COLLECTION 6

184
COL
What’s Left O
by Amy
Frustration, stalling us at every
turn. Amongst the crowd of
vacant eyes you can feel its grip
tighten. Suffocating, yet familiar,
constricting, yet comforting. The
Noire is all your darkest doubts,
your enemies, and your fear of
being alone. It’s a locked door, a
sealed hatch in the floor, a darkened
room: that contains all the
secrets about your true self, but
you’ve never dared open it to look
inside. Everyone has something
hidden, something mysterious,
magical and precious: just meant
for themselves, kept from others,
it’s how we were intended
to be. We have the capacity to
keep a secret. Yet in an attempt
to establish total control, for the
so-called good of our society, we
began to clean up, renovate, and
demolish the walls behind which
we hid such secrets for so many
eternities. The places where
we could once go to express
our innermost desires and our
distresses, suddenly engulfed by
cleanliness: a sheen of musty dirt
aggressively purified by something
mechanical, chemical—no
regard for the poetic beauty that
may once have been festering
within.
Fear of the mysterious is ordinarily
ingrained within us from an
early age, so deeply ingrained in
fact, that lines have been drawn
that we are so inherently petrified
to cross, for our own protection:
or for the greater good. As soon
as the darkness becomes just a
little too inviting—welcoming,
even. The adrenaline inside of us,
the fight or flight signal, switches
the light from off to on, revealing
the reality of a harmless empty
room. This isn’t to say that we
don’t fabricate these environments,
we still love to be terrified
for the sake of it, to explore our
dark fetishes, our perverse fantasies,
but only if a panic button
lies just within reach: we build
something that can be quickly
erased, forgotten or buried. Noire
is not a way of life for the average
human being, just something
to be played with, teased,
and used as entertainment. If
anything gets too out of hand,
well—it’s only our imagination.
How powerful can that be? It was
all just a dream. Pinch yourself
to check for sure. This isn’t to
say that every mind should have
been unlocked, and plenty of
depraved, psychotic a-lid in this
world should have undoubtedly
been left shut, but still there’s
no way to know exactly how our
world would look had these and
other such tools of control—the
gatekeepers of the Noire–never
been known.
Perhaps the most intense criticism
surrounds the network we
know as the world wide web,
innumerable factors, strings
of thought and oppositions are
open to consideration in regards
to this. However, one thing is
certainly clear, that we no longer
understand the importance of the
phrase, “some things are better
left unsaid”—suddenly we
are all knowing, all telling, and
all masters of our own online
universes, as tiny robotic devices
surround us and ‘enrich’ our daily
lives. No question left unanswered,
no stone left unturned,
no dark, mysterious passageway
left unexplored. Yet we are all
still fascinated by a story without
an end, an adventure: a tail,
only visible to the naked eye, but
to what kind of creature can it
possibly belong? For fear of the
answer we constantly construct
rational thought to somehow
disband these once so revered
myths: webpages, forums, selfhelp
websites, all answering the
unanswerable questions of the
world, that were once so wonderfully
abstract, suddenly now
seeming so concrete, our doubts
sent scattering.
As soon as we switch on and
log in, accept the terms, check
the box, something we never
even knew we had is inextricably
ripped from us: a foetus of
unknowable energy, curiosity
and depth. Should we have the
opportunity to look outside of our
assumed blinkers, even just for
the briefest of moments, and live
our own lives, instead of focusing
on the experiences lived by one
thousand million others?
Through media, music, video,
sound and film, we can experience
the cultures, lives, emotions,
existences and imagery of
every area of the earth, witness
the most horrific sights of war,
famine, depravity, and death—
but have the majority of us ever
really seen anything at all?
Something with our own eyes, to
the point that it shakes us to the
very bones, shakes us into action,
outside of the safety of our living
rooms, our cosy, comfortable
nests. How much of your life is
lived within a virtual reality, that
separates you from your fellow
human, a virtual reality, that has
really become your cage.