We accept the story because we live the isolation

One of the joys of the past year or so has been working on the series of collections culled from these pages. Pushing the Wave 2017–2022, which covered my rather sporadic output over the first five years on this site, was published in March this year, while I have been busy at work on its follow-up, Pushing the Wave 2023, a rather more substantial collection that came out just last week. I say more substantial because it was during that year that I began to truly develop the style of the weekly columns, and understood the scope, and potential, of what I had undertaken.

And the work continues unabated, as I am currently tackling the third volume of my pieces, in the form of Pushing the Wave 2024. I am very much looking forward to sharing more details about that within due course.

On top of that, I have been extremely busy writing the introductions and notes for the new P-Wave Classics series of books from P-Wave Press, beginning with three volumes of novels by Thomas Love Peacock, of which Maid Marian & The Misfortunes of Elphin is the most recently published, with Crotchet Castle & Gryll Grange due for publication in the second half of October.

Although it has been an enormous amount of work for each of the Pushing the Wave collections to select the pieces, refine, edit and annotate them, and then put them together with photographs and drawings drawn from the past 15 years or so or my life, it has been very instructive not only to go back through the experiences that led me to write the pieces in the first place but also to trace the evolution of my writing as I addressed a much wider range of topics and gave vent to many of the issues, large and small, that had niggled at my conscience, which previously had no outlet other than the occasional rant to family or friends.

But there has been an impact of all this reflection on me as a person and as a writer. Going back over the dozens and dozens of my articles, reviews, recipes, short stories, musings and other outpourings in fine detail from the past eight years has been enjoyable, but it has also eaten up a lot the time that I would previously have spent working on new pieces for this site. It has also made me a little hesitant. I wonder, like many a columnist before me, I suspect, after a certain length of time in the role, what I might say next. Have I not said it all? After all, putting together everything I have included so far in the three collections showed me I have already covered a lot of ground. Maybe I am all dried up, like a forgotten well.

But then, like some latter day Phil Connors from Groundhog Day (to switch metaphors), I wake up the next morning, read the latest headlines or opinion pieces, or simply just look out the window, and my previous world-weariness is forgotten, my imagination is fired up once more, and I am ready to put virtual pen to paper and bang on about something new that bothers or delights me, depending on my prevailing mood.

The real problem I have had over the past few months has been a lack of time to write down all the pieces I have constructed in my mind but have, sadly, drifted away from my consciousness. That and the sheer huge burden of shocking, saddening and lamentable news that has bombarded us in wave and wave of assaults on the senses, the mind and the soul, making yesterday’s urgent idea instantly irrelevant.

That we are living in ‘interesting times’ is something of an understatement, and each week I have been deeply affected by the way in which liberties of all kinds are under threat, by the powerlessness that many of us have felt in the face of the global events that are circumscribing our lives, and by the tragedies that are inflicted on people’s lives seemingly on a daily basis.

This morning, I sat down for a cup of tea with an old friend. It is not something I do very often, as the idea of freelancers being able to do much other than keep their nose to the grindstone is as fanciful as a unicorn piloting a jumbo jet. We talked of this and that, and chewed the fat until our thoughts naturally turned to the events of the day.

I have been going over and over the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath, pondering both the causes and consequences that we will see unfold over the coming months.

My friend made the rather fascinating observation that when John F Kennedy was killed and the FBI tried to blame it on a lone lunatic killer in the form of Lee Harvey Oswald, the public found the idea hard to swallow. The notion that a person detached and isolated from society thinking that the solution to the perceived ills of the day was the murder of a president seemed so far-fetched that it was almost impossible to take seriously, resulting in an instant fund of conspiracy theories.

Yet fast-forward just over 60 years and there has been no difficulty in accepting that Kirk was killed by a lone gunman with a vague and ill-defined axe to grind. Neither for him nor for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump when he was on the campaign trail. Why is it that we can now readily accept that someone isolated from society would reach for a gun and murder, or at least try to kill, a major, if controversial, public figure?

I suspect that the reason lies in the observation that, in the smartphone era and particularly having lived through the limitations and restrictions imposed on us during the COVID-19 pandemic, we all understand the consequences of social isolation, whether real or imagined, and how that can affect our relationship both with ourselves and with others.

Where there is ignorance there is doubt, and if we do not know other people, and especially do not know how to interact with them, then doubt can become suspicion, and even fear. And that throws up a wall between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that is as insurmountable as it is invisible.

Talking to my friend, I gave the example of the visitor who is lost in an unfamiliar town. In trying to find the way to their destination, what do they do? Do they stop a passerby or go into a shop and ask for directions? Do they look around them and try to find street signs and directions, or local landmarks? Or do they simply consult their phone? We all know the answer to that question, because we all do it: we consult our phones. When I was young, people in the street were stopped for assistance or directions without hesitation. I cannot think of the last time someone approached me for any other reason than to sell me something.

And so here we are, vaguely aware that we are living via a glass window onto a world that does not exist, while the real world that surrounds us passes us by. As a consequence, we are increasingly hesitant to engage with other people, and reach always for the virtual when unoccupied. Vaguely aware but too seduced by the sparkling world that lies just beyond the screen to do anything about it.

It therefore comes as no great surprise to us that a man killed a right wing influencer and activist without any clear motive or prior online presence attempting to justify his actions, even though Kirk’s death was, in itself and the way it was carried out, surprising and deeply shocking.

I am not trying to excuse anyone or anything here. The murder of Charlie Kirk was a heinous and unjustifiable act. But the fact that the story as presented by the US authorities has been accepted at face value, when 60 years ago it would have been immediately questioned, is something that we all need to ponder. In my view, we are becoming divorced from society by our experience with smartphones, devices that could be called individualisers but might more properly be called atomisers.