Modern-Day Extravaganza

The Age of Sensory Overload

In the midst of the modern day drift, each morning is a part of a continuous and monotonous oscillation. Even though the people have become numb, a glimpse of a light still remains, and on those early mornings when the gray sky drizzles with wet snow, Marshall’s kitchen window is the only one that shines in the suburbs. Back in 1987 when another gray structure had grown out of the ground, hundreds of people brought life to it by coming to live there. 35 years later, it still stands, merging with the gray sky.

The age of sensory overload. Never before did we have so many things that catch our attention. And were we so naïve to believe that it’s without a price to pay? No, I don’t mean the price that you actually pay for the technology and the food that you eat… The price to pay for the indulgence in this modern-day extravaganza.

Silence is now absent. Rhythm and melody take over the ether, leaving no space for rest, only when we go to sleep we take a break from the treadmill, but as soon as we wake up, we’re back into the flow. At some point it’s no longer rhythm or melody, we’re hooked somewhere within the noise of it all. There’s no longer a song that allows us to dance along the thread of time. We become dumbed down, deprived, and raped, lying on the floor senselessly.

The Hazed State

Marshall finds it difficult to grapple his thoughts, to paint a picture with his words, to remember what he wanted to say or to make connections between topics that he loves. When he has a spare minute, he grabs his phone and starts swiping. Checking Facebook, Instagram, Tinder or the situation in the stock market. Nothing new. Checks again. Swipes through hundreds of Instagram pictures or girls on Tinder. Waiting for that bump in dopamine, because every color in the palette has become gray.

He has made a few steps back. He’s drifting in the sea of mediocrity, dreaming about those careless summer evenings, when every single thing was perfect for that single fleeting moment. He is drifting away from his dream. Slowly, but anxiously. Each step taken backward, is an extra two to be taken forward in the face of Time. That senseless bitch, that sets her rules without ever considering to ask for the opinions of others.

Every weekday morning he wakes up and goes to a job that he hates. Marshall works from home in his kitchen, so he doesn’t have to go far. He works in a bank, but in his heart he wants to do creative stuff. And as time went by, the list expanded. Now he creates music, sketches with a 0,4 mm black ink pen, and very recently started writing short essays and poetry.

Problems of the Privileged

Marshall exploded onto this earth 29 years ago, on May 9th, 1992. Maybe a half an hour after the sun had risen, not that he remembers. But now he has come to enjoy early mornings quite a bit. There’s that sense of excited potential sitting on the sill behind his 9th floor window, waiting for him to come and seize the day.

When he was a teenager, Marshall used to be very shy. He had some friends, but it was difficult for him to make new ones. Girls scared the shit out of him, couldn’t look them in the eyes. Throughout his school years and university, Marshall internally and usually unsuccessfully battled his anxiety and awkwardness in social situations. He was extremely self-conscious, and meeting new people was a sweat-soaking experience for him. Only in the past couple of years, has he slowly begun climbing out of the pit, which he does not know how he got into in the first place. And now, after dozens of social interactions, parties, drinking at bars and dancing in clubs, new dates and new friends, he feels mentally exhausted and paralyzed.

He has invited all these people into his life and now he finds himself rejecting them.

Marshall finds himself suppressing his natural enthusiasm for life in a social situation because of the fear that some person he doesn’t like that much will come in closer contact with him, because he’s emanating positive energy. So he closes off because of fear. And he’s becoming the person that he doesn’t want to become, and also no longer the person that other people are attracted to. Marshall’s a wobbly in between. A rag. A scared lamb. A scared boy. What he realized is that he must be authentic regardless of the situation, and that exactly that is a part of the art of being.

Some time before he began trying to get comfortable being in the skin of the extravert. Being natural, witty, funny, interesting, focused on the conversation and other people. He had no idea what waited for him down the line. Previously, people were rather neutral towards him, but when he began being more welcoming in his behavior, they started gathering around and getting in contact with him. So what waited down the line was actual relationships with people, it was no longer just free-spirited and careless expression of his Self. It was now coupled with other souls on an individual level. It has now become a dance, and it was no longer a solo endeavor.

Marshall is a part-time overthinker. But sometimes he forgets that even though his social circle has grown, he has the tendency to become too self-centered, imagining that it’s all about him. That it’s always his decision who to keep in the circle and who to discard. When in reality, he’s barely that important. Barely even that important to write about.

Hello fellow beautiful mole, throbbed down the pipeline! My name is Elliott, and I’m just reporting the latest news from up above the underground. Here in the catacombs, we issue a good dose of intellectual masturbation.

The Electric Pipeline is providing a perspective on the psychological human state and its dynamics, where the world’s heading, and what can the (wo)man in the mirror do about it. Thanks for reading and see you around!