Fifty Shades of Vanilla. Black Lives Mattered
2nd June – Fingering a ribbon of thought, as I sit here trying to navigate the minefield of black squares, plaintive apologies and earnest avowals to do better. Twenty-five years yoked to an industry that made no apologies for not giving the fruitiest fuck about anything other than more, more, more and more. Harnessed in the traces, all frothing at the bit for homes, second homes, land, investments, pensions, we barreled the chariots of marketing round and round the circus, fashioning pictures, barking nonsense, selling shit. Nothing we treasured wasn’t plundered. Children, friends, pets, agéd parents, homes, communities, all grist for the mill of money, pushing product, minting new coin. Limping home at night, sweat caked on our withers, we all agreed (with averted eyes) that we’d worked hard for our oats; although with day rates in the thousands upon thousands, few would have compared it to mining coal. But we convinced ourselves we deserved it; and, if anything, conversations were less about less, more about more. And we were all white, every one of us. Except for the exotic few, drafted in to move merchandise to the darker folk we didn’t work with and knew nothing about. This was our palace and our playground, and it was fifty shades of vanilla.
So in watching the spectacle of everybody falling over each other to apologize, post, promise, march, an obvious question dangles above the fray. What are we prepared to lose? In material terms, going forward; but also right now. What part of these soft empires, won by acknowledged privilege, are we prepared to heave out of the closet and put on the table? Because if the answer is ‘none’ and the promise is simply to listen, nod, tilt our heads and return to our little palaces; then doesn’t the exercise begin to look like, at best, disingenuous absolution? Confessing our sins so we might be forgiven, before trundling right on back to them? And at worst – God forbid – self-promotion? Deploying our epiphanies as marketing tools to better angle for a still bigger piece of the pie?
4th June – We used to talk about money all the time, like Monopoly, we knew who had loads, who was falling behind, who got this job, that account, who buried it like doubloons, who splashed it about, used it to get girls or curry favour. It was collaborative in its competitiveness, and we were kids in a sand box. The cult of possession underwrote everything like a bad smell, vulgarity camouflaged with aesthetics. But now? Now it looks like what it always was. A gaudy cheesecake of entitlement. The lid has been lifted on our machinations and people are running about in their underpants trying to sound dignified while meting out the correct quotient of self-flagellation.
6th June – Is the tone different this time? Spinning the dial in this perfect storm of crises, have we stumbled upon a frequency so strong it refuses to allow us to thumb past, protesting our best intentions? Maybe things will look as real tomorrow morning as they do tonight, and nobody will be off the hook. When we wring out hands and whimper ‘we’re sorry, this is terrible, what can we do?’ instead of being treated like brittle Countess Dowagers, will we be told to stop talking and start relinquishing stuff? Not just going forward; but right here, right now. We likely won’t succumb without a struggle, despite our plaintive tone. Because we’re not done with shame yet.
7th June – Moorland sheep, when startled, bleat; nervously at first, but with escalating alarm as you approach. This tremulous chorus, the trilling of anxious aunties, is calculated to warn the sheepish community that dominion over the patch of grass they have occupied, untroubled, for centuries, is under threat. Along with any God given right to keep their heads down and munch. Sheep are tender creatures, but pathologically anxious. Only outright hegemony over all they survey can keep them from collapsing into a wobbly blancmange of ninnyism. If you apologize and move on, they settle, munch, munch, munch. If however, you persist in your trespasses, they move as one body into a collective semi-squat and piss themselves, all at once and at the same time like, well, sheep. A Greek chorus of febrile pissing. It’s amazing; the fountains at Villa d’Este, but upside down. And if bleating and fizzing torrents of ungulate piss haven’t convinced you to move on, if you’re still standing there, pointing, laughing, then they will shit. It’s that simple. Poo-caked sphincters open up like the mouths of Mormons in the Tabernacle Choir, and great steaming cataracts of hot raisinets tumble forth. To recap. Sheep, when nervous, bleat, piss and shit.
August 2nd – Remember the dog days of June and July when, bridled alongside their fellow huskies, they hauled the sled of contrition across the frozen landscape, every wrinkle of invested privilege laid bare in the unremitting glare of a frigid COVID sun? Remember how they keened and wailed, ran their soft paws bloody on the ice of remorseful awakening? Howled, howled at the moon, about how they had gazed deep into the pools of their doggy souls and found them wanting? Like a million Lears, ‘oh, I have ta’en too little care of this!’ they cried, wailed, pledged and posted, whimpered their tongues raw on notes of penitence; swore by their children they would relinquish their white-knuckled grip on all the treasure, step down from the podium and usher up those they had conspired to elbow aside.
Funny. Then the sun came up, weak at first; someone shouted ‘Mush!’ and they were back on their feet, running, chasing the light. Did somebody say they deserved less? They meant more.
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