Two weeks ago I came to an impasse. For whatever reason it happened and I made a seemingly split second decision to re-educate myself, within my discipline, but to get myself back into some kind of fluid state of mind and to break the cycle which I seem to have become entrapped.
Re-education, albeit my choice is mild, however I wonder if it is a microcosm of the bigger picture of the life I have come to exist in… My move to America, and my witness to the change from the familiar to the beginnings of a new way of living for Americans. A life of conservation, shared wealth, distribution of assets and a new time of creativity and invention. A new time, for change.
Elements of transformation are occurring around us consciously and seemingly out of our direct control as individuals, however en-masse we have created everything we see happening around us; the destruction of corporate empires which were built on the belief by the few that the way to achieve success is to streamline and singularize groups of employees into homogenous working environments, similar in theory to commun-ism…
However, with all power comes greed and corruption. We let the intellectuals command the actuaries and the actuaries command the accountants and the accountants command the lawyers and the lawyers get high on the echoes of their own immediacy and the accountants make sure the lawyers are happy by passing the figures on to the actuaries and the actuaries keep the traders informed of the numbers and the numbers swell and heave in a fantasy greedy mass of progress and interests and business… ‘and its all fun and games until someone loses an eye’ and in this case the cyclops eye is plucked and the one eyed monster is no longer king in the land where we have all had our eyes closed…
So the bough breaks and the economy falls, and all the safe-guards and insurance measures backups and escape pods haven’t been maintained becomes somewhere along the way the night-watchman was invited into the party even though he’s paid to watch the door..
Most of my adult sentient life I have lived in the luxury of economic growth and posterity. I am 36 years old as I write this, I live in Seattle for the last four years and before this time I lived all of my life in Ireland. Until I was about 16 or 17 years old I had vague recollections of collieries (coal mines), a staple existence in the UK, closing and falling over like a houses of cards, the radio constantly on and the television, pouring bleak news of union leaders who fought seemingly endless wars with parliament. Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Regan and starwars anti missile defense systems, and everyday there were two punishment beatings and an assassination or an attempt in northern Ireland. I dont even remember the Irish news because it was all so dark and deathly, falkland war, nuclear threats, job losses, neighbours drinking themselves to death, depression dark dark dark… and the news from America was Dallas, Tube Socks, Oil, Sunshine abundance and the hemorrhage of young minds and hearts from Ireland to the UK and to America.
Things are different now, but really they are going to fit into a similar pattern again soon. You mark my words, -it’ll happen. I feel like I walked past someone once a long time ago, a man on a street corner who said something like this, and I thought that he was a crazy old fuck..
..now its your turn.