Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.12.2016, Page 64

L I F E , T R AV E L & E N T E R TA I N M E N T I N I C E L A N D
Issue 18 × 2016
Dec. 9 - Jan. 5
www.grapevine.is
RIP
Modernity
We don’t really know who
we want to be now. Some
of us want to be 18th cen-
tury lumberjacks, on our
way back from a day at
the barber’s and haber-
dashery, others want to
be 90s Eastern European
gangsters slash extras
from that decade’s many
hacker and cyberpunk
movies. Some of us want to return the US, to the
era before the inevitable influx of Latin American
workers; others want to return healthcare to the
time before the invention of vaccines.
— We all share the wish of not being right
here, right now, moving forward. Personally,
I want to return Downtown Reykjavík to the
time before the tourist influx. At least, that’s
what I want when I’m standing in a queue popu-
lated by tourists. We didn’t have those back then.
Where there are queues now, there were empty
storefronts, actually. But I still hate the modernity.
Except when I receive my paycheque from this
tourist-funded magazine. Then I’m willing to stop
biting your feeding hand. For a couple of days.
— This is true of all these nostalgic lean-
ings of today. Pseudo-lumberjacks don’t actually
want to smell like lumberjacks, mock-hackers
wouldn’t switch out their shiny slim devices for
486 powered Windows 95 computer towers with
10 kg/20lbs CRT screens, American nostalgists
wouldn’t want to work the jobs that the Latin
Americans would vacate. And none of us are, when
it comes down to it, tuberculosis enthusiasts.
— But we want to fix our sights firmly on
something other than modernity. The promise
of modernity is fulfilled: we have the drones,
and they are annoying. We have the universal
communication devices to serve us Facebook,
and my god, how boring Facebook is. We’ve seen
the world from the comfort of our small screens,
and it is awful. It’s filled with wretched different
people with terrible ideas and views, and every-
one has decided that now is the time to put your
foot down and stop trying to be nice to these
people. Modernity is mean and hateful, but at the
same time bland and uninspiring.
— So we all pick our era of nostalgia, be-
cause if the other people aren’t gonna look at
our problems in practical terms with common
ground solutions, and neither are we. So we’d
rather be cowboys then. Sexy robot cowboys.

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Sveinbjörn Pálsson
LAST WORDS
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