The Standard Monthly Rant and Cat Picture

 Hello lemurs.   

 Hope you're well, and hope you enjoyed the new video too.   

 It's been quite the month. While running a little while ago I came down too hard in a pothole and noticed my back didn't work. In fact it was a slipped disk and I've now reverted to hobbling everywhere with an umbrella, like a shit Doctor Who. Perhaps you've experienced the joy of this too. It's a blast. 

 I've never given any consideration to having a back. It's one of those things you don't appreciate properly until it's gone, like financial security, or Firefly. 

 It has allowed me a fair bit of time to read, however. And since you're silly enough to still be sticking with me on this, I'll tell you my two favourite finds so far.   

 Monday Begins on Saturday by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Expected nothing. Got everything. Witty, original, originally witty, wittily original. Just read it. You'll have fun.  

 
 And Daemon Voices by Phillip Pullman. If you're even remotely curious about how Great writers come up with Great writing, this is a charming journey into the mind of one. Doesn't necessarily need to be relevant to writing either – I suspect it would work just as well for any creative field. Anyway, check that one out too if you have the time. 

  
 The coffee just hit, so let's take the smallest of tangents.   

 When I was quite young it seemed to me that most people were quietly miserable, and I never managed to disabuse myself of this notion. I gravitated towards books and movies that didn't try to pretend we're some noble and balanced species, but were honest about how fucked the human condition is.   

 Since then I've been wondering what it is that's got us all (some of us, anyway) in such a bind. And with all this time on the sofa recently to be a third-rate pompous philosopher, it hit me that almost everyone I've ever met is searching for salvation, just via different sources.  

 
 For example. I've never been too at home in corporate culture; wearing a shirt and behaving like a normal person. I was a pretentious prick as a teenager and assumed anyone wearing a shirt and  behaving like a normal person was just boring and hadn't stopped to consider – oh God, I don't know – time and space and wow Socrates everything's really big and there is no spoon, etc etc etc etc etc. 

 But one mellows as they age, and tries to stop being such a total dick. And I've since met lots and lots of entrepreneurs and business-y types, and a number of them have become my friends. They are hard workers. They are industrious and creative. And they are all way smarter than I am. So the “What a bunch of dull idiots,” argument doesn't work.   

 Whatever rush it is I get when a new idea turns up, the Real Folks are getting the same thing from Real Work. And all those parents I quietly judged in my teens for making kids the centre of their lives, all the friends I berated for going off to join the military, every time something was a bit alien or seemed pointless – only now does it occur to me these people are going after the same thing as the rest of us: salvation. That is, losing one's self in something bigger and more complex than one's self; feeling directed and human, if only for a day or an hour. Shrugging off the tedium and ugliness and self-doubt.   

 Since having this thought I've found it almost impossible to judge most lines of work in the same way teenage-me liked to. And if I'm not being too pessimistic, it gives us all something rather tragic in common, whatever our interests and directions. Namely, that we want to feel okay. Not euphoric, not existentially complete. Just okay.   

 And when you really, really get to know someone, you often learn how utterly un-okay they actually are behind the All's Well exterior. (Whenever I read about the lives of people I consider gods, like Philip K. Dick or Ray Bradbury, and realise they were just as lost as the rest of us, it's strangely relieving. Perhaps you've had the same experience with your favourite humans.)   

 In any case, it does seem a bit like we're wandering about looking for salvation, be it religious or secular. I would bet my cat on this being true for almost all of us.   

 There is an uplifting narrative that we're cemented together by a shared dignity and grace and inherent human good or whatever. Or, if you work for a company, they will often try to instill a sense of loyalty in you for whatever it is you work on. Or maybe it's a love of your country. Or city. Or martial art. Nothing wrong with those.   

 But underneath all of that, under corporate ambitions and artistic commonalities and political solidarity, I reckon there's something even deeper binding us together. It's the feeling of feeling lost in the universe. It's the feeling of feeling nothing some days and knowing you should. It's being fundamentally un-okay occasionally or often. And you don't have to look all that far into our biology  to see why that might be. Just getting by on a daily basis is a fucking nightmare of tangles and complications for the majority of the human species, I'm sure of it. (That's not to say billionaires are all sat around looking out the window and wondering how life can be so empty, but wealth doesn't guarantee happiness either, as you know.) 

 However. In the short time I've been on the planet, the only consistent and efficacious cure I've found for the malaise and the blues has been the company of humans one loves.

 
 There's a good bit in that Carl Sagan book, Contact, where...let's say some very clever aliens may turn up at some point. And during the conversation the alien says, “The only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.” It's a nice notion, no? Works for me anyway. I hope you've found the same. Because when it comes down to it, ignoring all the bullshit platitudes and trite love songs and worn out proverbs, ignoring all the striving for salvation and transcendence and belonging; it's just us down here. And while that sounds a bit lonely, I reckon it's actually wonderful. In the mud, but together.   

 Every now and then, on the crappest of days, you'll run into a stranger in a queue somewhere or something and have the best conversation you can remember in weeks. That's the shit I'm talking about. Decent, unconditional human-ing, regardless of movie taste, religious affiliation, or Hogwarts House allegiance. I have met a number of friends in this fashion. If I live to be an old man, it will be those unexpected human moments I'll think back on when I'm feeling long in the tooth, with one foot in the grave. I hope you get what I mean. 

 Rant complete. Jesus that got depressing. Mmm, let's leave all this on an uplifting note.   

 How are you? You're looking very dapper, I must say.   

 This month I appear to have accrued a sizable debt with the Yakuza in stock footage, but it had to be done. I still don't know how to animate and I suspect I never will. 

 As you may be bored of hearing now, none of this would be been possible without your kindness. And I am enormously, enormously grateful.   

 Some of you appear to be writers and have sent me your stuff recently in quantities I was not prepared for. I'm attempting to read all of it and write back; that's my morning routine these days. Feel free to keep sending it, I'm always happy to try new stuff. Give me your pages, your prose, your huddled masses yearning to be read.   

 And if my bullshit ranting above didn't hit the spot, I've attached a photo of my cat after a bath just in case. And if that doesn't do the trick, I'm afraid you're beyond help.   

 Thank you for being lovely and allowing me to keep doing whatever the hell this all is. Much love and I hope you're well, wherever in the world you might be.   

 All the very best,   

 Ex.  

 P.S – The new book has a title and a body. I'll let you see it when it's done baking if you want.