Finally got a chance to see Dave Gorman's new Googlewhack Adventure show as he did an extra performance this afternoon. As usual it is a consistently interesting tale of obsession bordering on insanity (and then often stepping over that border and revelling in its own madness). He's doing it in Edinburgh, so make sure you book early because its bound to sell out.
More than anything it made me consider again how much of my life I waste. Especially given that I had had to peel myself out of bed at 5 o clock in the afternoon to get to the Town Hall in time. (Maybe I should have given up alcohol, not chocolate. I think that will have to come next!)
Not that Gorman's adventure is a massively constructive use of his time. It is as he admits just an extremely elaborate displacement exercise to get him out of having to write his novel.
But it does make one realise how easy it is to get out and see the world. How instead of sitting round the flat in your pants, you can jump on a plane to China (OK maybe not the best timing for that one), have a chop suey in Beiijing and then head home again.
I don't even really have the constraints of a proper job to stop me doing that at almost any point. The world is my oyster. No, actually, I think it's better than that. To compare the world to an oyster (even one that is owned by me) is to undersell it a little, I think. If you had an oyster, what would you do with it anyway? Prise it open, see if there's a pearl in it? Find out there wasn't? Maybe eat the oyster and then wish you hadn't really bothered because it just tastes of sea-water? Keep the shell and use it as an ash-tray? Maybe try and buy another oyster and set up an oyster farm that breeds oysters which are then eaten by disappointed people, some of whom pretend to like eating them to justify the expense and make themselves appear interesting? How interesting do they imagine it makes them? How boring must they be to be so desperate for that extra slight degree of interestingness that they will eat an oyster without pulling a disgusted face?
The world is clearly much better than an oyster, not least because the world already contains all the oysters (that we know about) and loads of other stuff. You could exhaust maybe two minutes doing all the things you could possibly think of doing with an oyster and then move on to some of the other great stuff that is available. Mussels, cockles, limpets.
Then maybe even away from shell-based life-forms all together.
You could go bungee-jumping.
That's just one example.
When we die one of three things will happen.
a) nothing. We will be dead.
b) The Gods of CNPS will take great delight in taking us back through our lives, pointing out how close we came to an 88 in the four days it took us to spot one.
c) We will be made to account for our wasted time and shown what we could have won if we'd made the effort to make the most of this precious gift of life.
It's probably a) I think, but in the seconds as a) rapidly approaches, it would be a shame to do a quick mental version of c) and think "Oh!"
At the end of the day I don't think it makes much difference if you spend your time looking for Googlewhacks or helping the poor children. The only real insult you can give, having received this unrequested, but nonetheless pretty impressive gift of life, is to do nothing.
You'll have plenty of time to do nothing when you're dead. In this brief window of mortality, let us resolve to do something.
And don't waste any of that time on oysters. I did and I already regret it.
