I had a thought, the other day, that all of those “2012! It’s when the world is going to end!” prophecies and panics were right, in a way. Or, at least, that they were as right as they were wrong, and it’s just that everyone was being far too literal in approaching them. I’ve noticed that I am sadly not alone in finding that 2012 so far as been strangely, worryingly overwhelming in terms of life changes and work things and just big stuff – Friends have been having worse times of it than me, and fighting their own battles against all manner of things that I’ve only ever vaguely had to deal with, luckily – and it’s gone from dazed jokes that “This year is trying to kill us” to actually wondering if this year is trying to kill us.
It’s not, of course, but I wonder if 2012 is going to end up being some kind of weird year of change for people, where things happen (Things so important that they require italics, obviously). One of my favorite comments about all the 2012 insanity was someone pointing out that none of the prophecies were actually saying that it was the year where the world ended, but that they were all about massive shifts and dramatic changes (Terrence McKenna’s Timewave Zero, for example, has this year as the equivalent of a massive heart attack for the planet, but not a fatal one, if I remember correctly). I always preferred that idea, that “it’s not death, it’s changing” take on events, but I didn’t really take any of it even vaguely seriously until the other day, thinking that all of this upheaval and drama and quiet sad horror is the start of that change, and that it’s something that we’re all doing without realizing it. It’s the end of the world as we know it, perhaps, but only our own worlds, and only those worlds as we know them.
All of which is a quasi-apology for not writing here lately. I’ve been going through my own internal dramas (Very quietly, very withdrawn, you’ll be happy to know, and none of it serious beyond to my bank balance), and haven’t felt particularly like blogging here. I’m getting over that, though, and will soon be back to trying to catch up to 366 Songs (I am so amazingly behind) and, more importantly, other writing that can fill voids left by gigs that I no longer have or never had in the first place. The name of this site was always meant to push me forward, after all.