Prayers For Our Terrible Situation

Some days i use technological solutionism to hurt my feelings. Alba tells me that in her Wikipedia game tournament users had to reach the page for ‘mean world syndrome’. I can’t remember what they journeyed from, but in my head the starter square was something pure, and the oblique route the contestants traveled represented our own confused wanderings in l/ife/ove, from childhood elation to the isolationism of small creature big world adulthood. maybe they stopped by ‘Grindr rejection’, ‘Lewisham redevelopment’, ‘fear’, ‘pain’, ‘work’, ‘devalued’, ‘dislocation through closure’, ‘agony’.

Maybe they rejected the game and ended up on the happiest possible page that they could find in Wikipedia. Maybe they took a detour through ‘prayer’, ‘art’, ‘friendship’, ‘dad’s old stencils’ and ended up that night with thoughts that resolved into gems, the taste of love’s bitter mystery on their tongue, their eyeballs stars. If the angel of history is going to face backwards while it moves forwards someone needs to guide it. Will this person be you? Do you know what to do when the collective dream hits turbulence?

Drawings (prayers) by Harry Bix

Photographs (terrible situations) by Jordan Taylor

Text by Déas McMorrow