Sunday 13 March 2016

Everything’s amazing and no-one is happy…

I was in a pub, a couple of nights ago, to watch the football: Liverpool v Manchester United. I’m nominally a Liverpool fan (though I can’t remember why the affiliation began, and, having never been to Anfield, my fan credentials are minimal. Plus I don't really care who wins). The guy sitting behind me, supporting Man United, cared very much indeed, and kept up a running commentary of complaints about the way his team was playing. He was determined to be miserable, simply because the action on the screen failed to follow the script he had written in his head. Liverpool won 2-0 - hooray! - and it could have been 5-0 or 6-0. Man United were awful.

But, hey, he’s watching his team playing, in real time, on a big screen, for free, even though the action is taking place a hundred miles away. It’s almost a miracle, if you spend a moment to think about it. In a YouTude video, Louis CK riffs on this idea… that everything’s amazing and no-one is happy. About flying, he says, wide-eyed: “You’re sitting in a chair… in the sky!”. Yes, our sense of wonder has been whittled away, and we need to get it back…

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