Winston had lost. Big Brother had won. The great tragedy of it all was that Winston was not the same man anymore, if indeed he was a "man" and there was even a point in such a distinction as "gender" anymore. He had been irreversibly changed by Big Brother; dismantled and re-engineered to welcome their hatred, their lies, their control over his thoughts and even his own blissful death.
Paul shut the book flat, palms pressing each cover, and carefully placed the aged copy of George Orwell's '1984' back into its place amongst his other books on a dusty bookshelf in his bedroom. The story had impressed upon him many things, but foremost came the feelings of absolute helplessness and despair and depression.
Paul loved books. He adored books. Books had affected the way he had grown; the person he had become. Like strapping a sapling plant to a straight, narrow stick pointing vertically in the air, their authors had pushed ideas and dreams and desires and goals into his head. His goals were those of people who had came before him, his travels had taken him nowhere that had been unexplored, his thoughts were not thoughts that hadn't been thought before: he considered his tiny self entirely useless when confronted with the enormous wisdom and experience of the past.
Yet, he would always continue to read. He swallowed books one after the other with a fervent hunger for knowledge and wisdom, different opinions and perspectives, ideas and dreams. Most importantly, he read books so that he may one day write his own. Yes, he thought, writing was the most important thing; recording something original. That was the ultimate goal.
He spent a moment running the forefinger of his right hand over the books in the shelf, pondering which to read next, but he could not decide. More than likely, he would make the decision in an arbitrary, impulsive fashion and pick a title that he felt suited his mood at the time. Pauls' mood, not that he could help it, was forever in flux. It swung violently and without warning around an invisible axis, causing pain and suffering not only to him, but to all who'd tried to love him. There were times of peace, but in the background there was always an above-average level of paranoia that he could not rid himself of.
When things became too much, he would lie upon his side, hidden by the covers of his bed. His confidence would shrivel and his character would curl, reflexively, into a foetal position with his forehead moving towards his knees and his knees moving up to his chest.
He strolled from the bookshelf over to his bed and laid there, hands tucked underneath the back of his head, thinking for a moment before rolling over: "You could never write. They'd laugh at you." He said out loud in a flat, emotionless tone, as if what he'd said was fact, as undeniable as the laws of gravity.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Monday, 25 May 2009
Strange Dreams.
That night, Paul slept fitfully.
He dreamt of a factory, only it couldn’t be a factory for it was coloured as one would colour a circus; garish stripes of red and white and blue covered the walls and floors and stalls and machines. White flashing lights were everywhere, yawning into candescence before blinking off, then slowly on, then off again and again. Eerie accordion music played, as though this was some kind of carnival.
A giant copper coloured contraption that filled the room came into view, ornate and antique in appearance, with steam and smoke spouting from brass tubing on top of it and a loud whistling like that of a steam train and huge glowing doors that slid apart, jagged in nature like the jaws of an abominable creature. It was easily twenty feet across and perhaps fifty or sixty feet tall.
Each moment or so the jaws of this giant, mechanical beast ground open like a goldfish, though it bore no resemblance to anything as harmless in any other way, and a faceless mannequin would inch along a wide belt that extended from the machine, driven by oiled gears that dripped with the same clown-like red and white paint that adorned everything else in this factory of madness. The belt moved onwards and onwards, towards a dark horizon where Paul could see nothing. He could only hear a repetitive banging; tremendous and fierce, like a thousand boots worn by a thousand feet beating the ground in unison.
The sound drowned out the hideous accordion music as it echoed throughout the entire building, obscene and abhorrent, where it shook the endless concrete walls without any windows, rising from a concrete floor that was scuffed and circus-red. Despite the pounding of his ear drums by the insistent and incredible noise, he wanted to discover its source; he carefully walked along the path that the snake-like belt made, glancing occasionally at the frozen human copies that rode upon it. Bang. Bang. Bang!
His body trembled with each and every strike, reminiscent of a giant gavel cracked by a judge in court, though he had never been in court and had only assumed that was what a gavel would sound like. “Order! Order!” Yelled an imaginary judge, crying for the spitting steam, the grinding of the gears and cog-wheels and even the humongous banging machine to cease their mechanical din.
Soon he reached a tall-looking wall and there was no other way to follow the motionless bodies and no other way to find the whereabouts of the thing responsible for the banging without climbing aboard the conveyor belt itself. Bang. Bang. Bang!
He rode this contraption, rubber underfoot and smelling of oil, standing between two of the lifeless mannequins. And then, looking up at one of them, he could ignore the sound for a moment; these were not dolls, but people! Their features were frozen and not a sound escaped from their bodies – no breath, no heartbeat, not even a whisper – and they were drawing closer and closer to the gavelling.
Paul recoiled in horror and looked upwards at a giant fibreglass figure in the shape of Simon Cowell, one right arm clockworking upwards with an audible clicking sound, its hand holding a giant stamp. The moment it was raised, the arm crashed down upon the conveyor belt and the space around it shook; the mannequin was crushed into dust, but the hand with its pinkish flesh-coloured paint, cracked in places and dirtied with soot and powder moved immediately upwards.
The grinning and inhuman face of Simon Cowell was bearing down upon Paul, who now stood where the previous person stood. The accordion music reached a crescendo. Paul was now standing directly where the crushed person had stood and, looking upwards at the hand as it clicked and rose as high as it could, he understood it all: reading the indentation of the symbols on the underside of the giant stamp, he saw the word ‘Dreams’ with a cross through it.
The gears finally stopped clicking.
The hand fell.
Paul gasped and gripped his pillow, eyes snapped wide open and darting about the room. He released a short sigh, then climbed from his bed, away from its sweat-soaked sheets and sweat-soaked blankets. He peeled away the sweat-soaked underwear and black T-shirt he wore for bed.
“Ugh,” he grunted, "bloody Simon Cowell." Then he wandered into the bathroom to wash off the sweat.
He dreamt of a factory, only it couldn’t be a factory for it was coloured as one would colour a circus; garish stripes of red and white and blue covered the walls and floors and stalls and machines. White flashing lights were everywhere, yawning into candescence before blinking off, then slowly on, then off again and again. Eerie accordion music played, as though this was some kind of carnival.
A giant copper coloured contraption that filled the room came into view, ornate and antique in appearance, with steam and smoke spouting from brass tubing on top of it and a loud whistling like that of a steam train and huge glowing doors that slid apart, jagged in nature like the jaws of an abominable creature. It was easily twenty feet across and perhaps fifty or sixty feet tall.
Each moment or so the jaws of this giant, mechanical beast ground open like a goldfish, though it bore no resemblance to anything as harmless in any other way, and a faceless mannequin would inch along a wide belt that extended from the machine, driven by oiled gears that dripped with the same clown-like red and white paint that adorned everything else in this factory of madness. The belt moved onwards and onwards, towards a dark horizon where Paul could see nothing. He could only hear a repetitive banging; tremendous and fierce, like a thousand boots worn by a thousand feet beating the ground in unison.
The sound drowned out the hideous accordion music as it echoed throughout the entire building, obscene and abhorrent, where it shook the endless concrete walls without any windows, rising from a concrete floor that was scuffed and circus-red. Despite the pounding of his ear drums by the insistent and incredible noise, he wanted to discover its source; he carefully walked along the path that the snake-like belt made, glancing occasionally at the frozen human copies that rode upon it. Bang. Bang. Bang!
His body trembled with each and every strike, reminiscent of a giant gavel cracked by a judge in court, though he had never been in court and had only assumed that was what a gavel would sound like. “Order! Order!” Yelled an imaginary judge, crying for the spitting steam, the grinding of the gears and cog-wheels and even the humongous banging machine to cease their mechanical din.
Soon he reached a tall-looking wall and there was no other way to follow the motionless bodies and no other way to find the whereabouts of the thing responsible for the banging without climbing aboard the conveyor belt itself. Bang. Bang. Bang!
He rode this contraption, rubber underfoot and smelling of oil, standing between two of the lifeless mannequins. And then, looking up at one of them, he could ignore the sound for a moment; these were not dolls, but people! Their features were frozen and not a sound escaped from their bodies – no breath, no heartbeat, not even a whisper – and they were drawing closer and closer to the gavelling.
Paul recoiled in horror and looked upwards at a giant fibreglass figure in the shape of Simon Cowell, one right arm clockworking upwards with an audible clicking sound, its hand holding a giant stamp. The moment it was raised, the arm crashed down upon the conveyor belt and the space around it shook; the mannequin was crushed into dust, but the hand with its pinkish flesh-coloured paint, cracked in places and dirtied with soot and powder moved immediately upwards.
The grinning and inhuman face of Simon Cowell was bearing down upon Paul, who now stood where the previous person stood. The accordion music reached a crescendo. Paul was now standing directly where the crushed person had stood and, looking upwards at the hand as it clicked and rose as high as it could, he understood it all: reading the indentation of the symbols on the underside of the giant stamp, he saw the word ‘Dreams’ with a cross through it.
The gears finally stopped clicking.
The hand fell.
Paul gasped and gripped his pillow, eyes snapped wide open and darting about the room. He released a short sigh, then climbed from his bed, away from its sweat-soaked sheets and sweat-soaked blankets. He peeled away the sweat-soaked underwear and black T-shirt he wore for bed.
“Ugh,” he grunted, "bloody Simon Cowell." Then he wandered into the bathroom to wash off the sweat.
Britain's Got 'Talent'?
Paul sat in front of the large television in the living room. “Britain’s Got Talent” was playing across the screen, with its two presenters – the oddly named Ant and Dec – wearing tailor-made suits that did not suit their humble North-Eastern backgrounds.
The audience was roaring with excitement at a colourful mixture of groups and individuals, some wearing suggestive burlesque outfits, some army fatigues, one or two cross-dressing and the rest suits they’d been given by the show’s wardrobe staff.
The would-be judges of this menagerie of bizarre animals sat behind a desk slightly away from the audience, beaming and flawless in their sophistication that not a single contestant in this carnival could ever hope to achieve. Their shining white, perfectly straight teeth, their clean and shining hair, their fashionable attire. They glowed.
These were the demagogues of the people; far more important than the likes of politicians, great philanthropists, or even criminals, their sphere of influence was abominable and huge. They could and would decide, on a whim, the fate of peasants, turning them into human money-trees who’d – they all knew it, Paul hoped, but couldn’t be sure – be popular with the public for but a moment before their names drifted from guest-lists, their faces disappeared from newspapers and no television or radio show would exhibit their “talent” ever again.
Winners of the show would become transient pseudo-celebrities, but there was a ceiling to their ambition. Soon they would return to their typical and mundane jobs, grafting from nine in the morning to five in the evenings, all the while dreaming of ‘the good old days’. Soon, they would become shadows of their former selves, miserable and pathetic and wearing a mist of stale fame, hanging around their person like stale sweat, highlighting their descent into normality like a neon sign. When drunk enough they’d tell their story to anyone who’d listen; they were once heroes of the public, prodigal sons of the demagogues.
The audience roared and screamed and squealed, ringing in Paul’s ears before he turned off the television and the light and left the room, pensive and sickened, sad in advance for those poor fools grasping at “fame”.
Heading up the stairs to his bedroom, he was reminded briefly of a quote from George Orwell’s “1984”: ‘He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.’ Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Piers Morgan: this trio could turn an untalented, unimpressive, absolutely normal individual into a golden model of fame to the public. Of course, they would only choose those capable of supplying a sufficient stream of revenue, or it would all be pointless.
The country was involved with two wars, there was a global recession and unemployment rates were rising with each passing day: was this really the time to be thinking about these underhanded snake-charmers, filling their pockets by stepping on the heads of transvestites, groups of burlesque dancers and teams of young black dancing men in army fatigues? He’d begun to believe that the television schedule had been remodelled to take the country’s mind off of its financial situation...
The audience was roaring with excitement at a colourful mixture of groups and individuals, some wearing suggestive burlesque outfits, some army fatigues, one or two cross-dressing and the rest suits they’d been given by the show’s wardrobe staff.
The would-be judges of this menagerie of bizarre animals sat behind a desk slightly away from the audience, beaming and flawless in their sophistication that not a single contestant in this carnival could ever hope to achieve. Their shining white, perfectly straight teeth, their clean and shining hair, their fashionable attire. They glowed.
These were the demagogues of the people; far more important than the likes of politicians, great philanthropists, or even criminals, their sphere of influence was abominable and huge. They could and would decide, on a whim, the fate of peasants, turning them into human money-trees who’d – they all knew it, Paul hoped, but couldn’t be sure – be popular with the public for but a moment before their names drifted from guest-lists, their faces disappeared from newspapers and no television or radio show would exhibit their “talent” ever again.
Winners of the show would become transient pseudo-celebrities, but there was a ceiling to their ambition. Soon they would return to their typical and mundane jobs, grafting from nine in the morning to five in the evenings, all the while dreaming of ‘the good old days’. Soon, they would become shadows of their former selves, miserable and pathetic and wearing a mist of stale fame, hanging around their person like stale sweat, highlighting their descent into normality like a neon sign. When drunk enough they’d tell their story to anyone who’d listen; they were once heroes of the public, prodigal sons of the demagogues.
The audience roared and screamed and squealed, ringing in Paul’s ears before he turned off the television and the light and left the room, pensive and sickened, sad in advance for those poor fools grasping at “fame”.
Heading up the stairs to his bedroom, he was reminded briefly of a quote from George Orwell’s “1984”: ‘He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.’ Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Piers Morgan: this trio could turn an untalented, unimpressive, absolutely normal individual into a golden model of fame to the public. Of course, they would only choose those capable of supplying a sufficient stream of revenue, or it would all be pointless.
The country was involved with two wars, there was a global recession and unemployment rates were rising with each passing day: was this really the time to be thinking about these underhanded snake-charmers, filling their pockets by stepping on the heads of transvestites, groups of burlesque dancers and teams of young black dancing men in army fatigues? He’d begun to believe that the television schedule had been remodelled to take the country’s mind off of its financial situation...
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