The Video Game For One

The story goes that in 1925 Sigmund Freud, sent his book
'The Interpreation of Dreams' to America to be translated
from German to English by his nephew, Edward Bernays.
Whilst he was translating it, Bernays had his Eureka! Idea.

As he rewrote what his uncle had sent from German
into American Englsih, to explain how the dreams
of individuals could be coded, and commonly understood,
so an individual's dreams were seen as less than unique.
Bernays thought about how to recode mass communications,  
to make people live in dream-like states, beyond their means,
acting on signals only he controlled, that they misunderstood.    

The century that followed has been led by consumption levels
more conspicuous than could be dreamed by wealthy America,
for whom recrational drugs used to be part of the journey.
And it has been quite a journey, led by more changes
in technology than anyone could dare to imagine.

From the silent films of the 1920s thru the earliest television,
to the modern day mushy fantasies common to AI animation
is quite some set of changes in presentation for anyone to process. 

Now America has a president, who when he is beset
by unwelcome economic realities makes them go away,
through a media only he controls, thru which the public
can find the full measure of how much he is the ultimate
in being a controlling fantasist. The images he puts there 
exist to obliterate reality, as if American life is a video game
that he sets the rules for, where he is the only player.

Where we can read the results, in our news feeds.

'Remember Your Dreams'

the sign above my head said,
where by my bed I was also left
the means of writing them down,
before the day's thoughts erased them.

Music filled so many of those dreams,
most of it I'd shared with friends but some
fresh from my head, tunes I'd heard nowhere else.
Other times what came back was news reports
I'd read, on line or in the papers, when they were
the main way for me to learn about the world.

The best dreams would feature my truest lost love,
my one time dog Oscar, who in the short years 
I and my buddy cared for him we were the happiest 
three people could imagine being together. 
We made each other complete and content.

Now my days seem less engaged,
in a daze I do what must be done,
amiably but with less exitement. 

In This Age Of Overstatement

Where does truth have to go,
to be found, away from the shadows
of exaggeration, open evasion, cliches
that so easily block listeners ears,
and the wholely centralised media ownership
where the buck used to stop has disappeared?

I don't know, but seeking that place
starts with believing the place exists,
both in my times and in other peoples,
along with accepting, as we have to,
all days of wading through all that is not
the place seek, and slowly letting it pass,
leaving our search for rest in acceptance
intact. Whilst we seek the same for others.

The Poor Man's Work Ethic

When I was young the values I lived out
were the poor mans' work ethic of working hard 
to stay poor, and when work failed completely
doing government paid for displacement activities,
including further education, to remain active.
Whilst making my acquired cheapness work for me.

There the main purpose of my activities
was to keep me reaching towards the horisons
I could see, that retreated, the nearer I got to them.

I found my way out of this grown up version
of smothercare when I going nowhere slowly
by my being accepted by a world with no family
behind me, where my main experience of work
was the catch 22 logic of not getting jobs
from a market that was set to refuse me.

Nowadays I don't scrabble after money with any effort.
I live within my means and my greatest sense of reward
comes from having survived long term unemployment,
and the poor man's work ethic, with my mind intact.

Film Of The Day - 'My Dog Tulip' (2009)

 

This fine feature length animation is a film you can sink into, as I did when I read the book long enugh ago to be unable to say now when I read it. If you like dogs, and include in your likes unruly dogs, then enjoy with the certain charm this film presents, as man and dog find companionship in each other, against the odds, when both are rejects from normal society.

And please excuse the subtitles being in a language you don't speak, that is a small price to pay for having the original, English speech based, soundtrack......  

The Power Of A Handshake

Of all the devils whose hand, if I were offered it,
I would offer them mine to shake I don't know which
I would trust most. Which I might wash my hands clean of,
after, and whose hand I would set in a queue to make wait
for some distant ocasion where nothing rode on shaking it.

But my discernment tells me that he could present
himself as being of any nationality, any empire,
and could quote any government from world history
from the past to the present, that matched his bona-fides
with his verisimisitilude. Therein lies the problem.

When lies are made to seem so beleivable, and our media
buy into the pride of those who insist on being believed
-no fact checking allowed-then what can the public do?

They have to choose a side, and choose a media
in which their choice includes explanations, aplologies,
and asides that explain when their media will fall in error.
But apologies will be made promptly, to reset where truth rests,
so that same point can be found again later.

I will shake the hand of whoever apologises
in good time, and changes their stance,
after, longterm, we have had enough chance
for opinions to differ with honour. 

Know Yourself Whilst You Can

  This cartoon is from the mid-1970s and is either a tame satire on the ease of corner shop shopping out-of-daytime-business-hours where 'instant coffee' etc seemed new, a satire on the title of the John Lennon song 'Instant Karma', or a satire on the slow collapse of the values and cogency of the then Labour government. Any values that you had to 'just add water' to could not taste of much in the longer term. 

But I put this cartoon here because with the internet we have, fifty years since it made cynical young readers laugh, because in the 2020s our media is caught up in the midst of its own ever shifting fever dreams, where it focuses on one idea then another so fast that readers can't keep up with what is presently promoted as the next trend/the next leader, as the latest dream is paid for by advertisers seeking to sell the latest wares as if they were created - instantly! 

There is a better life to be had by knowing your own mind and knowing where, and what, it should not be led to accept. No product or idea is instant, particularly when we trace how it was developed. Yes, information is relative, and the relativity that informs it tells me that space/time gives us a choice of which space/time from the past to recognise. But space/time cannot be sure of the future: do your best to live in the present, as near as you are able.