The spectacle of our lives acted out in bitter lament
‘The everyday is always unrealized in its very actualization which no event, however important or however insignificant, can ever produce. Nothing happens, this is the everyday.’ (Blanchot. M. ( 1962) Everyday Speech.)
The city in ruination. The land in use. The land in turbulence of the performance of everyday life. The city falls into the chaos of order, the structure of form.
A journey from sea to land, from city to open space, the sensation touching lightly towards notions of beauty leaves me remorseful for my distain. The life which I keep on film seems distant from the steam on the bus windows.
The city cannot conceal its past. In silent screams, pavement lined with the marks of a past removed but not forgotten. The shopping mall has covered their graves. The Primark makes a loss and the shop on the corner must close. Fate. The man on the bench laughs: “Fate”.
The city of ruination, pause and memory. Impressions of grandeur in unholy haunts our notions of sufferance which render the ploy for success useless. The land of no return for the plastic trees and where milk bottles are high value investment.
There is a silence. There are silences. Those which we hear in the early hours sat alone in the dark, those which are heard in the hills. There can be no silence I reminded. Just as Highmore highlights, there can be no empty space. The spaces we perceive as dormant made alive by the plethora of sensations we can only choose to be privy too. Such sensations allow the mundane to flourish as spectacle unsung. Mourning our loss of perception.
The bird has been in the tree for 2 hours and 34 minutes. A lady with straw blonde hair echoes as she parades the space, sun light dabbling her step and highlighting the cracks on her face. “ We need the heavy weights” “ Yea he was brilliant” “No not that not today” A feast of caffeine to heighten sensation. The footsteps pass. Another arrives.
So what of these notations, these formulas, these passages, an archive of banality, a record of seemingly meaningless artifacts. Whose spectacle do we curate. To share such musings of potential, to invite such celebration of the silent absurd. To develop a soft compassion for the sense of uniformity which guides us swiftly to understanding. The apparatus of intensity to allow guidance through the quotidian.
The spectacle of our lives acted out painfully with all the lines spoken to fast, all the actions too slow. The actor collapses in sorrow perplexed by the nature his task. The silence is preferred so as not to lament such failings. The life continues, frail on the stage, doomed to the sufferance of misunderstanding. The seats in the theater fill and empty, clattering voices speak of the show. “He was wonderful” “ so realistic” “ I really thought it was really him” the actor sits still, now free from the character and sighs. Long, slow, bitter. He begins again to play himself and takes the 436 home.
Urban re:passages 