Speechless

Back from Caribbean! I arrived home today to my dark and empty flat only to find that the world is exactly as I left it. My phones are filled with “Hi Carmen, what do you do/what are your rates” messages despite my lengthy attempts at descriptive advertising and “away” emails, people simply did not even bother to read. I don’t understand how a man would think that you would want to see him after he’s spoken to you like that but oh well, maybe I’m just different. I can’t help but feel a little disappointed to be home. It seems that I managed to miss a zombie invasion by the looks of my telephone and honestly I could have spent another week out there. I’m possibly planning a trip to Paris in June so I couldn’t really take an extra week off.

I have been noticing lately that conversation is becoming really shallow and meaningless. People just talk for the sake of dialog, to fill a void of silent awkwardness but nobody is really mentally or emotionally engaged with their surrounds or the people they’re talking to. I have not bumped into anyone who is enthusiastic about anything right now and London seems to have taken on a dull, glum aura of general disinterest and discontent. Perhaps it’s the arrival of winter that has changed the mood somewhat but I used to encounter strangers and have spiritual or metaphysical conversations with them; this does not seem to be happening to me lately.

The Caribbean trip proved to be exactly the kind of escape I needed. Far enough away to not have to engage with the outside world and enough media to distract me from my own mind. I really forgot how therapeutic television could be. I spent an entire day doing a movie marathon and have caught up on all the latest blockbusters. I learned a lot from filling my head with fictional nonsense.

One of the movies I saw was Total Recall and while I was watching, realised that we now have a solution for a possible alien invasion. The US government should be throwing money at science fiction movies; it’s the best propaganda material we have made to date. If I was an alien plotting to invade earth and somebody was to beam up Total Recall to my space ship, I’d think twice. We present ourselves as very advanced, very high tech and yet exhibit all of the traits associated with irrational mammals. We have the power to destroy our planet and were stupid enough to do it. That should be enough to scare the wits out of any alien. If that isn’t enough, we could beam up a Twitter feed which reads like the private thoughts of people living in an insane asylum.

I wanted to write something deep and meaningful to quell this vacant feeling inside my soul. I scrolled through all of the major quotation websites and the various top one hundred quotations of all time lists to try and bring you something valuable with content and meaning. Instead of finding an inspirational quotation, I have come to the conclusion that the cumulative knowledge of the world has reached a impasse where nothing is particularly new or enthralling.

Everything that can be said has been said before. Our language lacks a certain depth of connotation to express a notions importance and significance. Love and thought have been failed by their own language. Humanity has been failed by speech. Like dogs on a leash we know what we want to say but just as we reach for the idea the leash rebounds on us and we are left with an empty sentence of unoriginal, vacant words that are tired and overused.

There was more truth in the grunt of our caveman ancestors.

Authors, like artists try to weave words into complex new sentences to create art from the mundane. There is more art in silence. A person of greater depth will interpret more meaning from a moment of silence but actual words will let it down.

If only it were polite for a lady to grunt. I’m sure there is a much more appropriate grunt perhaps combined with a sigh, a sighing grunt so to speak that would more accurately convey an emotion or the soul of human kind.