Anonymity Breeds Individuality

The blackened charm of the city: an unnameable presence that lures the damned with the fervour of a moth to the flicker of neon lights, upon which there waits nothing but its own inglorious death. A metaphor for the epitome of insignificance.

The stench of exhaust fumes and decay leads us blind, stumbling, to our Mecca. Be it by our own conscious manifestations or through a more subconscious yet profound sense of belonging. We indulge ourselves there: clogging the arteries of the metro subway, pumping through its veins, urged on by the city’s heart beat- a reluctant thump that echoes through the empty lifeless crowds. The corporates, the homeless, the slime. They writhe in the filth and scum which permeates the air and fills their lungs as they dance to the slow rhythm of car horns, sirens and cursing. The faceless crowd: Moving as one with indifference to the human lives that serve as the very molecules of its cold stark features. No one actually lives here- they only survive.

Blessed are the meek for they shall never know what it is to be swallowed whole by the rat race. At the thought itself, the cold hands of an overwhelming insufficiency clutch tightly to their necks and wring from them any starry eyed dreams they may have had of the big city. Without articulating it, the meek are innately aware that the city and its populace by no means equates to a likelihood of opportunity and success. Instead the city steals from its streets a regular sacrifice for the jaws of disappointment to sink its festering teeth into, spreading its bacteria and disease into the body long after it has moved on to its next pathetic victim. The slow creep of one’s demise and the knowledge of its imminence become more unbearable then the pain of the bite itself.

You would much rather be a big fish in a small pond then pour into the sea where the losers outnumber the winners 10,000 to 1. 10,000 constant reminders that at the end of the day fish are still fish and there are few that will never find themselves falling between cracks in the streets to rancid sewers below. Where they belong: Down in the sewers, with the other fish. But down below in the cess pool of despair and perversion await other fish whose lives are as dismal and meaningless as your own. Fish whose interests and intensions are as sick and twisted as your own. Others who have come to realise, as you have, that when you’re nobody you can be anyone you fucking like. Anonymity breeds individuality.



*Photo by Katie D