Category: Uncategorized

I finally have a new phone, after only… more months than I care to admit without a working one.

The first time I knew that my phone was in trouble was last December, on the plane to Brazil; I took it out my pocket after the flight took off, and realized that the screen seemed to be separating from the rest of the phone. I was temporarily nervous about what this might mean, considering that I was flying to another country and suspected that I really might need my phone to get around, but as it turned out, I was wrong on two counts: The phone was working fine, despite the screen lifting slightly, and I didn’t need it nearly as much as I’d suspected.

I didn’t really think that much about why the screen was lifting. The phone was, after all, about seven or so years old by that point and had been through the wars. I put it down to my probably having done something to it while it was in my pocket; maybe I sat down weirdly, or bumped it, or something. It was, I told myself, no big deal.

Months later, as the screen continued to lift away from the rest of the phone seemingly by itself, I decided to Google why that might be happening; the answer, as it turned out, was that the battery in the phone was off-gassing and in danger of turning into a bomb. Upon learning this admittedly disturbing fact, I did the most obvious thing: I turned the phone off and decided to get myself a new phone as soon as possible.

That was… at some point at the start of the summer, I think…? I can’t remember. Suffice to say, I didn’t actually get myself a new phone as soon as possible; instead, I accidentally started an experiment called, “Do I really need a phone, anyway?” (The answer is, kind of, but I did okay using Google Voice for the most part.)

Nonetheless, I now have a new phone, and I feel remarkably, stupidly excited and fancy about this turn of events. Next big thing: actually using it.

I’ve been thinking recently about secondhand nostalgia. It’s a weird concept that I’m having trouble articulating properly, but essentially it comes down to feeling a surprising nostalgia for things that you weren’t really present for in the first place, and have no firsthand knowledge of.

This comes from re-reading a comic from the mid-1970s the other day, and realizing that there’s something very powerful to me not only about the story in the comic — which, I hasten to add, is not a particularly good story — but the ephemera surrounding it; the ads, the editorial material, and even the graphic design of the entire package.

The thing is, I wasn’t reading comics when this particular comic came out; I wasn’t even reading when it was published. I was just two years old, and I lived in a different country altogether, so the idea that I passively picked up some of the visual cues from somewhere else in my life at the time. (If nothing else, I’m not sure two-year-olds really notice a lot of graphic design in the first place, especially not passively; I could be wrong, though.)

It’s possible that I’m actually nostalgic for the situation in which I first read said comic — which, in this case, was finding it amongst a pile of comics in a used bookstore in Glasgow’s West End, during a Christmas break from high school, and being thrilled that it was so goofy and so affordable, all of which feels like something that I really have every right to be nostalgic about, to be honest — but I really don’t think that’s it. My affection, my feeling of time-gone-by enniu, is specifically tied to the mid-1970s, and the circumstances it first appeared in, despite my inability to have any claim to that in any legitimate sense.

Is it entirely imagined, then? Am I over-romanticizing something that I’m just making up in my head? Perhaps — but it feels real, nonetheless, this silly affection for a time and a place I never was.

The most surprising thing about Saturday’s call that Joe Biden had won the election wasn’t really the actual call, of course; after that first 24 hours or so, it had been becoming slowly but convincingly clear that Biden was more than likely going to take it barring any kind of over-the-top shenanigans on the part of the Trump campaign and administration. Which isn’t to suggest that there was no chance that such shenanigans would take place — one only has to look at what has been happening in Trump world over the last few months, and increasingly over the last week or so, to see that shenanigans are definitely on the menu over there.

But still; by Friday, it felt as if there would be little way to overcome Biden’s lead without it being something that would be both all-too-obviously a cheat and roundly rejected by the country as a whole. His victory seemed more or less in the bag; it was just a question of when, not if.

The surprise, then, was watching everyone’s reactions to it. Perhaps I’m too cynical and jaded, but I didn’t expect spontaneous public parties across the country, never mind across the world. I didn’t expect to spend hours on social media, just scrolling and looking at the relief and joy of people who realized that their very existences weren’t going to be actively legislated against anymore. (Yes, Biden and Harris are, to be polite, imperfect options; they’re also a hell of a lot better than Trump and Pence, and the weird “what about”-ism that’s argued otherwise from both sides of the spectrum has been gross and sickening for the last few months.)

I wasn’t alone, either; the feeling of recognition as people continually came up with counterpoints to the term “doomscrolling” to explain their inability to stop looking at other people’s relief and pleasure. (“Dreamscrolling” was my favorite, although “joyscrolling” was more popular.)

More surprising than anything, though, was the feeling of hope that came from watching everyone’s response. More so than the win itself, watching the reaction to it made me hopeful that we’re headed on the right track, after years of it feeling the very opposite. And, even more hopefully, that we’re ready to do the work that needs to be done, at least in part.

When I first moved to the U.S., I didn’t have a green card. As a result, I spent a lot of time wandering around the neighborhood that I’d just moved into, purposefully not doing anything that would cost any money, because I didn’t really have any money; I had, after all, just moved to the U.S. and didn’t have a job yet.

I also found myself spending an extraordinary time watching daytime television, because what else was I supposed to be doing? (I mean, yes, there was that whole “getting the green card sorted out” thing, as well as the various other immigration shenanigans, meetings and requirements; I was doing both of those as well, don’t worry.) As a result, I am left as someone in the year 2020 with an entirely irrational nostalgic attachment to “Cleveland Rocks,” as performed by the Presidents of the United States of America, also known as the theme music to The Drew Carey Show.

It’s not that I really loved The Drew Carey Show — honestly, at this point, I can barely remember it beyond the vague shape and the fact that Craig Ferguson played an uptight boss, in what felt like kind of counter-programming considering Ferguson’s own personality. But that theme music…! I would try my hardest to be in front of the television just to catch the theme every afternoon when it played. I couldn’t explain why at the time.

I can’t explain it now, either; there was something about the way that it built that won me over every single time the guitar started — something about the line “Living in sin with a safety pin,” too, for some strange reason, the connection between the two things that felt as if they should be contradictory, or at least disconnected, as if it were some kind of magical spell.

There was something unfamiliar but inviting about it, and the fact that it repeated daily and was one constant in a time where there were few constants made it even more inviting and appealing; so much so that, more than a decade later, the song drifts back to me in memory and I feel such a surprising connection to a time I hadn’t thought about in a long, long time.

One of the stranger and, I think, less remarked upon elements of the last four years is the way in which it feels as if everyone has been radicalized to some degree or another. I don’t mean in the sense of political partisanship being on an unmistakable upswing — although, to be blunt, I wonder how much we can really call it “partisanship” when it’s closer to being “the people okay with fascism and the people who aren’t,” but let’s go with the partisan thing for now — but, instead, in the sense that I feel like so many more people are now happily, eagerly, accepting conspiracy theories that support their world view.

Any mention of conspiracy theories immediately points to the rightwing, who’ve been in this space for years: remember Obama not being an American citizen, or the idea that Benghazi was a false flag operation? That kind of paranoia and belief that of course they’re lying to us has, surreally, only grown with the right in power — just look at Pizzagate, QAnon, or the recent furore over Hunter Biden’s business dealings and what they really mean, for proof of that.

It’s not just the right, though; late last week, social media was struck by another wave of a theory that is, on its face, absolutely ludicrous, but nevertheless popular amongst far too many people — that Melania Trump is replaced by a Fake Melania in public appearances, for any number of stupid reasons. I saw countless posts arguing that of course it’s not the real Melania, and look what she’s mouthing to Trump, and so on, and so on, each one convinced that, yes, this was definitely a real thing that was happening and why won’t everyone wake up and smell the fake First Lady coffee.

I’m not immune to this, I admit. Part of me is utterly, entirely, convinced that there’s no way that the election this year will be fair. I can’t believe that the Trump administration won’t try everything it can to cheat and skew the result, and I also can’t find it inside me to believe that, in the face of a loss, Trump won’t do everything he can to stop himself leaving office.

There’s evidence for this, I could (and would) argue; it’s far from a baseless theory. What I keep returning to, though, is the strength of my belief in it not as theory, but as fact; I wholeheartedly believe it as if it’s already happened, even though I know that an alternative is theoretically possible. I know better, yet I still believe.

That’s the problem, maybe.

“Situations get fucked up, but turned around, sooner or later.”

While my love for Elliott Smith has faded somewhat since the early 2000s, that one line from “Say Yes” is something that returns to my head on a regular basis, it seems. When I first heard it, it was something that instinctively seemed true in large part because I was particularly optimistic and given to magical thinking at the time, so of course the universe would solve things and reward good people, right…?

This past year, though, it’s been particularly difficult to think along similar lines. 2020 has been almost supernaturally cruel, as if everyone were living in a horror movie where the slasher was the entire calendar year itself, out to demolish our self-esteem if not just kill us outright. There’s been disease and disaster, protests and police riots, layoffs and financial collapses, with the world playing out as if we all stepped into a Previously on… recap at the opening of Years and Years season 2 by mistake. We got the “situations get fucked up” part, but where’s the “turn around”?

(Sometimes I wonder just how much more frantic I’d feel were I in the U.K., where Brexit is still happening at the end of this year, but then my brain forces me to think of something better before it just shuts down involuntarily. I can’t really blame it, considering.)

As things tend to, though, there are signs that things might be changing in small and big ways towards the end of the year, and… perhaps… improving…? I’m almost actively fighting against optimism at this point, however. It’s too close to an election where I’m grimly convinced shenanigans will prevail, and I’ve gone through more than enough “hopes get dashed at the last minute” experiences in the last few months to be too nervous to expect anything else, thankyouverymuch.

The end result is, the Elliott Smith lyric now feels curiously, frustratingly naive, the product of more innocent times that probably never existed in the first place. I hate that; I hate to find myself that cynical, and I find myself wishing that, if and when things do improve in the short term, then one of the first things to recover is my sense of hope, however un-earned and childlike it may be.

I keep feeling as if I should write something about the election, especially considering that it’s easily the thing that’s dominating my thoughts for most of the day these days — it’s become a horrifying avatar of 2020 in that way, and one that I get more than a little concerned about when I consider things not necessarily working out the way I’d want them to — but, the sad truth is, I’m not sure what I’d say if I had the opportunity.

I’m exhausted by the 2020 election. I’m far from alone, I suspect; how could anyone be anything else, considering the year we’ve all been having? Even ignoring the fact that this particular election season has been quite as depressing as it has been — these particular candidates! This particular “discourse,” as the kids would have it, if those kids were cynical pundits who felt required by their career choices to pretend that everything isn’t quite the trash fire that it actually is! — this was hardly going to be a year for everyone to get excited about the prospect of engaging in the democratic process. We were too busy trying not to get sick, trying not to lose our jobs, our homes, our friends. This wasn’t the year, to put it mildly.

The electoral process waits for no man, however. (Imagine if it did! Imagine the many ways the United States could do elections better, like getting rid of the Electoral College, or either allowing everyone to vote by mail without it being portrayed as the end of the fucking world, or giving people off on election day or or or!) So, we’ve spent the last year or so with the entire apparatus at work, going through the motions of the primaries, the conventions, the debates, the entire time an entire nation just thinking that, really, we all have more important things to do and can we just have a different President already and move on.

And now we’re, what, a week away…? The anticipation, the pressure, of it all feels physically palpable at this point, ever-present. And, perpetually, exhausting.

For all the time that I’ve spent pondering the intricacies of aging in the past few weeks — and, given that I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago, that’s an upsettingly large amount of time, I have to shamefacedly admit — there’s one element of that whole “growing older” thing that had, until recently, seemingly evaded me: the recognition that, as it turns out, everyone else gets older at the same rate as I do.

Okay, that’s maybe a little too simplistic — but, sadly, not entirely offbase.

I was reading XX the other day, the new novel by graphic designer and comic book creator Rian Hughes, when the thought suddenly occurred to me: Rian Hughes is probably somewhere in his 50s now. It was something that, at once, seemed only logical and simultaneously impossible. After all, Hughes was a designer on a number of my favorite Britcomics and related titles back before I was really paying attention to graphic design: I can still remember his redesigns for Speakeasy and Deadline back in the day, and that was three decades or so ago. He has to be getting up there.

And yet, Rian Hughes is one of those figures who, in my head, doesn’t age past… late 30s at best…? It’s an imprecise art, but there are those people — not friends, friends age just like regular people — who are set at particular ages and don’t get to go past that, in my head. I can’t explain the logic, and I can’t pretend that there’s any kind of science at play here. It’s entirely arbitrary, but that doesn’t make it any less real. I simply have a lingering disbelief that Rian Hughes could possibly be as old as he actually is.

I like to think that this isn’t just me, and that everyone has artistic heroes that are forever stuck in a particular period that they have trouble shaking off. That could simply be my own neuroses shining through, though —  a needy sense of please, let it be other people, not just me. Still. If I’m 46 now, there’s no practical way for those I looked up to in my teens and twenties suddenly to be younger than me anywhere other than my heart, sadly enough.

(Amusingly, I couldn’t track down a birth year for Hughes. Maybe this isn’t quite as unrealistic as I thought…)

It’ll come as little surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to… all of this that concentration has been in shockingly short supply in 2020, with seemingly every single month apparently running down the international supply that little bit more. The simple act of just getting through the day when so much is constantly happening all the time, without becoming distracted by 20 different things at any given moment, feels like an achievement in and of itself, with the end result being that every single day feels exhausting on a level that we’d previously only managed to achieve in entire weeks in the olden days.

There was a point the other day where I wondered if that was just me, and if it was more to do with my increasing age — my half century is on the horizon now, shockingly — than anything else. Maybe everyone felt like this at 46, I wondered half-heartedly, before checking the news and discovering three separate things that would have made jaws drop just five years ago, all happening at the same time and snapping me back to reality.

It strikes me that, at least twice within the last four years, there’s been a mass movement of people reassuring each other that we’re living in a New Normal that was particularly stressful — unhealthily so, in fact — and that we should be kinder to ourselves and those around us if we happen to fall short on stated goals. And, of course, the second time — when COVID hit, and we all went into a lockdown that’s still happening, despite what some might believe — came before the end of the first, meaning that we’re just living in New Normal on top of New Normal. Does that mean it’s a third New Normal, or a New Normal Squared? I’ve lost track.

All of these thoughts come up, of course, on a day when it feels as if everyone’s struggling a little bit harder than they expected to get basic tasks done, myself included. I’ve started to wonder, is there a way to do this differently?