Atomic Blonde (david leitch, 2017)
"Before you die, I want you to get this through that thick, primitive skull."
This year is 2018 and it's the year that I'm celebrating the 20th anniversary of my Mother's death. If 'celebrating' is the right word.
There are numbers attached to this topic which some might call coincidences, but which I'm finding a bit difficult to deal with. Let's go through three of them:
Perhaps you can feel the slow, solid, inexorable rotation of all of this. This precision-built machine that will perform the function it was designed for to the end, regardless of who is crushed. My relentless horror in the face of the ticking, whirring mechanism of this machine.
But, of course, there is no machine, and there's nothing special about these numbers. They are all a complete coincidence. I know this because there's nothing special about any of us. You might think this isn't the case, and that there are some humans who are more important than others. You might want to pull out a list of names to prove this, and your list (or someone else's list) might include names such as Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Rhee, Julius, Pot, Dahmer, Lennon, Dickens, etc. You could wave this and say See, there are elements that make some people not like others, that allow some people to have more impact on the world around them than others, and for that impact to be felt for years to come, sometimes even millennia but you'd be talking nonsense.
You see, if Giotto hadn't popularised the use of mixing oil with paint pigment someone else would have. If Einstein hadn't published his theory of relativity (which a lot of people say is really complicated, but you should look up what it means some time because it's really simple and everyone should know what it means) then someone else would have come up with it. If Hitler hadn't taken the concept of hubris quite so far then someone else would have. There's nothing special about any of these people, they were simply part of something larger that moves this way and that in a general shape, the specifics of which hardly matter at all. *Who* came up with something, or did something, that pushed us all forward a little further in this narrative we're playing out matters very little compared to the fact that it happened. Pretty soon the names behind the invention and popularisation of the personal computer, the internet, and the smartphone won't matter a jot. Just as much as how the name behind the inventor of the wheel, or the spoon, or the clock, isn't what matters. What matters is that we have these items. That we progress.
And yet sitting with that information, truly letting it well up inside you and fill you, is not a comfortable sensation.
If you're at a party, or a gathering of friends, and suddenly someone asks a question or makes a point and these words trigger something inside you, and you realise that you know something that relates very strongly to this, then you'll feel a need, a burning desire to speak, to be heard and to be acknowledged and validated by the people around you. What you are about to come out with is something that only you could possibly bring to this conversation, to this moment. And why not? After all, you are a unique set of circumstances. A number of cells shared by everyone on the planet, but in an arrangement that is quite unlike anyone else. You have a history that no one else on the planet shares, not even your siblings (if you have any). You observe the comings and going of the universe from a vantage point that will never be re-created. You will never happen again. And because of this, coming to terms with the fact that none of the above makes any difference whatsoever can create feelings of ennui.
What most people do is create a world philosophy that allows them to deal with these feelings. There are three general shapes to this: one of them involves religion, the second involves spiritualism, and the third involves nihilism. The first two create a purpose to it all, and the last one denies any purpose (Yes, I'm keeping these as deliberately loose as possible so as not to disclude anything). We have no idea which, if any, of these are true, and yet we continue to put all of our eggs into one of three baskets just so that we can continue to wake up every day, brush teeth, put shoes on, and go outside. I mean... what else are we supposed to do?
At 08:15 on the 6th of August 1945 Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business when there was an explosion. He fled the city, and returned to his home town, Nagasaki. At 11:02 on the 9th of August, Tsutomu was being berated by his employers (Mitsubishi) for his wild, crazy story about what had happened in Hiroshima, when there was another explosion. On January 4th, 2010, Tsutomu Yamaguchi died, and I often wonder how many times over those intervening 65 years he asked himself Why me?
This year is 2018 and it's the year that I'm celebrating the 20th anniversary of my Mother's death. If 'celebrating' is the right word.
There are numbers attached to this topic which some might call coincidences, but which I'm finding a bit difficult to deal with. Let's go through three of them:
- On the date of the 20th anniversary of her death I'll be the same age that my Mother was when she died.
- On top of that, on the same date my eldest child will be the age my Mother was when I was born.
- When my eldest child is the age that I am now, I'll be the age that my Grandfather was when his child, my Mother, died.
Perhaps you can feel the slow, solid, inexorable rotation of all of this. This precision-built machine that will perform the function it was designed for to the end, regardless of who is crushed. My relentless horror in the face of the ticking, whirring mechanism of this machine.
But, of course, there is no machine, and there's nothing special about these numbers. They are all a complete coincidence. I know this because there's nothing special about any of us. You might think this isn't the case, and that there are some humans who are more important than others. You might want to pull out a list of names to prove this, and your list (or someone else's list) might include names such as Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Rhee, Julius, Pot, Dahmer, Lennon, Dickens, etc. You could wave this and say See, there are elements that make some people not like others, that allow some people to have more impact on the world around them than others, and for that impact to be felt for years to come, sometimes even millennia but you'd be talking nonsense.
You see, if Giotto hadn't popularised the use of mixing oil with paint pigment someone else would have. If Einstein hadn't published his theory of relativity (which a lot of people say is really complicated, but you should look up what it means some time because it's really simple and everyone should know what it means) then someone else would have come up with it. If Hitler hadn't taken the concept of hubris quite so far then someone else would have. There's nothing special about any of these people, they were simply part of something larger that moves this way and that in a general shape, the specifics of which hardly matter at all. *Who* came up with something, or did something, that pushed us all forward a little further in this narrative we're playing out matters very little compared to the fact that it happened. Pretty soon the names behind the invention and popularisation of the personal computer, the internet, and the smartphone won't matter a jot. Just as much as how the name behind the inventor of the wheel, or the spoon, or the clock, isn't what matters. What matters is that we have these items. That we progress.
And yet sitting with that information, truly letting it well up inside you and fill you, is not a comfortable sensation.
If you're at a party, or a gathering of friends, and suddenly someone asks a question or makes a point and these words trigger something inside you, and you realise that you know something that relates very strongly to this, then you'll feel a need, a burning desire to speak, to be heard and to be acknowledged and validated by the people around you. What you are about to come out with is something that only you could possibly bring to this conversation, to this moment. And why not? After all, you are a unique set of circumstances. A number of cells shared by everyone on the planet, but in an arrangement that is quite unlike anyone else. You have a history that no one else on the planet shares, not even your siblings (if you have any). You observe the comings and going of the universe from a vantage point that will never be re-created. You will never happen again. And because of this, coming to terms with the fact that none of the above makes any difference whatsoever can create feelings of ennui.
What most people do is create a world philosophy that allows them to deal with these feelings. There are three general shapes to this: one of them involves religion, the second involves spiritualism, and the third involves nihilism. The first two create a purpose to it all, and the last one denies any purpose (Yes, I'm keeping these as deliberately loose as possible so as not to disclude anything). We have no idea which, if any, of these are true, and yet we continue to put all of our eggs into one of three baskets just so that we can continue to wake up every day, brush teeth, put shoes on, and go outside. I mean... what else are we supposed to do?
At 08:15 on the 6th of August 1945 Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business when there was an explosion. He fled the city, and returned to his home town, Nagasaki. At 11:02 on the 9th of August, Tsutomu was being berated by his employers (Mitsubishi) for his wild, crazy story about what had happened in Hiroshima, when there was another explosion. On January 4th, 2010, Tsutomu Yamaguchi died, and I often wonder how many times over those intervening 65 years he asked himself Why me?