Tell Him Something Pretty

I just finished a rewatch of Deadwood. 'Tell Him Something Pretty' is the title of the final episode.

I like that title, so I thought I'd write a blog post called 'Tell Him Something Pretty' even though I don't want to write about anyone telling anyone else something pretty, and I don't want to write about Deadwood.

I may have figured out why writing this blog is so difficult. It's because I'm writing not for its own sake, but because I want to go back in time. I want to go back to the time in my life when I did write blog posts, and I can't. It's like fighting against the current. That's why I keep writing these and not posting them (see a lack of hyperlink here for examples of previous unpublished posts). As I type, I have a momentary sense of treading water, but I can't go backwards.

Trying to write has the futility of those anxiety dreams I have all the time. I had one recently where I was trying to fill the dishwasher, but every time I thought I was close, more dirty crockery would appear, and I'd have to reorganise things. Even with my superior dishwasher organising skills, it was impossible to finish.

I haven't yet dreamt about writing a blog post that I'm unable to post. Maybe it will happen tonight.

Of course, I could just post this. I could just post the other ones. I could post a story I've already written: just a basic copy and paste job.

I could... but I can't.

Because of the reason up there. The one about not being able to go back in time.

I need to convince myself to travel forward in time, not backwards. I may not be able to go back to blog-writing times in the past, but I could travel into a future where I write. That's a journey I can make. I can get carried along by the current instead of fighting it, I can relax and I can float, I can catch my sleeve on a fountain pen, I can dash my head on the rocks of stream metaphors somewhere round the bend in two-thousand-and-god-damned-nineteen-or-some-shit.

But I don't want to hurl myself into the future. Donald Trump is President there. I can barely even bring myself to write it. Donald Trump is President there. And Brexit. And... everything else. Things genuinely are much worse now, right? It's not just a subjective thing, is it? You know I hate it when people imbue their own times with MAJOR SIGNIFICANCE just because they're alive. I don't think I'm doing that. It just is that bad.

It's no wonder I want to go back in time. Even treading water is better than going forward. Even trying to tread water is better than going forward.

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OK - I just went to get lunch, and I was mulling it over. Maybe the world isn't that much worse. I put my pessimism down to two things: Twitter and Southampton Football Club.

Twitter

I don't have any friends. You might think that would be the headline of this issue, but I'm going with Twitter. I don't have any friends, so my only real view of the outside world comes from Twitter. And maybe it's just the people I follow, but Twitter mainly gives me the despair of current events, and the negativity of reactions to said events, and the further negativity of reactions to said reactions.

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[Contemporary Edit: I never finished this. What a shame. It was so interesting and original. If only we could hear more about why Twitter is bad. Alas...]