motion sick (5/May/18)

I pick up a pen and words fall out
not necessarily though in the order I might want them too
like writing songs, wanting to realise a sound in the head, a compiled image of moving rhythms, swimming notes, auralscapes, how it’s supposed to be but in the end once committed and realised in the outside world it’s never comes out that way, how it should be, instead an unbridgeable dissonance
words behave the same
defiant little mischievites, so frustrating are they I don’t even know why I bother at all as much as I do, except
they make a racket otherwise, in that space annoyingly too close to my ears, rattling and clattering around and if I didn’t expel them, release them, vent them, they’ll just keep on rattling and clattering, so I toss them like rolling dice lest they rot my insides, inside out, in the same way Coke Cola does, that corrosive and addictive sugary beverage
inside the words are a poison, outside they become almost medicine, an antidote (to what I’m not sure exactly) temporarily inoculating me against re-infection
but it doesn’t last as more soon build up, like plaques, clattering and rattling plaques they recur, reignite
… I’m a hedgehog hibernating in a woodpile the day before Bonfire Night…
I’ll try to restrain them in ink
I’ll try to restrain them in type
I’ll try to chain them to digital eyes
“don’t be squeamish” I’ll say, “please excuse my wayward wordery that may go astray, miss a beat, step out of line, flick a finger, dance on your grave, exercise little regard and in fact don’t exercise enough becoming bloated, pompous and self-referential”, though sometimes they even make me queasy so vertiginously defiant they hang form their obtuse meanings
… it’s all too easy to become motion sick…

© 2018 robert greig

float/fade/dissipate (19/April/18)

conversation’s overrated… people talk too much… some never seem to stop… their mouths moving in time attempting to translate some inner monologue into something intelligible to an outside world whether that outside world wants to hear it or not…… much verbalising blah-blah-blah but so little said… like the difference between hearing and listening, you may have heard something but did you actually listen…… so much nothing evaporates within seconds of leaving the lips escaping at the speed of breath as though spurning the orator with a “must get away, must get away”… streams of niceties, background noise, the etiquette of strangers, the acquiescence of acquaintance, the predictability of friends…… being still like children with a new toy, trying to learn what to do with it while it defies us as intangibly as the air upon which it floats, fades and dissipates… and so often makes such a din before it does finally surrenders to space, such potential for richness all too often reduced to poverty and frequently leaving a bad taste in the mouth…… non-verbal communication gets smothered that endless inane chatter, the sound of their own voices droning on and on and on and on andonanaonandonandonandonandonand… see… it might turn into a mantra falling into a single note forging a visceral connection with the earths harmonic, the very note it too is humming at that very moment bringing gravity to its knees and aligning every molecule of air opening a huge pit of boredom into which we are all sucked once and for all and forever, amen…… that’d stop someone talking that’s for sure……… we all know someone who does it and it’s usually the one with the most grating or monotonous voice, like combing your ears with a porcupine or drowning in instant custard, one packed with e-values and preservatives and sugar-substitutes, sugar and salt and other type-2 diabetes time-bombs…… often what’s being said doesn’t need to be and frequently repeated as though their brain has run out of things to verbalise but for reasons unfathomable they feel compelled to keep rabbiting on regardless worried that if they stop talking they’ll no longer exist…. although quiet often  the listener might wish they didn’t… one could call it dullardry, the art of continuously talking to the point that no one not even yourself is listening and yet the mouth keeps going on andonanaonandonandonandonandonand……

© 2018 robert greig

rage against the machine (29/March/18)

lately, all outrage seems to be registered at the same level irrespective of the target, a set the controls to the heart of the sun policy while we pump up the volume to 11, til all that’s left is stall, crash and burn…

… as such leaving little to nothing left over in the tank, running on empty, all raged-out, no degrees of separation through which actions, events, dislikes, concerns, fears, terrors can be compared and measured against… it shuts down argument, exhausts opinion, denies debate and views other than the dominant, however laudable, in danger of becoming as dictatorial as that at which they rail against… it makes discernment  anathema making any appropriate or effective response impossible to gauge or determine… not unlike the oppressed become the oppressors, haunted by a road of bones…

… where niggles and misdemeanours are treated with the same disdain and vitriol and tarred with the same notoriety as the genuinely heinous, abhorrent, distasteful, horrific, even criminal… disapproval becomes scattergun, being simpler than accepting at some level you may in fact be wrong, misguided or over-reacting… in other words, simple wins out over a reality of complexities regardless of whether the issue itself may be, as is often the case, more nuanced… throw enough stones at once and one is bound to make contact despite the likely consequential collateral damage that inevitably results… culpability becoming a national sport with guilt the default setting…

… all or nothing, knee-jerk, taking the tabloid way out, why think when you can be told what to think and better still, how to react… a veritable emotional cul-de-sac where a no return/ no redemption policy is enforced and imposed effectively obliterating what remains of anything resembling scales of justice, i.e. innocent until proven guilty, welcome to the vigilante culture…

… and what’s left for the genuinely shocking?… once you’re emotionally-drained by headlines and drunk on hashtags reducing perspective at best to an afterthought… no need to worry about the elephant in the room, simply get out your blunderbuss, shoot it and ask questions later…. or not……

… be careful with that opinion to be sure it falls in line, be sure to ‘like’ this as if you don’t then the converse may be presumed, that you’re not one of us, ergo, you are one of them…. what you don’t say becomes as dangerous as what you do say, silence speaking volumes while your absence will be taken down as evidence and used against you… click or be damned… in the meantime there’s no need to think, that’ll be done for you…… history has been here before, many times over in one form or another… it’s tribal, lord of the flies, the bullied becoming the bullies, with or against and the middle squeezed out of all existence… comply or be ostracised…… it’s in our best interest to show we’re as outraged as them, insert yourself quickly lest the accusers gaze should fall upon you next, after all, who wants to become the rabbit in the headlights?….

… contempt has become an absolute, strength is measured by who makes the most noise ideally with the fewest syllables (all the better to taunt from the headlines or terraces) while any doubt or question is framed as a sign of weakness, of the liberal woolly-minded… a rush to judgement is preferred before attention deficit sets in…bandwagons are all too easy to hop on but dangerous to jump off once they’ve established momentum… keep your nose clean and your head down below the parapet avoiding the pyroclastic rant of outrage so favoured by those who, for whatever questionable motives, neglect to engage their brains first…… it’s staggering how fast things now get lost in translation…

… despite there being two sides at least to every story there’s an increasing tendency for one to hurry in and drown the others at birth.

© 2018 robert greig