An aimless ramble

Isn’t this just the most fantastic image? There’s something about smoke suspended in air that’s undeniably sensual. I think that it’s the fluidity that does it, smoke doesn’t move with purpose, it lingers. It lingers around the mouth, it dares you to inhale; reminds us of our proximity to other people, that we share the same air.

If the world was black and white, the women were French and slouched the louche slouch of the aristocratically debauched and if the walls of every bar reeked of the decadence of the torch song then I’d be a happy man.

What am I blathering on about? I’m not sure but I find that as I get older I get more nostalgic for times I didn’t witness. I love the idea of 20s Harlem or 30s Berlin. The danger, the slumming, the energy, the easy outrage. The idea that there were still boundaries to push against, minds to expand.

I find myself nostalgic for times when experience required effort. How different was life when entertainment had to be sought out. I think that that’s the major change I’ve seen in my lifetime. 25 years ago if you wanted entertainment you had to leave the house and seek it out. You wanted a saucy thrill and to see what all the ‘Deep Throat’ fuss was about, you headed to the nearest ‘porn cinema’ and dealt with all that that meant. These days entertainment doesn’t live outside the home, it lives inside our every device. ‘Deep Throat’ is available On Demand, it’s inside this computer, it’s available on my phone, I could even get a fridge that could find it. We’re so used to having entertainment available that we expect everything from Church to the shape of our Fish Fingers (Fish Sticks) to entertain us.

Mind this change is the basis of my theory that boredom was a 20th century disease. Prior to the 20th century you were too busy throwing piss out of a window and burying your children to be bored. Just look at any of those ‘ye olde house’ shows where people ‘travel back in time’ and end up spending 16 hrs a day polishing the fireplace.

Then came labor saving devices. And around the same time radio and TV. Both offered tantalizing glimpses of other worlds. Both entertained. Both raised our expectations – and both fell silent for long periods of the day. We were shown that the world could be endlessly entertaining; we were excited to the point of giddy by masked men and their sidekicks and then… nothing. The screens went blank and nothing else seemed as interesting. We were prisoners to scheduling and the dead time dragged.

But no more. This is a 39 / 7 economy. That’s how long a day is these days. 39 hours. Or at least when you ask people to keep a record of all that they’ve done and how long it took them the tasks add up top 39 hrs. There’s multi-tasking for you. So no more boredom. 10 mins to wait – TXT. 20 mins to wait – e-mail. A half hour – Messenger. A whole say – Secondlife.

So no more boredom. But no more illicit thrills. And no more smoke. No more Marlenes, no more Mae Wests, no more Josphene Bakers. No more. Pig Porn yes. Old school provocation no. Sad huh?