( Article for SUPERBLOW magazine )

Satsuma Disaster.

A swelling of numbers around the periphery of an idea.

Good & evil, light & dark, talent & celebrity.

I’m sat in Worthing in bed, hooded sweat-top and pants, typing like Murder She Wrote on a laptop, cigarette, crème de Menthe.

I’m trying to remember something I keep thinking about.

A story that is slowly writing itself.

There is me here thinking, typing, walking along the seafront, ice cold, recounting my life to myself as if someone had just asked me what my life was about.

And then there is this awareness I have that things happen in time with startlingly obvious forewarning.

Fashion and history and politics and religion and battles and mortality and growth and ideas and things.

They all become something suddenly different, but all so obviously, as if I knew it would happen, as if I were remembering it, anticipating it, and am watching everything happen in slow motion, or from a distance.

Everything is so focused on the after effects rather than the development and tipping point of an event or idea.

That is, the point when everyone joins in, everyone buys & sells, the media write and document, the followers of fashion celebrate and the public votes by phone for who they want to evict.

Do I really need to get to know whom I am talking to so intimately and make them want me?

I am talking to you, and you are reading my words, but you cannot fully understand what I mean or feel, I can’t expect you to, and without that level of understanding you cannot truly be the intended recipient of this communication.

The audience must seek me out, the focus must come to rest on me, as otherwise I spend my life chasing it, trying to be heard, make sense, know my audience, know who I’m talking to, and adapt everything I do to be acceptable and comprehensive to a half known quantity.

Because the media is edited, and the focus of its attention edited, must I too be edited?

A life played out mimicking a medium of mass communication, like charades, a magazine or programme, constantly reinventing itself, rephrasing, adapting, contradicting, selling out, seeking attention, doing the best to please, big headlines, straight columns, clear pictures, airbrushed and unsharp masked, clever transitions, short sentences, an adverts duration, issue after issue, opportunity after opportunity, with engaging soundtracks for dramatic effect.

There is no happiness or contentment to be found in being a reflection.

Time will never end, as there will always be an absence beyond it existing in its aftermath.

Nothing I can ever do can stop, interfere with or change this.

Things articulate time passing.

Great ideas are first thought, forgotten, half-remembered, annotated, edited, selected, constructed, realized, released, presented, picked up upon, made fashionable, celebrated, focused upon, made heroic, made influential, communicated, explained, clarified, translated, reinterpreted, made available, commercialized, brought, used, sold, made a commodity, made mainstream, made everyday, made unfashionable, fallen out of love with, rejected, taken off the shelf, put away, dispensed with, interned, forgotten, erased, lost for ever, unearthed, chance discovered, decoded, remembered, mythologized, renovated, revived, made symbolic, commemorated, revered, worshiped, made emblematic, made fashionable once more, celebrated, focused upon, made heroic, made influential, communicated, explained, clarified, translated, reinterpreted, made available, commercialized, brought, used, sold, made a commodity, made mainstream, made everyday, made unfashionable for a second time, fallen out of love with, rejected, taken off the shelf, put away, dispensed with, interned, forgotten, erased, and finally lost forever again, though maybe only until they are once again unearthed.

From a jumble of sentences that don’t quite fit together follows an entire process of archaeology.

Does anyone really know what Nostradamus was talking about, or Nietzsche, or Jesus?

In the future, will VOGUE magazine become a fully functioning religion with cathedrals, vestments, ceremonies, public holidays, Christmas lights on Oxford Street and its own chocolate currency? Will Hip Hop become like Yoga, and cigarettes like Heroin, and Pork Scratchings like Truffles, Apple Tango the blood of some Christ-like figure, and keyboard typing a ritual hand dance like ballet, with over accentuated movements like an orchestral conductor or air guitarist.

Will anyone understand the written word, the email or text message, the smiley faced emoticon, the printed t-shirt, the low cut of a denim jean exposing a tummy, the holes in a pattern, a jacket cut to follow the exact line and movements of a Professor of Fashion, now long gone, but who was this strange type of small person that was like a Bishop or Knight, who conjured bright coloured images and strange bacteria like shapes by hand, who breathed carbon monoxide and communicated with others through strange circular dialects, fragmented verse and algorithms, using a 26 letter alphabet with10 numerical digits, punched into an old tin calculator called an ‘iMac’, using a 4-fingered hand with only 3-joints per finger, and a strange claw like limb called a ‘thumb’ which probably evolved for hunting food in the Tesco Metro.

Electricity like steam and fire will become redundant, the bronze age, the iron age, the plastic age, the titanium age, everything will become lost and decay, like wood pulp pages in a book and audio tape cassettes, compact discs, flash memory, hard drives, mp3, nothing is sustainable because everything is constructed from matter, the periodic table cookbook, oxidising, reacting, breaking down, evaporating into thin air, with invention, technology and fashion transforming everything, making obsolete, progressing, surviving, sustaining life, decency and civilization.

We have to lose everything, our entire culture, our beliefs, our lives, our wardrobes, our ability to dance, quite possibly within the space of a decade, generation or lifetime, or at very least within a hundred years.

We have to be ready for anything, happening very quickly, and we might not be the ones who adapt or survive. It might not be physical or intellectual prowess that helps us survive, or wealth, status or celebrity, but rather chance location or simply being in the right place at the right time.

Hatfield & Welwyn garden City might be one of the lucky places to be.

Or it might be that Fashion Design prepares you better mentally than Graphic Design or Catering or working in HMV, to cope with sudden change, to adapt, and to survive variation.

A move into education, into politics, into writing down words late at night in my pants.

The change has already started within me, in anticipation, slow-mo frame by frame, referred to vaguely until now as ‘The Future’.

It doesn’t shock me when I think of the possible effects of change, my Fashion Education protects me and makes me accept it more readily.

I will survive this, and so will some of my ideas.

Not necessarily the ones I thought were good either.

They may we worthless now, but my audience is on the move, hungry, determined, methodical, getting closer, warmer, and it’s only a matter of time before they finally unearth me. Hanging on for dear life, curled up under some damp stone, or at the bottom of some rock-pool: this strange hardy creature who has managed to live without running water, car or washing machine for a large part of his adult life, and who has grown a shell to protect himself from the harsh elements of his environment, fossilized by lifestyle, and with adapted sensory perception to compensate for lack of widescreen TV, i-pod and Sony Playstation.

There’s a distinct possibility that I will be one of the lucky ones when change comes crashing in.

Words by Professor Julian Roberts

‘Satsuma Disaster’, SUPERBLOW, issue 2.