Rhetorical Questions Round a Rectangular Dining Table (vol.22)
“And true love lives. On lollipops and crisps”
It was just after 1pm when, with indecision reigning supreme, I decided the best course of action was to take a walk in the warm rain of an English summer clearly still wearing his flip flops on a sunny beach a million miles from here. I wanted to listen to the Radiohead album “A Moon Shaped Pool”. Again. So naturally I went for a walk and got caught getting my suntan walking in the English rain. It’s still a MAGNIFICENT piece of music, as is the magnificence of the opening quarter of an hour to “The Crow”, a film of my youth now watched with my son in a circle of cinematic life if you will. Last night and indeed the night before that, I watched “Kinds of Kindness”, the new horribly despicable yet brilliant film from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and I’m at pains as to how to describe it outside of my written breakdown I penned and published last night after watching it for the second time, and a film I couldn’t wait to end even though I loved it. It’s all about death and control, submission and repugnant dominance. There’s a cult leader and lots of sex, some awkward, some graphic. There’s lots of food. Nourishment, I think, is the key. Along with a crushing desire to please, to be subjugated. There’s exploitation and there’s very definitely a contamination, of both the mind and the spirit, and indeed the body and a desire for sins of the flesh. I called it “Gloriously awkwardly despicably horribly brilliant” on Twitter. You can follow me there if you wish, but I don’t particularly advise you doing so.
Talking of Twitter (and Instagram and Social Media in general) have you noticed the preponderance now for asking inane, boring, childlike questions? Who are these people? Are they even people? Are they even real or, like Kamala Harris, a creation of artificial intelligence only visible and alive within The Matrix? Boring questions that receive a multitude of replies and I’d bet all the money in your pocket the originator of the question never responds to the replies. What a boring grift and grind, questions and no answers, playing the roulette wheel of The Matrix asking people how their day is going or if their writing represents them or have a message? Can Keir Starmer pass for human? Where has the summer gone? Is it butter then jam on a scone, or the other way around? Pictures of album covers or film posters and inane questions about your favourite album. I’m going to start replying to each and every one of them from now on with “Why don’t you fucking mind your own fucking business?”. Going to take a spin on the Matrix roulette wheel. See where it lands.
A particularly irksome question I saw the other day was — How many bookmarks do you own? OK, tame and family friendly, boring and empty too, but how about this question about bookmarks:
Do you own a bookmark that, midway along, has a piece ripped out in the shape of Peter Benchley’s “Jaws” and is clinging to life by the thinnest of threads but you can’t possibly throw it away as it reminds you of the summer of 2013 and a summer of love and sunshine, cocktails and high living, but yet ended in heartbreak as you were loved by someone, very deeply, but for the possible creation of a man you could and should be rather than the flesh and blood human being you already were?
Now that’s a question about bookmarks I can get behind!
Listening to “A Moon Shaped Pool” earlier I had the grand idea of using the opening line of each song and riffing away on any random gibberish that tumbled from my unstable mind. Here’s what I would have had to play with had I played my own silly game:
Stay in the shadows
Dreamers, they never learn
Then in your life, there comes the darkness
Now as I go upon my way
You really messed up everything
Hey it’s me
A moon-shaped pool, dancing clothes
It holds us like a phantom
This dance
All the holes at once, are coming alive, set free
I’ll drown my beliefs
You can mix them up I guess? I’ll drown my beliefs in a moon-shaped pool, dancing clothes, stay in the shadows as I go upon my way, this dance holds us like a phantom. You could have some fun with this? If you do, please give me the honour of a credit and send your entries, care of Mr Horseman, by the closing date of 10th May 1986. Please enclose a stamped addressed envelope should you desire a response.
Or you could just luxuriate within the final track of this magnificent Radiohead album and stop posting dumb fucking questions on the internet?
OK Computer?
Thanks for reading. What? It’s raining and I’m losing control of the shaking sands in my tiny mind. Anyway, here’s a book you should buy. You’d be a fool and a communist if you didn’t.
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Dude, it’s Friday night and we’re into our second bottle of semi-cheap wine and edibles. And then I get to reading this. I read those lyrics while listening to Paloma Faith. Tell me that didn’t work out in my head?