I was in the local shop today, getting something to eat for lunch, when I suddenly had the strangest sensation - a spontaneous awareness of the unlikeliness of this life. I mean, I thought of all the rest of the human population - most of whom live in what you and I would consider abject poverty - who have never seen or entered such a shop. And this, this, is what all their work sustains! This lifestyle, for people like us! all the various brands of soft drinks in plastic bottles and all the pre-packaged lunch deals and confectionery in sealed bags and store-baked patries - this is it, the culmination of all the labour in the world, all the burning of fossil fuels and all the back-breaking work on coffee farms and sugar plantations. All for this! This convenience shop! I felt dizzy thinking about it. I mean I really felt ill. It was as if I suddenly remembered that my life was all part of a television show - and every day people died making the show, were ground to death in the most horrific ways, children, women, and all so that I could choose from various lunch options, each packaged in multiple layers of single-use plastic. That was what they died for - that was the great experiment. I thought I would throw up. Of course, a feeling like that can't last. Maybe for the rest of the day I feel bad, even for the rest of the week - so what? I still have to buy lunch. And in case you're worrying about me, let me assure you, buy lunch I did. (Alice)
It has become normal in my life, for example, to send text messages like the following: tillerson out at state lamoooo. It just strikes me that it really shouldn't be normal to send text like that. Anyway, as a consequence, each day has now become a new and unique informational unit, interrupting and replacing the informational world of the day before. And I wonder (you might say irrelevantly) what all this means for culture and the arts. I mean, we're used to engaging with cultural works set 'in the present'. But this sense of the continuous present is no longer a feature of our lives. The present has become discontinuous. Each day, even each hour of each day, replaces and makes irrelevant the time before, and the events of our lives make sense only in relation to a perpetually updating timeline of news content. So when we watch characters in films sit at dinner tables or driver around in cars, plotting to carry out murders or feeling sad about their love affairs, we naturally want to know what at what exact point they are doing these things, relative to the cataclysmic historic events that structure our present sense of reality. There's no longer a neutral setting. There is only the timeline. I don't know really whether this will give rise to new forms in the arts or just mean the end of the arts altogether, at least as we know them.
What do we have now? Instead? Nothing. And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.
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Alice watched for the sight of him while she dried the dishes with a chequered tea towel and stacked them away in the cupboards. When Simon asked her how her work was going, she shook her head. Oh, I can't talk about that, she said. It's secret. No, I'm retired. I don't write books anymore. He handed her the damp dripping salad bowl and she patted at it with her tea towel. I find that hard to believe, he said. Felix was no longer visible out the window then, he had gone around the other side of the house, or further back among the trees. You'll have to believe it, she said. I'm burned out. I only had two good ideas. No, it was too painful anyways. And I'm rich now, you know. I think I"m richer than you are. Leaving the salad tongs down on the wire rack beside the sink, Simon said: I'll bet. Alice put the bowl away and closed the cupboard door again. I paid off my mother's mortgage last year, she said. Did I tell you that? I have so much money I just do things kind of randomly. I will do other things, I have plans, but i'm very disorganized. Simon looked at her but she looked away, taking the salad tongs off the rack, wrapping them up in the tea towel to dry them. That was generous of you. he said.
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