Junction 36

Karl and Rick, Warehouse MCR, 12/04/24

Hmmnn, so it looks like it’s been a fair while since I last scrawled something on here. Nothing more or less to do with anything other than the title of this piece I’m afraid: a deep and unsettling apathy toward the general state of the world and the lack of the wherewithal to do very much about it has seeped into the old bones. I suppose I could have misquoted another musical genius and called this “Pissin’ in the wind” and the sentiment would have been about the same. Having a pair of teenage daughters doesn’t half focus the mind on humanity’s ills in our troubled times.

But then, amidst the wettest April in 62 years, along with over a thousand other battle-scarred former teenagers, me and the long-suffering were lucky enough to find ourselves pogo-ing away at an Underworld gig. For three fleeting hours, the peerless pensioners’ heart-pounding rhythms and soul-lifting soundscapes transported us to a time in the early 90s when everything, for our generation at least, seemed so hopeful. I mean, with our more enlightened upbringings, we wouldn’t be daft enough to repeat the war-mongering, climate-shafting, xenophobic antics of our grasping forbears would we? Creating greater inequality, reducing freedoms and fostering a society of feverish intolerance surely couldn’t happen on our watch, could it? Hmmnn well, at least the music’s stood the test of time…

Above Coniston, High Bethecar

So it seems we need some “…reasons to be cheerful: 1,2,3.” Or at least to remind ourselves that today’s teenagers aren’t all on a highway to hell in a handcart. Jessie’s sat squarely in the middle of our greatest reason to be hopeful above: by some miracle, we still have an unbelievably beautiful planet to shuffle about on. Despite centuries of greedily plundering her resources and laying waste to her forests, rivers, oceans and very atmosphere, mother earth continues to bestow boundless riches on those of us fortunate enough to be able to seek them out. It behoves us to fight for their protection; most pressingly in these islands, for her most precious resource; not gold or diamonds or likes or followers: water. (https://www.savewindermere.com/petition – among others)

Tomorrow’s World, BBCTV

Another reason to be cautiously optimistic is that the kind of future utopia predicted in all those wacky black and white science shows of yesteryear is finally getting closer. The mad boffins are miraculously getting usable amounts of juice from fusion reactions. When the crony virus struck, the WHO predicted an effective vaccine would take 18 months of feverish science. The eggheads nailed it down in less than a year. Just this morning I read that a young girl who was born deaf can now hear thanks to gene therapy. And it wasn’t very long ago that, apart from the odd spluttering Prius, the only electric motor you’d (barely) hear on the high street belonged to Fast Eddie in his milk float. Those skyscraper-brained scientists (and economic pressures) will inevitably crack the affordability and environmental nuts and we’ll soon all be whizzing around noiselessly.

Still no sign of a bloody jetpack though! https://youtu.be/yt0E-AkoM9U

A final reason for hope is our own hideously flawed hides:

‘Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “Whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men” and he would have meant the same thing.’ Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

As an aspiring writer of sorts, I flail about like a spoonman in the lowly foothills of ineptitude, beneath the pinnacle of the great man quoted above, in the certain knowledge that I’ll never be able to craft anything remotely as eloquent, much less get it published. Likewise the thousands of other would-be Brontës and Rowlings, Lennons and McCartneys and Hockneys and Banksys, all no doubt supremely talented, all doomed to a similarly unfêted existence.

But we’ll keep on buggering on with our more prosaic artistic efforts, along with the millions of true heroes and heroines who provide real hope for humanity; the carers and teachers and refuse collectors, the doctors and nurses and hospital porters, the warehouse packers and shelf-stackers, burger-flippers and delivery drivers; all those whose fundamental value to society, its bricks and mortar rather than its hanging baskets and patio lighting, was so starkly highlighted by the wretched pandemic. When the chips were down, the world had zero tangible use for artists and bankers, marketing executives and asset portfolio managers. Well, maybe one of these gangs of villains helped a lot of folk to cope in those dark and long days; perhaps that’s wherein hope for our teenagers and humanity rezides. Thank you for the music…

…cowgirl.