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Friday, 31 March 2006
I Am The Holy Empath
Hands up then, anybody ask the question yesterday that if I didn't punch the Primark assistant in the face why the hell would I have shot her, hand gun or no?
Yes?
Good for you. You questioned a patently untrue statement about (my) human behaviour. Or maybe you just don't think I'm all bad.
No?
Ah, so you believe in evil? Or maybe you're just prepared to believe evil of me. After all, I wrote a book full of savage and perverted violence.
Didn't even give it a thought?
Nothing wrong with that, just don't become a writer. It will never be more than cardboard.
I'm currently reading a book called "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. It was sold as a marketing book. But, like most books on the topic, although they can tell you how a sales boom occurs after the event, they are fuck all use in getting one going.
On the plus side it has some interesting stuff on human behaviour. And one part of its argument is called The Broken Window Theory. This is some years old now and was postulated to explain how epidemics of crime occur.
If you're not familiar with it, the argument goes:- If a window is broken in a street and is not repaired, then another window is broken, and that too is not repaired, and so on, it can quite quickly start an epidemic of crime because the perpetrators realise that they have, in effect, laissez-faire to do anything they like. The broken windows tell them no-one cares. The more things that are allowed to go unfixed, the more far-reaching the crime wave becomes.
It's quite a good theory and is unusual because it flies in the face of the environment versus nurture argument, saying that neither are true, it is in fact just a random situation.
That said, I don't agree with it. Life just ain't that simple.
Like that Primark Moment. If the items had been rung through correctly in the first place it would never have happened, right?
True, but equally well, if the shop had had a good customer service policy it wouldn't have happened either.
Even with its bad customer service policy it still wouldn't have happened if the supervisor hadn't shoved me, then told me to shut up, then threatened me, then sneered, etc, etc. After all, I still didn't punch her.
Everybody reading this, if they think about it long enough, knows one person who would have punched her. Is that because they were brought up differently?
Possibly.
Is it because they are male?
Even more possible – but my boyfriend didn't hit her either.
How different would it have been if I had been black? Young? Pissed off at someone else? Had a parent that always used the expression "Am I talking to you?"
How different would it have been if I had been young, black, male, angry at someone else and had a hand-gun? A definite six 'o' clock news moment.
Nope, not if the supervisor went for a tea break and sent someone else instead.
The whole incident hung on a million variables. It always does.
The expression 'an accident waiting to happen' is far more common than newspapers or films or fiction would have you believe. And that is why we don't believe it. Because the idea terrifies us. The idea that random acts of violence, tragedy are exactly that – random.
Always.
Evil, as an entity, even a state of mind or being is no more real than the tooth fairy.
Think Adolf Hitler did what he did because he was evil? Like it came down one night and possessed him? Or maybe his mother beat him with nettles?
She maybe did, but it didn't make him gas Jews.
A lot of things did that. A very dodgy upbringing, an obsessive compulsive personality, the first world war, thwarted artistic ambitions, poverty, hunger, damaged national pride.
You could go on all day, and those are just the things we know about. What about all the things that Hitler saw and felt and experienced that we know nothing about?
Think you know me because I write in here daily? What kind of food do I like? What's my favourite film? What's my favourite book? What was the last novel I read? Why didn't I punch the Primark assistant? (Don't worry, I don't know the answer to that one either.)
When I set out to write DANNY, it was this kind of black and white thinking – 'Hitler was evil, Gandhi was good' – that used to really piss me off.
Having a deeply dysfunctional family has its uses. You get used to trying to second guess human behaviour. I'd been doing it, literally, since I was a toddler, trying to make sense of a very unsafe environment. I learned to read every nuance of the behaviour of the people around me. I also learned that there was no such thing as an absolute in behaviour. Generosity went with maliciousness. Kindness went with aggression. Sensitivity went with barbarism. You just had to learn the predictable patterns of it.
As an adult I have skills that would make me an awesome con woman, able to read someone's character without even talking to them. I'm the person at boot sales that never takes stuff home. I'm the sales rep who earns the car. I'm the tarot card reader who grosses the most on the phone line every day, without fail. Scary, eerie, I'm an every day Derren Brown without the magic.
I've only ever used the tip of my skills and have preferred to stay clear away from professions where I might be tempted into using them. I lasted exactly two days on a phone tarot line because I felt like a magnet the first day, soaked full of people's sins and misery, heavy with them.
When I went back in the next day they came over to my desk with something approaching reverential awe mixed with bafflement. I had broken records for call length, government rulings on call times had been breached repeatedly, something they'd never had happen in two years of business. I was the milk cow of tarot line readers.
Doing what?
Reading people's voices, understanding what they were really asking me and then telling them what they wanted to hear.
Could I read the cards?
Could I fuck.
Is it supernatural power, psychic?
Is it fuck. All I am is a scary empath. All I know is what you're thinking and why you think it.
I left the tarot line and never went back, never did it again.
I avoid knowing people, never discuss their problems, never ask questions. I'm like some kind of X-ray vision woman, the hero of Dead Zone who sees people's lives when he shakes their hand.
I remember vividly, once, in a canteen, when I was around 25, and had not yet learned how potent this ability was to other people, a work mate remarked on what an unerringly good judge of character I was. She asked me to tell her something about herself. Unfortunately, the other six people round the table were immediately intrigued. Of course they were. Hey, here was a bona fide palm reader right in their midst, and she didn't even need the palm.
Flattered by the attention, fat little ego being fed, I agreed to do the whole table.
It was one of the ugliest moments of my life.
I had to tone down everything I said, miss out great chunks of people's characters, gloss over things I knew. I remember one woman, in particular, who always kept everyone at a distance, me most of all. I left her to last, seeing her palpable discomfort, not wanting to go there myself.
She left the table before I got to her and stayed further away from me than ever.
What did she think I knew? Why was she frightened of me? She was right, I did 'know' something, but possibly still to this day no-one else does, including her, I suspect.
And so, this skill makes me the perfect writer, who knows everything about everyone.
Yeah, in my dreams.
I don't even know my own mother. For all my awesome and, admittedly, slightly paranormal skills, I have never been able to figure out her particular riddle – if she has one. I don't even know that for sure. I know about as much about her now as I did at thirteen, and that's precious little.
And why? Because you can't know, because there is always the random chaos of life. The genes – too much male chromosome? Not enough? The body chemistry - too much sugar that day? Not enough? The hand gun - ever used one? Is it loaded? The supervisor - sound like your mother? Catching you out in a lie? The cashier that goes early to her tea break – rushes your clothes through the till? Hands you over to someone else? The annoying toothache - Really frightened? Blinding pain? The supervisor's uncomfortable knickers, the company policy, the fucking weather.
Random, all random.
And, much as I'd like to pretend I'm God (oh, just for five minutes), all I have is a skill, nothing supernatural or even weird, it just feels that way to you.
It doesn't stop me having brawls in Primark, it doesn't make me rich, although it could, all it does is compel me to write about life as it actually is, random acts of sex and violence included. Where a wrong till receipt turns an unseemly brawl into the six 'o'clock news.
And no psychopaths were involved at all.
Not yet read DANNY? Find out what all the fuss is about at www.poisonpixie.com or check it out on Amazon here Or rub shoulders with Danny's rich and famous readers at Chancery Fans
There is also an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans. The new C Stone's DANNY
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