NOTHING TO SAY

This is very, very weird. After rattling out my nonsense for more consecutive days than really seems all that healthy, I suddenly find myself in a position where I genuinely cannot find anything of any substance to write about.

Nothing.

The cupboard is bare.

Perhaps it has come from a general sense of how little my opinions and I actually seem to matter in the great scheme of things, or maybe I’ve just been rattling on about stuff for far too long and then a day comes along and you just can’t think of anything new to say or write about. I sat down thinking that I would try and write something slightly more light-hearted than usual, but nothing would come, and I mulled over the possibility of sharing a few thoughts about the stuff I’m currently listening to on the CD player in the car as I drive to work, but nothing I could come up with really seemed “significant” enough to write about.

I know! I know! It’s never really stopped me before...

However, sometimes the “muse” won’t come and it’s best to admit it, close down the file for the day and move on, in the sure knowledge that at some point, even if it’s still a few days hence (sorry, but I love using words like “hence” - It probably annoys the hell out of people and confirms my oft-suspected predilection for pomposity...), something will strike me as being “interesting” enough to set my writing juices flowing again, much, I’m sure to the general irritation of an indifferent universe.

After all, a few weeks ago, I effectively completely disappeared from the wacky online world for over a week after faithfully appearing every day for over a year and also having had, despite having many resolutions and against all of my better judgement, a few humiliating recent paddles in the murky waters of other social networking outlets.

And yet nobody even seemed to notice.

There was not a comment, not a whisper, not the slightest enquiry as to why everything had suddenly gone so silent in Lesser Blogfordshire. To all intents and purposes, the last free message directed towards the world might have been sounded from our tiny little broadcasting station and the jackbooted soldiers could have been hammering down the doors with their rifle butts and dragging the free thinkers away towards an uncertain fate, and yet, in terms of basic concern, it appeared that the world remained silent with regards to our fate.

Or perhaps the relatively limited version of “the world” that does engage with these humble pages had better things to do and other things to think about. It is, after all, always a terribly busy time of year for everyone as we try to claw back the many quids (other currencies are available) that we have splurged about in the still relatively recent pursuit of our various midwinter happinesses, with the financial horrors of budgets, holidays and other pocket-fleecing things to come, and, I suppose the comparatively lacklustre disappearance of a relatively unloved stranger is hardly something that would generally be regarded as something to be remarked upon.

Maybe they just assumed that I’d gone on holiday, which, as you know, I am known to do...

I suppose it’s just a bit disappointing on a personal level, that’s all. We all like to think that we play slightly more than a supporting role in the lives of those with whom we regularly interact, and yet, in the great theatrical production that is somebody else’s life, most of us are seldom more than extras, able to be trodden underfoot by the horses in that opening charge, or passing by in the background, possibly even mostly out of focus, as the main event goes on in extreme close up somewhere nearby which we remain ever detached from.

More happily, being extras, we can put on another wig and sometimes return as a completely different person in a later scene, or, with a certain amount of careless editing, turn up again long after our character has already walked around the next corner. Sometimes, we might be called out from amongst the ranks of the surprisingly vital yet usually unregarded mass of other supporting players and be given a more prominent role in someone else's story, and occasionally, by some miracle, we might even be given a featured starring role for a little while.

After all, as the man once wrote: “All the world’s a stage. And all the men and women merely players.” Sometimes it’s hard to keep that in mind as we watch as the world passes us by and leaves us feeling rather irrelevant in the great scheme of things. The fact that all of us ultimately are irrelevant when it comes to the bigger picture of the universe is something that we’d all rather not dwell upon, but should, at the very least, serve to remind us all that we really should be trying to make the best of what we do with the tiny fragment of time that we get to play out our story in.

This, of course, serves to remind me that in the continuing unfolding story of me, everyone else is either a featured player or a background artist, but there can only be one star playing the lead role. Oh yes, certain people might occasionally yearn for some kind of recasting, but there can only be one original superstar in this tragedy as it inexorably unfolds, and I do seem to have got myself rather typecast in the lead.

It’s just such a pity that the script seems to be so lacklustre and, ultimately, rather bland and disappointing. Perhaps more suitable to be considered, it it were to even be considered at all, as an art house supporting feature rather than a summer blockbuster.

Mind you, the continuing repetitive and predictable  themes and tropes aren’t really helping to make the plot any more engaging, and familiar turgid lines of self-pitying dialogue like “THIS, it appears, is how much I matter...” do little to engage the wider public, as we spin along inside the ever decreasing circles of a strangely unengrossing and repetitive storyline.

Then again, I suppose it could be argued that it isn’t really about whether I matter, but more about how little these relatively unloved outpourings do.

Mind you, it has been an eye opener because I also can’t really imagine that there’s anything much I could say that really matters anyway... The world it turns, and turns again. Nothing that I can say or do is likely to prevent that from happening and, of course, if I actually did manage to stop the world from turning, even for a moment, I’d be smashing through the nearest wall at more than a thousand miles an hour along with the rest of you, and none of us would have much of a part to play in anything very much if that ever happened.

“Made it Ma! Top of the world!”.

But then it is rather interesting to wake up one morning with a sudden sense of what it must be like to be in someone else’s shoes, to try and appreciate what it must seem like to read these regular outpourings from another point of view. What must he be thinking? Why does he think anybody would be interested? Why does he think he has something to say? Although the fact that I can’t seem to get my nearest and dearest to take any interest in what I might think, or whether they have been persuaded by significant others that there would be nothing of interest for them to see here is a constant nagging concern, especially when some of those human barricades have an over-inflated sense of their own genius about which we are constantly expected to endure.

After all, all that I’m really trying to do is speak what’s left of my mind, put a few of my thoughts on the record, but sometimes it seems that just because it’s me rather than some other character that I’m expected to be impressed by, nothing I can say can really have any real value...

Except to me, of course, which should, of course, be all that really matters.