COLLECTION 6

UMN
185
f The Noire?
Heaton
Anonymity and privacy are
things of the past: our emotions,
everyday and otherwise,
shamelessly spattered across
pages, even the most hardened
critic has their price. Nothing
is sacred anymore. Existence,
once so wonderfully fragile and
unfathomable is now tirelessly
analysed and finally, explained
away: there is no mystery. How
can there possibly be when every
moment, feeling, living, waking
day is captured through the eyes
of a camera lens, how much of
your life do you even live through
your own eyes? Let’s appreciate
the irony in all of this interconnectedness,
if only for a fleeting
moment. Each time we find
ourselves afraid, and isolated,
within moments we are able to
network to our nearest and dearest
in a heartbeat. Slide open the
iPhone screen to reveal a world
of human contact within, but if
we were ever forced to face our
own most twisted fears head on,
how quickly would a cry for help
really be answered? How many
of those so-called friends would
come to your rescue when you
truly needed them most? Have we
somehow become so lost in our
own world of imagined security
that in fact, when we finally look
back: no one’s there. Instead of
staring, sharing, tweeting and
liking our way through life, copy/
pasting our personalities into
the endless white space, why
not step outside and take a walk,
down a darkened street, down
a road without an end, and see
what’s really possible? How far
are we really able to defend ourselves
and cross the line into the
place without an exit? To discover
all the sordid delights that may
well lie within.
Yet it is irreversibly so, that the
beauty in the unknown has been
long since forgotten. In a world
full of endless safety features,
soft cushions and user-friendly
bullshit, how is it even possible
to find the Noire? Let alone live
a life inside it. To really crawl
into its cavernous mouth, teeth
glinting, tempting as they are
destructive. Those who even hope
to find a way must live on the
fringes, outcast, the only ones
who dare to go where others
dare not, living life to the full,
travelling further, pushing themselves
harder to the very edges.
As more and more mysteries of
the world are seemingly solved,
unmasked, excavated, where
do we find that last place that
is truly—underground. Ignorance
may be bliss for a while,
but somewhere there’s a feeling
deep inside that’s niggling
away, yearning for something
more than just the world that is
tailored for us by the choices we
already made. Who we know,
why we know them, where we go,
what we do there, what we buy,
where we work, where we went
once, twice, three times. Perhaps
without this constant observation
of our every movement we might
feel free to explore some of those
secret corners of the world, those
hidden places you can’t read up
about on Lonely Planet, leaving
your review from 1–5 stars. No
photo app filter can blur the reality
of what was really there. No
edit button, no retouching tools.
As we become ever more intertwined
I start to wonder what will
become of us in the end, what
will be left of the Noire, in us,
in the things that surround us,
perhaps it was never even there
in the first place, or perhaps we
simply don’t care what happens
when all the mysteries are
solved. Concepts are researched
and researched into nothing.
References quoted, captions
explaining, clarifying, criticising.
Whatever happened to just
letting things be? Leave notes
hanging—artfully mounted in the
mid-air. When the rush of excitement
of simply not knowing, is
a feeling that humans can no
longer ever experience. Background
checks, google searches,
facebook pages: telling us all we
really need to know. Why would
you bother looking anywhere
else? As a lack of empathy, and
disconnectedness overwhelms
and consumes you, are you really
in a position to stand up and
fight? Drugged, subdued, and
vacuous, tapping away into the
abyss.
As we disband the external socalled
threats that surround us,
will we start to destroy ourselves
from the inside out, our minds
so constricted that they slowly
coil in on themselves, tighter and
tighter around our consciousness
until the last drop of curiosity is
unravelled. What hope is there for
the Noire—half-dead already–
taking it’s last gulps of air in a
world where anything that once
waited patiently in the shadows,
is now mercilessly exposed
beneath the unblinking chill, of
inextinguishable neon lights.