In 1996, with movies and TV doing such good jobs of holding the attention of literates and illiterates alike, I have to question the value of my very strange, when you think about it, charm school. There is this: Attempted seductions with nothing but words on paper are so cheap for would-be ink-stained Don Juans or Cleopatras! They don't have to get a bankable actor or actress to commit to the project, and then a bankable director, and so on, and then raise millions and millions of buckareenies from manic-depressive experts on what most people want.
Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer: Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."
Operator: Here we are, I have this connected for you now, it should run fine at least for the next few days.
[undoes cap and wipes finger around run and re-covers, smiling to no one in particular, a little C shaped gesture of the head]
Recovery is usually straight forward, there might be a few odd sensations here and there but don't worry. The medication you're on now will dull any pain, but more importantly it will subdue that feeling your getting.
[gestures]
Yes, the pins and needles. I spoke to a lad the other day described it as being like his nerves trying to make a fist or a shadow-puppet or something. Obviously that's not what is really happening, and the sensation is all wrong because the signals can't be coming from where you think they are. Obviously.
[Wipes upper lip and sits down carefully, as if this action, of all the others that will be performed today is the one that will be observed, marked]
[Takes a small breath and allows features in face to wind up in a familiar way that comes before beginning the routine, speaking the words that have worn their way through time and observance. Familiarity is not comforting, not in this case, but it drives time and responsibililty as if on a belt and that does make things easier, one it's started it's as predictable as the morning news.]
[Does not say anything]
[There is a restaurant nearby, it is nearly full, only a few tables in awkward places between walls and fixtures, next to the toilets and beneath a speaker are empty, or at least occupied only by inanimate objects, possessions, shopping.]
Narrator: so where is it, where are they coming from?
Operator: Somewhere else, that's all the matters, some Other place. That's what is most important, they come from outside. It's a binary thing.
Narrator: But surely there is a gradient?
Operator: Not in this situation, not in most in my experience, the cut makes it pretty clear.
[A young couple are standing in the doorway of the restaurant, not yet committing to entering as if they can hang onto the moment before that decision is made, before the social armature swinging like a boom comes round. They stand in that dead space at the top of the arc, assessing whether it will work to enter this place to eat, whether it will be awkward, perhaps sharing a table, at least having to excuse themselves as they step past people already in mid flow of conversation, and food, protecting themselves further with protective laughter, fork gestures, protecting against an elbow in the back or a scarf knocked from the back of a chair. To enter into all of this is so much. The wind tips, the boom swings over and they enter, uncertain as to whether this decision is their own but by then it hardly matters, reflexes kick in and they are enveloped]
Operator: You're going to have to learn to let it go.
Narrator: let it go?
Operator: Yes.
[wipes lip again]
There's something that was there, but now it's elsewhere, it's in the Other space.
Narrator: That's ridiculous, it's in a space here, it's in a bin at the back probably, in a yellow bag and on a trolley,waiting to be moved again.
[Begining to obviously sweat, looking damp]
It's more active than me, and that's the problem, it's still part of me, the gap means nothing. I'm full of gaps, you're full of gaps! The thing that's me is monster.
Operator: ...
[shifts weight as if to get up, then repeats action in reverse, brings it back. Like a man in a bar racking the pool balls, that little flourish, getting more pronounced as the evening moves on, the more pitchers, the more won games, the more hopefully threatening stacks of 50p's on the edge of the table]
Now, look self image is a delicate thing, but you can't dwell on it, you need to understand...
Narrator: I do understand, you don't understand at all. I have gaps all through me same as you, that object out back, making its way in the world, that's still part of me, just like my primary school education is part of me, the way I learnt to form letters on those exercise books with the extra horizontal lines.
[Tries to stand but can't, sits down, sits up. rubs hands together, looks down at the beads of sweat on the backs of each hand. Watches one droplet of water run off one way, and then another a different way. Blinks.]
There's just a blur that gets thicker in places, has some dense points, collision points, tight enough that I can sit on a chair with them but it's still all a blur, there's no line that says this is one thing and that's another.
Operator: But there is a line...
Narrator: No, no there isn't! We put the line done afterwards, and then forget that we did so, or at least try and forget. This is why we have courts for example, they spend day after day doing this activity that ends with a line being dropped on the ground and everyone trying hard to forget they just put it there. Day after day telling some poor soul that he transgressed while he looks at his feet and lies through his teeth that he knowingly did it as if there was a sign there.
Nothing categorically ends, well it does, but that category is what we put down. You know what though? that categories have been getting blurrier and blurrier themselves, mixing in with all those things they were meant to keep apart, like you've microwaved your ready made korma too hard and for too long and it just got up off that ceramic rotating plate and ate your face!
Operator: But division is what makes things work, you can't have a machine made out of jelly, the gears have to be distinct from one another, otherwise the energy wouldn't get anywhere.
Narrator: Rubbish! I love jelly, and the energy runs more efficienty through that than it does though the drive on a lathe, all that energy lost in a slipped belt, in the wearing of bushes, and the whole thing is making it self redundant all the time anyway, bringing on it's own obsolescence while continually looking the other way, pretending it can last for ever and it will harness all these kinetic and cultural forces in it's steel for all time. The jelly is far more efficient and it embraces it's own demise with no pretence, with dignity.
Operator: This is a very stressful time, you can't expect to adjust straight away, that's what we're here for, to put these systems in place to ease the transition to your new life. It's not even you new life, it's just your life.
[Wipes hands on down sides of trousers from hips to just above ankles, bending forward with head still looking straight ahead at all times, settling back. Leans forward to fall back on the old phrase]
Everything's going to be fine!
Narrator: I know it will be fine, I know it will be seamless, it's the seams which are false! It's the myth of the seams that are making this so stressful, they make you think you should know where you are but you don't. I mean, one doesn't, not "you" personally. The map isn't bloody there when you look down! I'm going to learn to accept it if it's the last thing I do! I'm going to learn to be overjoyed when people put their fingers in my food and leave them there, I'm going to spread myself out all over the place and just ooze and throb, it's going to be wonderful, I'm Whitney, I'm Chaka Khan, I'm every woman! I'm ready for the dream time, melt me!
The turn of this century was a strange, vague period; especially in the harsh light of how its first decade has shaped up. The noughties, distinguished (?) by the most perverse of cultural enthusiasms, was heralded with a sense of weary anxiety and trepidation. But of course that was just my experience of it. It's uncanny to reflect on - to invest with meaning - a time that felt like a waiting room; a meandering interlude between one way of life and another promising to arrive. Discussing the past with those who were present, we can take fragile comfort by conceptualizing ourselves as a distinct generation defined by shared moments; accepting with a faint smile that our time has passed (open regret being as taboo as ever). In more pretentious moments, it can be rationalised as some (sub)cultural epoch; a world marketed and internalised as our own rite of passage, our cultural currency. I could assert that it was a bewildering time to be of a certain age, but I have to concede that for me it was bewildering. To be honest, it felt like I was surrounded by a lot of mystifying certainties back then.
The ideological assumptions that shuffled the U.K. from one millennium to the next is still open to debate. Most of 'us' had known nothing but a Conservative government, but the direction which Labour would take us was to some degree uncertain. The signs were there, but 'we' were still youthful enough to naively maintain some glimmer of hope. CGI, the mobile phone and the internet still retained elements of magical novelty. For most of the 90s, they were generally regarded as reserved for certain types of people. We were told in preceding years that we should aspire to be whatever types of people they were, but many of us assumed it was only those types of people who were paying much attention. It was as difficult to identify who was right then as much as it is now. We were probably too busy diverting our confusion into entertainment products, the tastes we often mistook for needs. Lurking somewhere inside that common mistake, a vague sense of generational identity was found. Listening to 'You Don't Know Me' today, I hear one world making an exit; weary and unsure of the one about to enter. I doubt that was the intention of the song, and the years that followed demonstrate how we can't tidily pinpoint our anxieties according to the calendar. Society is experiencing a far more overwhelming transition in 2011 than we could imagine in 1999. We didn't realise how limited our perspective actually was back then, but history teaches us that's nothing new.
Van Helden's track was pretty retro for 1999, but it hardly sounds dated in the context of today's pop music. The context of how we hear it may have changed, but even that can defy easy categorisation. My most vivid memory of hearing it was passing through an unlikely (?) location, while the historical and emotional significance of the site was explained to me. Ghosts were mentioned; but we punctuated the old sad story by turning up the volume to bounce our tired and emotional heads, until another subject of conversation came up. The party we were returning from didn't conform to standard 90s cliches either. Not the discofied set of the video, that's for sure. A less contained space for hedonism than the above mise en scene presented as the norm. It may be tasteless to suggest that location's history gained resonance as the above song hitched along for the ride, but for me it accenuated historical reverberations in the (then) present. It may be more arrogant to separate a very deep historical wound from the indulgent, transient context that brings these wounds to one's attention in the first place. When, where, and how we learn things matters to what is being learned. After all, atrocity and disco exist in the same world as my thoughts do. The histories of both continue to effect the direction they take, even unconsciously. At certain times, the most unlikely of partners can join in on the neuron dance. And the bigger the crowd gets, the harder the outcome is to predict.
I never actually saw the above video until I just cut and pasted it. There's been enough water under the bridge for the song to survive somewhere outside its visual packaging. It was an anthem of something. Twelve years ago, I may have believed it spoke 'for' me. A few years later, it was more likely to be speaking to me; on behalf of those within immediate orbit, or those mediated at a further distance. And now? Perhaps it's lyrics are more applicable to an ephemeral space hovering somewhere in between: 'Here'. That virtual world of known unknowns: demanding our responses are as immediate as possible, be they strident or passive. Where the structure of the exchange decides the final result, far more than any strength of argument or solid confirmation of fact. A world that doesn't really exist; but is nevertheless capable of moving our attention towards unexpected places. Leading our thought processes to novelty, amusement, offense, events, argument, atrocity; occasionally realising that our bodies are lagging further behind the further we seek. Every easy click limiting our time and movement, a few more minutes and hours that will never return. The electronic caricature of a cyclical time and personal immediacy long lost to us. Yet another disease of language we couldn't vaccinate. Diagnosis alone cures nothing.
So what am I talking about 'here'? Am I making any sense? That depends on who it's written for, which I thought would be obvious: You of course, dear reader. The other side of the interface. If you're uncertain whether I actually am speaking to you, then we can revert to the oldest of computer games to establish a connection. They once excitedly called it 'interactive', a word used a lot less with regards to the internet in 2011. Movements diagonal, horizontal, vertical, triangular, back and forth; eventually receding back into the darkness, once the screen bids farewell. Any interaction in these spaces is the laziest kind of performance. If you opt out of playing you for the time being, we'll accept that as a statement of indifference or ignorance. For the time being, you may not have even arrived 'here' yet. At some point over the next few weeks (months, years) you could be finding yourself 'here' for the first time. Then you can grace your silence with a minor judgement; as swift as it is forgettable. You've 'been' somewhere, and so on to the next visit, and so on to the next, and so on.
If the memories dicussed at the beginning of the post elude any wider significance, then this platform denies their significance outright. The internet has proven to be a poor replacement for the pop song, the car journey, the party, or indeed history passed on via the spoken word. We can fool ourselves that it goes some way to satisfying our communal longings, but in 2023 its features and talking points will be a far dimmer memory than a disposable song heard from the back of a car. No pop song released today will evoke much in the way of a shared memory. No one will convince anyone that ghost victims of recent atrocities haunt these networks, much less those of three centuries ago. This post, and its source, will be of no consequence to anyone within days. The memories I allude to are unreliable enough to those who can remember them. Opinions or autobiographical details expressed before or after are quite useless. My intentions won't matter, if they ever did. To enquire why I wrote any of the above would be more futile than friendly. You could ask me five minutes after I click 'publish', tomorrow, next week, or five years from now. Where it all came from, and where it wanted to go, would remain a cold case. You'd be none the wiser. How could you be? You don't even know me.
(NB. This post was corrected after spotting several typos, which only added to the general rambling klutziness of the piece.)
I'm not a QPR fan (by any stretch) but on the day they return to the Premier Land after 15 long years of exile, it seems like an apt moment to reflect on this, err, classic artefact. Says just about everything there is to say about the early-'90s in one small, boxfresh, paradisal space.
