Sunday, September 4, 2005

the death of poetics

Born of a generation which champions the uninspired as art. The cryptic perishes beneath the crushing weight of the explicit. The discomfort of the unreal is tossed aside, discarded, for the comfort of the real. Today, no-one creates so much as manufactures. No-one shapes so much as fabricates. No-one writes so much as generates, formulates. And we're all here, neatly queued, licking our lips, waiting to have our trays filled with more vapid, tasteless slop.

Ease, and the pursuit of. We've trading in one-off films for dime a dozen movies, none of which can end without being set up for a sequel. The innocence of the situational comedy has been ruthlessly murdered in a dark alley by reality television. Radio plays have moved over to provide space for the continuous playing of top-forty hits - a steady stream of mass-produced garbage, you can tune in, listen, and never hear a thing. Our museums are lined with a million blank canvases. Our bookstores, filled with all the masterpieces of yesteryear - because there is nothing else.

You're queued up, waiting, the stainless steel tray cold in your shaking hands. Your stomach rumbles - it does that a lot lately. You're thinking about food, sustenance. In particular, you're thinking about what you ate yesterday and the day before, trying to conjure up the tastes, trying to bring to mind the smells. There is nothing. Your tongue presses against the roof of your empty mouth, as you try to remember the feel, the texture, of yesterday's meal - was it coarse? Was it smooth? Your stomach turns - it does that a lot lately. The queue inches forward, and clutching your aching gut, you reluctantly shuffle ahead, dispirited. Closer to the front. Closer, perhaps to close, to one more ladle of nothing, one more scoop of bland, unpalatable slop.

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