It makes me sad sometimes when I think about what human beings have to endure. Having to listen to other people talk, for example! Having to endure it – that’s enough to wear anyone down, isn’t it? It’s the whole sad spectacle of it, people talking at each other, yakking at each other, yakking in general, wearing each other down relentlessly. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not being unduly misanthropic here. If that’s the word I’m looking for. I’m really not. I’m coming from a place of compassion. We’re such sad dysfunctional creatures, aren’t we? So very sad, so very dysfunctional… It’s often struck me that the reason we human beings spend so much time yakking at each other, yakking on mobile phones, and just yakking our heads off in general, is because we’re trying to prove to ourselves, and to other people, that we aren’t sad and dysfunctional creatures. It’s a tactic of desperation. A tactic of pure desperation.

We are desperately talking away to each other nine to the dozen without ever taking a break because we want to prove to ourselves that we’re normal. Okay, you’re probably thinking, but isn’t it true that most people don’t seem particularly desperate when they’re chatting, isn’t it true that most people seem to take to it like ducks to water. Don’t they love it? That’s exactly the point I’m making however – that’s the whole point right there, you see. That’s the point. That’s the point. You see the thing is that we’ve got so very used to this gimmick of ours that it now seems perfectly natural; we’re so well adapted to it that we think we’re talking about things because we actually want to, not because we desperately need to in order to persuade ourselves that we’re not total freaks. The gimmick has taken over you see and it’s got the upper hand. It’s got the better of us. It’s taken on a life of its own and we’re just going along with it. We’re hitch-hikers – we’re just hitching a lift. We’re just going along for the ride. Isn’t that always the way?

It’s got so that when I notice people talking away to each other nine to the dozen I look at them with pity and I think ‘you poor bastard’. ‘You poor bastard,’ I say to myself, ‘life is grim, life is grim’. But on the other hand you could say that perhaps they’re enjoying the grotesque suffering of it all and so who am I to judge? Who am I to interfere? Who am I to say what’s right and wrong? Life’s a funny old thing, isn’t it? I know that’s a cliché but never mind. We put ourselves in such dreadfully uncomfortable positions, don’t we? But who’s to say, perhaps we enjoy it on some level. Perhaps we like it. There has to be some kind of an old pay-off in it for us for God’s sake. Some kind of an old perk. There has to be some kind of an old perk now wouldn’t you say. Some kind of an old perk, some kind of an old perk. Wouldn’t you say. They take to it like ducks to water you know. That’s the whole point I’m trying to make here. That’s the point. That the gimmick has got the better of us – that we don’t know what we’re doing anymore but we don’t want to let on to ourselves. We don’t want to see the darkness. Confidence is everything – isn’t that what they say?