SHIVA SERVER SPACE

Sometimes a thing that is the opposite of a thing is destined to become the thing that it is the opposite of. Sometimes, going so far in the wrong direction is the catalyst that motivates us to change direction and go in the right direction. This is just such a time. The separation before the union.

The atomisation that has caused us to communicate via electronic communication will cause us to actually become that electronic communication, uploaded minds unified in one big algorithm. We'll no longer be 'here' but we'll never be alone again.

The only physical evidence of us ever having existed upon this plane will be a skyscraper sized server humming in the middle of a field somewhere. Obsolete corporeal forms will dangle, atrophied, from wires on the server's bleak exterior, but consider the server's interior. Oh, what an interior. Our communal consciousness residing inside, realising that we are all Lord Shiva and that we are all 'one'. We'll be creating universes and playing cosmic games until some tiny fucking varmints scamper up the field and nibble right through the Shiva Server's power cable, causing existence to end and start all over again.

Start because the tiny fucking varmints will evolve into a super intelligent race and eventually upload themselves to a similar Shiva Server space.

...they'll no longer be 'here' but they'll never be alone again.

Here's a poxy song about it...

I love you very much you know, so go away and come back when we're ready.

PLACE

Before we emerged there was a place.

A place just like the rest of the place.

A place near a place that was the same place.

A place in a place where it stayed in place.

A place that waited for us to take our place

and place the place in context.

MULTI-PLATFORM FUGGER

I'm thinking of repackaging myself as a multi-platform event. I'll no longer be just a man and a blog but an app and a Twitter account and a movie and a book and a glossy magazine and a comic and a podcast and a live stream and a first person shoot 'em up and a cake recipe and a meteorological condition and a provocative undergarment and a political ideology and an intimate compliant and a comedy routine and a wrestler's finishing move and a brand of dog food and a car hire firm and a place to store hazardous waste and a new hairstyle and a song in the pop charts and a dance move and a witty slogan and a new wave in fashion and so on and so on.

I want all these new strands of me launched at exactly the same time on the same day to much fanfare. I want to be the thing everyone thinks about, simultaneously, for at least an instant before they decide they don't really like me and come to hate me and set about starting a backlash. But starting a backlash will be no use because, as well as a man and a blog and an app and a Twitter account and a movie and a book and a glossy magazine and a comic and a podcast and a live stream and a first person shoot 'em up and a cake recipe and a meteorological condition and a provocative undergarment and a political ideology and an intimate compliant and a comedy routine and a wrestler's finishing move and a brand of dog food and a car hire firm and a place to store hazardous waste and a new hairstyle and a song in the pop charts and a dance move and a witty slogan and a new wave in fashion and so on and so on, I will also be my own backlash.

There will be no escape. Every route will be closed off and the world will be trapped in a hellish circuit with me as the starting point and me as the finish and me as all points between and even if I am dead I will go on, branded into your culture and onto your brains, permanently burnt into your retinas, forever at the tip of your tongues. I will be the source of every 'like' and every 'dislike' given. The parts of the world that do not concern me will creep by in the background and when anyone tries to discuss them others will change the topic to me. Me! Fugger! The blog, the man, the event, the range of action figures, the clothes line, the schism, the healing of that schism, the religion, the atheism. It'll be Fugger this. It'll be Fugger that. Fugger will be the source of all confusion and the source of all clarity. Fugger will be first word that babies utter and Fugger will be the solitary word on all your tombstones. Face it, when I am repackaged as a multi-platform event you will all be truly Fugged.

And so it will go, on and on and on until something else comes along and gets hashtagged instead and lays me finally to rest. R.I.P. Fugger, Multi Platform Event. We'd miss you if we could remember you but I'm afraid that we can't. So much happens now and it happens so fast. No one's got time to recall the past. Like what came before Fugger, ...what the Hell was that? It was probably the Crazy Frog or some kind of crap. No one can be expected to remember that far back.

INVISIBILITY CLOAK

(Image: Pol Úbeda Hervàs - I'm Not There) 

 

I sent off for an invisibility cloak. I've had it a while now. When I put it on I'm completely invisible. I like being invisible. Well, I like not being seen, you know, going unnoticed. I rarely take the cloak off now. The cloak allows me go about my daily business without fear of being recognised. Recognition is a fear of mine. Have you ever been recognised yourself? I don't just mean 'spotted', I mean actually recognised. I can't stand it. I'm ashamed of myself you see. For the longest time I have been dogged by a sense of embarrassment that is caused by being me. It's like the feeling teenagers get when they are seen with their parents only I get it when I'm seen with myself, which is always, unless I'm wearing the cloak. I love the cloak.

When the cloak is on, my unbecoming physical carriage is concealed as is my appalling dress sense and my facial expression of acute defeat. The only thing I could possibly do to mess up my day is say something stupid but I recently had my vocal cords severed so that too is no longer a concern. I'm only made detectable by the shopping list I carry. As far as others are concerned, I'm just a floating piece of paper with words like 'sausages', 'eggs', 'washing up liquid' and 'Chambourcy Hippo-Tots four pack' written on it. The people of the town don't bat an eyelid. There's a few of us using the invisibility cloaks around here. There's a lot of floating shopping lists and wallets and briefcases. There's a lot of people who want to continue availing of the world while not actually being part of it. It's a beautiful planet, it's a pity to mar it with oneself.

Personally, I think everyone should wear invisibility cloaks. Maybe kids shouldn't, so we can keep an eye on them. Kids have nothing to be ashamed of anyway. But the rest of us, my God, the things we have presided over or instigated, allowed happen or failed to make happen. Really, I'm astonished most of us still show ourselves in public. We should all be invisible and we should all get our vocal cords done too. Then the only way left for us to mess things up would be to write something down, as I am here. Writing would be the only remaining threat to our culture of ultra-discretion. A ridiculous blogpost, an angry text, a love letter to someone who doesn't love you, a ransom note to the wealthy parents of the nervous child in your box room. All of these things are likely to occur if we retain the ability to write. But I have a solution to this threat. All keyboards, pens and writing implements of every sort should be rigged with a fatal booby trap that will activate should the device detect that you are writing something other than a shopping list or a purely utilitarian combination of words such as 'out of order' - which, incidentally, happen to be the words I want engraved on my tombstone.

I'm not sure how the writing devices would be able to detect what you are writing but I'm sure some clever person out there will figure it out. I'm too stupid to sort out that kind of thing myself. My stupidity is another deficiency that is evident when I am sans cloak. My stupidity is visibly demonstrated by my clumsy gait and open mouthed breathing. I really am a pitiful sight. I look like a stupid dumbass just like you look like an arrogant jackass or a wonton tart or a violent thug or a scared little bug.

Yes, we should all be invisible, all of the time. Well, ...most of the time. There might be occasions in my unseeable utopia when it is appropriate to take off our cloaks and reveal ourselves. These would be the times when we need to be together. To share moments of visual and tactile intimacy. On these occasions we'll uncover ourselves and stand naked before each other, revealing our scars and stretches, our folds and wrinkles, our distended packages and unimpressive appendages. All of these things and, of course, our eyes. Our vulnerable eyes, staring into the vulnerable eyes of another, with no cloak, no chatter, no hoodie, no shades, no Facebook profile page to protect us. Just ourselves, completely naked and hoping not to be rejected.

THE SCHIZOPHRENIC AGE

Reuben was outside the shopping centre again yesterday, handing out his leaflets. He looked unwashed. Pity. He could've been assistant manager of Office Furniture Direct. His wife kept me up all night last night too and not in the good way she used to. She doesn't discretely pop by anymore. She spends most of her nights standing on the roof of her car, pointing at the sky and screaming that the Moon is coming.

People believe all sorts on my street. We've lied to each other so often about infidelities, unreturned lawnmowers, whose kid hit whose first and so on that notions such as trust and truth have completely dissolved. In the absence of a unifying narrative, everyone has picked their own story. James down the end of the street thinks that I'm a member of the Illuminati because of the way I close my curtains - a sinister left to right that apparently corresponds with a certain occult ritual. Michael and Anne from number 38 are convinced that Madge, the dog from number 12, barks a secret code to spies that are housed in the garden shed of number 23. And no one even knows who lives in number 23. The residents of number 23 are so paranoid that they never emerge from their house. Some of us think that they may not even be in there. Who knows the truth? Who knows if there is even a truth anymore? Was there ever a truth? Everyone has their own ideas and no one has the same ideas. There are just so many ideas. A multitude of ideas. A mess of ideas. What is the collective noun for ideas? An 'insanity' of ideas?

The only thing myself and all my neighbours agree on is that we can't trust each other. This sometimes seems impractical. Take the time number 4 caught fire. We all stood watching as the Sweeneys banged their fists against their upstairs triple glazing, their faces contorted in muted screams as they were swallowed by flames. All we could say to each other was 'false flag'. In fact we chanted it: 'False Flag! False Flag! False Flag! False Flag!' In the morning, the authorities came and cleaned away the family's charred remains as we viewed suspiciously from our windows. We all agreed that the whole thing was a staged event involving special effects and we all thought that each other were behind it. No one mourned the loss of life. If you die on our street we think you are secretly still alive and if you are alive we think you died and were replaced by an impostor. Everyone on my street is an impostor. Even me, according to everyone else. But they would say that because it is they who are the true impostors. Not me. I think. I think I think. I'm fairly sure I think.

Despite our mutual distrust, everyone on my street shares pride in one thing. We won a prize for being the most atomised vicinity in our borough. The county councillors said that we were leading the way. A member of government even paid tribute to us at a business function. He said we were an alert and vigilant community and what was great about that was that we applied our alert vigilance to fantasy and not reality. 'Reality is all ours lads and we can do what we like with it,' he told the vested interests and they all raised a glass to toast the death of community and the advent of the schizophrenic age.

You know, I sometimes feel as if I don't know what anything is. What anything really is. I just know what things look like and what others call them. It's the same with people. They could be anyone. You could be anyone. I could be anyone. Just who are we anyway? And why are we all so frightened?