Communicator (communicator) wrote,
Communicator
communicator

I wish that man would go away

Graffiti sticks in your mind. Sometimes it's there for months, sometimes for years. It becomes a geographical reference point.

Where I live all the graffiti is concentrated in one fetid tunnel under the A45. On a typical day I go through this tunnel several times. It's like the id of the neighbourhood. You are walking down a bright, clean, avenue then you go down the ramp into the underpass and you are immersed in sexual anxiety and ill-directed anger.


Most of the text consists of insults to named people. In particular assertions that their mothers are fat and ugly, and that they and their mothers are prepared to fellate all and sundry.

One item gets me every time. It's on the facing wall, so it is staring you in the eye as you walk down the tunnel. It gets larger, but it doesn't get any clearer. I've been reading this sentence every day for over a year now.

RICH C SUCKS HIS FAT MUM KNOB

What the hell does it mean? It isn't an ungrammatical sentence: it's a completely meaningless one. What is it that Rich C is supposed to be doing? Is it a sentence with emotional content, but no actual reference? Or does it represent the Freudian anxiety of someone with only the haziest idea of human anatomy? Did it arise spontaneously through all the other insults on the walls combining into one meta-insult, written by the walls themselves, in response to the years of abuse that have been inflicted on them?

To me it seems like a sentence that emerged from a bit of the mind that doesn't usually have access to language.

And tonight it will be there again. It's doing my head in.
Subscribe

  • Phew what a scorcher

    I see Gove has backed down on climate change and it's back in the curriculum again.

  • GCSE Computer Science

    My book is now for sale

  • LJ Settings

    At the moment I have set up this journal so that only friends can comment. I hate doing this, but I was just getting too much Russian spam.

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Comments allowed for friends only

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    default userpic
  • 4 comments