The below is no longer relevant, or is perhaps only a fragment of the whole process which was still occurring as I wrote about it. Unbeknownst to me. The theme of lack now refers most prominently to my own moral/ethical lack. My decision to sell out and participate fully in a system which I hate and am alientated by was a hard one however hopefully it will ultimately serve good and a truth which we can all vibe to. Plus who can blame me in this economy. Lol. The dilemma I faced between a well paying job which I don’t agree with plus may well hate, against a job which pays terribly and allows for occasional moments of compassion and lots of learning which I ultimately won’t use or need in my desired career, was a hard one. However I made the decision to make bank.
Get paid.

Cold.
Hard.
Cash.

Given the likelihood that we’re all doomed it would appear to be inconsequential anyway, except to me who will struggle with it eternally.
All the way to the bank. Marx made the point that social democracy working towards communism is apologetic and not sufficient. This is how I feel but Marx wasn’t witnessing the hellscape I am… I hope that my decision to be a bourgeois apologist isn’t the sign of general a mellowing as I recently hit the big 30. Rather I hope that it’s a stepping stone from which I can contribute one day contribute.

But it doesn’t feel like that. None of it feels like that. Neither does it read like that, lets be honest. Read it back. It’s some apologetic liberal bullshit, isn’t it. Oh and boo-hoo, poor me, I’m not living my dream of saving the poor and am instead becoming better-off. Don’t worry this too has crossed my mind.

Anyway my recent tumble off the wagon from full time bike extolling veggie to bacon roll snorting, diesel revving worky was preceded by the economic position I’ve taken up but it has made my moral lack more noticeable. Would Karl Marx eat a bacon roll and drive a diesel for cold hard cash? (That question is best directed to a Mr. Engels, who is nodding emphatically).

I should state that my thinking has been heavily informed by the wonderfully informative and extraordinarily serene wisdom of Ryan and Todd from the often incredible Why Theory podcast. And has also been reconciled by Contrapoint’s most recent video, which was, as always, excellent. Another little ditty which seemed to follow this train of thought is the film ‘Ya No Estoy Aqui’ which is one of the best films I’ve seen. I can’t begin to recommend it enough, to those who are reading this, which is nobody. The fact remains, it is beautiful, funny, cool and completely brilliant.

I wrote the following as I weighed up the job…

My calloused fingers no longer recognise the keyboard. They feel heavy and dense like the thoughts preceding them.
I’ve poured over my routines of late, analysed my time, diet and the seasons to understand why it is that I’ve not been writing. I’m not sure I’ve been able to write, even. That could be a fundamental difference but it amounts to the same result. Which is an absence.
In that sense, I’ve been responding to loss, an emotion typically called grief but it would be wrong to say I’m grieving. Loss occurs as a third-state. It is known that it is not there, yet it is not there. It is lack which is felt.
From what little I understand of philosophy, (*) this is an already existing idea and one which is being dealt with more universally during these testing times.

For many this has meant that they lament the loss of rights which they didn’t previously exercise. Personally however, the time I would have spent writing has been devoted to other pursuits and interests. One of these pursuits is the necessary pursuit of monetary income through gainful employment. Much of my time has been spent in said employment, which, those who know me will understand, is irksome. Not just because I am a natural Sophist, or a layabout, but because I am ideologically opposed to the labour which I produce and exist as. More recently the ill-gotten gains which I have received from my labour have been used to further consume. This again is something which has left palpable distaste in my mouth and brain. I hate consumerism and recently have been ‘forced’ (or convinced / forced myself) to join along. I’ve bought things which I’ve ‘needed’ for ages and put off. Either way, I’m spending money like nobodies business (on items produced in what must be slave like conditions which will ultimately wreck the planet) and it makes me sick. Perhaps this is a nascent protestant ethic or an ethno-national trope which I’m applying to myself. More than likely the act of consumption and inevitible anticlimax is just shit.

The reason I have become a hardened consumer is because I am a cyclist. An identity based on capitalist consumption, in capitalism a positive ascription tends to coax out a lack, I’m a cyclist therefore I need a bike. There are exceptions to my cynicism – mahlers hierarchy of needs probably best describes them? I can attest to the fact that it is better to be dry on a bike than wet on a bike – therefore a good jacket is necessary. However this basic need does throw up a dilemma. Cyclists need clothes, good cyclist clothing is made in sweatshops and is expensive. Cheap cyclists clothing is made in worse sweatshops and doesn’t work. I’m sure this is all of our dilemma.

The pinnacle of this cycle is my new search for a home, in one of the UK’s most expensive and inflated housing markets. I am a person who would prefer to live inside, therefore I am a potential customer. Because I want to live inside. Should I rent at exorbitant prices, or buy (I have the means to do so as I am middle class – see all of this blog) and perpetuate the misery and inflation. I have little choice, I’m looking to buy. I also have a new salary from the job which I mentioned earlier whose main task is selling my soul to the devil. Again, poor me. I’ll soon stop with the poundshop Marxist economics and begin again with reflective psychoanalysis but first I must demand that estate agents no longer use the work ‘popular’ to describe an urban area. It is populous.

Anyway, the time I would have spent writing has been spent riding or working. The money I’ve made working has been spent on riding. I’m being gradually taken away from writing by my own middle class trajectory and identity as a cyclist. Perhaps I need to spend more on being a writer? Probz would work too, 3 week Guardian retreat and bobby’s yer mammys brur. Dirty boab. All of this is has created the gnawing sensation of personal lack. One hobby is being replaced by another and there is a strange almost visceral reaction to not doing the other. Perhaps I could give up working… Not if you want that house, son. I suppose everyone feels a lack when they don’t take part in other hobbies i.e. football. however not having football doesn’t feel like I’m losing a part of myself, that it’s somehow fading away. When the season ends, there is a new season to look forward to. Even Covid couldn’t touch Hibernian FC. In lifeball however, as the seasons have turned suddenly I have felt the lack more acutely from being a hobbiest at life. Try as I might observe and think as I should, the lack of time and stimulus are felt. The stimulus issue is bad, try and spend 8-10 hours a day in a grey concrete warehouse working on the same bike everyday and often not to music you actually like. I may go fully mad.

Perhaps it’s all just the apathy of a man shut in his house for months with no real summer then? Incidentally, we lacked a summer and now it is Autumn. This could be a contributing factor to the knaw before the knaw. Naw? (All of this foreseen only by Ali Milesi of Lists fame.) I’ve been on a hiatus from thinking and now I’m gone…

It’s not that I lost the urge to write, I just didn’t have anything whatsoever to write about? Camus already smashed the fuck out of it, didn’t he? But then he wasn’t in an actual lockdown when he wrote the plague. I think my apathy is the one of the man whose tireless work is not for the revolution as it should be, and he knows it. It’s the apathy of a man who wonders if the revolution will ever make it, if he’ll ever make it. It’s a sad guilty and familiar apathy. Its the apathy of a failing critique? A critique failed before I was even able to conceive of it. A cruel apathy forced on to the apathetic. Is that wrong? Quite possibly. Apparently all I can fo is follow the news and occasionally vote.

Some of these thoughts I’ve not been having have revolved around the conditions of my work. The evil zenith of which takes the form of music. Note, it is not music. It is anti-music. To explain fully; in the shop where I work non-copyright ‘music’ is played continuously so that the owners don’t have to pay the licence fee. Instead management have singed up to a programme which ‘provides music solutions’ for retail. Congratulations if you didn’t instinctively stick a skewer down your lug hole.
This corporation creates a loose appropriation of music and presumably skims the subscription fee and artist costs. That a company should feel the need to scrimp on paying for music should tell you all you need to know. That another company provides a ‘solution’ for such a problem situates us firmly in the year 2020.

At work I have found myself repelled by several of the characters, as is normal apparently. One of whom’s personality has been subsumed by his position and experience in the ‘industry’, which he is keen to tell you all about. His jobsworth nature combined with incessant talking about interests which I do not share, drove me away. Fair enough, we’re different. It is on the aesthetic level of music which we have found some common ground, a truth or value which we share.
Another ‘colleague’ is worse still. His whole being is devoid of value. That sounds harsh however I mean it in the sense that the worth in his life has been replaced by anti-values. His whole patter consists of how much shoes cost, stylish earphones, hats and shoes. He has been subsumed by capital and is ‘lack;. He will soon begin a post as a financial analyst where he hopes to make lost of money.

Of course it is very easy to hate someone like that. Very easy. However they are probably well meaning and a symptom of everything else that is wrong. The abundant crushing pressure we must all surely feel which is Capitalism. I’m not sure if these are the thoughts of an orthodox Marxist or a mellowing bourgeois apologist. They could be both. It is perhaps again best dealt with with apathy, with lack. Perhaps that’s why I got a new phone, need a new jacket, etc. Perhaps I need these things? What a parlava.

All that was written before I turned 30 and took the well paying evil droid job.

Since… I’ve turned 30 and done a decades worth of shopping in a few weeks. It took a while and was probably because I’m suddenly earning money. But it still feels rank.
Most pertinently however, I have started a new job. Earning considerably more than my last one. However the role is considerably worse in many respects. See above for my thoughts on the system we didn’t choose to order our day to day life.

The need to take this job was brought on my the precarious nature of my last role. The underappreciated status which it brought with it, I was relatively skilled believe it or not and poorly paid and I am looking to buy a home and therefore partaking in the whims of a global economic system based on brokerage, booms and busts. A system which I cannot, try as I might, take down.
So I started a new job. A sentence which sounds like the introductory line to a bad podcast.
I did. The job involves servicing expensive exercise bikes in clinical droidian environs. Some co-workers display extreme levels of something called ‘brand loyalty’? I can’t even begin to explain… (See my entrys on the now defunct STA Travel.)

The exercise bike and concomitant online class is the alienated extreme of bicycle riding, something only capital can bring forth. Equally, the disgruntled worker in a real bicycle shop owned by a milionaire and paid minimum wage is an alienated form of labour. Would it be preferable to own the means of production? Would that make you petit-bourgeoise? Almost certainly.
Abolish money, I say.

When you think about it the communist super state would be pretty beneficial. Secure job, housing, purpose to life (serving the revolution). None of these things are certain in the current rig.

Anyway, these ramblings are collected over several months as I’ve ran slowly out of time and energy. My free time devoted to riding bikes with gay abandon through local woods, at the horror of dog walkers. Suffice to say there is not the clarity of thought of long ago, only a thread which is itself folded and self-reflexive.

I’ve mentioned earlier the how capital creates the lack – as a worker, as a consumer, also most probably in my apathy. The constant red alert of covid has barely touched the side of my noggin, the procedural dullness of Brexit is no longer my concern. I’m part of the workforce that drives diesel. Its easy to say the apathy is wrong – it surely is – but being able to follow politics is a privledge not designed for those on the hard edge of politics. Which does and also does not include me. Following procedural politics is a luxury in that respect. Politics is felt elsewhere, like jazz. It may not carry the thread of conventional songs yet it still felt deeply. Perhaps why I have been digging jazz recently. Perhaps because I love those horns. Perhaps I’m mixing my metaphors.

Well done if you made it this far. I’ll reward you with something vaguely relevant, a brief review of Tenet, which I saw in a familiar cinema which had changed dramatically. Tenet was good. The music was good. The film was probably good, I don’t know enough theoretical physics to comment. Despite it being quite predictable in places it was worth it for the pay off. Also, large chunks of it were bad and existed solely to serve the idea. Which was good.
The messages about individual change enacting systemic change is good and clearly relevant for climate change etc. But also released by a massive bunch of cunts. And so bad. The probably postmodern idea that there can be multiple selves and no definite time was negated by good guys and bad guys and a win or lose situation. It was a weird mix of high concept art and blockbuster shoot em up butts in seats etc. I suppose the sporadic nature of time as it exists in this entry is inspired by Tenet, as much of it is written across time zones. Anyway, who gives a toss. Do what you need to do is apparently the message. I needed to write which I’ve just done, even though I don’t do it anymore. Lack.
Lack

LACK!

It’s pitch black.

And not late.

I come here again with something to offer and something to gain.

A stream emerges from a trickle.

It’s pitch black.

When I came here last things were the same.

Changed as ever.

And faster than I could reckon for.

It’s pitch black.

When I came here last, it was dark.

Now its black.

I don’t mind the dark.

I don’t mind pitch black.

Someone ought to put the lights on.

That’s all.