crushed nation by katharine eastman
Comrades In Luddism!!! - yes we happy band of sisters sheltering from the progress-loving madness of the people around us - I have more amusing jollities about what we are missing. For those who weren't taking notes, you might've missed the fascinating news that I had a quiet Sunday. I liked it. I hope yours was good too. All I "did" (in the eyes of the world) was nip off to Lidl to buy the Observer. I could've just as easily nipped over to the equally nearby Aldi. Nothing in it really. I later learnt that at the exact time I was struggling to find the barcode on the front of the Observer three people were stabbed in Aldi and a man was caught by someone famous from the TV (no, nor me) and later charged with attempted murder.
This is one of those common situations where something dramatic happens and eeeeeveryone tells you Oh yeah I was nearly in the World Trade Centre that day but my daughter was sick so I had to stay at home and look after her instead, or I was going to be on that beach in Bali that was decimated by a tsunami but I lost my plane ticket and had to stay home and watch TV instead .... sort of thing. Well with me it's not that it was nearly me who was in that store when someone went around stabbing people, with me it is that it was nearly me who was doing the stabbing.
I think I can be quite open about this because I know that I am not the only one. It's just that I am one of the tiny minority of you who is honest and stupid enough to admit it. Because everywhere out there there is so much on-a-knife-edge rage and misery and hopelessness and frustration. With me it is none of those things (I think) - I am quite upbeat and I enjoy the luxury of having nothing because it means I have nothing to care about, and I am not angry or anything because the country is such an entertaining mess and if you just step back a pace and become a spectator, well it is better than anything on the TV.
Whether it's the quotes from Rousseau or Hitler or Stalin, it all comes to the same thing, we're all very willing to put on the chains, to slip into the torture-chair and happily scream and scream silently just because everyone around us is in the same cage. And it's all very well for me to put on this smug-cunt act and pretend I'm not trapped too, me in the same home as you, the same life, the same country, the same idiots smiling down on us and telling us it'll be better one day and please don't wait till you get to my age and realise that they've been saying it for decades and decades and it's never come true and it never will and you have to find your own way to step to one side and be a spectator and not a participant - I haven't really done it, I'm just pretending to you that I have.
(this is a messy remix of "Progress Fucks Up Again" by Simon Aulman. photo Debenhams in Southampton yesterday)
