Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Vol 2. Compliments and Quotations. Starry nights and distractions from within The Matrix. And why do I waste my time on Twitter?
Vol 2. Compliments and Quotations. Starry nights and distractions from within The Matrix. And why do I waste my time on Twitter?
It is indeed a starry, starry night as I pen these words from the corner of a rectangular dining table somewhere in the heart of the darkness of England and boy has it been a strange 48 hours both within and without The Matrix. It started well enough what with I’ve convinced myself was a lovely compliment, degenerated into an argument with my son that has left me wracked with guilt as always, donning my writing cap and producing a rather unusual take on a football match from 40 years ago to take my mind away from the guilt and thereby distracting myself, yet again, from the distractions I’d been distracting myself with before all this self induced kerfuffle started and now I’m elucidating my angst here, at the end of a perfectly sedate (argument aside) 48 hours that I must, simply must, embellish so as to continue my frankly unhealthy path of distracting myself once again from those damned distractions that were distracting me from actually doing quite simple and mundane tasks in the first place, but which fill me with as much enthusiasm as a turkey being fattened up prior to thanksgiving.
“Strange Days indeed”.
The above quotation comes from Nobody Told Me and a particular favourite song from John Lennon and certain songs have seemed to follow me around in the past 48 hours despite me not actively listening to any music at all. As is my custom I’ve listened to my usual array of podcasts and caught up with all the news not worth knowing but music? Next to zero. But the ever present Vincent seeped into my psyche and quite unconsciously but then again, it often does. As does Robbie Williams’ Feel and a song I’m simply not permitted to like but find myself loving more and more with every listen. This time around it was playing from a car’s speaker system as I ventured to my local corner shop (convenience store) to shoot the breeze and avoid the shit with a couple of kindred spirits who both like chatting football, politics and wondering how we ended up so upside down in a world that’s fallen through it’s own space time continuum and is currently convincing itself that everything is perfectly in order and perfectly the right way up. I returned home, heard a snippet of Red River Valley (old time C&W number), thought of my dear old Mum and ended up writing a whole thesis on why Liverpool should’ve beaten their near neighbours Everton by more than the 5 goals they inflicted upon them in 1982, and naturally, veering way, way off course and writing a 40 year old football match report through the prism of the love I have for my dear old football mad Mum.
“Strange Days indeed! Most peculiar Mama”.
It’s approaching a year now since I hope I did my Mother proud at her leaving party and everyone seemed to catch the wave and the way I laughingly held court (someone allowed me to stand behind a Lectern and give me access to a microphone for goodness sake!) and they laughed in the right places, gasped occasionally and I think maybe even had a good cathartic cry midway through the first of two renditions of Luciano Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma. It wasn’t supposed to be played twice but it was fitting nonetheless and perhaps the old lady, not particularly renowned for her overt sense of humour, left it until the last minute to pull the funniest and most appropriate trick of all. I’d like to think she wanted to hear her favourite song one more time and wanted the last laugh too.
That particular thought pleases me greatly.
Being the emotional soul that I am music really is the root to my heart(ache) and this past year that has been heightened to ever higher degrees. The tiniest of Roy Orbison driving all night, the mighty crescendo of Pavarotti imploring that none shall sleep, a Country and Western song about a bloody cowboy or a wordless piano rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone all send me into deep reveries for a grand old lady I lovingly called “Mum”. So there I was talking about this very thing with an old Boss of mine recently and quite the secret musician he is too, and toward the end of our chat, and via the medium of open discussion, he exclaimed:
“Unfortunately, the world’s not ready for you right now, Blackers”.
and whilst not said with any malicious intent it did chime as being an unfortunately astute observation. So I’ve now convinced myself that it is in fact a compliment and again, being the contrarian that I am, I’m now bloody in love with the compliment as well as being distraught at the precise accuracy of his statement. It’s not as high on my compliments chart as say, being called an “Alien” and “not of this world”. I cherish them dearly. My old boss also said recently that he now finally understands why he always thought of me as a “complicated egg” but I think the “world’s not ready for you” compliment just about pips it, or at the very least equals it.
But my immediate question is: when will the world be ready for me?
The next question on my quest to fill these sporadic diary entries with rhetorical questions is will the world ever be ready for me? Was it previously ready but has now sailed into a differing port on life’s ocean? Is it my fault I missed it? Didn’t I have the correct accreditation? Have the tickets been lost in the post? Do I need to scan a QR code? Why do I need to give you the “long number” in the middle of my credit card? And who are you anyway? And why do you think you can order me around?
“I’m the ghost in the back of your head”.
The above quotation comes from the stupendous song Spanish Sahara by an Oxford band called “Foals” and whilst it doesn’t particularly lead us anywhere it is a rather beautiful and emotional song that rises and falls over 6 balletic minutes before crashing together in a wonderful crescendo. I highly recommend it to you. Again, that equally doesn’t take us any further forward but I can at least feel guilty (my favourite emotion it seems) as I’m writing about a band from Oxford, England and that band isn’t Radiohead. But music distracts me from my distractions and so as I desperately needed further distractions from the tasks I keep avoiding like a vampire fleeing from a rather large container of holy water, and so I retreated again into that cesspool world of Twitter as quite frankly the only way I see of upturning this upside down world we all now inhabit, within or without The Matrix, is to moan about at in 280 characters (or less) and the incessant howls into the dark abyss that passes itself for Twitter.
Why do I waste my time on Twitter? That is a question I often pose and not particularly rhetorically either. I’ve always seen Twitter as a kind of text message to the world, the village noticeboard or the “Lost and Found” sections you used to find at the back of newspapers and when you did eventually find it, you didn’t really read it anyway and skipped merrily onto the sports section. And who could blame you, then or indeed now? Who now wants to read my screeds on bodily autonomy, why I hope Tony Blair metamorphoses into a 9 feet screeching lizard before winking at the camera and disappearing in a puff of dust, or how ironic it is a world leader can admit to lying, on public television, breaking laws and restrictions in the process, and at the time of writing Her Majesty’s most loyal police force will not be requiring his pleasure for a conversation under caution, possible fine and other repercussions thereon.
Answer? Barely anyone? And who can blame them? Who reads these articles?
Answer? Probably the same.
Alas.
I don’t “get” Twitter and I’m similarly lost here, ploughing a furrow for a field that won’t be sown next season. It’s all a game, I understand that. But how do you get the wheels of the fruit machine to land on the Jackpot when a celebrity (of varying denominations, from Z to A) can tweet “Hello World!” and get a gazillion likes and retweets and I use every damn character available (in every Tweet too) attempting to provide a thought provoking, angry, somewhat apocalyptic, occasionally funny, but extremely vague and niche tweet that perhaps one man and his visually impaired dog, if I’m lucky, find vaguely amusing?
How indeed? I guess the answer is you have to go “viral” but who wants to go viral these days and under these newly created medicated worlds? And would going viral affect my bodily autonomy?
Who knows? All I do know is people are strange, when you’re a stranger, and we’re all strangers in The Matrix whether we pretend otherwise or not. So why do I seek the adulation of a system I know is both rigged and so upside down it’s currently met itself 80 years previously on a time loop that’s now splintering into our own current continuum?
Frankly, I don’t know. I’m a questions guy. I always have been.
Why has my old left become so far right? Why has the right gone soppily left? And doesn’t a bird need two wings to fly? Why can’t you believe the truth anymore? Why is everything that was so right so obviously now wrong? And why is down the new up?
“And what is up, buttercup?”
Thanks for reading. Here’s a link to Volume 1 should you wish to read more rhetorical questions from round a rectangular dining table.
Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Volume 1: Why does uncertainty kill? Why don’t I answer the telephone? And why are there more questions than answers?medium.com