Loneliness (A masked emo post)
Wouldn't you like to try dying just this once?
Thursday, 06.01.2006"Goodbye. I am leaving because I am bored." — George Saunders' last words
Some say that death is the end-all dead last pitstop of life. Those people, I think, have had fun with my life. Death, as I see it, is simply a release from the mortal coil that I've posessed so far. It's a transfer, not an end, a part of the journey. And, to be honest, I don't really think the next life, or the next life, or the little bits in between will be any better.
Right now, you could say, is my "emo" moment. Y'know, it's time to pull out the knives, the dark mood lighting, the candles and such. I'll pull this off with a nice dramatic bang, ok?
(This is satire, by the way. I felt that I hadn't really driven the stick through the funny character that is the emo guy.)
I've been watching Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Bashou (Beyond the Clouds, The Promised Place), and there's one character in there that I deeply sympathize with: Sayuri. For a good deal of her life, she relentlessly lives in a dream world of no beings; loneliness is her only accomplice and her only acquaintance.
Most people would think that I live a pretty good life. I have a roof over my head, adequate funds, a good education, nice parents, a nice community to go to, and I am skilled in multiple fields. Except for the fact that it's so empty. People surround me, I pass them everyday, but to me, they are nothing but shells, talking faces that could be easily automatrons or make-believe fantasies of my mind. I have never honestly talked to somebody; to talk to somebody is to play along with this cold, distant make-believe world, to follow its rules, and to accept the tyranny it exerts over me.
I hate how it seems that the world revolves around me without care. If the world doesn't care, why should I be here? When people say "oh, what a wonderful thing you've done there," it's all too easy for them to turn face and simply walk away, forgetting everything that they've just complimented. On top of that, it seems that those modes of communication are becoming antiquated, and we've begun to enter the era of endless cynicism, with the Internet and mass communication. For what person in any other era would be able to write such a scathing harsh critism of their own world; what person imbibes themselves with enough hatred to exert enough effort to release such a work? It is only now, in the modern day that such things occur.
People don't exist to me, really. I see nothing more than empty shells that go about their business—they could be simply automatrons programmed to have imitations of feelings. I don't relate to any of these things, nor of the things they speak about. Loneliness, too, is my sole companion in life.
These thinly veiled figures go about their lives, and one of their biggest interests seems to be mass communication—the television, for instance. The TV is so cold; it stands as an inanimate object, exuding nothing but impersonal, thoughtless radiation, the patterns of which they seem to enjoy. The programs they show on it—they seem nothing more than calculated scripts based on demographic information and pre-made plots, wrappped together in order to draw the most viewers for the day such that the advertisers can make their day's pay. I don't understand, and yet they talk about it with such excitement in their voices, and with such joy in their hearts. I cannot relate, and as they watch TV, they all draw away from me as I stand in my cloud of bitter, befuddled confusement.
People say that TV dramas exude massive amounts of emotions, that their showings can rouse such feelings in their hearts. These shows are like all the rest: pre-produced, well thought out, created for a reason. If a feeling is rehearsed, and then incorporated all so well into the template of a plot, can one still call it a feeling. No, at best these shows are a bitter mockery of true humanity, of true sentiments. How can people still have real feelings if they are so easily affected by these?
As those people all watch the same shows, they begin to become almost united in how they speak—"Didn't you like that episode last night?" "Oh, yes I did." "Wasn't it great when..?" "Of course!"
The advent of mass communication has done nothing but force people to resemble one another, to become a single TV-watching entity with the same interests and thoughts. How can I relate to such a cold being, whose making was ultimately the result of calculated TV programming?
The Internet, too, is a net of nothing. People like to talk about the sites they visit so much, yet I have strolled the internet, from the darkest, deepest confined forbidden corners of the labyrinth, to popular sites (here!). What have those dark, dank corners offered me? Nothing. What does here offer me? Nothing. This new mode of communication, which everybody praises as revolutionizing time, and enlightening the various people that roam the planet are completely wrong. The Internet is a void, and I too cannot relate to it.
And yet, those creatures that stand by and claim to be humans still use it. To bridge the gap in the incredible void that the Internet presents, the use of emoticons, varied text caps, and new styles of writing have come forth. Are we such a cold generation as to be able to express our lives and the entire spectrum of our sentiments in three measly characters printed on a remote display: ":-)"? Without a doubt, humankind has dwindled to the point where this type of heartless, soulless conversation can take place: there really is nothing more than a void behind all of these people's mask-like faces.
I am the last person on this planet to live a sincere life. I relate to nobody. Should the cosmos be mean, I relate to nothing in this universe.
It is in this loneliness of undone relationships and cold, constructed feelings that I live. It's at points like these that alternatives begin to look appetizing. As the Old Bard put it:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
I am the last caring, sincere, humane being on this Earth, and the end approaches me.
Postscript
In the process of writing this text, it was originally much longer. I had several more sections about facets of everyday life relating to the bitter cold of technology, but upon posting a rough draft (so I could proofread it and correct for errors), Myspace ate half of the content when I reedited it. I am currently: very angry. :(