Silence: The Writing’s On The Hat

A car alarm went off outside. Same car. Third time today. I looked out the window at the offending overly-sensitive vehicle only to see a man, and I shit thee not, walk out to the white car wearing a blue baseball cap which read SILENCE. Was this performance art? Was it some kind of joke? Was it plain dumb co-incidence with the uncomprehending man wearing a message from the universe? Was it his job description? Did he walk around town silencing cars out of some inability to tolerate noise? A worried-faced woman wearing a scarf over her head stared at him from a nearby building as he silenced the car wearing his SILENCE hat. She didn’t look impressed. Who can blame her? A man wearing a hat that says SILENCE should practice what he is advertising. Twenty minutes later the car alarm went off again. It sounded its dissonant and ignored BEEP BEEPBOOOOPBEEP call of distress, deterring no thief, nor drawing any attention to its plight, until the man wearing the SILENCE hat reappeared from a doorway, strode purposefully over and silenced the thing forever. I felt as if I had just witnessed one giant metaphor for modern day media. The ‘fact checkers’ silencing alarms left right and center, before they attempt to silence them for good threatening social cancellation and law suits whilst wielding the tools of humiliation and mockery like cudgels; thick blunt instruments of silence in a time of horror.

The conspiracy theorists don’t help much with the whole mess. The ones who are worried about perfectly reasonable things such as side effects from covid vaccination, nuclear war, the rise of the New World Order, a possible ‘great reset’, the collapse of the global capitalist system and the great ‘economy’ scam, whether Princess Di was murdered, or if Elvis is still alive or just how. Not to mention modern day mysteries such as why and how does someone stuff themselves into a giant bag and zip themselves up without leaving any fingerprints or signs of injury. My mind wandered ever so slightly left of center there, see how easy it is to get distracted by wondering about the real stories behind the excrement we are fed as being ‘news’? Some of the more gullible souls swing too far to the realms of terminal paranoia and end up convinced that the world is flat and various public figures are actually reptilian in nature. Actually they may have a point with the latter unlikely scenario, since politicians and the Establishmentarians of various kinds show about as much warmness and empathy for other human beings as damn iguanas.

Any alarm bell sounding, any dissent or wondering, ponderings or investigation is met with extreme prejudice. It is met with a ‘journalist’ wearing a hat that reads SILENCE on one side and something like a big city TIMES or POST, running out to quieten the alarm, that sounds sometimes in error, but sometimes with good reason. It is a sign of the times that some scenarios that run through the darker corners of my brain would not even make it onto this page. After all, who wants to end up tied to a tree, with a gun thirty feet away, arms, legs and neck bound by rope and a gigantic shot gun wound to the right temple, or some other such contortionist nonsense. I do yoga regularly just to make sure that if I ever piss off the wrong, (or right depending on the way you look at matters) people, that I make it as easy for Them as possible. After all, mercy has to be earnt in these unenlightened totalitarian times of great suffering.

To not think about the horror and ridiculousness of the propaganda we are fed, to deny that laptops are not ‘real’ that is until the point of confession where we are allowed to consider the reality, to believe those who financially profit from ‘checking our thinking’, is to sell Truth down the river stuffed into one of those magic duffel bags that some poor spy allegedly crammed himself into in search of sexual kicks. I have no idea what is wrong with the ole noose round the neck, bathroom door clothes hook technique of autoerotic asphyxiation if some man – and it is invariably a porn-soaked man with a death grip on his own dick – wants to swing that way: potentially lethal, sure, but a lot less messy and complicated, but I digress.

To not confront the terror and the possibility of Chinese Communist Party bioweapon labs making covid and unleashing it on the world is to be unprepared for reality when it strikes. It is not being a doomsayer to look at the alarms going off and to see the Agents of the Establishment walk out, automaton-like, mechanically dull and efficient in their hats which read SILENCE, as they turn off the alarms that are ringing and wonder if those alarms need to be left to sound loud and clear.

The appearance of doing good is far more important in this instagram-able world, to get that herd-based social credit score pat on the head, than to embrace and amplify any reality that lays beneath the propaganda. People are warned off looking too deeply, and left scrabbling around in the flat earth theories and the shit of the anti-semitism and disgusting and false denial of holocausts, shootings (a pox on that shit Alex Jones) and other nasty and dangerous lies that people buy in order to force their own agenda. The Truth lays convulsing on the floor, with people either stepping over it to get to a juicy argument that serves their own fear and prejudices, or else in fear of humiliation, retribution or cancellation of their social status.

We are being owned by our own need for the herd to approve of us. I think one of my most fortunate saving graces, is that I never did give a shit about the herd or what the dull majority thinks of me, but I am an anti-social nightmare, and a dirty artistic type to boot. The dull majority is what matters, not someone who has been exiled from the mainstream for most of their life. I am split off from the herd, neutered and left without a voice or a future. Without the chattering and twittering majority turning off their own alarms and making sure there is no reason at all why the alarm is sounding, not just turning it off until they are told it is ok to leave it ringing by people who are paid to turn off alarms, there will be no positive change in society at all.

Alarms are sounding off everywhere. Balloons and unidentified flying objects being shot out of the sky by sidewinder missiles, covid being unleashed upon the world, strange huge metal balls washing up on Japanese beaches, a spate of toxic train accidents, a fire at a Tennessean uranium processing facility… I could go on, but why bother, we all see it, even if we try to tune it out. Bird flu is now spreading amongst humans, at a point where only now covid is becoming a non-issue has me nervous. It all seems a little unnatural. Why are these things happening and why are the alarms all being turned off? Soothing claptrap is being forced down our throats via what used to be ‘the news’ and now is the Daily Propaganda and Distraction dose for the masses? Our internal alarms that are meant to keep us safe and aware are roughly silenced and sedated with a constant stream of misinformation and we are expected to live our lives carrying on in ignorance and comfort until we are told we are allowed to react and accept. Even our outrage is being directed. We are helpless in the face of the new info-edu-politico-propaganda that threatens to turn our brains and our morals into jello.

It is all in the name of ‘stopping panic’, but really it is all just another method of control. Panic sometimes is the only really appropriate response. Action is sometimes needed fast. We are being treated like children to be controlled and kept in the dark, not adults who have a right to have a say in whether we want to be herded like cows to the slaughter towards a major world war. We will only be allowed to see it when it is right upon us and the bombs are falling on our heads and The Man is knocking on the door asking for our husbands and sons to go and fight the Russians, the Chinese or the damn aliens. Sometimes I wonder if the Powers That Be want a massive population reduction event, and to be frank this is one alarm that I have no desire to either sound for others, nor silence in my own head. I am probably being ridiculous. It is a chance I am willing to take.

The car alarm outside my apartment window went off for no reason, at least no reason that I could see. There was no person messing with its windows, nor slashing its tires. No one was hotwiring it to steal. Car alarms are useless really, they only serve to torture people in urban environments. The man wearing the SIILENCE hat, silenced the alarm and went back in. I half expected the car to drive itself off down the street it’s thief shouting ‘I tried to warn ya!” But nobody cares, not even the owner of the car. We all have insurance policies that buffet us from disaster and let us relax and not take quite so much care. The whole world has let the grey little insurance salesmen in and they dart around silencing alarms and paying out only when forced. We are a self serving, violent little species. I watch the world destroy itself with building more when we don’t use what we already have, interfering with nature, interrupting the natural order of things, and making a huge mess of it all and I feel like throwing my hands up at it all. Living in San Francisco feels like living in a bone yard, where the bones are still moving; animated yet devoid of life.

Life is art. Art is life. The two intertwine when done right, and diverge when wasted, meaningless and lost. Art is a game. I suspect it is all a great game of one kind or another. I have spent a lifetime playing ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ and ‘stick it to the man’. On one hand we have the extremist fanatics whose seduction techniques are unparalleled. They don’t just want, but they need to win us over in order for their far right or far left, or ultra capitalist or communist ideologies to prosper. They are the destroyers of peace, destroyers of nature, and corruptors of the natural balance of this planet. Humans have not learnt how to be civilized.

As a species we tend towards fascism and totalitarianism. All we have is excuses. All I hear is why we are not fault. Overly complicated and useless solutions are posited, but they are all tied up in red tape and academic institutions and their circular thinking, whilst none of them actually look at what works. We humans are the source of the problem. Most of the time the intent starts out as good, whilst the outcomes are invariably bad. Everything from homelessness to the scourge of nuclear energy and weapons is complicated and made as expensive and ruinous as possible. The only solution is disobedience. As a species we have to look at what used to work and how we fucked it up and how we get back to ‘the Garden’, back to Eden, back to happiness, and do so with fairness and equity to all.

We need to get back to peace and away from this Capitalistic nightmare that has led to extinction, horror, death, pollution and corruption, and to all the artists and the writers and the comedians and the people who are meant to sound the alarm, being SILENCED by the nameless man in stupid little hats that keep a lid on the real emotions, desires and needs of a world crying out for something other than the war and suffering we have got. I am an extremist of my own kind, I suppose. I am a freedom absolutist. An anarchist with a small ‘a’. I am against the establishment and the Powers That Be that want war and destruction. I stand for the right to simply live. To be. To exist and to simplify.

We need to move back towards the unique – the visceral instead of the the mechanical. We need the craftsmen making sustainable things, instead of the mass produced, environmentally destructive and artificial. We need to counter all that totalitarianism and propaganda with being the glorious, unpredictable, fantastical, limitless, ageless, authentic beings that humans have the potential to be. Let the alarms ring out….it is danger time, and the powers that be are trying to soothe and shame us into walking into the abattoir willingly and quietly.

Peace. …but I just wanna know when Elvis is coming back to Graceland…I mean…he has to be alive somewhere, after all….Perhaps he walked off the edge of the world…