Down & Out in Paris & London

“It is taken for granted that a beggar does not ‘earn’ his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic ‘earns’ his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable. Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar’s livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course–but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout–in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him.”

George Orwell, Down & Out In Paris and London, 1933

Cyborg

You wake up to an alarm based on an app that’s monitoring your sleep patterns. You still feel tired.

You check your feed on an app to see what’s happened since you fell asleep. It feels like the same thing repeating over and over.

You scroll through news alerts on an app that curates stories of interest from around the world. After a while it’s all too sad, and you turn it off.

You check for pictures friends have sent you on an app that makes them disappear. A couple of jokes and selfies you’ll forget by the evening.

You call your cab on an app while pouring yourself some cereal. Not enough time to make breakfast.

You check your work e-mails and calendar while you’re en route. It helps you ignore the traffic.

You constantly refresh your social media app while you’re zoning out of a meeting. There are no new notifications.

You watch videos on an app while waiting for your lunch to arrive. You’re careful not to laugh too loud at your desk.

You alter images for your presentation on an app that makes them look better. More than enough to impress the boss without actually doing anything.

You challenge a colleague to a quiz game on an app. You lose because you didn’t know the capital of Alaska.

You go outside for a cigarette and chai, which you can pay for through an app. Who keeps change, anyway?

You browse available jobs and opportunities on an app after sending off your presentation. Then you look up state capitals of America.

You message some friends on a couple of different apps. You need to figure a plan for tonight.

You get off work and go to the gym. Your device tells you how many calories you burned. After half an hour you shake it a few times to get to 500.

You order groceries and essentials you’ve been avoiding on an app, selecting a delivery slot for tomorrow. Your friends haven’t responded.

You call another cab from the app and leave for home. This time it’s harder to ignore the traffic.

You start up your dating app, you know the one. You keep swiping right and messaging people who you’ll probably never speak to.

You’re home and tired. You use the video chatting app to call your parents, who ask the usual questions. You know the right answers.

You check a couple of the apps again. One friend was nice enough to tell you he’s busy. No dates still.

You look at an app that recommends events around you. All the beautiful smiling people in the photos are intimidating.

You spend a long time scrolling through a food delivery app. Maybe two different ones. Then order the same sandwich you almost always get.

You turn on your TV, which has its own apps for entertainment. You pick a couple of movies that seem interesting.

You use your device to read the movie reviews and decide to go with the blockbuster. Within minutes you’re checking your phone again.

Your food arrives and you post a picture of it on your social media apps. Edited and enhanced, of course.

Your movie is still playing but it’s going too slow. At least your food photos got a few likes.

You pause the movie and lie down in your bed. You check your sleep stats and set the alarm for tomorrow.

It’s hard to fall asleep, so you go to the porn app. It’s nice to imagine yourself as one of the perfectly proportioned actors.

Eventually, you put the phone away and fall asleep. Soon enough, the cycle will start again.

 

Separate

Many nights while walking home, I see a young man with his headphones in, collecting and separating trash amidst the stench of the massive dumpsters that serve most of the street. Like millions around the city who drive taxis or clean tables or press elevator buttons, it is unlikely that I would be able to pick him out in a line-up. Whenever our paths cross I feel intensely guilty that there is perhaps nothing in common between us, apart from being around the same age, that even on the same road he occupies a world completely separated from mine.

 

Life & Fate

“People in camps, people in prisons, people who have escaped from prison, people going to their death, know the extraordinary power of music. No one else can experience music in quite the same way. What music resurrects in the soul of a man about to die is neither hope nor thought, but simply the blind, heart-breaking miracle of life itself. A sob passed down the column. Everything seemed transformed, everything had come together; everything scattered and fragmented – home, peace, the journey, the rumble of wheels, thirst, terror, the city rising out of the mist, the wan red dawn – fused together, not into a memory or a picture but into the blind, fierce ache of life itself. Here, in the glow of the gas ovens, people knew that life was more than happiness – it was also grief. And freedom was both painful and difficult; it was life itself. Music had the power to express the last turmoil of a soul in whose blind depths every experience, every moment of joy and grief, had fused with this misty morning, this glow hanging over their heads. Or perhaps it wasn’t like that at all. Perhaps music was just the key to a man’s feelings, not what filled him at this terrible moment, but the key that unlocked his innermost core. In the same way, a child’s song can appear to make an old man cry. But it isn’t the song itself he cries over; the song is simply a key to something in his soul.”

Vasily Grossman, Life & Fate, 1980

Idealist

 You watch the video of them, going up on stage, collecting the award, smiles plastered on their faces. You don’t know why, but it feels like a betrayal.

The team you worked with for months, years, who you argued with, who you stayed late nights with, getting so much success. Why should it hurt you? You should be happy for them.

But you feel this permeating sense of falseness around their achievement. Not that they will care. You remember the times you discussed inspirations or they applauded your ideas, the times when you knew so much more, the times they solicited your reactions.

Even the specific time they thought of this concept, three of you discussing it and you immediately offering an opinion, a possibility. Sure, it changed drastically since then. Years have passed. Still, you know that it could have been you.

But it wasn’t, you would never have done it like that. You wouldn’t have agreed to the end, to the demands of producers or clients or whoever else. You would have wanted your own way. Sure, what they made was pretty decent. Movie, album, ad, it could have been anything. But it never really pushed any envelopes. It gave people what they wanted, it was simplistic, it was well packaged, it was perfectly marketed.

You didn’t want that, you wanted to make your own choices. You were the one who decided that it was too tedious for you, who decided to make your own way. You imagined that the recognition would come. That the audience would see your authenticity, your vision, your ego.

You were the one who believed that the content is all that matters, that quality is worth more than marketing and organisation. You were the one who chose to make it your own way, who would rather have a few fans than a million followers, who wanted to do it for the love of the craft, who valued authenticity over compromise, talent over process.

You think of your attempts to find a way into the system now, your e-mails forgotten, your phone calls unreturned, your future uncertain. You push them away. You realize that it could have been you, if you had just waited a little. It could still be of course, if you keep going, if you stay on your own path. Maybe it won’t, but you have to keep trying, instead of thinking it could have been you.

Scattered

What would you do if you knew you could never return again? What would you take with you, besides the heaviness that fills platforms and terminals? How would you explain your sinking to those who have never felt your regret, who have never built a life that was uprooted, who are whole and not scattered across cities and oceans? How can you explain being torn between one place and another, between true and false, hopeful and broken, solace and opportunity? How can you show them that home is only in your soul, a place that can never be found again?

Demian

“I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly. Everyone goes through this crisis. For the average person this is the point when the demands of his own life come into the sharpest conflict with his environment, when the way forward has to be sought with the bitterest means at his command. Many people experience the dying and rebirth – which is our fate – only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfully to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise – which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams.”

Hermann Hesse, Demian, 1919

Futurist

If you think about it, most things science fiction can imagine come true. You can speak to somebody a million miles away. You can send them pictures, videos, watch them at any moment, as though you’ve been teleported in an instant.

There are machines that can speak to you, analyze your every thought, bots who chat like human beings or vast systems of information that know you better than you know yourself.

You can watch archived video from any era, or read about it, you can learn about every known moment in history, you can see a painting or a sculpture or an artefact, probably even hear their music, like you’re traveling through time.

You can understand and translate any language, you can see any part of the globe or even outer space. You can land on Mars or the moon, or use satellites to discover any location, even fly drones to them and observe.

You can use a pocket-sized device to communicate with anybody, to replace your mind. You can go on a diet of supplements and juices. You can take pills that make you happier or calmer or more energetic, you can alter your mind and body in every way.

But even though all these possibilities have been made real, why do they often feel like a shallow imitation, an empty version of an adventure, like progress that is more internal than external, more imagined than real?

Essence

In the city center, a temple, an old church and a mosque stand with less than two miles between them. There, you often see a young boy with a folding table, selling trinkets of various kinds. He couldn’t be older than fifteen, but has the air of a seasoned salesman, imploring you to buy without coercion. When the authorities arrive, he packs up his large bag and disappears, only to materialise nearby a few hours later. You observe him and sense that perhaps he has grasped the essence of God better than any of the tourists, devotees or holy men.

The Ultimate Revolution

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

Aldous Huxley, The Ultimate Revolution, Lecture at Berkeley Language Center, 1962