Ellard

The day began as any other in the south of the Great Empire – the morning glowed sickly brown with flecks of purple as the old sun cut through layers of patriotic chemical fog. The re-education camps were already alive with the screams of those regaining their harmonious relationship with the state. Minor officials lay awake, puzzling over the changes in their children returned from study overseas – their once docile offspring now equipped with a thousand excuses for every small task.

Out in the fields the toil was as it ever was, and the plastic vomit factories still busy from the night shift, meeting the endless needs of the decadent west for novelty. At Baiyun airport the official beggars plied their trade in multiple languages, most of them plain clothes officers keeping an eye on the ‘taxi drivers’, who were plain clothes officers keeping an eye on the ‘beggars’.

But on this day came a visitor from above, a message from the stars conveying great dissatisfaction with the order as it was. There were signs for those who could read them – the complete absence of birds was not one as all bird life had died long ago from mercury poisoning – no – the giant advertising banners for MERCEDES BENZ and CHANEL and IPHONE quivered with urgency – the metal detectors clanged and pinged with alarm – the rumble of traffic joined by an even deeper rumble …

A huge meteor from regions ethereal, although marked with an earthly thought, an inscription caught by multiple hidden cameras;

FUCK YOU GUANGZHOU AIRPORT

hurtling across the Great Empire guided by an alien intelligence, purposeful and malignant. It swooped and slipped around the edges of the air patrols and there is evidence of an impossible curve in the final moments – sweeping through terminal A up and through the immigration gates, the holding area for foreigners and doubling back to render the onboard baggage inspection area into a molten slag of metal, uniforms, batons and visa stampers.

The devastation was terrible; but no one hurt (except a kick in the arse for that plain clothes officer that gave me shit.)

Chinese media played down the affront as a small disruption to the ever glorious march of aviation in the one true nation. Ai Weiwei was re-arrested for exceeding his last duty free allowance by 1,000 litres. Plastic vomit production was doubled as part of a five year plan.

The subsequent diversion of all air traffic to Beijing was added to itineraries as an ‘additional technical stop’.

I can’t remember which story it was – an elderly English detective novel (Agatha Christie or some such) which featured a guru in residence at the dead man’s mansion. When questioned by the detective he says:

‘I want nothing’. Three times.

Similar guru to one described. Contents may vary.

The clever English detective translates for us; he wants for nothing, he wants no thing, he desires nothingness. Which shows how poorly the antique gurus of the English countryside communicated their needs, and perhaps why they are not so common these days. But I do agree with him, for 2012 I very much want nothing.

This year has been a cat lady house; cats everywhere, a stench of them, cats squished on the carpet and ceiling, cats on top of and inside of other cats, so many that no particular cat is visible. So much happened this year and in such overlap that I can’t say I really tasted any of it. I haven’t yet laughed or grieved. Good, bad or ugly it doesn’t matter if you pour it down your throat so it never touches the sides.

Surely you share this sense of your mind being pushed and pulled apart by email addresses and deadlines, mobile devices, job roles, offices, communities, ‘friends’ … despite constantly closing them I still have 7 active email addresses, four phone numbers, I can’t remember which thought was temporarily stored where, sometimes can’t even think clearly because of the constant blinking and pinging and messaging and I’m not even on Facebook, God help those who are.

(I put up a ‘Gone On Leave’ on my work email. Then peeked at what was coming in. There was an urgent mail about a study deadline I’d missed. It was a shot across the bows – ‘where did you think you were going?’)

The result is a tiredness, a tepidness where nothing is particularly valuable. Achieve the goal, do it to specification. Fill the allotted space. Move on. All energy is spent in fitting the result and no time to flex, to sidetrack, to meander. There is no play.

Play, like all waste, is the mark of the highest castes; it (seemingly) wastes time.

Ancient Greeks demonstrate the art of doing fuck all.

If you can’t play, you don’t encounter the unexpected and inexplicable, which means your creativity remains stagnant and you become solidified, a mummy, a statue and the pressure on ‘artists’ is to do just this – it earns applause in the same way as obsessiveness is a cherished disease of the managerial class. The artist is constantly coerced into repetition of past glories.

In 2011 I did many things. I typed them all out here and then deleted it all, which was an apt ceremony.

In 2012 my resolutions:

• To play. To slack off.
• To count to ten before saying perhaps.
• To melt into the background.
• To imagine all the hassle before the supposed glory.
• To express sympathy while somehow avoiding offering a solution.
• To do one thing at a time. If that.

Word.