20120717

Emma Morgan



THE FAQ



The FAQ, FULL ARSENAL QUOTA, this says to you

And does not answer anything

Because the thing you would most like to know the answer to

Is not a question, that to your knowledge, is frequently asked

It is not even Wikipedian

It is a question related to the fetid ugliness

Of the dank depression that is the underground car park

And how surely something could be done?

Some lick of paint. Some mural surely. Surely they could mural if nothing else at all. Some youth scheme employed to brighten, tasteful message ridden graffiti, that sort of thing. Get fat stinking youth off dirty urban streets and into dungeon car parks. And while they’re at it why not put homeless to sleep in bunks down there, surely more practical, not to mention economical. Soon an underground metropolis, a catacomb culture takes root and grows. And, being the way of the youth and the homeless, breeding would take place, pale mouselike eyeless pink babies sucking at their mother’s dirty paps, or something like that, to counteract the ageing population. Not just some utopian dream, some town planner’s vision for a New Jerusalem, but the full and timely exploitation of our underground resource availabilities. Under the town hall we will dig down for victory through the conference chambers. Civil servants in their lunch breaks will roll up their sleeves and descend in stylish glass elevators to tile new bathrooms for the great unwashed. And, by providing for society’s most needy, we grow ourselves. So soon no need to go home from work at all, as this multi faceted multi discipline multi multi everything rejuvenates our inner cities. So down you sink from your office, down through the dark layers of sedimentary deposits, to your own little free pod, your little cell in this great urban hive, where you can sleep and are even permitted to dream and in the morning after using the communal washing facilities so thoughtfully provided and so gleamingly tiled, you may stroll through the attractively muralled tunnel to the super efficient metro system and come back up top to make some cash to keep yourself in this regenerative miracle. Architects will win prizes. Politicians will be lauded. Homelessness eradicated. Youth employed. Obesity eliminated. Artistry encouraged. New cutting edge technology plus civil responsibility equals urban regeneration miracle that leads the way for universal transformation. Lebensraum. No let’s not say that. Let’s say a society so big, so interconnected that it mirrors the web. The web. The web. Cue hysterical visions of cross continental global interconnection as we sustainably shelter ourselves underground from the glowing intensity of UV and the ravaging damage of flood, fire and famine. So also environmental tick box. Hurrah, the world is saved.

But that was not my original question

My original question was this:

Would most underground car parks benefit from a mirrored glitter ball?

And I would like to think that without a statistical analysis and a cost benefit ratio and an interactive comments and ideas page, without a Facebook mob or Twitter hysteria or the universal dialectic generated by cutting edge new media

That the answer would probably be

Yes.


Emma Morgan comes from Guernsey, Channel Islands and like many islanders has gypsied around only to end up back where she started from. She writes poetry and is working on a novel about sex, drugs and rock and roll.

 
 
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