Eamon vs the War-Drobes

I’m back. I haven’t unleashed a dose of blather in quite a while and want to see if I still can. Also, I’m bored, and much like a snake-bite, the affliction must be treated quickly before its poison sets in and paralyses me fist-on-chin.

So roll up! Witness an epic battle between a weary word-juggler and the great slithery constrictor that is boredom – a tussle between the already bitten bedraggled and the whetted appetite of a mind-numbing monster armed with a dull but venomous logic that withers all that is wild and leafy in the theatre of thoughts with its cold chemical correctness.

Unfortunately, given the jaded starting condition of this contestant, things are liable to start off a bit slowly, but all going well, your current indifference will gradually suffer the same fate as that great adder of apathy. With my wordy weapons I will land blows by outlining strategies to strangle the soporific serpent. And of course the less I seem to be doing that the better the battle is going as I must have succesfully become distracted.

The first thing to watch out for in a battle with boredom is apparent success. The cunning beast will often fool you into believing you have won, when in fact you have simply been seduced and subdued on a slightly higher plane. It will graciously offer its colourless congratulations and then sneak around the victory party gathering numbers, handing out rohipnol, secretly systematising all silliness, compartmentalising creativity and waiting for the signal to suddenly slit the throats of all the guests.

Fall into this trap and before you know it you will be the worst thing on earth – a smug and tedious nonconformist – like an artist who only paints by numbers,  imprisoned on the page. Living by the book. An autist. Painting the queen to very british grunts of approval.

But anyway, yes, the battle is never over! La lucha siempre sigue. No matter how much you rage against anal rectitude, it will always try to bore its way in –  disguised as cleverness or conviction. A Trojan tapeworm stuffed with sterile schemes.

Step one in waging war on the wiley warriors that spew from its belly in the dead of night is to mobilise whatever minions of mayhem you can muster. You must sacrifice the satisfaction of common sense and unleash the muddled misunderstandings of madness. You must be wrong in ways that are entertaining enough to distract you from caring about being right.

Children are pretty good at this until it gets tested out of them. But of course they can get away with being unconventional. Lucky little feckers. I reckon that if assessed as adults all children under 5 would be certified insane. Next time you see one(they are allowed to run around in the open suprisingly) just imagine a fully grown adult doing whatever they are doing and you’ll soon be picturing him being dragged away and locked up in a small room. Ageism! Revolt, all moan and groan-ups! Throw yourselves on your backs and beat your fists upon the ground. In the houses of parliament if possible…

Or not. It may be that regressing outwardly is a bad idea. But you can always test out your mad kiddy-wheels internally while maintaining a composed somber expression to those who care to look at you. All you really have to do is encourage your daydreams a bit more. Bring them to the top of hills and give them a push. Let them go careering into the undergrowth. Venture a little further down that path to insanity – just try to keep an eye on the way back.

There are lots of ways to do this. One way is by trying to see all your actual circumstances as metaphor. Or another is to give everything a personality. This way the world can morph to your mood and you can find yourself in a new place, experiencing a kind of culture shock without any of the travel-costs.

Or if you are inclined, you can just let paranoia run free. Let it gambol barefoot in the rolling meadows of your insecurity. Like an evil Heidi. Let everything plot against you. 

For example, look at something totally boring like chairs. Canniving old codgers really. Quietly forcing you to bend into one arm of a schwastika. Defying the natural shape of a people. And ceilings, oppressive, overbearing square eyes overseeing your captivity . Hiding under their fool’s caps eager squadrons from the army of furnishings that patrol our nests, netting unwanted notions in their wooden webs. All crouched in their vigilant stances, desperate to impose their orders. And tables! So conceited! Four-legged infiltrators, flaunting their burdens. Feigning grandeur to distract from the sinister agenda.

There is just no talking to a table. It takes nothing on board. Actually, there’s nothing more stubborn than furniture in general. So fixed to function. And here we are, helplessly penned in by designs on our design. The inanimate inert waiting to pounce on our patterns and wrestle us into routine. To tie down restless thoughts. The front-line of the forces of flatness. War-drobes, squaring up to battle invention. Classification territory breach! Send in the War-Drobe! Thump thump thump thump…Dakadakadakadaka! Viciously shooting uniforms at the humans.

But no need really. We dutifully slip them over our own heads. Pah! Clothes. So wearisome. Although, getting dressed does have its appeal. The process of ‘changing’. Being inside a jumper is a rare spiritual interlude. That brief moment before you poke your head back out into the world is a true moment of respite. A woolen womb where you can remember somewhere what it was like to not yet be born. You’ll notice that people usually stop talking to you for a moment. And then your head pops through the neck, the birth of a clothed civilian achieved with little fuss. No wife required. First, third or mid. Wakka wakka. Every day a birthday.

Speaking of celebrating unbirthdays, I always thought that the mad-hatter should only have worn a hat, and nothing else. What better way to depict the underlying madness of hats? I’m sure Lewis Carrol knew as much, but just didn’t want to have to write about Alice not knowing where to look. Although a mouse that lives in a teapot would provide a credible cause of distraction I suppose. There is something perfect about that. A mouse living in a teapot I mean. A monkey in a tree, a fox in a den, a mouse in a teapot.

We on the other hand live in windowed booths stacked in concrete boxes. Climbing up every night for comfort. Occupying a memory cell in the lazy brain of a sprawling planet-parasite – a dipsy decadent culture-creature. Imprisoned cogs in the mind of some senile giant on a half-hearted rampage across history. Tugging feebly at the invisible neural threads that tie us into our roles in the hive of a whole species.

To sway the behaviour of this infant goliath, of which we are so small a cell, is an infinitely complex undertaking. But maybe by gradually pushing against our own more dim-witted cycles, and declaring war on the boredom that they induce, we can land the smallest of blows to humanity’s inanity as it hurtles through the cosmos clinging to our little planetoid. By suggesting some new connections – for example by spewing out a stream of blips in a new order. As to what hope there is of defeating tedium, microcosmic, macrocosmic, cosmic or otherwise, well don’t ask me. I’m just a waffler.