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27.07.2008

Yeah, two years. Took me a while to get around to writing again, not due to lack of courage but more down to legal necessity (as my previous employer was somewhat unforgiving of prose based pursuits). It's been a rather tumultuous few years, emotionally and mentally harrowing at times even. Thankfully, home life has been refreshingly sane so that at least kept me lucid. It really is odd though, as I've been back in Britain for over 5 years now and whilst being one of its indigenous population I find it very alien and awfully lacking somehow. Those two years in Japan forced a certain sense of individual and social objectivity that previously wasn't allowed to truly grow. It's not that Japan was and is in anyway faultless but it was different enough to highlight the nonsense I grew up with. The nonsense I thought to be "normal" and even praiseworthy.

A few months ago I got to visit America on business. It was a fascinating few trips. After all, you grow up being fed the Hollywood film diet. You expect this pristine country filled with immaculate people, excitement around every corner. In reality, it's all falling to pieces and it's in a worse state than the most decrepit parts of the UK. I was stunned at the total lack of any kind of infrastructure and amused at the simply awful cuisine (something I was expecting to be more accomplished, though comparing it to my trip to Paris last year I doubt few countries could offer something as gastronomically wondrous). Thing is, I wasn't an archetypal tourist either. I was taken out to expensive restaurants, stayed in luxurious hotels and experienced the higher end of what was on offer. Yet, it was still very much lacking.

There was also the bizarre social element of displaying all you are in discrete snapshots; almost forcing the existence of a post-modern being at the expense of anything weightier and ultimately more sincere. It was infuriating at times, simply not being allowed to properly communicate myself. As individual content was almost disallowed. The land of the free is only so in a visual and simplistic sense I think, not in an individual one.

These trips also had a more profound affect on me; social swaggering is utterly meaningless and almost painful somehow. Living life at the higher end of the food-chain was an interesting experience but one that catalyzed my innate feelings towards what I really wanted to be doing. I foolishly thought that acquiring societal power equated to greater personal choice and further chances at making a difference. This wasn't the case. Admittedly I was offered all sorts of spangly things and was excelling at what I did but it was all meaningless.

So here I am, me again. Finally.

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17.09.2006 26.08.2006