So I've just watched "Hogfather" and it was good. For a Terry Pratchett adaption, it was superb given that so much of what makes Pratchett fun to read is the narrative, something you can't really do with a TV show. It worked and was both touching, funny and a little unnerving in parts, so all good, really.And it got me thinking about the central theme, which is the notion of fantasy and how it gets us through the day:
Death: Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With Tooth Faeries, Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty, that sort of thing.
And given that I am prone to think about the nature of existence in the shower, in lieu of any greater mental challenge whilst washing, I wondered if this was a pretty good point. For the past couple of years I have entertained the fantasy of growing up - The pretty wife, the house, the car, the mediocre middle-class friends - which suddenly struck me as a) One of the reasons my last relationship crumbled without me realising it and b) As a total waste of my fantasy.
I mean, if you fantasise about some responsible, upright future, what the hell are you doing? I should be fantasising about more... Fantastical things. Not some fucking idealised tedium that I may well slip into without really doing anything to cause it to happen. It seemed so dull. I'll use my conscious, important time for that. Hell, I'm entering a career where there will a surfeit of reality, of the real nasty side of existence. I shouldn't spend the time in my head dreaming about becoming a lassez-faire suburbanite, should I? Did it really give me any pleasure? Given that so much of my future was based on dreams, should I be so entirely surprised that my ex left me? Not because I was constantly off in some fantasy land, but rather that I was planning a future, one that left nothing to the imagination. Thats not the way a relationship should be based and it's not what my "me" time should be used for.
Is it?
As a foot-note, I've noticed that my mother bought me a pair of boxer-shorts (surely the best underwear in the world?) that have "Think of England" on the bottom of one leg. Is she trying to suggest to me an alternative lifestyle choice? D:



2 comments:
I think we both know what you fantasise about, and it's not middle-class suburban life.
It's foxes, furry little dickgirl amputee foxes in soiled nappies.
D:
Don't forget the oatmeal.
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