Janus' Thoughts Develop (Ch.12e) :Meeting Lifestylers

Chapter 12e : Meeting Lifestylers

 

In the long pause between bands onstage recordings from Vidnet were playing, but at a far lower volume than the live music of the bands.  Now was the time to approach these people and find out a bit more about them.  He was standing behind a couple of teenage boys who looked every bit to be devoted Lifestylers in their flamboyant long hair and colourful clothing.  They were not actively speaking to each other or anybody else and seemed to be wrapped in their own thoughts so they seemed suitable.

 

‘Hello there,’ he said.  ‘You seem to be into this cause, the Lifestyle movement.  Is that right?’

 

‘Yeah,’ frowned one lad.  ‘So what?’

 

‘I was wondering do you people really agree with what these bands are saying?’ he persisted.

 

‘I approve the message ‘course.  Don’t we all?  Why are you here?’ said the youth, displaying some accusation in his question, turning Janus’ enquiry back on him.

 

‘I’m here to see the bands just like you,’ replied Janus, stating the obvious.

 

‘I mean how d’ya find us?’ asked the youth.  The other was smiling for some reason Janus did not appreciate. He hadn’t said anything funny, had he?

 

‘I know this place has music, because you can hear it in the street after dark,’ explained Janus.  ‘I saw some of you people going in so I thought I would come in too and have a look.  It’s good to see some real live music.  There hasn’t been too much of it for me recently.  Mostly bands don’t play live, they play on the Vidnet.’

 

‘We don’ watch Vidnet,’ said the youth.  The other continued smiling.  ‘Do we, Cast?’

 

‘Er, no.  We don’ watch trash.  We live the real thing,’ said Cast, the smiling youth.

 

Janus was inwardly disappointed.  These young men did not seek to give the impression that they were well educated.  Whether they really were he couldn’t guess.  Everybody in the Modern Age was well educated, they had to be.  No one could escape, but these two gave the appearance of having “escaped”.  He did not like the slight undercurrent he sensed of  accusation, as if he were not of the right generation.  Janus was only thirty-two, not so old really.  He didn’t like the implication that this was somehow not his kind of music.  He’d been listening to and viewing this kind of music on Vidnet for many years, and it hadn’t really changed much in more than a hundred, perhaps two hundred years.  Could it be that these youths were unaware of this?

 

‘You don’t watch the Vidnet?’ asked Janus.  ‘Is that true?  I thought everybody watched the Vidnet.’  He tried to appear friendly with a touch of humour.

 

‘No, we don’t watch the Vid.  It’s not real,’ said the first youth, echoing the second.

 

‘Is that so,’ said Janus, genuinely surprised.  ‘Is that true of many of you?’

 

‘We can’ speak for dem, but we never watch it,’ said the first youth.

 

‘It’s the instrument of control,’ said Cast, still smiling.

 

‘I suppose it is,’ nodded Janus, although he personally saw it more as an instrument of liberation, a way of learning about the world, as it was, as it had been, and in history.  Real society was all in there if only you knew where to look for it.  It was more real than the reality of mindless number changes and factory-like office jobs, of unimaginative repetition and wasted time.  But he was nonetheless excited that there were people, however impolite who had a different view.  The unquestioning brainwashed denizens who inhabited the modern world of work also approved of the Vidnet.  For most of them it was their life after work, after the commuting on the networks.  It was what they did after they got “home”.  True, many of them idled their precious time away watching what Janus might think was “trash”, but all judgements were relative.  If it entertained them, then why shouldn’t they?  They had precious little other entertainment.

 

‘What you ‘ere for anyway?’ uttered the first youth.  Again the slight accusation, which Janus didn’t like.

 

‘As I said, I like the music.  I’ve been listening to this kind of music all my life,’ he retorted, taking care to sound totally polite and unruffled.

 

‘Dat’s a long time then,’ snickered Cast, becoming louder again.  Janus took an inevitable dislike to these two.  They did not seem to want to be liked.  But he was here to find out.  If these people rejected even the Vidnet then he was not going to find out who they were and what they thought, unless he spoke to them.  He decided to find out what he could without worrying what they thought.  This was information gathering, and Janus could be very single minded even when he was not made to feel welcome.

 

‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘why there don’t seem to be many of you over the age of say twenty-five, thirty at the most.  Are older people not wanted, or is it just that older people are too busy working and don’t have time for this?’

 

Cast laughed first, then “First Youth”.  ‘Older people not wanted,’ smirked Cast.  Janus did not like to ask directly whether Cast thought he was too old.  He thought he knew the answer already.  He hadn’t expected this.  He’d been here for an hour or more watching two bands and wandering around and he hadn’t received the impression that he was not welcome.  True, nobody had come up and welcomed him but that was not usual at Vidnet publicised concerts or night clubs, which were not specifically associated with the young Lifestylers, or anywhere in the City, certainly not on the Tram Network or even at work.

 

Judging by lyrics and interviews with modern “Lifestyle” bands on Vidnet Janus had not detected the accusatory ageism which these two displayed.  The spokesmen for the movement, such as he had seen, which was very little, had appeared to be sociable enough, if a little more angst-ridden and informal than more average citizens.

 

He had had enough of the subject of age.  It was time to find out more.  ‘Which college do you guys go to?’ he asked.

 

Again laughs.  ‘We don’ go to college any more,’ said First Youth.

 

‘We broken free,’ said Cast, with his usual supporting explanation.

 

‘You mean that you don’t go to college?’ asked Janus in mock exaggeration.

 

‘Nop,’ said First Youth.

 

‘But everybody goes to college,’ said Janus, it was pretty much true.  He had never had the option to avoid it, nor had he wanted to at their age.  As far as he knew, or most citizens, the only young people who were exempted from college were the sick, in body or in mind.  College and continuing study of one sort or another was necessary to secure employment and even when that was secured the employer would normally desire training or study of some sort to continue.  He expected that many of  these Lifestylers had found ways to avoid it, and he wondered how.  From the lyrical statements of bands he had seen or heard they suggested an escape from formal study to a more natural life, sentiments which Janus could certainly appreciate.  ‘How do you manage not to go to college?  You will need to earn a living soon surely.  Without qualifications surely you’ll have no future.’

 

‘We don’ worry about the future.  We live for today.  We don’ need college,’ said First Youth.

 

Cast laughed again and said, ‘You should try it, you might like it.  But you’re too old for it an’ you’ve already been to collidge.’  Cast turned away suddenly without warning, as if Janus no longer held any interest to him, despite the laughter he seemed to have provided.

 

He looked around swiftly as if to find some excuse to get away, saw someone he presumably knew and without any goodbye he moved away, a casual cut off.

 

First Youth was still there so Janus persisted.  ‘Why don’t you need college?  You’ll need a job won’t you?’

 

‘Na, we don’t need jobs.  We are natural people.  We are free.  Anyway, why you askin’ all these questions?  Jus’ relax and be like us.’

 

Janus wanted to ask why ”First Youth” thought anyone would want to be like him.  He was surly, ill mannered, atrocious at normal lessons of everyday conversation.  He appeared to be quite on his own at this moment now that Cast had wandered off.  Both of them seemed to be young and lacking in maturity.  Their judgements were not what he would have called “developed”.  They were basic human people, perhaps an example of what more people might be like if the modern system failed to control them.  But he didn’t think so.  No, something had corrupted these two, giving them thoughts unreal and unbalanced.  Perhaps working parents had left them be, and they had let themselves be influenced by other immature minds, perhaps a peer group of other Lifestylers.

 

‘I gave up my job too you know,’ said Janus, wondering how he would respond, whether it would be with interest, awe or some other attitude.

 

‘You wanna be one of us then?’ said First Youth, coming to his conclusion.  ‘It’s too late for you, man.  You are too old to be us.  You wanna find some people your own age to hang up with.’  Janus half expected him to ask him why he’d given up his job and show at least that interest, but it wasn’t to be.  First Youth did not want anybody to think that he could be curious about them.

 

‘How do you exist outside the education system,’ asked Janus, hoping for an answer which would tell him so much that he did not know.

 

‘You ask a lot of questions, mister,’ said First Youth.  ‘Why don’t you go and ask them somewhere else?  I don’t need this fuss.  I want to watch the bands.’

 

Janus shrugged internally.  Blank wall.  He wasn’t going to get much more out of this youth.  He had already outstayed his welcome, cold as that had been from the start. He wasn’t surprised after Cast’s disappearance.  ‘I didn’t mean to pry.  I’ll let you be.  You watch the bands and enjoy yourself,’ he said.

 

Janus looked around as he moved on from the youth.  He saw Cast talking to some other young men of similar long-haired appearance.  They appeared to be swapping small tablets.  Could it be that they were exchanging drugs?  Some Vidnet Lifestyle representative had publicly encouraged drug use for artistic and social purposes and although all scientific and health advice suggested that this was in most cases very unwise, he supposed that the user might well come to appreciate a different view of life.  Janus shuddered and hoped that drug use was not widespread among these young people.

 

The appearance of these long haired youths appealed to him because it was so different from the tidy expected norms of the working society.

 

Years of work had dulled his attitude to the smart and polite exterior of office workers.  Scratch the surface and underneath lay the pampered insensitivity of so many unimaginative people.  They were bored children dulled by their routines, with little energy left for anything but an artificial development of their personality.  Some were worse, those who really believed in the office madness of modern life. By contrast these unusually dressed people seemed unafraid of the conventions or of the social machine, willing to take genuinely new and independent paths through life.  However his first introduction to their participants had been a sad experience.  First Youth and Cast were nothing but immature children of the most undeveloped kind.  They might as well have been ancient feudalists or tribal people from the early history of the planet for all the civilised sensitivity they seemed to project.