Party party, rock on.

Never fear, dear reader, I am still alive and well. The recurring sinusitis has not done me in yet! (Hallelujah!) Neither have I, as one of my friends suggested, learnt everything I possibly could ever learn, therefore rendering my blog redundant. I have just been traveling the streets of the world, searching for whispers of truth tucked away in corners, doorways, and hearts. I have been watching people at parties, watching how they drown themselves in drink, dance, and each other. I have sat in parks, listening to the pleasant chatter of mothers and the exuberant laughter of children. I have gone to dinners at fancy restaurants, wining and dining in luxuriantly wooded and beautifully styled rooms. 

And what can I tell you that I have learnt?

I have learnt that playing is a very serious business. 

Let me repeat this thought: Playing is a very serious business. Never before has the world (i.e. the middleclass/upperclass/people who can afford it) had at its fingertips the type of resources for entertainment and pleasure that it has right now at its present stage. And never before, has the world been so booooooooored before. But still we play. And it is at this point, that the following anecdote falls into mind. It comes from a book called The Salaried Masses by Siegfried Kracauer, which is a sociological account of a study he did amongst the salaried employees in a post-WW Germany. Speaking about an interview he had with a secretary and her work colleagues habits of entertainment, Kracauer writes:

"Then she gives an extremely odd reaons for the fact that the girls generally avoid serious conversations. 'Serious conversations', she said, 'only distract and divert you from surroundings that you'd like to enjoy.' If distracting effects are ascribed to serious talk, distraction must be a deadly serious matter.'

We play for many reasons, primarily because it IS fun, but Kracauer seems to touch on a point made in Ecclesiastes 7:2

It is better to go to a house of mourning

than to go to a house of feasting

for death is the destiny of every man;

the living should take this to heart

Playing becomes a deadly serious matter, when we undertake it to escape thoughts of death and what that might bring, ne-c'est pas? And in a culture where it's becoming increasingly bourgeoise to talk about serious matters, it seems then that play itself has become a serious matter...