Notes from the Gesellschaft (1)

The streets were a blur. Blind faces blended with brand named jeans and fresh footwear; old men walking with hidden dignity, confused by the ambience of consumption; young girls cajoled by Top-Shop-Beats and repetitive treats which sacrificed the soul for continuity. One man stood still, his back to the wall, pulling intermittently on an American cigarette made in China that he had bought, for tax purposes, from another man who he knew only by his association with frequent trips to the Costa del Sol. His other hand held a sign which promised shoe reductions for the third time this week; prices ever falling so as to leave scope for profit. The clattering wheels of shoppers and commuters twisted round him, unsure of his purpose but afraid to look him in the eye lest he turn out to be a Jehovah’s witness or one of the other sects who breath fire on the streets and who children are urged not to speak to for fear they communicate something intimate with a perfect stranger, corrupting their minds and ruining the endlessly constructed atmosphere of the Gesellschaft, which was close to completing the starbucks-ification of the high street but which still feared (and would always fear) anyone bold enough to lift their head and look into the battered faces in front of them. To look into faces either on their way to the office, or the shops, or back to a station to catch a train (catch because they so readily slip through your fingers and must be tied down with GMT and digitalism and spite) which might whisk them away to somewhere quieter and more acceptably sanitised where each individual might share in the reality of television or the constructed worlds of video games (whose objectives are easily met and quantifiable for minds weaned on GCSE’s and GNVQ’s and other acronyms of success).
The faces continued to pour into one another either behind doors or on the street; smudged foundations and blended gels painting a new and ever more represent-ive-able portrait applicable to a facebook profile or one of the lesser social networking sites which stretches its limbs of cold comfort over every facet of life imaginable to the ready mind of one of Bebo’s children.
There was a brief pause in the activities as the man leant his sign against the wall to roll another cigarette. Two an hour for the next six would complete another day as a signpost to a better deal, a better fit, a better life, a better world. Such is the ease of it all in the Gesellschaft; such is our inheritance; such is our legacy and woe betides anyone who threatens its future with an unprovoked glance (or glare) which might open the door to a new generation of resistance. It is unlikely, there is little room left in the Gesellschaft for opinions without a scan-able barcode, but it is still feared for even the weariest arsonist can start a fire if they chance upon a match. But none of that is for today. His sign back in his hand the Gesellschaft slipped on unabated, untouched, unthreatened for this day and for most, for evermore.

*

As I walked I realised the world had forgotten to smile at anything other than Dave, or one of the other satellite channels where ordinary guys made brief names for themselves by plunging their heads into brick walls or introducing their penis to a viper. Less so the reality winners, plucked from obscurity to simulate hope, but returned to their sofas for the sake of justice.
Leaving the controlled reactions I turned Clark’s heel on the pavement and beat and opposite tack retracing my steps through the street already refreshed with clean faces as I left the fury behind me and cowered into my own hole. This day was over, at least for me, and I had meals to share with the microwave and friends before I closed the door and turned out the light on my day in the Gesellschaft.
It would rumble on without me, its scent replenished with new wrists. There was a comfort in that and as I walked I sought solace in the familiarity of the sign that operated at various heights above and ever changing face that waxes and waned in time with the new beats that, persistent in common time, pushed us on, drove us forward and held my sorry fingers as I negotiated the curvature of a world which could now be flattened by forces capable of turning the sun into moving pictures and ‘phone bills. Even at the dead of night, when the imperfect oscillation of our planet was corrected by street lamps and night clubs providing a ready distraction from the complex constellations which baffled minds capable of more when blinded by an artificial light and the repetitive drone of the calling card of those who do not sleep in the moments dictated by starlight for fear they might lose out and forget why it is they hurled themselves about brushing past the thickness of made up faces in made up spaces all searching the skyline for the familiar banner which could guide us through the darkness and save us from the black night that would almost certainly ruin our impression of a world constantly searching for the light and terrified into submission by the daemons that surely lurked above ground in alleyways and byways and who would nibble our skin and corrupt our flesh as they devoured us in a great sandwich dripping with the terrified meat of bodies afraid of and direct contact with our immediate environment, with the realities of our confusion, with the understanding we had not yet found and which despite our protestations would remain as elusive as the holy grail until we made the final unavoidable journey out of the Gesellschaft and into the true darkness of the night.