She's spent two days at her job and said that she couldn't wait to get back there in the morning for Day Three. This small, innocuous claim sent me into a frenzy of jealousy. Way back in 1999, I got my first full time job as Staff Writer on a popular pop music mag and skyrocketed into orbit. My start date was meant to be Monday, 1 November but on the Thursday before, my editor phoned me and asked if I'd like to fly to LA the next day and interview S Club 7. You know when Gwyneth Paltrow found out she was first nominated for an Oscar? I was about a billion times more excited than her.
But after a couple of years in swanning around in showbiz circles, going to swanky parties, flying all over the world and chatting to anyone who was anyone in the most superficial, one-sided fashion (in that I would slip into the erroneous belief that we were having fun banter as friends but the moment I made the heinous mistake of talking about anything other than them, their eyes would glaze over with acute teenage cataracts and the conversation would grind to a halt), I had an epiphany. It was when I found out I had to do a phone interview with Britney Spears and the only time she was free to do it was at 1pm and I was really annoyed because it meant missing a fun lunch with my workmates - at that point I knew that the honeymoon was over. In years gone by, I would have eaten a tramp's vomit to have the chance to chat to Britters on the blower, but now I'd rather have a cheap lunch in a bad local eaterie than listen to her wafty pronouncements on nothing. Gradually throughout the next few months, the celeb world became less and less interesting to me and when I went freelance I found myself dreading the work over which I had once salivated.
Fast forward a couple of years and I began my Master's degree in English Literature, something I wanted to do to supplement a newfound desire to teach English full time in secondary schools - but over the course of that year, my eyes were opened in an unexpected way - thankfully nothing like that scene in a Clockwork Orange. But rather than developing a love of life and a hunger for knowledge, my cynicism, previously reserved for vacuous popstars, expanded like the plant in the Little Shop of Horrors, growing new tentacles of disdain overnight and baying for blood with terrifying volume. I learned about different political movements, wrote my dissertation on the way that culture can be (and is) manipulated by the state for its own gain, and suddenly lost faith in the purity or joy of almost everything in the modern world.After my degree, it was almost impossible to feel optimistic about any area of life: charities were being run like businesses, supporting the evil capitalist superstructure. The national educational syllabus was determined by civil servants and simply reinforced existing stereotypes. Culture was just a tool to manipulate the masses - where government or corporate funding is key in art, how can any off-message works reach the majority? Where sales are all-important, how can subversive literature be published and distributed successfully? In fact - can subversive art that really challenges the status quo actually exist since, by definition, capitalism co-opts everything for its own gain (cf. modern art in the foyers of big banks or the adoption of punk culture by the mainstream)?
Suddenly, throwing myself into anything became an act of naivete, since spending my 9-5 in the pursuit of any one ideal seemed, well, idealistic and thus stupid. Journalism, newspapers, book writing - all lost their appeal since the newspapers, publishers and TV companies all looked like horrible corporate apparatuses full of lemmings that I wanted to avoid at all costs. Charities seemed to be adopting an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude, courting celebrities and wealthy capitalist 'philanthropists' (see this from today's Guardian). Sure, they're doing good - but the world is fundamentally out of kilter, the rich/poor divide is growing apace and the charities aren't able to do much about it. Politics could be the place where huge changes could be made - but it's a two horse race between old nags that should be driven to the knackers' yard, where the finalists haven't been selected democratically and no one cares who wins. So I floundered, unable to find an area about which I'd felt that passion and excitement so many years ago. It's a tragedy that my thrill levels have gone downhill since I met S Club 7.
Now I work in the City, an area with which I feel no connection whatsoever. Being a child of the capitalist situation myself, I took the job to enable myself to buy a flat, and I make no apologies for that although there is a part of me that thinks I should set up a commune. And there's no doubt that if I am still working in finance in a few years, it will make me sad. Naive or not, I just feel like there must be something out there in which I can believe, a cause untainted by modern bullshit - but then, if it exists within the modern world, by definition it must have been sucked into the system itself. Maybe the only option is to operate knowingly and resignedly within the structure, either following Laurie's lead and revelling in an industry, like fashion, that never claims to be anything other than completely vacuous - or doing one's best to change things from the inside. But where? And who can you trust? For fascinating conspiracy theories, you don't have to look far... And I'm still reeling from the Prince Harry media blackout.
Anyway, this is all FAR too stern for my liking. I'm sure we'd all be far more comfortable if I started venting about the fact that I carefully put my theatre tickets for tonight into my book and then sensibly left my book on my bed - so now I must sprint home after work, grab the book (which really is hopefully on my bed but definitely might not be) and then rush to the theatre for the pre-show discussion. It will all be really sweaty and stressful and I'm livid about the whole thing. But what does it matter? It's all capitalist bollocks anyway.
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