ONE OF ThE THiRTEEN (2)
Everything is evil, particularly in a city. I have become part of the concrete twine of everything, walked past and shoved into, invisible, extra surfaces behind closed eyes, mixed odours fill the city of bleach and blocked drains, then life pulls you down. I walk this city listening to the constant hammering of building work, the steady roar of motorists, the endless mumbling of the commuters and breath the damp stuffy polluted air. Everything clogs me up, in my nicotine-coated lungs, my over washed skin pores, my pulsating glands and my bald shaved head. I try to wash away the filth every morning and every night. But I always feel dirty. I think today another workday. I have forgotten when my day off is, so I have to go to work. I hate work, it makes me feel abnormal, but I need money. I always need the money.
I really fucking hate my job. I hate the people I work for and with. But I need the money. I find it so hard to survive as a freelance artist. The business of consumerism confuses me. I don't know if it was ever meant to make any sense. I get paid a reasonable wage for my job, mundane clerical work. Sometimes my days are filled with data entering, other days I have to deal with ‘customers’ and on my better days I spend time ordering products. I say mundane clerical work because it sounds exactly as it sounds and IS. Sometimes I really fucking hate money, it really is the root of all evil. As a consequence I'll never get to have any. I know that I hate people, just the way they ‘plod’ along, wearing the clothes they wear and saying the things that they say. The way they smell, the way they sweat, the way they laugh. Their mobile phones are always ringing. When they answer they have to shout and sound important, I wish I owned a sniper rifle. I would soon put them OUT of my misery. I tried speaking to a friend about the thoughts in my head. That friend stopped phoning me. Not that I answer my phone very often. I'm more cautious about friends these days. Who can I trust and why should I trust them? . Friends usually disappoint me or I disappoint them. When did everything become so complicated? The advertising posters in the tube station are moving, I know they are I can see them doing it, they are swirling, making crazy patterns. It could be that I'm feeling faint and dizzy, but nothing else seems to be moving. Maybe I’m having a panic attack. Or I need a higher dosage of my prescription.
I make it to work. Skulking into the building via a ‘staff’ entrance so the customers don’t see us in our real clothes. The elevator is always confusing. People get on and off in semi-random ways. Nobody says anything. Nobody ever says anything, I just daydream. I have a lot of daydreams during most of my working day. Nothing makes much sense. But there is always a lot of blood, death and sex in my daydreams. Fuck it all, I'm tired. I suppose I could do something else, go back to my art, but that doesn’t pay the bills, and it also requires energy and some artistic skill, which I have to admit, I don’t have!
The elevator takes me to my floor, number 13. I go to the allocated space that is mine; turn on the computer, sit and wait. I think I have a skill for noticing trivial things. Like the stain on a tie, or the smell of sex on someone else’s fingers, or the patterns in cracked ceilings. It is the one thing where my eyes are alert; always looking for the next camera phone opportunity, but it goes completely unrecognised by the world. I really enjoy the ugly and the banal to me they are also quite beautiful, and yet my real skill in the world goes unnoticed. Maybe everyone notices the symmetry in ugly things, but I don't believe it. Even other artists that I know who paint and photograph don't properly understand the nature of this Murkyworld. They only do their art in a dishonest, cynical fashion aimed at mass markets and corporate sponsorship. I think my life is an ugly kind of ugly. Nothing redeeming in my existence at all. Lesser beings inflict their misery on me because I am able recognise such things. I am able to pretend that I have an empathy with them. So the gullible, the stupid, the foolish and the inane surround me. I am not by nature an unhappy person - I take the unhappiness of others and embrace it to the sublime. Their misery is my art. Such is my talent.
I more than hate my job, and more than hate my life. It is more of a loathing, an absolute disgust with myself. But something keeps me going. I honestly don't know what. I walk along, I move across the same old streets, the same journey, the same views. I work to live and I do my best not to live to work, but I can sense that I am changing. I am feeling more miserable and numb as the days turn to weeks then to months and still I ‘plod’ along, becoming like THEM. The others who I despise. I’ve got to the point where nothing is worth saying. All distinction is blurring. I rarely want to talk to other people. I prefer the silence. The same row of buildings blink past me as I stroll along, stepping into Embankment Gardens, the same flowers, trees and pigeon droppings grabbing my attention as I smoke another cigarette. I am sick of seeing these things, I want to see something new, something different, but can't pull my eyes away to look at other things. I create my own déjà vu.
There is a basic assumption about modern life that everyone will contribute to society through paid work so that we can earn the right to live and exist. Our basic needs are taken care of via various companies, methods and rules, which leads to an increasingly alarming world where the divide between rich and poor becomes wider and the western consumerism ethic is destroying the planet on a global scale. But it is all a part of the corporate evolving consciousness and existence. Knowledge of this evolution in itself is useless though. Understanding something doesn't make it meaningful when so many of us still have to work in useless and pointless jobs. But we are now supposed to force or create a meaning from this and manage ourselves, with plans, forms, discussions, formats and presentations. I may be dependent on society for a job, a place to live and something to eat, but society is also dependent on me and every other idiot like me. The government need my taxes. The Corporations need me to consume. They need me to work, to exist, and to pay bills, to buy products, which in turn keeps other human beings in existence. All this mutual dependency breeds contempt. All this society breeds is a selfish being.
This is a strange world we live in.
I watch the others in the park. A tall suited man moves into the space between two girls, as he hurries to his office, the girls are laughing and talking loudly into their mobile phones. The man then turns and stares at me for staring at them. Well he can just FUCK OFF and FUCK YOU TOO. Normal behaviour. I'll never learn. The man runs away, did I shout at him out loud? I don’t remember. The girls are still on their mobile phones. Loud talking about the night before, then loud whispers about sex. Shut up you stupid little sluts. I think about cutting them both up with a bread knife. Stupid bitches. Don't tell me the world was constructed for and around these sorts of people. Media brainwashed, MTV, reality TV, soap opera, wal-mart, primark idiots who serve no purpose in society except to suck cock and have a cunt that men can use. They have nothing to talk about, they don’t have a brain. Fuck them and kill them is what I say!
Limited sense, imagination, intellect, feeling; unlimited self-assurance, corrupted purpose, opinion, moral indignation, belligerence. Why am I so tired? Everything is diminished. Maybe they never really existed. Maybe it is I, I am the insane one and the rest of the world is sane, perhaps I am a minority, the only person who has a feeling for something more. That there is something wrong in the way that we live. I dread tomorrow before today has ended. To wake at the same hour, to the same radio show, the same news, the routine of shitting, pissing, shaving, showering, moisturising, coffee, cigarette and some toast. The daily routine of wearing a suit, a tie, comfortable leather shoes, a laptop briefcase, the daily monotony, the expected regularity, my corrupted moral energies, commuting like everyone else, talking the talk, walking the walk, so many thinking the same thing, talking the same way. I just listen to my mp3 player and read a book. I desperately want to escape from this absurd, mollifying, nullifying nightmare that is called living. I have a complete intolerance to my own insecurities. So fuck off. All of you. All of me. Fuck the thirteen. The Valium isn’t working anymore; the mass sedations are coming to get me.
There is a silent queue at the tube station, waiting to purchase the weekly or monthly travelcard. Someone just looked at me strangely. Fuck off, stupid cunt. Look in the mirror you ugly fuck! The patterns on the advertising posters are becoming more random. My mind, I think it is crumbling. Tears roll down my face, an embarrassing acknowledgement that I'm still human.
Why do I keep doing it? I want something more, but what is it? Society, Government continues to perpetrate the same mistakes that have been made for centuries, that they have forgotten that they knew what needed to be done, they just don’t want to. They want the power, they want to control us. The corporations, the governments, the politicians, the management, the bankers, the wealthy. Fuck this stupid world. It makes no sense to me. I don't need it. I'm not going to work tomorrow. I'm going to subvert this ghastly culture and overcome my fears. I'm going to acknowledge it, legitimise it and get murky with it. I dream up a new dream, a romantic dream with Alice White and travelling. I'll sleep the sleep of a million universes and wake up in a million mornings and do it again, live all my thirteen lifetimes at once and forever. I'll be grateful and take it for granted that someone will love me.
First I have to wake up in tomorrow morning as I did today, and do it all again, the same things, the same procedure, but very differently, start changing the patterns. That should surprise them. Make them realise that I am not one of THEM. I am not a number, I am a free man!
ThE ENd.
Everything is evil, particularly in a city. I have become part of the concrete twine of everything, walked past and shoved into, invisible, extra surfaces behind closed eyes, mixed odours fill the city of bleach and blocked drains, then life pulls you down. I walk this city listening to the constant hammering of building work, the steady roar of motorists, the endless mumbling of the commuters and breath the damp stuffy polluted air. Everything clogs me up, in my nicotine-coated lungs, my over washed skin pores, my pulsating glands and my bald shaved head. I try to wash away the filth every morning and every night. But I always feel dirty. I think today another workday. I have forgotten when my day off is, so I have to go to work. I hate work, it makes me feel abnormal, but I need money. I always need the money.
I really fucking hate my job. I hate the people I work for and with. But I need the money. I find it so hard to survive as a freelance artist. The business of consumerism confuses me. I don't know if it was ever meant to make any sense. I get paid a reasonable wage for my job, mundane clerical work. Sometimes my days are filled with data entering, other days I have to deal with ‘customers’ and on my better days I spend time ordering products. I say mundane clerical work because it sounds exactly as it sounds and IS. Sometimes I really fucking hate money, it really is the root of all evil. As a consequence I'll never get to have any. I know that I hate people, just the way they ‘plod’ along, wearing the clothes they wear and saying the things that they say. The way they smell, the way they sweat, the way they laugh. Their mobile phones are always ringing. When they answer they have to shout and sound important, I wish I owned a sniper rifle. I would soon put them OUT of my misery. I tried speaking to a friend about the thoughts in my head. That friend stopped phoning me. Not that I answer my phone very often. I'm more cautious about friends these days. Who can I trust and why should I trust them? . Friends usually disappoint me or I disappoint them. When did everything become so complicated? The advertising posters in the tube station are moving, I know they are I can see them doing it, they are swirling, making crazy patterns. It could be that I'm feeling faint and dizzy, but nothing else seems to be moving. Maybe I’m having a panic attack. Or I need a higher dosage of my prescription.
I make it to work. Skulking into the building via a ‘staff’ entrance so the customers don’t see us in our real clothes. The elevator is always confusing. People get on and off in semi-random ways. Nobody says anything. Nobody ever says anything, I just daydream. I have a lot of daydreams during most of my working day. Nothing makes much sense. But there is always a lot of blood, death and sex in my daydreams. Fuck it all, I'm tired. I suppose I could do something else, go back to my art, but that doesn’t pay the bills, and it also requires energy and some artistic skill, which I have to admit, I don’t have!
The elevator takes me to my floor, number 13. I go to the allocated space that is mine; turn on the computer, sit and wait. I think I have a skill for noticing trivial things. Like the stain on a tie, or the smell of sex on someone else’s fingers, or the patterns in cracked ceilings. It is the one thing where my eyes are alert; always looking for the next camera phone opportunity, but it goes completely unrecognised by the world. I really enjoy the ugly and the banal to me they are also quite beautiful, and yet my real skill in the world goes unnoticed. Maybe everyone notices the symmetry in ugly things, but I don't believe it. Even other artists that I know who paint and photograph don't properly understand the nature of this Murkyworld. They only do their art in a dishonest, cynical fashion aimed at mass markets and corporate sponsorship. I think my life is an ugly kind of ugly. Nothing redeeming in my existence at all. Lesser beings inflict their misery on me because I am able recognise such things. I am able to pretend that I have an empathy with them. So the gullible, the stupid, the foolish and the inane surround me. I am not by nature an unhappy person - I take the unhappiness of others and embrace it to the sublime. Their misery is my art. Such is my talent.
I more than hate my job, and more than hate my life. It is more of a loathing, an absolute disgust with myself. But something keeps me going. I honestly don't know what. I walk along, I move across the same old streets, the same journey, the same views. I work to live and I do my best not to live to work, but I can sense that I am changing. I am feeling more miserable and numb as the days turn to weeks then to months and still I ‘plod’ along, becoming like THEM. The others who I despise. I’ve got to the point where nothing is worth saying. All distinction is blurring. I rarely want to talk to other people. I prefer the silence. The same row of buildings blink past me as I stroll along, stepping into Embankment Gardens, the same flowers, trees and pigeon droppings grabbing my attention as I smoke another cigarette. I am sick of seeing these things, I want to see something new, something different, but can't pull my eyes away to look at other things. I create my own déjà vu.
There is a basic assumption about modern life that everyone will contribute to society through paid work so that we can earn the right to live and exist. Our basic needs are taken care of via various companies, methods and rules, which leads to an increasingly alarming world where the divide between rich and poor becomes wider and the western consumerism ethic is destroying the planet on a global scale. But it is all a part of the corporate evolving consciousness and existence. Knowledge of this evolution in itself is useless though. Understanding something doesn't make it meaningful when so many of us still have to work in useless and pointless jobs. But we are now supposed to force or create a meaning from this and manage ourselves, with plans, forms, discussions, formats and presentations. I may be dependent on society for a job, a place to live and something to eat, but society is also dependent on me and every other idiot like me. The government need my taxes. The Corporations need me to consume. They need me to work, to exist, and to pay bills, to buy products, which in turn keeps other human beings in existence. All this mutual dependency breeds contempt. All this society breeds is a selfish being.
This is a strange world we live in.
I watch the others in the park. A tall suited man moves into the space between two girls, as he hurries to his office, the girls are laughing and talking loudly into their mobile phones. The man then turns and stares at me for staring at them. Well he can just FUCK OFF and FUCK YOU TOO. Normal behaviour. I'll never learn. The man runs away, did I shout at him out loud? I don’t remember. The girls are still on their mobile phones. Loud talking about the night before, then loud whispers about sex. Shut up you stupid little sluts. I think about cutting them both up with a bread knife. Stupid bitches. Don't tell me the world was constructed for and around these sorts of people. Media brainwashed, MTV, reality TV, soap opera, wal-mart, primark idiots who serve no purpose in society except to suck cock and have a cunt that men can use. They have nothing to talk about, they don’t have a brain. Fuck them and kill them is what I say!
Limited sense, imagination, intellect, feeling; unlimited self-assurance, corrupted purpose, opinion, moral indignation, belligerence. Why am I so tired? Everything is diminished. Maybe they never really existed. Maybe it is I, I am the insane one and the rest of the world is sane, perhaps I am a minority, the only person who has a feeling for something more. That there is something wrong in the way that we live. I dread tomorrow before today has ended. To wake at the same hour, to the same radio show, the same news, the routine of shitting, pissing, shaving, showering, moisturising, coffee, cigarette and some toast. The daily routine of wearing a suit, a tie, comfortable leather shoes, a laptop briefcase, the daily monotony, the expected regularity, my corrupted moral energies, commuting like everyone else, talking the talk, walking the walk, so many thinking the same thing, talking the same way. I just listen to my mp3 player and read a book. I desperately want to escape from this absurd, mollifying, nullifying nightmare that is called living. I have a complete intolerance to my own insecurities. So fuck off. All of you. All of me. Fuck the thirteen. The Valium isn’t working anymore; the mass sedations are coming to get me.
There is a silent queue at the tube station, waiting to purchase the weekly or monthly travelcard. Someone just looked at me strangely. Fuck off, stupid cunt. Look in the mirror you ugly fuck! The patterns on the advertising posters are becoming more random. My mind, I think it is crumbling. Tears roll down my face, an embarrassing acknowledgement that I'm still human.
Why do I keep doing it? I want something more, but what is it? Society, Government continues to perpetrate the same mistakes that have been made for centuries, that they have forgotten that they knew what needed to be done, they just don’t want to. They want the power, they want to control us. The corporations, the governments, the politicians, the management, the bankers, the wealthy. Fuck this stupid world. It makes no sense to me. I don't need it. I'm not going to work tomorrow. I'm going to subvert this ghastly culture and overcome my fears. I'm going to acknowledge it, legitimise it and get murky with it. I dream up a new dream, a romantic dream with Alice White and travelling. I'll sleep the sleep of a million universes and wake up in a million mornings and do it again, live all my thirteen lifetimes at once and forever. I'll be grateful and take it for granted that someone will love me.
First I have to wake up in tomorrow morning as I did today, and do it all again, the same things, the same procedure, but very differently, start changing the patterns. That should surprise them. Make them realise that I am not one of THEM. I am not a number, I am a free man!
ThE ENd.
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