Babylon
by
by
Andrew Bromfield (Translator)
The Only Drug You’ll Ever Need
What better therapy could there be for the protagonist, Tatarsky, to cope with the final trauma of the dissolution of the Soviet Union than the invention of advertising slogans? On the other hand, magic mushrooms might achieve the same end, namely, the removal of the “relict [sic] of the Soviet era, the slave mentality he still hadn’t completely squeezed out of himself.” This was necessary in order to play the Game With No Name that has taken over Russia.
The game, of course, is the game of language. As in the biblical legend of the ancient tower, language is changing in incomprehensible ways. Those who are in the vanguard of the changes are the ones most confused. They create the new words, which create commercial value. How do they do that? Capitalism, just like Communism, is built on words; just different words. The words necessary in post-Soviet Russia have to touch the Slav mind. Explosive words. Sexy words. Noble words of the Motherland and her deep culture of words. Words that fit with despair but promise greatness and plentitude.
And it works. Fizzy drinks, cigarettes, washing powder are the things words attach to. These things become the words, and vice versa. This is the magic by which transformation out of the Soviet mentality comes about. The magic affected absolutely everything: “... people weren’t sniffing cocaine, they were sniffing money, and the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill required by the unwritten order of ritual was actually more important than the powder itself.” Symbols, words, that is to say, language was being consumed everywhere as if it had real substance. No wonder the popular resurgence in God who also became real through the same process!
There is a curious subtlety in this process: “First you try to understand what people will like, and then you hand it to them in the form of a lie. But what people want is for you to hand them the same thing in the form of the truth.” Lie? Truth? Both come in the same package. Haven’t you noticed? Same brand. Same factory. Same ingredients. All sourced from the same raw material: that infinitely deep well of language. It never seems to go dry. The more that’s extracted, the deeper it gets. And it’s free.
Language is a drug. No, THE drug. Soviet language cut the drug with all sorts of repetitive, inert crap. The same words over and over. Barely enough to get a buzz on. Vodka was a welcome refuge. Capitalist language is the real thing, crack cocaine with a Fentanyl chaser. You can only appreciate it if you’ve been weaned on the fifth-grade junk of socialism. Capitalism gives you the words to fly, to soar... to eat a really satisfying meal. Sure it takes some getting used to the stuff but once you’re on it, you hardly notice the hangover. Just up the dose and the ride continues. The apparatchiks didn’t want anyone to know about the well. Now they pump out as much of it as they can.
Having consumed the abundant new words of Capitalism, we digest them and they become part of us, indistinguishable from us. They are us. We then excrete the waste, upon which the magic mushrooms grow. “As far as Tatarsky was able to judge from the murky depths of his own Soviet mentality, the project was an absolutely textbook example of the American entrepreneurial approach.” The system is self-sustaining - we eat each other’s shit. How’s that for a fecund metaphor?
What better therapy could there be for the protagonist, Tatarsky, to cope with the final trauma of the dissolution of the Soviet Union than the invention of advertising slogans? On the other hand, magic mushrooms might achieve the same end, namely, the removal of the “relict [sic] of the Soviet era, the slave mentality he still hadn’t completely squeezed out of himself.” This was necessary in order to play the Game With No Name that has taken over Russia.
The game, of course, is the game of language. As in the biblical legend of the ancient tower, language is changing in incomprehensible ways. Those who are in the vanguard of the changes are the ones most confused. They create the new words, which create commercial value. How do they do that? Capitalism, just like Communism, is built on words; just different words. The words necessary in post-Soviet Russia have to touch the Slav mind. Explosive words. Sexy words. Noble words of the Motherland and her deep culture of words. Words that fit with despair but promise greatness and plentitude.
And it works. Fizzy drinks, cigarettes, washing powder are the things words attach to. These things become the words, and vice versa. This is the magic by which transformation out of the Soviet mentality comes about. The magic affected absolutely everything: “... people weren’t sniffing cocaine, they were sniffing money, and the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill required by the unwritten order of ritual was actually more important than the powder itself.” Symbols, words, that is to say, language was being consumed everywhere as if it had real substance. No wonder the popular resurgence in God who also became real through the same process!
There is a curious subtlety in this process: “First you try to understand what people will like, and then you hand it to them in the form of a lie. But what people want is for you to hand them the same thing in the form of the truth.” Lie? Truth? Both come in the same package. Haven’t you noticed? Same brand. Same factory. Same ingredients. All sourced from the same raw material: that infinitely deep well of language. It never seems to go dry. The more that’s extracted, the deeper it gets. And it’s free.
Language is a drug. No, THE drug. Soviet language cut the drug with all sorts of repetitive, inert crap. The same words over and over. Barely enough to get a buzz on. Vodka was a welcome refuge. Capitalist language is the real thing, crack cocaine with a Fentanyl chaser. You can only appreciate it if you’ve been weaned on the fifth-grade junk of socialism. Capitalism gives you the words to fly, to soar... to eat a really satisfying meal. Sure it takes some getting used to the stuff but once you’re on it, you hardly notice the hangover. Just up the dose and the ride continues. The apparatchiks didn’t want anyone to know about the well. Now they pump out as much of it as they can.
Having consumed the abundant new words of Capitalism, we digest them and they become part of us, indistinguishable from us. They are us. We then excrete the waste, upon which the magic mushrooms grow. “As far as Tatarsky was able to judge from the murky depths of his own Soviet mentality, the project was an absolutely textbook example of the American entrepreneurial approach.” The system is self-sustaining - we eat each other’s shit. How’s that for a fecund metaphor?
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ January 19, 2020
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