He was sitting on cold stone in the warm evening sun.
The air was dense and humid, and sounds of birds and stranger beasts lay atop the deep, humming sound from the Earth below.
Beneath him there were eight steps leading to the ninth – the one he was sitting on.
The top stone.
He felt calm and comfortable.
This had to be a dream.
It was.
It was Sunday again.
A chilly, late autumn Sunday, and Vix had once again travelled down to the Village.
He was happy he had taken up seeing Mr. Friend again on Sundays.
Every time spent in the Village made him look forward to next time, and the weeks in-between seemed to fly.
Mr. Friend was sitting in his usual chair, gesticulating with his right hand, as if chopping the air in a karate-like manner, or violently handshaking an invisible man.
Things had gotten rather hot already, as Vix had turned the conversation towards touching yet another subject where their personal views collided:
The one concerning the Future.
"There is only the moment, Victor. It’s the one thing that it is interesting to focus on. Always! Use your knowledge of the past to be the Master of the moment.”
“But everyone dreams of the future”, Vix said. “The future is where all the possibilities lie. It’s where dreams come true and change is possible.”
“Possibilities!? Look at what happened to all those who tried to escape the moment, Victor: the Futurists, all the science-fiction visionaries. They were all trying to escape into the future, and where did they end up?” Mr. Friend was fuming, and didn’t stop to wait for any answer from Vix; “I'll tell you where they ended up; they all ended up in the past! That's where you’ll find them now. No, I’ll give you some good advice: stick to the moment! Then you'll be on top of things."
Vix hastily took a sip of his coffee, sat it down again, and fired back:
"But the moment stinks! There's nothing for me in the moment. ‘The Now’ is far past its sell-by-date. Do you really think I’m so thick as to believe there is still a point in trying to stand up against all this shit surrounding me? Things seem pretty hopeless from the point where I'm sitting, all tied-up, chained to the present."
"Ok, yours is a particularly sorry case, so I'm almost tempted to agree. But the only hope is for the younger generations to open their eyes before they get too entwined in the messy frame of thought that is your inheritance. If you stick around in this mess for too long you’ll soon feel as if you’ve got too much to lose, which is of course just a silly self-deception, but it will make you end up just getting exhausted defending your own little piece of bad cake."
"So you, like a lot of old people who’ve had their share of fun, think it's the youth's responsibility to clean up the mess made by the generations who fucked up the whole scenery, emptied all the natural resources and left us with nothing but garbage?"
”Hah! Anger. Good stuff! It could well be the right road to take in order to find your way out of your ignorance.”
Vix found the old man particularly irritating today.
“Well it’s you who bring out the old punk in me.”, he said.
“Aren’t you a little too young to claim to be a ‘punk’?”
“Might well be. It still had an impact on me in retrospect. History you know.”
Mr. Friend didn’t listen. Instead he leaned back and smiled as he spoke:
“Ahh. Yes, the late seventies saw some pretty tough resistance awakening in the youth with all that punk rock and harsh political opposition spreading like a fire. And forgive me for saying this, but as much as I do believe this anger was a rightful manifestation of the intuitive feeling of injustice that young people felt at the time, with that sweet little slogan about the future… what was it, again?”
"No Future", Vix spat out.
“Yes! There you go. ‘No Future’. As I’m telling you. But as much as it summed up the whole situation at the time quite appropriately and was deeply and rightfully rooted in a will to change things, it all ended up as one of the greatest collective self-destruction cults the modern world has ever seen."
Vix couldn’t believe the nerve of the old bugger.
"So you're sitting here suggesting that Punk didn't amount to anything? I think you just might be able to get yourself a good beating if you dared to join me back into town and announce your views on this in public at the local pub. Especially to the people who had their lives severely touched, and maybe even completely changed by the whole movement of that day and age."
Mr. Friend laughed dryly.
"Yes. Yes. As a step on the ladder it might well be the best thing that ever happened at the time, but as evolution often shows that one extreme gets balanced out by the other in the next moment, I'm still not sure it can be viewed as a 'solution' to anything at all. And the destructiveness that backfired on the whole culture in the end just served the purpose of the very same authorities the whole movement sought out to oppose."
"In the end, maybe, whenever that might be. Hopefully we're not that close to it yet. I'm sure a lot of people got a hell of a lot out of your ‘self-destructing cult’.”
“And I’m sure you have a good example…” Mr. Friend folded his hands and leaned back in his chair. As always when he expected Vix to feel defeated.
“The DIY-thing, for one.”, Vix fired.
Mr. Friend gestured to hear more.
“The Do-it-yourself-thing.”, Vix repeated, and went on: “It seems like this ‘movement’ - if you insist on calling it that – inspired people to change a lot of the power-structures in music, fashion and various other aspects of youth culture back in the day. Of course this means a lot! It’s all about what and how you communicate with the world around you when you're at that age. And the way you think then will shape the way you think and act for the rest of your life.”
“Really?”, Mr. Friend put on an overly curious-looking face.
“Yeah. Really. It changed things.”
Vix felt very confident as he heard himself speak out to the old man.
There was a short pause. Then Mr. Friend said:
"Sure. But what if I pointed out that maybe someone saw this thing developing, someone quite smart, and that these smart someones made sure to exploit the whole movement and use it to their own advantage?”
“Like doing what?”
“Like dressing sheep in wolves' clothing, for a lack of better words. Or creating a kind of sub-cultural Trojan horse. You have to admit there's not that much left of DIY or anything with that spirit in today's pretty over-commercialised youth culture, only decades later?"
"Oh, that's the old ignorant fool speaking again. You don't think DIY had anything to do with things like electronic self-publishing and the whole open-source movement today?"
"Well, yes. Exactly. The open-source issue might actually be the best example here." Mr. Friend smiled smugly again.
"And how is that?"
"Well, I believe the initial idea was for people to be able to build open enterprise? Draw off eachothers resources, to create something without having to touch by corporate structures?"
"Something like that, yes."
“Free flow of information. Free sharing. Non-profit. Fancy slogans like that?”
“Spot on.”
"So what would happen if this thing gets off the ground, and becomes a bit threatening to the big corporations? Free enterprise can't be controlled and made profitable. A collision of intent is imminent. They would do what?"
"Try to stop it?"
"Now hear me here Victor, I'm not talking about the music industry alone. Unfortunately, as businesses go, it’s not known to be much of a MENSA stronghold. Their strategies of trying to strangle the public and close their eyes to new technology has done more to cement the aversion people have against them, than help them solve their profit problems? As desperate strategies go, theirs is like trying to minimize a balloon filled with water by squeezing it; you squeeze one end, and it expands in the other."
Vix wondered why Mr. Friend knew anything at all about the music industry.
"Guess you're right. At least they’ve helped us make music free."
Mr. Friend stared at him with his mouth half-open, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“Free?”
“Yes..”, Vix said. “Free.”
“You really think that’s what’s happening? That music is becoming ‘free’?”
“Ok, then. What would you suggest is happening?”
Vix’ confidence from a minute earlier had vanished.
“Do you know what one of the first things Mao Zedong made sure happened shortly after his ascent to power in the newly established People’s Republic of China?”
“No.”
“He made sure that they abandoned all copyright laws.”
“Why?”
“So that no artist opposing the authorities would be able to live off his or her art, or grow any bigger than totally irrelevant and non-influential outside of the system.”
“No shit?”
“Quite contrary: very shit! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you need to be part of this world’s economy in order to be a part of the world at all. Without sufficient backing you won’t have the strength to get up each morning and continue creating your personal little revolution. Or am I wrong again?”
Vix twisted on his chair, and said: “So what’s next? Mao Tse-Tung is behind the hidden global capitalist regime, too? And he personally invented the MP3 codec to disarm all cultural opposition by making each and everyone a starving artist without the energy to fight the power?”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Aw, come on! So all attempts at making something free will just tighten the chains?” Vix laughed and shook his head slowly.
"Ok, let’s talk about another industry, then - an industry where they make enough money to attract more brainpower than the music industry can dream of.”
“What industry?”
“The one containing the people who actually have made music abundant and worthless; the information technology industry.”
“OK?”
“Let’s move on to the software equivalent; your ‘open source’ movement.” Mr. Friend twisted like a cat getting ready to jump at a unknowing bird. “So, we have the people in the IT industries seeing this new development happening outside their own corporate structures, a clear threat to everything associated with their patents, monopolies, methods of gaining multiple payments for products that can be copied millionfold without any extra production cost. But contrary to the music biz they handle it right."
"How?"
"Simply by joining in. That's what they do. They join in, and say 'look, now we're sharing too'."
"But that's cool. That’s why some big software corps get kudos from independent programmers."
"Cool indeed. For those big corporations it is more than cool."
"Why not for all involved?"
"Because, Victor, do you really think an independent visionary young programmer would have one chance in hell against the marketing muscle that these enormous corporations have? If someone comes up with anything genial you're going to see their contribution get rapidly swallowed up in the machinery of the nice, big brother, who suddenly have become so 'eager to share'. I'm afraid it's a question of a drop of piss on one side, and an endless ocean on the other, and I'm sorry to say it'll be down to the idealistic, gifted, DIY-inspired young chap or chapess to play the part of the urinal variety in this equation."
This was another one of those moments where Mr. Friend managed to make Vix feel somehow young and stupid. He hated those moments, and didn't particularly want to see the smug old cat's point in those situations, even when he felt he might have been right. It felt like Mr. Friend stole something from him, something that was supposed to be his own.
He snapped back and hoped to change the subject by changing his approach:
"Whatever! That whole punk thing came long before my time as you pointed out yourself. I wasn't part of it, I don't even know anyone personally that was part of it. Punk today and the legacy of that period of time is mostly just a retro fashion thing, sold in readymade packages by the high street stores. And that's just entertainment - and not something I'd expect you to be in much favour of?"
As Vix changed his arguments, Mr. Friend did, too:
"Maybe. But it might have served a purpose up to a certain point.”
“And I guess one has to admit it doesn't come out as extremely intelligent-looking in hindsight… swearing on TV, knocking eachother over on the dancefloor, spitting in eachother's faces while sporting 'challenging' hairstyles…"
“No, the word ‘intelligent’ doesn’t quite spring to mind.”
Vix paused to think, now that they had buried the hatchets for a moment, then he said:
"But sometimes throwing some shit at someone, setting fire to something or just yelling at everything must feel pretty good. I think. Not that I would know, I've never done it myself, except maybe in my dreams."
"Well, I guess that's something." Mr. Friend grinned.
"Don't make me feel even worse about myself. It's heavy enough to have to face the daily obstacles I face."
"Are you really sure about that? I mean, are you sure it's not within yourself to define whether what you face is an obstacle or not?"
"Were you sent by the Scientologists, after all? Or some other sick band of opportunists? That kind of talk reminds me of those silly books by smiling authors with soft-filtered portraits on the back cover beneath quotes like 'this book changed the way I manage my life's resources' or 'I used to be a victim, and look at me now'."
"I love this skepticism, Victor. You really know how to make an old man happy, I must say. But then you knew that, didn't you?"
"Oh, get outta here. First you start by trying to convince me that fighting the power is a good idea by discrediting Punk, then you tell me to 'work on my attitude' like any other old fart. Next thing you'll tell me the second summer of love '88 and Acid House was the work of the C.I.A. or something?"
"Certainly not!”
Mr. Friend looked out the window.
Then he continued: “The Americans had nothing to do with that."
"Thanks."
"No, no, no. I believe there was mainly British intelligence involved in that one."
Vix let out a big sigh, then he stretched out on his chair, folded his hands on top of his head, and quickly let them down again.
"Oh, purr-LEASE! Come on." Vix was laughing out loud now.
Heads were turning inside the coffee-shop.
Mr. Friend looked at him in what he decided was an attempt on the ‘innocent-suggestion’-look.
"But surely you didn't expect that the fact that more than half of England's below 25's suddenly were raving around in fields in the middle of the night with their head stuffed with psychedelics would go unnoticed, did you?"
"But for God’s sake! You're trying to make me believe that British Intelligence invented it. You're such a fucking ace comedian. THAT’s what you are. That’s where you come from. You’re a retired comedian. It all makes sense now."
Mr. Friend ignored him.
"Victor! You see, we... they - those who'd like to be in control. Their kind never really invent stuff, not at all. It's a matter of being aware of what's inventing itself, then getting in the right position, and then finally make sure that it doesn't get out of control. Losing control, that's what it's all about. Not losing it. I mean."
Vix noticed that Mr. Friend seemed more than a little beside himself today. He also noticed the slight slip of the tongue, and the lack of the usual elegance in his desperate attempt at quickly getting back into style after the glitch. He was unsure about whether to arrest him on it there and then, but decided to let it lie and rather move on with the conversation. Even just to make things a little more interesting.
Mr. Friend continued: "You have to understand that what happened at the end of the eighties was something that had to be brought under some kind of control. Simple as that! Here you were facing a situation where the youth of the nation suddenly started creating new social bonds all on their own. Meeting in fields and unlicensed warehouses, engaging in ritualistic dance, accumulating real human power. And all this outside of the System - outside of where this kind of power was supposed to be. Recipe for disaster, if you ask me."
"And I do ask."
"Well, of course this couldn't be accepted. Luckily past experience of handling similar matters both at the end of the sixties - when things went completely out of control for every party involved - and in, as we just talked about, the end of the seventies - where the self-destruction of the uproar cleaned up its own mess almost by itself. This past experience meant that this time a different solution was to be applied."
”And this is where you go on and tell me that the authorities were the real entrepreneurs behind the whole Acid House movement? Get outta here!”
"No. I’m not going to tell you that. Not at all. Not in the beginning, anyway... But you must understand that eventually measures had to be taken. This thing couldn't be left to grow out of proportion all by itself."
Vix looked lazily disapproving at Mr. Friend.
Then he said:
"Like it had to be aided out of proportion by some external force? How about just giving young people some cred for once for pulling a new culture off by their own force?"
Mr. Friend almost whined in a near wimpish manner, as he continued:
"Sure! At first I don't doubt one minute that this was something that came straight from the untamed creativity of young, restless, bored souls. But very quickly some tags had to be put on all these sudden new activities for the collective understanding to hang on to. And these would preferably be quite negative tags. Why do you think that was?"
"Dunno. Cause all people ever see is negativity? In everything."
"People see what they're being shown. With the situation of the national tabloids getting access to the 'crime-scene' before anyone else, we were all soon dealing with yet another irresponsible, carefree and ’hedonistic’ youth culture, obsessed with sex and drugs. Didn't you ever wonder why the British tabloids were the ones who insisted on that if you were to be attending this new craze you had to take all the new designer drugs?”
"Oh, come on. As if there weren't enough drugs there to start with. I've heard all the stories from the first and now 'legendary' parties, and we're not exactly talking Pimms and cigars either."
"Yes. Yes. But that's not my point."
"What exactly is your point, then?" Vix was starting to get bored, and doubted he would be able to follow Mr. Friend for much longer.
Yet he thought the old man had to be given the chance to explain what exactly his point was:
"That as soon as this newfound energy of youth started showing some real muscles, the only sensible thing to do was to sprinkle some gasoline on the nice, warming little bonfire."
"Why? To make it even stronger?"
"That, and to emphasize the aspects of this new 'movement' that could be perceived as negative or threatening to the public eye, and at the same time make it look attractive to the forces in society that would ensure its destruction, and therefore, destroy the chances of it making any real change"
"And who might these forces be?"
"Greedy drug dealers, gangster cartels and powers of hyper-commerce and a plain superficial set of values. All sure to make the scene implode on itself."
"You've almost started sounding like me now."
"Maybe we're not so different, then?"
"I beg to differ."
"Whatever you say. But the fact is that while the majority of young people lose themselves to computer games, repetitive music and pill-popping, others were free to go on with the restructuring of the world.”
"So you're basically saying the entire nineties can be written off as a decade of escapism blindfolding the youth while the whole world were being mislead once again? I think you might be well out of touch with the workings of young minds for once . Of course you took a pill when going to a rave. That was half the fun. And anyway it was part of rebelling against it all, not following the squareness of the herd. It was about dropping out, man.”
”With the capitalist-owned pharmaceutical industry acting as pusher, and the tabloid press acting as advertising companies? My guess is you’ve been thoroughly screwed in your youthful naivety, my friend.”
"Ah come on! This time you're too far out on a limb. And Pac Man was the Devil in disguise leading our souls further into damnation? Hah!"
"Think of this: It’s basically the same group of people who are the major shareholders in the arms industry, the oil industry, in Hollywood's entertainment business and in the computer gaming industry. And they have only one thing in common; they’re controlling the whole business of murder and human suffering and are making unimaginable amounts of money from it. The arms industry is still bigger than the whole oil industry in terms of yearly turnover, and anyway they're so closely linked together that you'd be very clever to separate the flow of money and power in and between them." Mr. Friend said. Sounding like Vix.
"And here you are directing all your fury towards the poor entertainment industry? If it's the same people putting money into leisure, at least that balances out some of the bad things they do with their money elsewhere. Don't you think?" Vix said, sounding like Mr. Friend.
"Did you ever ask yourself why most computer games are based on war and killing?"
"To enable young people to let of some steam, maybe?"
"Maybe, but if people were more balanced and fulfilled in their lives they wouldn't feel the need to slaughter imaginary members of their own species, would they?"
"I guess not. Never thought of it like that."
"Haven't you ever questioned why most young people are so interested in violence and warfare? That it might not be, as some might insist "part of their nature". Most frustrations in kids don't turn up until they're old enough to start understanding that the world they grow into is somehow off its hinges, and that's when they're presented with their first toy gun, or their first computer wargame. Make monsters, and give them something to kill with."
"You sound a bit like a whinging old woman, but fair enough. You say this too is all part of the same game?"
"Of course it is."
"And you tell me it's all willfully set up. Ruthlessly constructed, like a concentration camp in Germany under the Nazis?"
"Like a concentration camp in Siberia under Stalin, like a Japanese concentration camp in Manchuria, or a more modern one in Abu Grahib or Guantanamo Bay under God knows who. A thinking soul can get a really hard time trying to imagine what a man-made system is capable of doing to members of its own species, especially once it turns into a ’legal entity’ or any kind of soulless and 'formalized' gathering of men. People are cowards, but as soon as they're part of forming a whole that is larger and more powerful than any of its single building-blocks, they'll do almost anything and hope to get away with it.”
”The gathering of a human herd?”
”Not really. A human herd is still just a gathering of humans, and will continue to act as that; a quite unpredictable flock of humans. I’m talking about the monster that is created when every single soul accepts that one frame of thought, or a set of rules, that is allowed to overshadow anything on their personal level; from their human conscience via their ’common sense’ to their whole worldview.”
”Like a religion?”
”Like a religion. Or a political system. Or a commercial system with all of its ridiculous laws. Any kind of system that removes all traces of humane judgment, or allows for someone to hide behind a set of external rules. A hive is a perfect way for bees to organise themselves, but we are born totally different creatures with totally different skills. We're born to think for ourselves, act for ourselves, and judge by our own judgment. Together.”
”And not hide behind things such as communism or fascism?”
”Any –ism. Any external idea that is being accepted as an authority to what you deep within feel and know is ’the right thing’ – usually a thing that varies greatly from situation to situation in life, and that requires that you are in touch with yourself – something most people seem to be far from.”
”You think people would act otherwise if they were in touch with themselves? I've seen people who, if they were to get more in touch with themselves as they are already, would be even bigger walking disasters than they are now."
"You've got to give and take, Victor. Give some slack, as you like to put it yourself."
"Yeah, but seriously. Don't you think humankind need some kind of guidance when you see the messy state of people running things by themselves?"
"Sure. Just show me one example of people running things by themselves in modern society, and I'll judge from that."
“Victor.”, Mr. Friend said abruptly.
“Yes?”
“What exactly is it you want?”
“Want?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
Vix felt as if someone had poured a kilogram of flour into his mouth, and that his whole being went bloodless and dry.
“I…” he stuttered.
“Yes, you.”
“I want… JUSTICE!”
“Aha. Justice.”
Vix nodded frantically.
“What kind of justice?”
“Wh…”
“Justice as in equality for all in every aspect of life, here and now? Justice as in you’re a bastard in this life and get reincarnated as a rat in the next? By what measurement do you want justice?”
“I…”
Vix gave up, and let the conversation rest from there on.
Back at the Shelter, he stumbled across a new website.
It was called peacerael.org and had been started up by people from both sides of the Israel/Palestine tragedy, who were living in the troubled areas.
It was a kind of online forum, but instead of the usual fiery discussion boards, this one only allowed for people to post their poems.
This way, common people who were touched by the insane conflict had an opportunity to express their anger, sorrow and frustration without having to defend or argue for or against anything; it was just a place to express your personal feelings for the world to see.
There was pain, of course. Much pain. But those who posted here had in common that they just wanted to show what was actually happening on a human level, and by doing so hoped to build some kind of bridges directly between people, and not through any kind of system of politics or belief.
This evening a young mother from Ramallah had posted her words, and for some strange reason Vix felt that she hit him somewhere within his aching soul where he usually didn't feel any kind of response whatsoever.
It could have been guilt, but guilt caused by his own blindness, he concluded, and not just the usual guilt he struggled with everyday, the one that came from an old teacher, his parents, or the simple fact that he never amounted or aspired to anything in life.
Her poem read:
WHILE YOU DANCED
While you danced
My life was shattered
Blood was shed
While the music played
I lost my only child
And faith in God
He noted down the events of the day, and backed up his main drive.
That night, Vix could feel the full weight of the world on his shoulders as he went to sleep.
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