Just Protester watches The Baader Meinhof Complex and gets upset about his piano teacher from twenty years ago
Just Protester Trevor, welcome back to The Sewers! We congratulate you with a happy new year!
Hey.
So what’s up? Do you love Greta Thunberg?
Ugh.
I know there’s some dispute about her among environmental activists.
Sure.
So what are you up to these days?
Bah.
Hmm.
Have you seen The Baader Meinhof Complex movie?
Yes, quite a few years back.
Yeah.
You’re not going to blow up a mall or something, right? that’s a major carbon footprint, to blow things up. Also, morally, it’s got a moral footprint as well.
What if the mall is empty?
I want nothing to do with it.
You started talking about it.
It’s the only scene I remember from the film.
Sure.
So you’re depressed.
Maybe, yeah. I mean, it’s a life long struggle, to fight for what’s just, y’know? so it’s alright to get tired from time to time. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna do anything destructive and crazy. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna give up the fight, either.
So what did you think about the movie?
It made me sad. It was like watching sci-fi. It was like really exciting. Like, if they were here and now… but that’s just not our reality. There’s no movie about the revolution we’re facing, coz we don’t know what it looks like, what language it speaks. We’ll know that only in retrospect, y’know?
Do you suppose the way we discuss revolution and protest injustice today had become dated and irrelevant?
Y’know, talking about socialism and capital distribution and stuff like that on a national scale, yeah, that’s irrelevant.
Is it?
Like, protesting a bank… I mean, if you take a bank, and make all the executives in it, y’know, go –
Hang themselves?
No. fuck. If you take a bank and all the executives, y’know what, all the workers in this bank go home, quit. And you have a bunch of socialists running that bank, what happens then?
Ah…
It’s a rhetoric question. Nothing happens. Like even in fucking Money Heist, okay? What happens? Nothing. It becomes yet again a personal story about these five people.
Right.
Fucking narcissists.
Who?
Everyone, fuck.
I agree with you about not having the language or the image of what the next revolution would be like. We can only have assumptions and guesses, that cannot help but be affected by past and present.
Yeah? And?
That’s all. I agree with you.
Fuck. that doesn’t help with anything.
And watching The Baader Meinhof Complex does?
Oh fuck you.
So what will 2020 be like?
How the fuck should I know?
What were you up to on New Year’s Eve?
Who cares? You forget about it 12 hours later. Then for a week or something you get it wrong when you write the date, like you still write 2019, and then another week later you forget about 2019, too.
Hmm.
Yeah.
So wait. You didn’t like Money Heist?
Bah.
3%?
What is this? A Netflix blog? Fuck.
I just know that when you’re down you watch a lot of television. It even used to make you feel less depressed. Like when we talked about Mallrats.
Mallrats…
Yes.
Fuck, I was fucking stupid.
Yes! You’re so not there anymore. You’ve changed.
Sure.
Sometimes I even think you know better than most people.
Yeah?
Sure. About global scale politics and changes.
Yeah, y’know, I spend a lot of time just, y’know, getting more and more knowledge. It’s like, I see it as my duty, to be an informed citizen of the world.
Exactly. And maybe it seems like all this knowledge accumulates into nothing in reality, but that’s just a matter of time.
Do you really think so?
Well, to an extent.
What the fuck does that mean? Fuck. You’re just… you’re just…
“In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
Orwell, 1984.
Right.
So you’re saying I’m like… keeping these words alive, the words with which we can still think clearly.
Exactly.
You’re just trying to cheer me up. I kinda appreciate it. to an extent. Y’know when I was like 7 or 8, my dad made me take piano lessons.
Oh?
Yeah, fuck! So anyway, I had this teacher, he was all about the big deal piano pieces. Beethoven. Bach. Debussy. And of course, Rachmaninoff.
Really?
Yeah. anyway, after a year or so, he made me listen to one big piece every week. As in to inspire me to become a great pianist. And y’know, I’m really not into this kind of music. I’m so not into this stuff. But what can you say, it’s fucking impressive, the fact that people can actually play – with their two hands! – these insane pieces. So I liked watching videos of people playing these piano pieces. And of course, I imagined what it would feel like to be in their place. Just playing like that, making it look easy. But I didn’t like practicing, y’know? it was so fucking boring, and I was like 4000 levels under these pieces. And one day the teacher told me: you prefer to watch others play and to dream about being like them, but you don’t try to be even less than half as good as they are.
Wow.
Yeah. So the lessons stopped. Albert. That was my teacher’s name. fucking hated him. But maybe he was right. maybe I’m just a fucking daydreamer.
Was your father upset you quit the piano lessons?
How the fuck is that relevant? Fuck. It’s like you’re not even listening. Jesus.
Jesus?!
Fuck.
Thank you for sharing –
Fuck you. fuck. 2020 is going to be the worst fucking year ever.
We wish it to be a better one for you.
Bah.
Hmm.
Ugh.
So what are you going to do now?
What do you care?
I’m trying to check if you’re suicidal or planning to blow up a mall.
Well, neither.
Good!
Okay bye. Fuck.
We thank you and congratulate you, Just Protestor.
Who cares.
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