New writing: a muse on being without power

It’s been an age since I’ve written anything reflective just for the fuck of it. So, here’s something you might enjoy. It doesn’t really have a title. Well. It kind of does.

Enjoy reading my muse!

A muse on being sans power

The startling emptiness of a house without power is unsettling to the modern mind. Even if the power goes out when there is no appliance in use, even if there are no lights turned on, there is a feeling that something has gone, disappeared, left us alone.
The modern convenience of electricity is weightier than most people believe. It sits on you, over you, around you, all the time. When it’s gone, things are truly quiet. There is no incessant hum of the fridge, or the freezer. No high-pitched whine that we are told is EMF. No hum of a lightbulb that is on its last legs, no fans, no pumps. There is no possibility of a stereo being switched on, no television, no gaming consoles, no computers. There are no routers, no wifi, no telephones – not unless you have an old-fangled landline phone that requires no electricity to run.

It unsettles people because they suddenly realise that they are alone.

And not only that they are alone, but also that they have to be alone with themselves, and with other people, without the distraction of a multitude of other things to which we give our attention, or our partial attention, constantly.

Remove it, and there is peace if you know how to relax.

I’m enough of a hippie to really enjoy it when there is no power. I don’t particularly like having to rely on town supply water when my tank’s pumps don’t work, but the absence of power fills me with a happy sense of contemplation and freedom.

Provided I have gas to cook with, I wouldn’t mind if the power stayed off indefinitely. We would have to completely reorient how we viewed the world – hell, I’d have to dramatically rethink how I earn a crust – but it would force all of those generations who have never had to live without power for any extent of time, to think about how they connect with each other, and to the world in general.

It is ironic that I write on a laptop while the power is out. But even if I couldn’t write with the aid of an electronic device, I could write on paper. And now, when the power is on again, I rue the fact that it is, am assaulted with the noises of everything turning on, humming, invading on my space. The modern world is convenient, yes, but that is exactly the same reason as to why everybody is so filled with discontent.