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Thursday afternoon anti-capitalist distress
I think what people in conversations about media piracy do not understand is how hungry, genuinely hungry, lack of access to art makes you - a sort of, wasting away, of your mind and soul both.
Which is how I came to have an argument with my husband at the beginning of the week. In the UK, they're beginning a new "we deliberately infect you with Covid so we can study it and we'll give you £4000" study, and I kept going back to look at it and all I could think about was I could buy some books.
Except, I couldn't; because that lump would be swallowed up at once in repairs, and replacements of essential things, and then life would go on with everything broken, everything dull - and nothing to distract yourself from it. But you sort of, slowly and over time, stop noticing or caring - although it still affects your mood, of course - things like, the impact that a broken vaccum cleaner has on the dirt around the house, or the impact that a broken mattress has on your back and how well you sleep, or the impact that disintegrating clothes has on your self-esteem. To the extent that when this emotional lifeline of, perhaps I could lie in a bed for a week and probably not die but possibly and then have £4000 at the end of it, you're not thinking of what a clean carpet would feel like between your toes, because you've come to a place of - if not acceptance about it, then normalcy.
But the books you could have the books again, the ones that never turn up in charity shops. You could see those niche screened once at a festival films, and follow up on your interest in particular artists, and support creators you admire, and really develop your thinking on this or that, and participate in conversations, and a reading list that gets longer and longer and longer.
Probably the nicest thing that has happened all year is that Howard David Ingram - who I admire very much - had a set of online talks on Folk Horror, with a "pay a little extra so that low-income people can come for free" program. I can't overstate how far this hour went towards making me feel like a human being again - being around smart people; new ideas; and above all, feeling wanted and valued by a wider society which rarely hesitates to say no, not for you at every opportunity, an un-scalable wall. And the talk was about a lot of films I've been meaning to see for years, but haven't been able to access of course, but it was still re-humanising. It's nice to have a break from shuttling between the sofa, the desktop, the bed, and occasionally the kitchen, for weeks that turn into months and then years.
And I say re-humanising, because the ultimate effect of a paywalled world is a constant awareness of, not only exclusion, but an exclusion which almost everyone sees as normal, natural and deserved.
The covid study is, perhaps, an acute moment of a wider social norm maybe I could catch a killer mystery flu that's known to cause as-yet-symptomless heart-damage in young people in order that I could have a standard of living that feels tolerable, it's just a faster variant of the working class jobs which wreck the body, from factory-work to cleaning, to being in the army or living on an oil rig, or doing saturation diving, or mining. or pissing into a bottle because you're not allowed a toilet break in the Amazon warehouse. My grandfather watched a teenager die from being soaked in molten steel at the factory; my husband left his last job after his manager threw a female employee against a wall; my last employer knowingly put me in hospital; we left the city I love because the only places we could afford were knowingly dangerous to live in, and yet there were plans to increase both the traffic and planes; and now I'm weighing up how bad, really, would a shot at brain fog and reduced lung capacity, because our society is so centered around the ownership of things, that the dirt and discomfort no longer has meaning to me, but perhaps if I could get some books, I would start to feel like a person again.
But then you turn on the news and your government has voted against free meals for children in poverty, and you think; well, at least it's not that bad for us just yet, and have another cup of tea to stave off the boredom of an empty afternoon.
I think what people in conversations about media piracy do not understand is how hungry, genuinely hungry, lack of access to art makes you - a sort of, wasting away, of your mind and soul both.
Which is how I came to have an argument with my husband at the beginning of the week. In the UK, they're beginning a new "we deliberately infect you with Covid so we can study it and we'll give you £4000" study, and I kept going back to look at it and all I could think about was I could buy some books.
Except, I couldn't; because that lump would be swallowed up at once in repairs, and replacements of essential things, and then life would go on with everything broken, everything dull - and nothing to distract yourself from it. But you sort of, slowly and over time, stop noticing or caring - although it still affects your mood, of course - things like, the impact that a broken vaccum cleaner has on the dirt around the house, or the impact that a broken mattress has on your back and how well you sleep, or the impact that disintegrating clothes has on your self-esteem. To the extent that when this emotional lifeline of, perhaps I could lie in a bed for a week and probably not die but possibly and then have £4000 at the end of it, you're not thinking of what a clean carpet would feel like between your toes, because you've come to a place of - if not acceptance about it, then normalcy.
But the books you could have the books again, the ones that never turn up in charity shops. You could see those niche screened once at a festival films, and follow up on your interest in particular artists, and support creators you admire, and really develop your thinking on this or that, and participate in conversations, and a reading list that gets longer and longer and longer.
Probably the nicest thing that has happened all year is that Howard David Ingram - who I admire very much - had a set of online talks on Folk Horror, with a "pay a little extra so that low-income people can come for free" program. I can't overstate how far this hour went towards making me feel like a human being again - being around smart people; new ideas; and above all, feeling wanted and valued by a wider society which rarely hesitates to say no, not for you at every opportunity, an un-scalable wall. And the talk was about a lot of films I've been meaning to see for years, but haven't been able to access of course, but it was still re-humanising. It's nice to have a break from shuttling between the sofa, the desktop, the bed, and occasionally the kitchen, for weeks that turn into months and then years.
And I say re-humanising, because the ultimate effect of a paywalled world is a constant awareness of, not only exclusion, but an exclusion which almost everyone sees as normal, natural and deserved.
The covid study is, perhaps, an acute moment of a wider social norm maybe I could catch a killer mystery flu that's known to cause as-yet-symptomless heart-damage in young people in order that I could have a standard of living that feels tolerable, it's just a faster variant of the working class jobs which wreck the body, from factory-work to cleaning, to being in the army or living on an oil rig, or doing saturation diving, or mining. or pissing into a bottle because you're not allowed a toilet break in the Amazon warehouse. My grandfather watched a teenager die from being soaked in molten steel at the factory; my husband left his last job after his manager threw a female employee against a wall; my last employer knowingly put me in hospital; we left the city I love because the only places we could afford were knowingly dangerous to live in, and yet there were plans to increase both the traffic and planes; and now I'm weighing up how bad, really, would a shot at brain fog and reduced lung capacity, because our society is so centered around the ownership of things, that the dirt and discomfort no longer has meaning to me, but perhaps if I could get some books, I would start to feel like a person again.
But then you turn on the news and your government has voted against free meals for children in poverty, and you think; well, at least it's not that bad for us just yet, and have another cup of tea to stave off the boredom of an empty afternoon.