Bleep Bloop - Upamanyu Acharya

Mocking the flock. I’ve done this a few times. I regularly make fun of the flamingos at Sewri Flamingo Point; they’re just so futile, lapping away happily at pebbles and bits of plastic strewn over the most desolate part of the East coast of the island, and it’s obvious they don’t want to be there. I sympathise; I wouldn’t want to be in a place called Sewri either. I once borrowed peanuts from a guy on a ferry on our way to Alibaug so we could throw it at seagulls. I don’t see how that’s relevant, but hopefully it helps set the tone for the rest of this artefact I’m about to write.

In the last time period settled smoothly in the stream of public consciousness, Stephen Fry got married to someone called Elliot Spencer. People weren’t astonished at the fact that it was a guy, because that sort of thing is supposedly normal in Norfolk, but at the fact that he was a whole 30 years younger than Stephen. Which is great, I think. People should be allowed to marry whomever and whatever they want, except helicopters because fuck helicopters – they can fly; they don’t deserve the right to get married. Honestly, I’m surprised he stopped at 30 because knowing British celebrities… Okay, I can’t possibly make a Jimmy Saville joke about Stephen Fry. He’s just too nice.

Top Gear got cancelled. The show that millions of people, all over the world loved to casually tune into while browsing Facebook on their laptop and listening to Katy Perry. The only reason the show even lasted for 22 whole series is probably because people didn’t realise they were even on air. In that time, James May discovered blue shoes, Richard Hammond flew helicopters to work and Jeremy Clarkson built an empire of petrolheads- teenagers and old people alike (no in-between); people who truly understood the value and the marvel of a machine as wantonly charming and as unerringly certain as a car. Some of them even watched the show. David Cameron, one of Jeremy’s neighbours who also happens to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, backed Jeremy during his “fracas” that led to his dismissal. Glad to know that he’s got his priorities sorted; the whole ISIS thing isn’t as big as Jeremy’s ego anyway.

Taylor Swift released an album last year, and the disturbance it caused in the steady flow of trashy music that we are so assured from music studios’ finest products is immense. She really does speak to her audience in a way no other artist does. Taylor Swift is to teenagers what Lutheranism was to people in the latter chronology of the Holy Roman Empire, or what cocaine was to any 80s musician. I have to wonder what it takes for someone to be so successful though; surely something in their brain’s wired differently from the rest of us. Something other than passion, beauty, charisma or talent. I wonder whether she’s actually certifiably insane, and whether she wakes up in hysterics some mornings thinking, “I am an onion.” She wouldn’t be as crazy as my favourite author and poet Russell Brand, who was actually considered so barmy that he was rejected from the Church of  Scientology.Tom Cruise, saving the world, one maniacal religion’s institutional integrity at a time.

So, back to the flamingos at Sewri. From their vantage point we’re just a bunch of hairless apes with Samsung Galaxy Flips and Nokia phones running Symbian, flashing a bunch screens at their faces and trying to get Reliance 2G to work so we can upload it to Instagram using ‘Nashville’ and tagging it #nofilter. I imagine we look kind of the same to people on the other side of the metaphorical fence; to the Clarksons and the Taylor Swifts of the world. The people who actually manage to shape the world and make a difference aside from being part of an endless sludge of electronic bleeps and bloops. But let’s not let that discourage us from shitposting like Jaden Smith or rising up against the white-fiery words of figurative fascists of fame and fortune.

-UpamanyuAcharya
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