The Chatter

The cast and characters in the national newspapers are the same. The celebrities are the same. But where is all this going?

I find myself frustrated by the apparent futility of all the chatter. It has been reported for months and months…the same information about Zuma, Selebei, Mbkei, Mugabe, Agliotti… But then you stir it all together with the rest: ‘when will Ryk get a girlfriend’ and his book will come out after this Olympics (literary shadowboxing after Whites’ timeous release after the Rugby World Cup), Heyneke Meyer retiring to a farm outside Pretoria (apparently heartbroken), media parasitism of ‘Britney Spears’, what are the ten best foods, films, shoes – to look out for in 2008. So what? I saw an impressive German sedan sporting the same words on his number plate. People walk around with t-shirts saying ‘So What’. It’s everywhere. People’s thoughts and ideas. The chatter.

Now even ‘So what’ is part of the chatter. The chatter chatters about itself. This article is more chatter, more noisy impulses, more tidbits of another person’s thoughts filling up people’s heads.

I find when I read something in the newspaper it starts to blur. I forget what I am reading. It fuzzes into the next story, or the next column. More and more and more information, details, what did this person do or say, and why, and what does it mean. On and on and on. Page after page, paper after paper, url after url, sms after sms.

And still, there’s more. More ploys and plays. Fred Khumalo has a new book, and another in the works. Oliver Roberts says Khumalo’s glasses are the kookiest in the building, even more than David Bullards. Andrew Donaldson calls this building ‘a Stygian hole in Rosebank’. What does it all mean? Where is it going?

Someone writes about a war criminal…blowing kisses to his daughter…someone talks about a child soldier who hacks off first one hand, then another, then feet, before dumping the person into a long drop toilet. Another report says that there was snow for the first time in living memory in Baghdad. And they think it is a good omen. The weather in Johannesburg has been unusually cool, and damp, and brooding. It rains and rains, and then weak sunshine comes out only to be overwhelmed by more rain.

For years I have been warning and commenting on the oil price. People like me predicted $100 some time ago. I am surprised it’s taken this long, but now that it’s here I wish I could wake up and we could be back in the days before $100 oil. Gold prices are going nuts. Stability is under threat: in markets, in malls and farmer’s fields.

The chatter confirms something that I find horrifying, and terrifying: though we know… it will still unravel, despite our dismay, and in spite of our knowledge. Forewarned is simply having information. The world is Diana and the press, and we know what happened to Diana. The world is a pack of hounds, and you and I are one of those hounds, voracious and fascinated and greedy at the same time. Right now Britney Spears is an analogy for a kind of innocence being stolen, being spoiled. We’re entertained by this. To us it is not someone’s life, it’s something interesting. Her life is being stolen from her, and millions are tuning in for the show, breathlessly reading the columns and feasting their eyes on images her. Our voyeurism is also a paralytic form of participation, a sort of yielding co-operation to the fatality at work. The audience compels the paparazzi, who know that everyone is watching. And so the snake begins to eat its own tail. Britney’s demise is also our own, the world grows older, but not wiser, and we are powerless to prevent either.

I see that I am living in a double universe. I’m the character played by Russell Crowe in American Gangster. I am the Richie Richards of my world, and the gangsta’s of my world are the issues that grow as our common demands – our greed (and who said ‘greed is good’) – rope together to form a twisting behemoth. I look upon our ill-gotten gains – from oil – and the cost, to the environment. I’ve toiled many evenings and mornings, raging, lamenting, commenting on where this is all going. Sometimes I also think ‘everything is going to be all right’. It isn’t.

The Gangster Syndrome

In ‘Gangster’ the Crowe character broods and spies and tracks and follows. After a substantial lead up period, Crowe puts himself at the centre of things. He goes to a wrestling match armed with his camera. But there is a dizzy period, right after Lucas’ mother says: ‘Everybody knows you can’t kill cops’ that you wonder – is this going anywhere? Is Lucas going to carry on thriving (at the expense of others)?

He goes to church, and while there, whilst singing hymns, beyond the church doors, strings of policemen infiltrate a vast, scabby building infested with drug dealers. It is a long sweaty climb through the warren of rooms. But this is the answer to the question: where is it all going?

There is a world of luxury, of jewelry and sex and big, lavish meals. It’s not just in America; it’s everywhere, and drugs are simply a metaphor for our hopeless consumer-based addictions. There is the bliss, the cash, the decadence, the cars, the clothes. But there is also a room where it is all borne; where the money is counted, where the drugs are cut, the shopping bags are spilled, and the clothes come off. It’s a place, seemingly harmless, of powders and potions that lie behind other things. And it will be broken down with a heavy hammer. Those on the other side register shock and surprise as the powder poofs up to large explosive discharges. Blood will spatter this powder, and those in the room will be overcome by the sheer determination of Reality. At last all of the downtime manifests in massive bloodletting. There is some relief in that.

Even so, in the movie, we see that Richards and Lucas ultimately became friends, just as Mbeki and Mugabe, Selebi and Agliotti, Beowulf and the demon develop their mysterious allegiances.

Barry Ronge astutely observed in a recent Sunday Times magazine that the world is such a grim place to behold now that most people prefer not to be in it. The most popular movies are the most unrealistic. I am personally sickened by this delusional state of affairs, but I am no less immune to it.

The epiphany is simple. We are not in the world even though we are the world. We are disconnected, lonely, troubled, and occasionally, satisfied and thrilled by myriads of impulses, overloaded with food, information, work and infotainment. We will be shed violently, or forced to connect, also: violently. In a sense it is true what was always true. Blood washes clean, even the clatter, all the clutter, from our lives. This is the way life starts fresh, and clean, and clear again. Inevitably all the shouting, all the restless noise, must be lost until the glass walls of life, and all its fragments, can shatter and smash so that all the separate compartments can be bloodied, and reconnected, resuscitated. I believe we already know that this massive bloodletting will happen in our time, in this time, and soon: while we are still alive.

I wonder then, is it not wisdom, to abandon pontification, analysis and rationalizing. If we’re all fucked, perhaps the only sane thing left to do is something that is important enough to do while we still can. Perhaps nothing else needs to matter if one thing matters enough. Perhaps that can quiet the insane chatter before the storm.