Soon I will be close to the middle of an age. The roaring twenties, tiger striped. I savour the day of my birthday each year, a natural giving up of childish formulations. I wouldn’t say that I am particularly immature or childish (which perhaps isn’t for me to judge) , except for the fact that I can’t drive (although now learning) but I do enjoy the planetary orbited notion of ‘growing up’. What you lose in youth you gain in clarity. Most people don’t like getting older, assumedly, but not necessarily consciously, because it is one year towards death, one year without fulfilled potential, one year plus de sag. Unsurprisingly this lament is usually the song of the woman, the ageing female. Unsurprising, as there exists the narrative arc sold to us doves that honey, grab a man while you can! Utilise everything you can afford, no matter what your post code. It is somewhat uniquely penetrating, a message that gongs through pocket depth: Cheryl Cole’s fuck me lashes at £3.99 , £39.99 per pop at Harvey Nichols’ bar of brows- because we’re worth it.
Where has the championing of individuals run to? Particularly women. There exists an unending arsenal of groups for the masses. Post all about it. As if we all join together in one big breasted identity, none of us will get lost, none of us will be defeated. Everyone is Boudicca. However I do believe that there is not as much power as sold in our numbers here. Of course, groups are great. They bring community where there is isolation and comfort where there is sadness, power to the powerless and confidence to the broken. However there are people who are in a way misled into this group phenomenon, where every part of their life is somewhat dictated by someone else. The Algorithm aunt. There is nothing wrong with these outlets, it goes without saying, nor am I against them. It just feels the balance has been tipped. To be or not to be, how do we be without being shown how. It seems society has become so uncreative in its vision of a life, of what it is to live with idiosyncratic rhythm. Its imagination has vanished. Down down the drain into the interconnected gutter of mossy sameness. Shameless? In fact the opposite resulted, relief. soft, quashy relief. Same-ly smooth operators project mirrored lives onto kingly pedestals, adored yet simultaneously decried by, the likers. our version of events. mine becomes yours, ours, no one’s. there is no ‘one’. Capitalist society actively dissuades the modern woman, and man, from their rhythm. Gone girl.
I feel the older I get, the more fine tuned things become, as if I wake up on the 24th of September every year and play one clear A on a birthday stradivarius, only brought out of its case for this one purpose, so is understandably, in great knack. At 14, a trepidatious play, 16 brash and rambunctious, 18 bright and shy, 24- Aphrodite? Damn it’s how I feel! How I want to feel, where my rhythm is, where my drum skins simmer. Joan of Arc meets Venus vibes. Compassionate, strong, brave, womanly, Rosalía-ly. Chalk circles you’ve been sketching can be smudged and redrawn, one year in charcoal, the following in ink. I really do not mean or want to get spiritual here, but instead completely practical. For me this means ‘style of the self’ , identity, the things you insist upon (said by Sontag). The people in your life, the books you read, are you the mistress of Instagram, the compatriot of Facebook, for better or for worse? Till death do you part? Passivity is not only ok’d but encouraged for the modern day everyman. Don’t think, just do it.
Does your focus have momentum? Your own focus, bird’s eye view. Grusha’s gang. In Brecht’s ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’, we see her fight plight to plight, valiant and strong whilst clearly, bricking it. Her focus, clear. Of course, she is the creation of a writer’s imagination, however I think that her ‘mode of person’ is pretty neat and perhaps also pretty counter to now.
The world is dying, become a vegan. A broken record of generation Z, save the world and look good whilst trying. Buy the soy burger, tell your friends, repeat. It is disturbing, mirrored upon mirrored lives, one shatter 7 years of bad luck so be careful with your comfortable clone. Highlight her hair, make up her face and yeah actually, make it up too, there’s an app for that. Subscribe her to headspace for £10 a month and relish the numb, mmm numb numb nothing. read normal people, watch it as well, keep yourself sexy man victorias secret is the shit. the contraceptive pill works by shutting down your ovaries and creating a mucus layer just below your cervix so the sperm gets stuck and cant travel up any further to the non existent egg. contraceptive- contra, against and ceptive, comes from the verb incipio, I begin, thus: Against beginning. Ended at the start. Cogito, I think. Contracogitives: the mainstream, Mark Zuckerburg, the status quo? There’s something quintessentially Orwellian surrounding this encouraged loss of thinking, think crime. You may argue that this is simply how marketing works, to persuade and persuade again, harder and harder until you cum pound signs. Perhaps if we ‘think first buy later’ as opposed to the latter, we would trust and accept, for example, that the logic of sourcing locally can only be environmentally ‘better’ than becoming supervegan and in fact, sourcing globally. Carbon footprint is the big dairy cheese. Of course, not everyone is able to have udderly fresh milk from the farm down the road, nor meat from the village butcher. I just think there can be more thinking done here amidst these hero rhetorics, packaged deals that are sold to us as the answer. the messiah of lifestyles and lord, are you free to pass motherfucking judgement. Yes, ethics comes into this, yes, it is not ‘good’ to be eating red meat every day. again and again, TBC. but at least, consider this.
Your twenties, the best years of your life said by those who are perhaps yet to have their worst, the non miners, the coal diggers remaining unknowingly afloat the proverbial mine- the soul. The middle aged, professing the twenties to be the best, honestly, t h e b e s t. I am of the opinion that yes, thus far, they’ve been great, but I do think that they’re a time for a few shit years to be mixed in with the ‘best ever’. To mine is not fun, it can be enlightening yes but it is messy, there will be blood. But those in their thirties I have met who would not be so ready to slather me with that same paint, that their twenties were the best, don’t say anything at all, not even that thirty is the new twenty or that they’re waiting for forty to be, you know, the eat pray love years. They don’t speak around age pseudo philosophically, they just speak, and listen. about anything and everything, from time to time about their experiences, what they have learnt but also the now, what is happening now what is new what is fricka fresh. what is exciting you, me, what is exciting, what is happening? Gerunds gerundives, the -ing news, nothing ended, for the beginnings.
I’m not a hater of nostalgia, at all, I champion it from time to time, I think it is grounding and important and comforting and safe and a C major chord of ‘I was here’ arpegiatting both real and elusive. I felt that, I saw that, I heard it.
Perhaps we think of the bigger picture too often. What do you have to say about today rather than a group of years. It is in the detail that your individual lies.
