Reflections from the edge of the abyss
From Wellington with Love.
Yesterday was a “leap day” apparently and we all played along with the frankly absurd and surreal by welcoming an extra day into our February calendar as The Matrix can’t function without an additional day every four years. It’s little wonder I refuse to believe that anything is real in this upside down existence we all participate in. Speed of Light. Speed of Sound. Time Zones. Living life by an alarm clock, a wristwatch, time, time, time, until the alarm clock drags you back from a dream that is as real as that damned alarm clock. Far cleverer people than me suggest we are all blinded by the dark matter that swamps the visible light spectrum to such a degree as to leave us with a sliver of light on which to view our earthly existence. Quantum physicists have long contended that everything is made of atoms and as these invisible existential cousins of ours are almost entirely empty so that phone or tablet you’re pretending to read this article on doesn’t exist, cannot exist, nor the chair you’re sitting in as you distractedly thumb your way through a digital electrical Matrix all conjured from unbelievable magic, witchcraft and invisible frequencies.
So why not add an extra day to the calendar. It’s about as believable as everything else is.
Yesterday was purely a writing day. After a bacon sandwich and my first cup of tea of a day that shouldn’t really exist, I sat upon a chair that quantum physicists will tell you also shouldn’t exist either and at my trusty dining table that also shouldn’t be physically real. I used to pen a series of articles from this very table entitled “Rhetorical Questions Round A Rectangular Dining Table”, lengthy stream of consciousness articles on any and everything and despite me myopically loving my play on words that is the deliberately misspelt title, only a young Canadian gentleman by the name of David ever read them. The rain was teeming down in central England and with the added extra being that it was wintry and bitterly cold too, I hunkered down, sucked the end of my pencil as I rested my elbows upon a table that shouldn’t really exist, and wrote to my heart’s content.
First I transcribed my written notes and rambling musings from the previous evening’s game of football between a Liverpool team of my beating Red heart and the “Saints” of Southampton. I was born just 19 miles along the south coast from our saintly cousins so I had more than a little skin in the game and couldn’t be more proud of a Liverpool team winning once more and with a gaggle of kids and boys barely old enough to drive or drink alcohol. The bubble will surely burst but what a sheer pleasure it is to see such accomplished, stylish football from kids younger than my own teenage age son. I enjoyed writing the article, more free-form than usual and with barely a glance at my highly detailed and trusty notes.
It may have been a “leap day” but it was good that some things never change.
Next on the writing agenda was the latest in my “Read Along” series of articles whereby I present to the reader my written review of a film together with my Youtube recording of me reading my review. All very myopic and narcissistic but I’m running with the series come what may as I’m rather proud of both my writing (my film reviews are often anarchic pieces of rambling musings) and the videos are OK considering it’s just me, myself and I, a laptop, a favourite Salvador Dali print in the background next to a bookcase containing my four self-published novels and a Dali melting clock as I read my review to camera. Not exactly exciting or Oscar worthy but genuine all the same and hopefully a unique way of “telling the story” of the film whilst getting to know a little about me, a vision of me (should you wish one!) rather than just my written word.
The film under review was last year’s “Inside” starring Willem Dafoe, a gamekeeper turned poacher in a living art world he now cannot escape, a refrigerator that plays the song “Macarena” if left open too long and an existential descent into hell via isolation and desperation, the madness of cabin fever and “Pyramid Song” by Radiohead. Suffice to say, I highly recommend this claustrophobic horror film to you.
Here are the two articles published yesterday:
"Klopp's Kids march on in the FA Cup"
I also penned a further “Read Along” article on the 2022 conspiratorial drama “Amsterdam” starring Christian Bale and Margot Robbie and a travel article entitled “Whitchurch with The Stripes” as I detail a brief background to the canal that winds its way through this tiny central England town and all accompanied by some lyrics from the much missed American band. These await my final sign off for publishing and remain in stasis only because I treated myself late into the evening with some live youth football, a return to the beautiful “Basin Reserve” in Wellington, New Zealand for some Test Match cricket between the Kiwi hosts and their noisy neighbours from Australia before ending the day with a new film, the eagerly awaited “Poor Things” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Following on from “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”, the Greek born filmmaker’s latest offering is batshit fucking crazy and I loved it. Spoiler free review coming soon.
I could heartily recommend “Amsterdam” to you or why I chose a particular White Stripes song to accompany my canal photographs in what I call a “Pictorial Stroll” but I won’t. You can pretend to read these articles in due course once they’re published. I could tell you that “Poor Things” reminded me a little of Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” and not before a FUBAR moment just 20 minutes into a film that was already shocking me into submission way before then. It was a Yorgos Lanthimos film after all. Or I could tell you the wonder of turning out all the lights and watching not only this film but the cricket from New Zealand in total nighttime darkness and how wonderful it was see Wellington again and 11,000+ miles away from another Wellington on the other side of the world and where I pen these very words. The “Basin Reserve” has a roundabout circling the entire ground! New Zealand struggled, Australia were their usual mighty selves and it’s been almost exactly a year since I was last in this faraway Wellington from my own, watching and writing about England’s travels down under in an article entitled “From Wellington to Love” which only a young Canadian gentleman by the name of David ever read.
Some things it seems are destined never to change, even in a Leap Year.
The two articles published yesterday received a combined and symmetrically pleasing at least 444 claps and 4 comments. Two articles of original writing from the depths of my heart and soul, written in the moment on the latest game from one of the world’s biggest “Brands” (I despise this concept but I use it here for emphasis) and a film from last year, received a fart of appreciation in a gale force wind. With one honourable exception, no-one commented on the actual football or the film and no-one (honourable exceptions aside) ever does. I use the seemingly popular headline topics such as Sport/Movies/Writing/Life and not one Liverpool fan, not one football fan, barely a fan of cinema or film and anyone actually responding to the main topic of the article? Just empty claps from people not actually reading my article but just so that I’ll clap their article?
I think you might be onto something.
And I wonder why I fucking bother.
A cursory glance at the articles posted by the good people who decide to pretend to read my writing by clapping shows a very similar pattern: Numbered articles such as “7 ways to lose weight” or “7 guarantees to make money with Bitcoin”. All cut and pasted gibberish with not one singular original idea and against the very principles why we’re supposed to be here in the first place: writing.
Yet they have thousands of claps and comments.
We are the “Goldfish Generation” of grifters climbing the mammon money tree and a pyramid of schemes amongst a pyramid of dreams. The cut and paste generation without a single original idea of their own, dumbed down by 45 second TikTok videos as that speck of sand has become the extent of our attention spans. Write a lengthy article from the heart? Put your pencils away dinosaur, there are new kids in town cutting and pasting their way to “7 signs you’re in a dysfunctional relationship” and “7 ideas I’ve copied from someone else on the internet who no doubt cut and pasted this from someone else too in a vain attempt to make money by doing nothing or having an original thought of their own”.
This is where I’d ordinarily insert a “We are the Goldfish Generation” in a sly callback joke but you won’t have read this far down the article.
And I wonder why I fucking bother.
*This article was originally published to my Medium blog site and for the bots and grifters and “Goldfish Generation” that reside there*