Don’t you think every now and then that you just wish everyone would shut up? It’s an impulse we all have at times, but it doesn’t generally get mentioned in the media — for obvious reasons. Not only is it heretical of me to bring up the subject here, but I may be losing a living even invoking the notion that a little less chat and fewer opinions could be a good thing.
think will smith tipped me over the edge when he was tipped over the edge by chris rock. Even before I woke up the morning after Will Smith’s night before, I had messages from people sharing their thoughts and demanding my opinion. It was just the latest thing we all needed to have an opinion on, and we needed to know everyone else’s opinion on it too, whether we wanted it or not. In fact, some of the opinions I was confronted with very early on were opinions about why we should all have an opinion on this.
There was a fairly limited range of opinions we could have about what had happened. Like everyone else, I wondered if this was really real. It was all so calm and clinical, almost surgical. It wasn’t the kind of mess you’d think someone would walk on stage and punch someone else at the Oscars. Ironically, there was a lack of drama. You would be tempted to think that Will Smith seemed to be playing a little and not very well, which opens up a whole different wormhole.
If he was actually acting, did he even know he was acting and can he even act aside from playing Will Smith? But maybe he’s not very good at playing the role of Will Smith without a script. Is any of this even real? Is anything still authentic? Does Will Smith just think he’s Will Smith? Does he think he has, no pun intended, free will? But is he actually just an actor playing the role of an actor who doesn’t know he’s an actor, even though he thinks he’s an actor?
Is he some kind of Manchurian candidate? are they all Are they controlled by Morgan Freeman? Is Morgan Freeman called that because he’s actually the only one with free will? Is Morgan Freeman actually God and is Hollywood his joke? And as the voice of God in films, is he a side joke?
Now I’m falling into my own trap. Anyway, within a few hours I had heard every hot Will Smith recording imaginable. I’d seen him dance all night at the Vanity Fair party, I’d seen him rapping along Get Jiggy Witz it with the cheery air of a man who hadn’t just committed a one-punch attack on another guy in the middle of a big deal in front of the whole world. I knew who in my circle supported him and who didn’t, and so on.
And so I went out and ran with no headphones. And between the traffic noises I noticed something. And it was exquisite, and I was beginning to realize what it was. It was silence. It was punctuated by occasional birdsong and the occasional garbage truck. But it was there, unmistakable, the underlying sound was the sound of silence. And it struck me that silence might be the ultimate luxury these days.
I’m not a very Zen person, so instead of just being with and enjoying the stillness, I was wondering if anyone had successfully marketed stillness to the luxury goods crowd. Think about it, the luxury goods industry has been belittling and belittling the notion of luxury. They make most of their money selling £200 plastic sunglasses and then overpriced ‘juice’, as they call their perfumes.
They hold on there and wait for the sky to fall when people realize that the idea of mass-produced exclusivity is a contradiction in terms. Or they become increasingly expensive and ‘tailor-made’, spinning yarn over the respective goats from whose bellies they get their cashmere, or telling tales of generations of leather goods craftsmen to sell overpriced bags.
But the problem for rich people is that no matter how exclusive and handmade-by-virgin-artisans-in-a-studio-in-a-tiny-village-in-the-mountains, the goods they buy are, they there will never be enough. Because there will always be someone who has more and better stuff.
Check out the superyacht gang. No matter how many gold taps you add to your superyacht, Vladimir Putin or someone else will always come along and build a bigger, better one. No, the rich crowd can’t really win on stuff. The best they can hope for is to keep up with the Joneses for a bit.
Because of this, the luxury has shifted from stuff to more experience-based goods. So that rich people at least feel like they can do unique things that others can’t do. You pay a fortune for authentic experiences, which most people get by backpacking, or turning off the main road and finding a nice simple restaurant that isn’t packed with tourists.
Rich people live in a quieter world than the rest of us anyway. That’s what private jets and private islands are for. That way, they don’t have to listen to the rest of us hustling our kids through airports or fighting on the beach. But there has to be a way to sell them ultimate silence. I call it “complete silence”. It’s cheap to produce and no one can have a better version because the version we offer is complete. It’s the ultimate bespoke, personalised, absolute luxury experience.
Now I just have to figure out how to give it to them, but one variant will be locking them in a soundproof room or taking them to a remote location. In any case, you are guaranteed not to hear any opinions about Will Smith or anything else.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/mid-life-crisis-was-will-smith-acting-is-morgan-freeman-actually-god-and-hollywood-his-joke-41510760.html Midlife crisis: ‘Did Will Smith act? Is Morgan Freeman really God and Hollywood his joke?’
