I - 13th March 2009
“Star On The Edge Of Precipice” it says — “Jade Nearing The End”.
Jesus Christ Almighty. Wincing, and eyes scrabbling for the nearest Anything Else. A slither of roll-up reek wispin’ about the curtain. The sell-by date on the curve of a Diet Coke bottle. A nicotine-yellowed biro-scrawled map hung on the wall above the laptop.
“This is intolerable”, saying, “swear to God, this whole thing. It’s intolerable.”
“What is?” asks Dymphna, hunched in the corner of the room next the wardrobe, picking tendrils of blue/green light from the gap atween the skirting and the wall. “What’s intolerable?”
“This.” Gesturing to the AOL. “This, all of this. Jade Nearing The End. Star On The Edge Of Precipice.”
She shrugs, wets a finger, runs it along the faux-pine finish, a wisp of turquoise rising then for to slither about her wrist. “Nothin’ to me. What is it to me if Jade Goody’s nearing the end or she isn’t? Jais’ sakes - people I know are dying. It’s hard enough pretendin’ to give a fuck about them.”
“That’s not the point” saying, jabbing at the touchpad, bidding the screen collapse. “That’s not the point at all. Look - honestly, if you aren’t fuckin’ terrified by this - I mean terrified - I mean cowering ‘hind the curtains, hands-over-eyes, ear-holes-sewn-shut, pishin’ yourself terrified, then…” A sigh. “I don’t know. I’m fuckin’ terrified, that’s what I do know, is that, is that I am fucking terrified.”
Studying a nub of amethyst prised out the paneling, held atween thumb and forefinger, she says, “I don’t recall you were over terrified, so I don’t, when that same screen there was black wi’ the bodies slung like wet rags about Gaza not three months ago. Nor when your man was shot dead in Craigavon. Nor -”
“That’s not the same,” I say. “That’s… the whole point is that those things are not the same.”
“Why? Because them dead or dying weren’t off the telly?”
“No - no, not because they weren’t off the telly, but because when they were on the telly - when they were the subjects of all them pictures, reports, commentaries, opinions - they were on the telly as human beings. Those were human tragedies. Reported by humans. However wrenching, however harrowing, still that news came to a fella’s eyes and ears from the realm of the Real.”
“Well what is this, if not Real? What are these, if not humans?”
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Article comments
1 - Aaron Fleming
Genius! Absolute genius!
The things demanding thought - ya know, the myriad thoughts swirling the brain, tied up back, in a shed, ticket in hand, awaiting their turn - have multiplied threefold.
Worry not, for the soulless exhibition of death and suffering terrified/terrifies me too. Maybe snuff was always in the mainstream. Maybe death was never just another narrative element used to pull the heart-strings and draw the tears. Maybe the mere act of witnessing is inseparable from death.
Time's only absolute is its own exhaustion.
Perhaps...
2 - Aaron McMullan
Sir Fleming, thank you no end sire. Snuff in the mainstream - yes, i dare say there's plenty truth in that. And here, maybe more truth than bears considerin'. For the slew of death-on-camera imagery is one thing, but this - yes. if there's any difference between this and genuine upper-case Snuff, it's damn hard to spy.
It sounds - or reads - like hyperbole of the wildest sort - this is the risk run when mouthin' off in the middle of these things - but I'm guessin', and a fairly confident guess it is, that this in all the wrong ways is New, if not unexpected, and has served to trail us someplace totally f**kin hellish. What good has come of it - the awareness raised amongst young women, this sort of thing - is nowhere near enough to counter the - yes - terror that comes with observin' it - and it's still goin' on - this total shatterin' of any ideas a fella or a woman might hold about what Human means, at all, never mind Humane.
But.
Anyway.
Again, thank you sire. The world it means, from a scribe such as yourself.
3 - Mary K. Williams
Wow Aaron.