Sed Non Satiata

There was a chill wind blowing that night. It kind of caught you off guard as you turned a corner or crossed a road. As long as you stayed close to a wall you didn’t notice it so much and the evening almost seemed mild. But the evening was deceptive. One minute you’d be fine, walking along, watching the show around you, watching mini-dramas play out, then the wind would catch you. It would stroke your skin and ruffle your hair. It would make you shiver and turn your collar up. It would blow other people out of your mind. The wind would throw cold water in your face and you would stop and look at your reflection in a window. You would look at yourself as Christmas decorations blinked on and off. You would stand there and look at your face and feel cold and alive.

Your Life Has Timed Out Due To Inactivity

It was a mild, clear day. I was walking my mind in the local park. A light wind blew dead leaves off the trees. Gravel crunched under foot.
They were sitting opposite each other.
One had dusty clothes and scraggly hair. The other wore an oversize jacket and had a nervous twitch.
I stopped next to them. One of them smelled. I watched them.
They didn’t care. They were too engrossed.
They played fast. I had a hard time keeping up.
They exchanged piece after piece, hitting the little clock after each move.
They were engrossed. Here they could forget it for a while, keep reality at bay. Here things were black and white. Here things weren’t confused in different shades of grey.
One saw that his king was trapped and resigned. They set up the pieces to play again.
Here it was binary, win or lose. And if you lost, you just played again.
I watched them play and forgot it for a while too.

Public Opinion Doesn't Exist

Bourdieu said that public opinion doesn't exist.
His point was that it is a created phenomenon. Opinion polls produce an answer to a question created by the agency which asks it, it's not an answer to a question which individuals ask themselves.
And if it is created then it is manipulated, it is not genuine and so it lacks validity.
It's a convincing point, don't you think?
But if you agree or disagree, haven't you just been manipulated by the argument and question? In which case, the answer lacks validity.
So how can we get a public opinion on whether public opinion exists or not?
Thinking about it, who gives two shits about public opinion.

Movie Idea

Movie opens on our hero, Sebathius, in bed with a beautiful woman. They are making love. He is a talented lover and she screams in carnal pleasure. But, at the moment of climax, our hero is hit by an overwhelming feeling of guilt at his petit-bourgeois lifestyle and he flees into the night wearing nothing but his socks. Here follows a powerful scene of him looking at his reflection in a river -the Seine? The Thames? The Bosphorus?- as he awakens to the concept that his life has been based on false needs and he wonders if he has ever had a true feeling apart from his current one of cold. The camera pans back to reveal a wise, old homeless person staring at him with a tear in his eye (Note to director: play Yellow by Coldplay). We cut to the next day and our hero is sitting at his desk at work but still struggling to find moral authenticity in a culture of distraction and still wearing just his socks. The next sequence needs finessing but, to show his resistance against dominant ideology and to draw in a younger public, the outline is that he meets a sexy female scientist on the bus and they decide to build a giant robot together (montage scene to Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi). The movie ends with our hero in bed with the scientist. They are making love. But, at the point of climax, she wonders if they can really subvert existing culture or if they are just feeding it and she decides to run off with the giant robot. Our hero is left alone in bed. In his socks (to Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees?).

All Black and Bleu

I'm in a bar in Paris on a Sunday morning watching the Rugby World Cup taking place in New Zealand.
It's the final, All Blacks v France.
"Allez les Bleus! Allez les Bleus!" chants the room.
All Black try. Chanting goes quiet.
Second half come back by the French. "Allez les Bleus! Allez les Bleus!"
Final whistle. One point in it to the All Blacks.
The room is sad. Then... applause. "Allez les Bleus! Allez les Bleus!"
I walk back home via Montparnasse cemetery and pass Beckett and his words come back to me...
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

I Used To Be Disgusted And Now I Try To Be Amused

I was walking through the streets the other day thinking how we like routine because it gives us the illusion of stability in a random world when I saw a man with no arms. He was begging. It made me think that he probably didn’t give a toss about the illusion of stability. That he was probably more concerned with just feeding himself. Then I thought what the hell did I know about what he was thinking.
***
You know, the more I know, the more I realise how much I don’t know.
***
His T-shirt said Startling Tales.
It was the cover of some old comic.
It had the picture of aliens carrying human prisoners across a landscape.
The people looked scared. They were being carried along. They didn’t know what was going to happen to them.
I stared at it a moment then I looked around at other people in the street. They were being carried along. They didn’t know what was going to happen to them. They didn’t look scared.
***
Am I reading a book or am I consuming content?

A Monkey In A Jacket

I was in the Louvre, exploring the upper floors, and I came across a little painting by Decamps.
Le Singe Peintre. The Monkey Artist.
I was transfixed. A little monkey in a jacket painting.
Decamps was having a go. Any monkey can paint, he was saying. Any monkey can imitate. Putting a monkey in jacket doesn’t mean he’s not a monkey.
Trying to do something different was hard, he was saying, not because of the effort but because it was simply easier to be a monkey in a jacket.
I thought about the little painting as I walked home, hands deep in my jacket.