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You’ve seen their logo—it’s an apple with a bite taken out of it. That bite is the symbol of the moment mankind broke their pact with God, transgressed their own innocent nature, and chewed into consuming and consumerism. We have externalized all wonder, materialized our inherent magic. There is an old river where I write; it’s grimy and dirty and ancient. From a distance it’s all very chocolate box: swans and cygnets, willows weeping and long grasses. When you stand on the bank, though, it’s brown and full of pungent gunk and natural funk and it’s cold, British cold. As I plunge in, my skin tightens and I stare; I reach for strangled breath. Forgotten capacities stir and a noise I’ve never heard emerges—a roar, an animal roar, unrefined and naked. Unexplored depths and vibrations, neglected and unstirred. We are nature; we are nature as we munch gum and check the phone; we are nature as we queasily regret our imperfection, turning the glossy page, turning our glossy stomachs; we are nature as we hear them witter inanely on the radio, desecrating the silence with the violence of their idiocy and dumb verdicts, chattering and grooming, picking through the ticks in their hair, marveling at new minutia. These boys that throw off Birmingham for Baghdad: What are they looking for there? What’s in that crimson desert that they can’t find in the bullring? Untangled from Spaghetti Junction and aspiring to spaghetti westerns, these loaded kids of Charlton Heston declaring their jihad. To end this hapless meander through a mapless expanse, a hopeful and myopic grope, a listless disconnected kiss smothered, like Magritte’s shrouded lovers, whose hand can guide us through this abyss, what cartographers of consciousness can we look to now? I’d take Gandhi over ISIS when it comes to making maps for new worlds. Gandhi is a bit of a placeholder hero for me, a kind of unthinking grab for an easily identifiable brand of hero. Einstein said of him: “Future generations will scarce believe one such as he ever existed.” My own love of him is founded upon early exposure to the film; in which scene after scene he challenges authority and stands up to corruption and bullying. Gandhi knew too that defiance had to come from somewhere other than rage. That you can’t build love from hate, that the world we live in is the manifestation of a sublime source. The most practical application of what a lot of people would regard as wishy-washy claptrap was his popularization of nonviolent protest. (en) |
