Okay, it's time to take that one down.
I write sporadically, usually in little fits that curl around the space of a few hours and land in some calm state of resignation. It's often difficult for me to look back upon what I've written without wincing self-consciously (the parcels prior to this post being no exception), but it's nice to let them air out a bit before they find permanent keep in some dark vestibule in the depths of my hard drive. Not that they get much air time here, of course.
Lately as I walk around I've been noticing all these stiff and wafery people, people who look as if they could be knocked away by a strong wind or a startling revelation. People caught up in a mold that leavens them out and fills their head with fluff and air. People who only talk in sensible and inoffensive terms, their mouths veritable fountains of social lubricant. It doesn't stem so much from their beliefs, it's more like a posture or perspective, like an aquarian with a pot full of smoke or a window adjacent to a smooth slab of concrete. And I suppose they're the kind of people who inspire others to provoke, to revolt, to shock, to reclaim and redefine. All of the soft political rhetoric about change aside, I think it's these people more than anything who give others something to stand against. It's easy to plant your feet in the tepid comforts of conformity and apathy and muck things around a bit, perhaps just as easy as it is to slide back into those plumy depths. The question is, when everything settles down and it's just you standing there with your feet in the mud, what will you feel? Pride, empowerment, resentment, indifference? Or perhaps just a little goofy?
Just a thought. It might just be a result of me walking around with my iPod too much, cut off and adrift in my own little sensory space.
Speaking of which, I realized this is something to add to your "Signs of the Coming Dystopia" checklist (for anyone who's keeping track):
I write sporadically, usually in little fits that curl around the space of a few hours and land in some calm state of resignation. It's often difficult for me to look back upon what I've written without wincing self-consciously (the parcels prior to this post being no exception), but it's nice to let them air out a bit before they find permanent keep in some dark vestibule in the depths of my hard drive. Not that they get much air time here, of course.
Lately as I walk around I've been noticing all these stiff and wafery people, people who look as if they could be knocked away by a strong wind or a startling revelation. People caught up in a mold that leavens them out and fills their head with fluff and air. People who only talk in sensible and inoffensive terms, their mouths veritable fountains of social lubricant. It doesn't stem so much from their beliefs, it's more like a posture or perspective, like an aquarian with a pot full of smoke or a window adjacent to a smooth slab of concrete. And I suppose they're the kind of people who inspire others to provoke, to revolt, to shock, to reclaim and redefine. All of the soft political rhetoric about change aside, I think it's these people more than anything who give others something to stand against. It's easy to plant your feet in the tepid comforts of conformity and apathy and muck things around a bit, perhaps just as easy as it is to slide back into those plumy depths. The question is, when everything settles down and it's just you standing there with your feet in the mud, what will you feel? Pride, empowerment, resentment, indifference? Or perhaps just a little goofy?
Just a thought. It might just be a result of me walking around with my iPod too much, cut off and adrift in my own little sensory space.
Speaking of which, I realized this is something to add to your "Signs of the Coming Dystopia" checklist (for anyone who's keeping track):
"The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest."
"And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed impty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning."
"There was a tiny dance of melody in the air, her Seashell was tamped in her ear again, and she was listening to far people in far places, her eyes wide and staring at the fathoms of blankness above her in the ceiling."
-Fahrenheit 451
