everybody knows this is nowhere

So, more of the same. Only more so. A little further into the Great Whimper, unless we finally plump for the Last Bang. I’ve always favoured the whimper. Welcome, or welcome back, by the way. And what have I done with my bitter, cynical, disappointed - oh so very disappointed - pessimism these past few years? Got drunk and watched Radiohead in a bout of miserablist hedonism? Sniffed around community activism to build the transition to a new resilience? Joined a gang and got us some land with a rocking chair on the porch? Maybe.

I got older, and more tired, that’s for sure. And I got myself to a new postcode. And a load of other stuff. Some of which was quite complicated, and difficult and draining. Some of it still is… But, that’s not why your here. Well, not that anyone is.

Anyway, here we all are in our little versions of nowhere, doing our best impressions of nothing. Just kind of waiting. For something. Obviously, this all fits into a mass of busy interlinked schedules full of stuff, you know, working, shopping, recovering from working and shopping, and people, and that. But that’s just the background noise, thats just the scene setting, yeah? Thats the first 15 minutes of the film, till the Life Changing Event happens, right? You know, the chance meeting with the love interest, the accidental bag switch for the one full of money, the conspiracy that hacks your work email. Or something less, it’s not like we want that much, even just a soap grade event, eh? Anything for a life less ordinary.

Well, no. I have actually had a somewhat less than ordinary life. No, really. Nothing filmic, nothing epic, but I’ve done things that are not usual. A fair few of them in fact. And I’m still here, and everybody knows this is nowhere. Then, most people have done loads of things lots of other people haven’t. We just tend to value otherness, the otherness that fiction posits as exciting. Not generally the stuff which is actually fulfilling. At least not realistically so. The apogee of cinematic excitement seems to be blowing a lot of things up these days, which I’m sure is pretty exciting - the nearest I got to this was fireworks as a kid, and I thought that was exciting - but I doubt it makes many people happier. Especially the relatives of the folk in the things that get blown up. And the more we use films for excitement, the more we use soaps for community, the more we use such mass media for emotional hits, the less we value the experience of our own real lives. And the more control over our lives we hand to the people who make the stuff. This may be nowhere, but at least it’s not La La Land.

Hang on. Miserablissed. Hmm, I like that.