On Pride and Vanity

Is it bad that you yearn to be “special”? To be unique? To be better than others? Yes! Absolutely! Being “special” means identifying your self-worth by the comparison of others. This MUST be eradicated. It must!  Now this is not to say that an obsession with self is a bad thing. In fact, just the opposite! Thinking about yourself is NOT a bad thing, folks. It takes work to be dÜrt! dÜrt is not about vanity; it’s about pride. It is not about building up a narcissistic version of yourself; it’s about presentation, it’s about being your very best self, it’s about never settling for bunk! 








Pride and vanity are very different. Pride offers us authentic, genuine, true happiness. Your pride is not your anger. If you have anger, let go of that; do not let your wounds, your narcissistic shield, your vanity control you. But your pride? Your preference for excellence? Your expectations to be your very best self? This is necessary! You must not give that up! You must not!

And you must not give up education, the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment. You must work toward understanding life more deeply, more intricately…. as much as a human possibly can. Your brain is full of potential. How exciting! How thrilling! You must live for the moments of wonder and determination, the moments when you’re left alone, left with your thoughts, no distractions, no outside agendas, only your stream of consciousness organically exploring with a fiercely focused direction toward truth. You must expose yourself to excellence. You must read and watch the works of inspirational artists. The classics are classics for a reason! When you read their thoughts and live their lives, you will feel new souls resurrect within yourself. Give life! Breathe life! Choose life!

Choose to be you. Choose not to destroy you. Choose to do the things that fuel your fire and choose to not do the things that suffocate that fire. You must burn. You must burn! You must eradicate your vanity, your foolish distractions, your foolish comparisons! You must find your authentic passion and you must hold on to it as if your life depends on it, because it does!

house of dÜrt thru nostalgia's veil

Last christmas, matthew dÜrt and I bought ourselves a christmas present... a Canon EOS 60D.  In the months prior to that, we had finished wrapping up our first project: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and we were eager to produce more, and wanted to have our own camera to practice with.

In this last year we have kept this camera close by constantly.  We have fallen in love with photography and cinematography, making it our desired medium for all future projects.  Whilst on this trip, matthew and I have brain-stormed constantly about what kind of art we want to be producing when we got home, forgetting to truly appreciate some of the things we have already captured.

Most of this has been hidden in our vault of images and videos.  But it is time to release some of it.

So I present to you: house of dÜrt thru nostalgia's veil.  A series of photographs from this past year.  We have plenty of projects planned and are eager to continue to release new, as well as old things from our private archive.  Stay tuned.

Laurie dÜrt: On Tackling Fear

"There's this whole world out here, and we can be sharin' it, or we can be scared of it, but I think we'd be better off bearin' it, if we were carryin' eachother."