an adventure no. Yeah, yeah, kind of huh. I don't really know what to make of that one. I almost want to finish it Like I want to make. I wanted to say, buckle up. I almost want to finish it Like I want to make. I wanted to say, buckle up, we're going to try something new, New or wild. No, yeah, exactly, but it's just left blank. So it's kind of up for interpretation.
Speaker 1:It takes me to another one that I saw a long time ago that says keep it wild. So keep it wild. What do you think that it means? Like somebody that really doesn't like like urban lifestyle, or something?
Speaker 2:Maybe. Maybe it's still like with tree hugging and dirt worshiper and like wild forest or something, or maybe they just like chaos this is like the chaos and Versus order and control.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, interesting, because for now, the cars that we've seen around, they all kind of focus in one way of seeing things and I really like this one. There is always someone cooler than you. I think this is like hey, come on, you like go down your ego or what?
Speaker 2:yeah yeah, yeah, I feel like that's, that's very philosophical, hmm, very good, because if it's if. If I say that's not true for me, then I'm immediately on an ego trip, you know, you know, oh, you are like, I'm like, like, then I am too cool. If I don't think that's true, okay, and nobody wants to be too cool, right.
Speaker 1:And why would this one put this in his car? Maybe he had like a, or she had like a girlfriend, or somebody that was surrounded by somebody with too much ego maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah like that's cool, that's a, and I think it goes with this one don't believe everything you think.
Speaker 1:And actually I saw this one already in walla walla, washington, where we we lived like for a little bit when our daughters were, when they were actually born there, sure, and I liked it. Don't believe everything you think, so this one is a philosophical?
Speaker 2:no, absolutely. I think it ties right into the last one.
Speaker 1:I think they're related do you actually believe everything that you think, or you try to um?
Speaker 2:it's really difficult. I try to make sure that I hold on to um trusting my experience more than I trust into other other things that have been said or what I've been told, and that's a really, really difficult thing to do, because a lot of growing up and going to school and being educated is involving trust and believing.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know what you mean, so you kind of follow the experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would rather say I don't know something than to say that I know for sure because I've been taught that or because someone told it to me.
Speaker 1:We actually met at a Friday's market or no, Sunday's market?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was the Whitaker Sunday market that we met you.
Speaker 1:The Whitaker. This is one of those hard and difficult words to write and pronounce when you land in Eugene.
Speaker 2:It is. I just started spelling it correctly the other month.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, recently I'm not going to take it bad, then no, and I found a very interesting project that, um, your wife and and you are are doing, yep, and is it? It's also related to like stickers.
Speaker 2:No, no, bumper stickers, but stickers yeah, they're not they're not bumper stickers necessarily, but we we call them, like self-help or self-therapy stickers, and we create them just out of the depths of our minds and in conversation and throw them down on thermal paper like you would a FedEx label, and we're trying to spread, you know, a no judgment, no agenda message, just relating, trying to relate with ourselves and relate with other people.
Speaker 1:And what's the like the website, if somebody wants to.
Speaker 2:It's called Disobedient Goods and Apparel and the website is disobedientgaco All right, and I see that you brought me here a little present.
Speaker 1:like it says, the power pack. What is this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I brought you the power pack and it has a couple of things inside of it. It's got a pack of questions for when, questions for my power and it has three stationary stickers in there for you to list out kind of affirm what's going on inside your mind and put it down on paper and then use as a sticker. And then two different quotes that we have found from James Baldwin that we think relate to power and our current situation in Western society.
Speaker 1:Very cool because the word power it's interesting how it can have many meanings and how you present it. And that's why I think I asked you when I first saw your label that well, I'm going to take a picture so the audience can see. And also I've seen the same word power as a bumper sticker, and then power and then the word Oregon all together. So here it has another meaning. No, If you see it as a bumper sticker, just power, what do you think that it means?
Speaker 2:yeah, I, I don't think that by itself, power is just a single definition. It can be translated to different contexts and in many ways I think it's like a negative connotation for power. You know, we think that having power is is corrupted in in so many ways and it's evidence is, you know, right before our eyes.
Speaker 1:So we have to relate with our own sense of power in a way that's healthy and here I can see it's more about your creative power and your uh and being able to overcome and to also use the well in what you are good at.
Speaker 2:You know Right exactly yeah, Okay yeah, do you want?
Speaker 1:to open it up. Yeah, let's open one.
Speaker 2:It says the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways and history is literally present in all that we do. And that's by James Baldwin. This is an important figure from our American history and the struggle for civil rights and the rights of other people and really trying to face with today.
Speaker 2:I think it came up for us because, yeah, I mean there's a shift of power is happening, and we have to recognize that, even though I control very, very little, I have a lot of power and what I'm able to affect in my own life and in the lives of people around me, and so I think what this quote is saying is that power is, it flows.
Speaker 2:It's not something that moves like a chest piece or or is traded like a coin, and power flows more like like a water. This other one says the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one, because ultimately're just dealing with a form of abuse and a form of punishment that doesn't actually heal or help people become better versions of themselves. This season for the holidays, we're going to be at the farmer's markets and at the Saturday holiday market creating bundles of stickers that we're encouraging people to send to their relatives and send to their friends all over the world, and we're encouraging relating with difference instead of being afraid or fearing that I'm not going to be able to express myself as myself, and holding firm that that's how I heal and how I get stronger is by resting assured.
Speaker 2:I can do better with stickers, and that's really our message.
Speaker 1:That's amazing and it's a little bit what shocked me driving by here that I found these messages, these stickers, these sentences behind the cars, and that's why we started talking now, and because you have a similar project in a way. You said before that you didn't want to put a bumper sticker because you kind of wanted to keep how you think, or yeah?
Speaker 2:I wanted to hold. Yep, I wanted to hold my beliefs to my chest and not on my sleeve. Really, you know, holding my cards close to my chest is kind of how I looked at the philosophy of bumper stickers break for Squatch.
Speaker 1:It could save your life. Can you explain? Maybe the people from Barcelona don't know who Squatch is?
Speaker 2:Sure so in in Oregon and in the Pacific Northwest of America there's a myth or a fairy tale of the Bigfoot. Oh, like the Yeti. Yes, so Sasquatch is short for Sasquatch, and Sasquatch is the Yeti in Oregon, and so it's just like a giant ape man.
Speaker 1:Do you think that he is walking around the woods? Oh?
Speaker 2:I have no idea. Okay, however, however, I will tell you that I've been to many different places in oregon and many people swear by its bigfoot's existence. Wow. And also, I've seen extremely large wild animals before. So, like when I see a deer you driving around the town, it's not a very big animal, but the elk and the moose that are out in the boonies out in the woods in Oregon are gigantic. They are so big that it makes me feel like an ant. Gigantic. They are so big that it makes me feel like an ant. So I'm really not. It's not beyond me to believe that there is something out there that is that big and that scary.
Speaker 1:Okay, and walks around when I live, I see this guy that is actually literally. He took his car as a police car, but it has a sign on top and it says something like a Squatch Search. He's like specialized in like searching for these. Did you say Sasquatch, sasquatch, sasquatch? That's really funny. That's harder than Whitaker. They even do a whole festival, yeah, they even do a whole festival in Oak Ridge about this Sasquatch. I believe it. It's all right. And then from here, maybe I know there's one that says no bad days, no bad days.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's back to the, and that one I've seen has a pineapple tree next to it.
Speaker 1:huh oh maybe you're right. And then it's like in Eugene, like the rainy Eugene, you have no bad days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, growing up, one of my really good friend's mothers had that bumper sticker on the back of her Toyota and was he or she really like chill, no, no. She had four kids.
Speaker 1:Sometimes maybe that's interesting you put in your bumper sticker what you want to be achieve, but you are not. No, totally, totally your goal. Like truth matters? Yeah, somebody would put truth matters there. Yeah, yeah, truth matters. They stay humble. Not all who wonder are lost. Oh, this one is also very philosophical.
Speaker 2:No, totally I. It takes me back. Truth matters and not all who wonder are lost. Take me back to the other ones that we were looking at.
Speaker 1:You don't always believe what you think. Don't always believe what you think. Well, you did say that you don't want a bumper sticker, but you know, I have to ask at the end, like if you had to choose one, even if it was not of your own creation, or use the power.
Speaker 2:Use your power Right, or one that I feel like right now in this. At this point in my life, I feel like the bumper sticker that most closely I identify with would say something like Mostly I identify with, would say something like you can't control me, or your power doesn't work here, or you have no power here. And just trying to really assess my own personal control and my own personal will to react to things differently.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on here, felix, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Tree-hanging dirt worshipper. I am an Indian thing you wouldn't understand. There is always someone cooler than you. Don't always believe what you think. Break for Sasquatch, it could save your life.
