The election is well and truly over and I think I've finally recovered from the lifting the heavy weight of changing the world via social media, making sure people I largely imagine already agree with me know exactly what I think about things at least three times a day. It takes it out of you.
In such times, it's important to use the internet for what it was made for, which is bluntly and rudely stating your views with no thought, curiosity or consideration for anyone else. This means it is important to share as many knee jerk headlines as possible to badly written clickbait articles
'NOW Theresa May is vaporised by the large Hadron Collider of Public Opinion' which, when clicked, consist of a clip that will stutter as it plays and a 6 paragraph description of how someone shouted something like 'oi Theresa, I'd like to Brexit you you daft mare!' from a distance whilst she ignores it and 5 people cheer. Sometimes you read the description first, sometimes you watch the juddery video but each time you thrill to the beat of democracy as you share it with all your hundreds of actual loyal real friends all of whom would be there for you in an hour of need at a heartbeat's notice. Such is connectedness in the white heat of electoral excitement.
Now you can look back on that time with a glow of satisfaction, knowing you played your part in the glorious June revolution of 2017 where the people's party stormed the barracades of power* and the people's emperor sit's proudly and wisely atop a throne of public love**
*didn't get beaten quite as badly as people expected.
** garnered quite a few likes for his witty 'fields of wheat' act and other madbantz.
Anyhow, this sarcastic act of Stalinist self critique will end end soon and I'll be turning my ire on to a target more evil than Tories. What I'm going to write about is controversial and we'll not be diverting from the main line of 'strong opinion' or stopping at the station of 'seeing other people's point of view parkway'
Consider that your trigger warning snowflakes and run for your padded safe space bunker if you like. There's a nuke coming, a white hot flash of views.
But first, I'm going to contextualise how strongly I feel about what I'm going to write about.
I'm going to take on a target worse than the insidious attack on the self that is the brain eating virus we call 'neo liberalism.' I could write at length about Donald Trump and the deeply disturbing threat to world security posed by the puppet clown of the oil industry. I could look at way the government has run roughshod over local politics and opinion and is trying to enforce fracking on the Lancashire countryside by fair means or foul.
I could write about the impact of global climate change and the sure fire twin impact of sea level rises and mass climate driven immigration creating a problem which makes the idea of procreation look bad in both hindsight and foresight. I could attempt to rally you with a cry of anger and hope, to urge you to look at the wider world and realise that we have only a short window of opportunity, a tiny chance to change our society for the better, to totally rearrange the system for the benefit of the vast majority of all life on the planet. I could say something snarky about how that rearrangement might require some self sacrifice and deluded you are with your ecover washing up liquid, Nissan Leaf people mover, vegan multigender awareness initiatives and all the other pathetic liberal cliche's that amount to essentially pissing in the face of the coldest, bleakest wind you can imagine.
I could try to write an intelligent and fair minded piece that undoes the panic room rhetoric above, about how I admire the principled stand you take but that how anything you buy that presents itself as 'a revolution' probably isn't and how we need to understand how to draw together multiple threads of argument instead of endless self promotion of our own discreet viewpoints and causes. I could write about how whatever we do, however ethical we are we are human and ultimately, humans are cunts and really a mass extinction is the best thing that could happen and how possibly that's reflected in the prevalence of apocalyptic representations in TV and cinema.
I could then deconstruct my own argument as cowardly and self defeating and blame the 60s for destroying any notion of collective responsibilty and allowing actual thought to disapear into a smoky haze of groovy love and consumerism that still underpins the most insidious of our current ideological self deceptions. Namely the idea that consuming stuff that we don't need is 'cool' and 'arty' and part of 'actualising' our 'inner selves' or some kind of inalienable right which defines the free world we keep on rockin' in. Get to fuck the sixties. Get to fuck in a big leaky boat and sink in the sea choking on the plastic crap you begat as your bastard Thatcherite offspring grab a water anytime on their way to some kind of bullshit culturally appropriated enlightenment class.
I could try to link the 'bullshit enlightenment' movement to the very real and endemic invisible mental health crisis and come back to neo liberalism again, pointing out how it's grip on our physical and therefore mental space is almost total, how the twin opposing forces of performance based precariousness and endless consumer temptation are evil, and I mean, evil. Like the worst torture devices imaginable. Like ISIS evil. Like, responsible for death and pain and shit evil.
Whilst I'm there I'd point out that I don't really think 'enlightenment' is possible. Just a state in which you feel calm. Perhaps contentment. That enlightenment is the religious equivalent of capitalism's better tomorrow. An idea that keeps you buying into the faith, an idea that keeps you buying into the dream, fiddling with the rosary beads, paying for the guru, buying the crystals, filling the collection plate, splurging on the designer lifestyle choices. There is no enlightenment. There is only death and blackness and loss and you are getting older all the time.
Anyway, all of the above and that, but that little lot pales in significance in comparison to what I actually want to address.
I want to discuss the deeply troubling concept of the funkily named astroturf. The phenonoma of artificial grass.
I think I first noticed this when (driving to work in my environment destroying car to do my oft pointless job in order to buy things I don't need) I spotted a white van, parked up next to the road at a jaunty angle, displaying a roll of lurid green fake turf on its roof. Driving to work generally creates a sense of bitterness and questioning of meaning, so I think it was repeatedly seeing this van day after day that helped to foster the feelings of bile. I started to shudder when people said 'we're getting astroturf,' to sigh involuntarily when passing houses with it installed.
So, I started thinking about it.
Why have I so little tolerance for this little fad?
1) Is it is a signifier that the end of the world is coming?
It's really popular in places where the climate makes grass difficult to maintain. Could it be that astroturf induces a sense of existential paranoia whenever I see it? Is it a trigger for a vision of a scorched earth where everything is dead and the only food and water is synthetically produced and rationed by an evil mega corporation who force the world's population to live in the arid wastelands whilst themselves dwelling in a heavily fortified biodome heaven on earth?
2) Is it a conspicuous sign of the thoughtless environmental damage we all inflict by not living in a tree in the wilderness at one with nature, walking in the snow and not leaving a footprint?
I'm not an expert on the dying bees, but y'know, if the grass is plastic then there's less little flowers for the bees to pollinate and all that. What about the worms?
Here's an article that discusses the environmental impact. You should read it, because it makes the argument I want to make and also because I'm going to use a quote from it below, that won't make any sense if you don't.
"Robert Redcliffe, managing director of Nam Grass.... has some sympathy for the environmental case. “I would agree them; it’s not for everyone, and it’s not for every bit of the garden. Half my garden is artificial grass, where the children’s play area is, but the rest is natural lawn with lots of shrubs and plants. I spend all my time trying to make the lawn look as good as the artificial one.”
There's the rub my friends. He has 'sympathy' for the worms, but unfortunately their habitat doesn't 'look as good.' That's the human race there. Well done, we are brilliant. Turning our mind to the problems of the world and coming up with innovative solutions all the time.
Here's an image from the 'Nam Grass' brochure. Now imagine the dog eating the kid in a desperate attempt to survive a dying world. You did that Robert Redcliffe. You. With your big plastic garden. Maybe the kid and the dog are robotic simulations Robert Redcliffe has had created within his biodome in order to have everything just as he likes it?
'I've got two kids, one of them is a robot and the other one is real, and I spend all my time trying to get the real one to gaze lovingly at the dog like the robot one does, because the robot kid is better, you should kill your kids and get robots instead'
3: Is it about control?
I alluded in my introduction to the idea of control of our own minds and the prevalence of 'wellbeing' events as a means of surviving the mentally toxic environment we live in. Naturally (or, rather, unnaturally) we see people trying to control their physical selves and their physical surroundings and is artificial grass a signifier of this?
That somehow, ridding the world of blemishes and bumps, of weeds and bees and worms is akin to the desire to do the same to our bodies. To defy age and reality, creating new and false ideas about what is aesthetically pleasing and thus new norms for people to live up to. We can see in the body fascism of everyday attitudes that a leads to b to c to d and so on and so astroturf is the start of a slippery slope. People will be having entirely synthetic gardens installed, covering their 'outdoor' space in a thin transparent membrane and having purified, perfume tinted air piped in before we know it. You are warned.
4: Soil is dirty?
It isn't.
5: It's fake.
Lets return to the idea that Robert Redcliffe mentioned above; that his fake grass 'looks' better. It's a weird statement. I think I must have a different aesthetic sensibility than Robert Redcliffe. On the wall of my yard little weeds grow. These have the most exquisite tiny blue flowers. The other day I was sat at the railway station admiring the tangled avalanche of brambles and flowers tumbling down the bank.
Everything is fake, of course. My wall, the railway embankments aren't 'real' in any deeper timeless wilderness sense, but the plants that thrive there speak of the impermanence of humans, of the ability of the trees and plants to overwhelm, they remind us that life is a constant struggle against being overwhelmed and eventually we will lose that battle. I don't find that depressing or want to fight against it. I like the life that is around me. To be amongst life, flower, insects, animals reminds me that beyond the gnawing doubts and self loathing that life is quite interesting. That right now, worms are burrowing, things growing, fruiting, falling from branches, taking root is fascinating. That birds will dig in soil for grubs, that thrive in a bacteria ridden moisture feeding on the rotting mulch of fallen leaves that in turn nourish the plants that grow to carry on the cycle. I'm not some unreconstructed eco-warrier, I don't do that much to aid this process, but I can't understand wanting to impede it for purely aesthetic convenience
I don't understand how Robert Redcliffe doesn't find this fascinating. I don't understand why he wants to smother it in plastic and wants other people to do so. Most of all, I don't understand how he can see the plastic as somehow 'better' than the extraordinary biodiversity of the living environment. Like, yeah, your actual grass isn't as uniform but when did sterility and uniformity become the definitions of beauty?
6: If I'm honest I don't have a lot of time for actual lawns.
A bit of grass is fine, I don't mind a bit of grass. What I don't understand is the desire to cover every inch of the space available to you with grass. For most of my adult life I've lived in houses without gardens. I deeply envy the houses near me that back down on to the canal. They have beautiful undulating gardens that get loads of sun and sweep down to the water side. They are idyllic locations. As near to heaven on earth as it gets in a northern ex industrial town.
There is one particular house that each time I pass it, makes me feel as if I must be a slightly different variation of the human species than the owner. There is a large old tree in the garden, A lovely mature curving angular gnarled graceful gentle beast. There is grass. And nothing else. Literally nothing. No shrubs, no flower beds, no water feature, no herbs, no exotic grasses, no alpines, no little conifers, no roses, honeysuckle, ivy. Definitely no weeds.
The thing is, I love a bit a bit of minimalism. I'm all for the empty room but outside, it feels like the space is a shared one and keeping the place so utterly bare seems somehow selfish. I don't want to get all new age and patchouli but the thought of the retired colonel of my imagination who lives there (I've never seen anyone in the house or garden) angrily pouring some kind of chemical compound on the daisies and dandelions, poking furiously at the nests of swallows and swifts with a long stick and stabbing at mole hills with a fork in the hope of skewering one makes me get visions of karmic retribution. I fantasise about what sort of mind set is happy, only when the outdoors is free of any signs of life and the land is tamed into neat stripes by the regimental rider mower.
Where this digression is going is to signal my pre-existing discomfort with the lawn as a concept. In fact, back in 2004, I was invited to take part in a poetry day. I did so and I read a poem, long since lost on the hard disks of time, about my disdain for lawns in general. I can't really remember the details of it, but it was along the lines outlined below in terms of content, but worked into an actual rhyming structure with several stanzas.
people with neat lawns are insufferable smug cunts who look down upon people who have wild and untamed gardens but I wonder if they realise that I look down upon them because I can't imagine anything more dull than spending your life looking after a lawn like it was some kind of work of art when actually a wildflower is a thing of beauty.
So, given the above, you can imagine how the idea of people who want a fake lawn makes me feel.
7: The advertising makes me queezy. It's part of a self delusion we are performing that 'everything is normal' HAVE YOU NOT SEEN WALL-E FFS?
I'm going to let up on Robert Redcliffe for a moment. In my research for this article (don't laugh) I looked at the google search 'environmental impact of astroturf' and came across quite a lot of statements like
- it doesn't need watering
- it doesn't need chemicals
The first two are countered by the fact it's big fucking lump of plastic. It'll still be there in a thousand years. Your house will have crumbled and your neighbour's lawn will be a beautiful meadow with buzzing insects flitting in and out, undisturbed by your extinct species but your plastic lawn will still be there. Perhaps ripped by the thrusting trunks of trees and shredded by the claws of who knows what emerges from the post extinction ecosystem but it'll be there. Perhaps that's what astroturfers want.
8 It gets advertised as 'a time saving trick'
When are we collectively going to get our heads round this one. When are we going to understand that most of the time we are saving is pointless? In the unlikely event that anyone is still reading I've penned a short play below to illustrate the point I want to make. It will mention astroturf.
A: Hey, I'm not sure about your plastic garden. It looks a bit weird.
B: Fuck you buddy, I'm one of life's WINNERS, I don't have time to do the garden. I've had my intestines hooked and bladder up to this bag and trained a chimp to run alongside me while I'm busily doing IMPORTANT STUFF, unhooking the bag and fitting a new one. Hell yeah.
I think it's a culturally aloof perspective to assume that the only people short of time have delusions about being 'succeeders' - the garish advertisement of the time saving benefits of a synthetic outdoors is a metaphor for something or other. I'm not quite sure what meaning I would pin on it.
- The need for instant gratification
- Something to do with homogeneity
- People increasingly seeing or being forced to see leisure as a time they can't afford.
It evokes faux utopia, beautiful dystopian visions of workers toiling away, visiting a 'leisure zone' and listening to piped birdsong and walking on treadmills facing a cgi representation of countryside. Under their feet, synthetic grass.
Perhaps these workers are employed by the biodome dwelling overlords and shuttle between their work duties and their sleeping chambers without ever seeing the outside world. Sealed off from the plastic ridden dust filled wasteland of storms and heatwaves. Maybe they're satisfied. Maybe it's the inevitable march of progress.
Maybe I shouldn't think so deeply about astroturf.
