IGOR – Farewell Statement

Sep 16 2009

IGOR – Farewell Statement

by Igor

posted in Farewells, Igor

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*Igor was eliminated at the end of Round 4

The closing words of my last passage were “I want to be heard”, and the response was to toss me into the dustbin. I’m not brassed off over it. You’ve done me a favour. You’ve denied me the quick fix, the online pill that delivers an endorphin rush but leaves a hollowness, the cat-and-mouse comment game that wastes your hours by stranding you in an ocean of babble, the cheap write that inevitably comes when you spend your entire life plugged in. I don’t fancy diluting my work for the gormy watered-down taste of the masses. I can now piss off again to my underground cavern and forge in the smithy of my solitude the uncreated portrait of my conscience.

I’m not cut out for this century. I don’t fancy its bubbly self-promotion and promiscuous exclamation marks. I’d rather have my strop on than end up among these social media slappers who pass their hours befriending half the world and losing themselves in the process. The daft hysterics of the mob drown everything else out. The web has spawned a culture of noise that is rendering the writer of depth extinct.

Cheers for the bollocking in voting me off. You might say I climbed into the noose when I turned upon you. Dear reader, if I’ve been out of order it’s because I care. As that German codger said, what doesn’t polish you off only makes you stronger. I can only blame myself for signing up for something as barmy as an online reality show/writing contest. The only word there that isn’t vile to me is “writing”.

I was seduced by the glitter and allure of the virtual world. But I’ve discovered the web is a faithless partner for a writer. She entices with her assets but she’ll betray you for the next fellow at the first opportunity. I’m just calling the tart out for what she is. Beware the Internet, for she makes cuckolds of us all.

Not that I’m chuffed to return to my isolation. In the information era it’s bloody unlikely my craft will receive any posthumous recognition. There’s no time to read the ones who have already been discovered, never mind to go digging up others. Nobody will unearth your work like they did Dickinson and Kafka. Live in chatter; die and rot in obscurity. That’s the only fate in the interactive computer age.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must unplug and get back to wheeling myself through my tunnel. It may be dank, lonely, and wretched in there, but it’s the only place I breathe freely. Anywhere else is intolerable.