Relaxing Lockdown - A Rant

The queue outside Nike's flagship store in London on the day of reopening

Let me tell you why this image fills me with despair. This is a shot of customers queuing outside Nike's flagship store in the West End of London, on its first day of reopening after certain restrictions on lockdown were lifted. They don't seem to be observing social distancing, though I know the store has taken precautions to institute it. The virus that has claimed 40,000+ lives in this country, is seemingly outweighed by the need to purchase a new pair of sneakers. But they're all wearing masks Marc. They are indeed, masks certainly help, but they do not guarantee protection. That means they impart false confidence, people get sloppy in their habits. Besides, I don't get the sense of the folk gathered here having made calculations of their own personal risk. Swishy-swooshy shoes out-trumps that.

Now I get that it could be viewed as an assertion of freedom, that finally we have been released from virtual house arrest. But to me it rather serves as testimony to being enslaved by corporate consumption. What could be more important after 13 weeks than buying the latest Nike models? Did all their shoes fall apart under lockdown? From all that exercising they probably undertook (irony klaxon). Equally, did all the folk waiting for entry into Primark (below) have to replace clothes that had succumbed to being moth fodder in the last 3 months?

How do you best express your recovery of freedom? Apparently you go out and look to buy goods that are not perishable in the short-term as food is and which have been branded as non-essential for a quarter of the year. It demonstrates the stranglehold certain goods and logos have on our imaginations and desires, that they become our first course of action, the number one thing we reach for in the outside world. Consumption is a declaration of who you are, but only after having had your independence of choice utterly manipulated by the marketing of these brands as 'the must own' or 'the latest model'. The same shrivelled imagination that left some people completely unable to make their own entertainment during lockdown, because they've always had somebody else or something else do it for them.

And yes we all want to support our local stores and to help reignite the economy that has slumped since March. But I can't help feeling such altruism is not high on the shopping list of these consumers. They are feeding their own appetites first and foremost, so that any assistance to the country as a whole is somewhat secondary.

Typically it's women who are said to be obsessed with shopping and particularly shopping for clothes. But the majority of those outside Nike are male. I think there is probably something about their identities and how they see themselves, that they have to associate themselves with global sports brands that axiomatically stamps them as athletes and men of prowess, even if they don't chase after balls or hit things with bats. It's that same drive that makes you want to have the latest Apple product that replaces last year's model. A Frankenstein's monster patchwork of globally available, logo-driven identities that supposedly constructs your unique, individual essence. And makes you feel totally invulnerable. Against a virus that takes no notice of brand names.

A New Phonetic Alphabet

Can I suggest the need for a new phonetic alphabet? What with Ancient Greek letters, old fashioned dances, metric weights, Canadian provinces and Shakespearean characters, today's youth have little chance of readily recalling the mnemonics attached to the letters.

We need to provide them with words instantly recognisable. Words they encounter every day. Words from the high street (or online shopping at least).

So I propose the following:

Alpha - ADIDAS
Bravo - BURBERRY
Charlie - CALVIN KLEIN
Delta - DIESEL
Echo - ELLESSE
Foxtrot - FILA
Golf - GIORGIO ARMANI
Hotel - HOLLISTER
India - IGI & CO
Juliet - JORDACHE
Kilo - KAPPA
Lima - LACOSTE
Mike - MARK JACOBS
November - NIKE
Oscar - OSHKOSH B'GOSH
Papa - PRADA
Quebec - QUICKSILVER
Romeo - REEBOK
Sierra - SUPERDRY
Tango - TOMMY HILFIGER
Uniform - UGG
Victor - VANS
Whiskey - WRANGLER
X-Ray - X-BIONIC
Yankee - YVES SAINT LAURENT
Zulu - ZARA


And to make it easier, these come with ready-made visual prompts.

 
 

  
 
 

 
 

 
 

 

 

Exege(ne)sis - Friday Flash

In the beginning was the word and the word was God

In the beginning was the wor(l)d and the word/world was go(o)d

In the beginning was not the world, because God was supposed to have created it. Not in any procreative, progenerative way, since there was no conjoining of the sexes in reproduction, unless you buy into the male-female polarities of light/darkness, earth/sea, sky/ground.

The word or the world could not be good, since there was no other moral being yet extant to judge and pronounce upon it thus. If the Divinity is pronouncing his own work as good, it's a little unbecomingly arrogant of such a numinous Being to do so. Blowing his own trumpet as it were and we all know where trumpets and the number seven can lead don't we Jerichoans?

In similar vein there could not have been the word in the beginning, sine there was no one around to utter it (other than the Divinity uttering a 'shezam' or similar conjuration word). In certain Far Eastern theologies, there is a primordial sound, the moment of its first striking being the act of creation itself, from which all life and energies with their vibrations stem.

And God said, Let the earth bring the living soul after its kind; the beast and the thing moving itself and the wild animal of the earth after its kind; and it was so.

There is no capitalisation of 'earth' gainsaying the investing of gender in the manner of a Gaia and yet this is followed by an immediate polarity of the (higher) living soul and the (base) beast. 'After its kind' suggests the generations reproduced through sexual procreation and this is of course the (spare) bone of contention in The Garden Of Eden.

The word 'after' has been interpreted as 'according', that is within its delineated phylum, genus and species type. Genetic groupings are demarcated, yet allowing for theological prohibitions on 'pure' and 'unclean' animals that seem to cross several classificatory elements and forms the basis of the Jews' Kashrut dietary laws. They wouldn't eat animals that seemed to diverge from recognised groups in no matter how superficial a manner.

'The thing moving itself' undermines its own theological dialectic. One interpretation has this being worms and other legless creatures crawling along the ground (the snake of course was not thus shaped until God ripped its legs away in Eden). Modern science also suggests the primary existence of single cell creatures, clustering together into slightly larger aggregates. So something that superficially resembled an eye, though of course lacked for a developed retina and cortical and synaptic brain to function as oracular, clumped together with some cells that provided a degree of locomotion across the ground. Incrementally in time, the aggregation grew in sophistication and the eye was able to link up to specialist cells to facilitate it to 'see', the brain and central nervous system wired up the muscles so that the animal could walk and the rest is Natural History.

But what of language? That first word? In the beginning was the word and the word was Gravity. G-Force.

Of course the first enunciated word was nothing as complex and intricate as 'gravity'. Yet without gravity there would in all likelihood have been no first language, no opening gambit, no referential system at all. For as mankind evolved in among that confusing welter of sense experiences in his environment, there were a few things he noticed followed rigid patterns.

rain always fell down on their heads

mountains always pointed upwards

their spears and rocks would always eventually touch down on the ground

as would their urine (men only)

trees grew vertically

while their shed leaves tumbled back down to earth

birds flew higher than men's heads

scorpions crawled at men's feet

avalanches and waterfalls crashed deafeningly descendently

volcanoes belched their fire and smoke ascendantly

Ergo a brace of things man could stake his tongue with. Up was skywards and down was plunging towards their feet. From this they were able to extrapolate words such as here, there, right, left, near, far, under, over. Me and you as in a spatial configuration. Us an them. "My God good, your god no good". Heaven and the abyss. They didn't just admire mountains, now they scaled them through shared language enabling co-operation and teamwork and preparation of resources. Upwards ever upwards. Eventually they would tunnel and mine beneath the earth and quarry metals and powering fuels. And all thanks to gravity establishing a few regular ground rules.

In the beginning was the logos and the logos was G-d.

If the Greek word 'logos' means the unifying principle of the world, then it cannot truly be translated as 'Word'. For words partition, categorise and define. Words undermine the monistic, the belief in the one, for they introduce and encourage relativism.

In the beginning was the end of the world. And the world was begun (conceived) and ended (divided and dissevered) by the word.