mightthinkthat | Video 1 ♔ Nothing in his Life Became Him Like the Leaving it

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Video 1 ♔ Nothing in his Life Became Him Like the Leaving it

[Private to self]

Well, of course it wasn't that easy. And there was the matter of placing myself on that world. So like my own. [He lets out a laugh.] Apart from that 'Below' business.

But not my world. I wasn't present at all. [He smiles.] What a poorer world for it! [Contemplatively:] A terrible shame what became of the lady. She was well loved in this world. Still, she had two sons here, so that was something to be grateful for.

Now we have 'the Barge'. I remember what Elizabeth said. That I should always find a challenge. Keep my mind active and sharp. It seems that in killing me, she guaranteed it! [He looks thoughtful again.] Would that she know about it.

[Public]

When I was growing up, my pastor was filled with the grim vitriol of the passioned believer, slamming his bible against the pulpit, telling us all that we were destined to end up in the fiery pits of hell to be burned and scorned for all eternity. We were all sinners and we all needed repent them.

Of course, it was something of a double edged sword. When your religion exhorts you to be a good boy while simultaneously telling you that any attempts on your part to do so was ultimately futile because God had decided your fate long before you were born, you tended to form a kind of apathy about the whole thing, whether you believed or not.

I confess, while I lay bleeding to death in my wife's embrace, my being sent to hell... or 'purgatory' for you lightweights [He smiles a little], didn't occur to me in the slightest. I'm sure it occurred to others, of course, but politics will do that.

[There's a slight twinkle in his eye.] ...Do you think the Admiral is a Labour man?

I will admit, I don't remember any of my teachings to feature such a... 'high tech' purgatory, with dining halls and 'wardens'.

As I discovered, [he shoots the camera a disarming smile] there doesn't seem to be much freedom to escape. So I'm a little unclear on the point of wardens? To keep us from bashing each other's heads in? Surely, not a concern to our Admiral, given his skills.

You can come and go as you please, so perhaps you're solely here to hammer home just how trapped inmates are. Of course, no doubt there's a certain... satisfaction in being above others, particularly others that you can point to be less... moral than you are, but otherwise, I don't see the appeal.

Of course, if anyone should care to enlighten me, I'd be obliged.

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That's an affliction everything living has, huh? The banality of unmet expectations.

You're either a philosopher or have been here a dreadfully long time. [It's a tease but he's not telling him he's an idiot or anything.]

[He laughs, in any case. People don't really tease him where he's from; this is refreshing.]

Little of both. I can't tell how long I've been around, and that's probably because I think too much about philosophy.

I suppose it's helpful talent, here.

Only if you find people who can follow it. Most of 'em around here are too focused on the rocks, you know?

I suppose that is the general impression I've been getting. Been paired?

Yeah, I've got an inmate, Harvey Dent. You wondering who you'll get paired with?

Well, yes. But that's not really why I asked. It was more in the spirit of a mental organisation. Who is with who, why matches are made, why they're not, that sort of thing.

I haven't figured it out yet either. I've seen some pairings that probably made the people involved worse off; I've seen some where they could have gone off and got married after. I think it's a gameshow system, myself.

Gameshows have rules.

I think this one does, too. They're just deliberately absurd.

Unless he's told us what these rules are? There are no rules.

[he shakes his head]

It's fair to tell the rules, but not always required. There are clubs where I'm from, made up of ex-military bikers, and they have the most intricate rules of conduct. But the thing is, you never hear what they are. If you told some new recruit about them you'd be thrown out on your ass. If you don't figure them out you're kicked out. It's a sink or swim deal--not unlike this place.

Well, I'm quite new, of course, but this place, it would seem that you sink and swim. Which you do has little relation to whether or not you get kicked out.

Hah, yeah, true. But that's how it is in most things in life, at least if you're born in the wrong part of town, so I never really noticed it here till you said that.

[Francis immediately thinks of suicide as an option which is adamantly not one here if death is off the table.]

Can't go further down, you mean? [He's... actually not sure he agrees with that, despite his treatment of the homeless problem at home.]

Not so much that. There's always something that's worse, everyone knows that.

It's more like-- like being that mosquito that got stuck in some sap a million years ago, or like being paralyzed from the neck down and then left in bed by yourself. The whole world tells you that you could do better, that you could do anything if you put your mind to it, but reality just holds you down right where you are.

[He'd been confined to the bed after a less successful assassination attempt (which makes him wonder just how successful the last one could be said to be) and he spent the entire time immeshed in a flashback where he'd killed two men during his sojourn in Malta.

Not the same, but he was stuck in the bed.] Sometimes the reality is filtered darkly though the lens of that position.

Is it any less accurate for having a darker slant to it? Reality is unique to every person experiencing it--for some, it is a bleak place to be. It's where the drugs creep in for many, or the violence for others.

Yes, because people, regardless of their position, have to try to be positive. Negativity comes with no effort at all.

It's why we're all convinced that upbeat people are lying to themselves.

Yeah, but realistically it's different to be positive and receive tangible or social reinforcement for it. A CEO who wants to think positive is more likely to have his efforts rewarded than a kid in the projects whose dad beats him on the regular, and who knows he's never going to make more than four bucks an hour if he busts his ass and tries to be honest.

If you're upbeat when you know you have no future, you probably are lying to yourself. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. The only viable goal in life is happiness--I don't know that it matters how we learn happiness.

A CEO who thinks positive will simply carry on as he is. He has no drive, no real drive, because there's nothing to fight. His ideas will be the same ideas he's had every moment he's been in the job. Any rewards he gets are merely the rewards he already has. And he's always vulnerable if someone has the thought to destroy him.

'A kid in the projects', on the other hand, will always have that steel that made him survive. He'll have to think new ideas every day to earn extra money and he'll never let a man hit him again. He'll grow up and he'll be the man with the proverbial knife in his hand that will rest in the heart of that CEO.

Perhaps in America that isn't how these things work, but England is a rather smaller country. Money has power, but it shouldn't be confused with power.

Oh I agree. Money can't get you anything that you can't get for yourself. But too many people confuse money with liberty--it's an illusion created by many of the laws that go into what we choose to call a civilized society.

In very rare cases I can agree with you about the kid having the grit, too. Ideally that is how it would play out--we'd get stronger leaders, more inventive minds. Survivors. But the truth is that most of them either never get the chance, or have their talents wrung out of them by despair. What's the use in being naturally gifted with technology if you can't even afford to pay your electric bill?

My own neighborhood--a banged up portion of the projects--had plenty of good people, but dope, poverty and a complete lack of usable education made sure no one would ever reach their potential. Those who didn't end up in jail joined the military, as those are the two main career options.

Well, our schools are free, even up to third level. And as for the military, I can say quite honestly it forged me in strength more than weakness. [He introduced conscription.] It also boosted me into my career, whereas I doubt jail has quite the same effect, unless you happen to be republican. The Irish version of it, that is.

We all struggle with despair. Some of us frequently, others less so. But drugs, in the beginning, anyway, is a choice. Giving up, a choice. And CEOs tend to fall into drug world more often than you seem to realise. It's practically a fashion statement back home. Live fast, die young.

Oh that's definitely true, I hear cocaine is getting more popular among the upper classes. I can't say if their desperation is the same, because I can only speak from my own experience--but there's no option or opportunity for much in the very poor areas. No one would choose what they have if there were. [He's not advocating for change, either; it's more like he's recounting things he saw on a documentary that he found a little incredible.]

The boys I know who went to war came back in pieces, mentally and physically. You seem more in tact. What was your experience like?

Video 1 ♔ Nothing in his Life Became Him Like the Leaving it

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