The Security of Failure

Utter failure is the sturdiest seat around.

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing” said George Bernard Shaw. That is a nice quote because it gives everyone hope. And also because it was easily findable by searching on Google. There, there, don’t be evil.

You were warned earlier in the week about this post, and here it is in all its putrid foulsome glory. Get a waft of that freshly microwaved-stench.

The history books are filled with failures, and it is often these that are the most interesting, story-wise. I think it could even be more interesting to examine the failed petering out of famous characters than their heady ascendancy to fame. And we Brits love a failure. Only out of the hideous mediocrity of an endlessly dripping climate can real failure flourish. The Darwin Awards stand testament to our obsession with failure. And that is great, because it is far far less to live up to.

Just as water always trickles to the lowest point and then reaches a state of total stability, or let’s call it peace, so could we say that the same applies to us? Reaching the pinnacle of success, the height of ambition, is like being tethered to the top of a building from a burning thread. You can enjoy the view while it lasts.

But more tellingly, you could probably enjoy the fall as well. I’m fairly certain that there is a perverse pleasure in failure of your own making, that makes you want to wave on the way down as the blinking windows cascade past. Unless some blue-suited, red-underpanted twat flies under and scoops you into his arms and plops you in front of a television camera so that you can wear an expression of disbelief and hopelessness that wouldn’t look out of place on the face of a government spokesman who has just publicly shat himself while describing the delicate details of foreign policy and military spending to a roomful of respected and revered journalists such as Kate Adie, all the while being live-streamed onto the BBC and Al Jazeera, and knowing that the public shitting story will be inserted respectfully in between that Diana special on faulty motorway underpasses and a human interest story on the effects of the Common Agricultural Policy on Joe, a farmer in Shropshire whose turnips were publicly burnt in the car park of the parliament building in Strasbourg for tasting natural. Actually joking aside, elements of the Common Agricultural Policy are disgusting but this isn’t really the time to go into that.

Maybe reveling in failure is some form of masochism, a self-inflicted wound that you take pleasure in opening and salting, much like those crisps you used to have to add salt to – and incidentally, what happened to them? Somehow that need to balance along the edge of a precipice, that tightly grasped balancing pole as your placebo aid to posture, is only made worth it by the sideways glance of the massive drop.

On a related note, have you ever got butterflies while sitting on a sledge on the edge of what appears to be an infinite drop in the snow? No matter that you are just in an abandoned college car park, the only thing you can fixate on is the target, be that a brick wall, your little sister, or a small but highly unstable nuclear power plant. These are in ascending order of entertainment value to yourself. That is the other point, the failure is made more or less tasty by the benchmark that you are working to.

Enough though. The insides can rot if left out the fridge too long, and there are some things, like the bullshit above, that are best left frozen. Anyway, if failure is your default mode of thinking, then it seems pertinent to choose a profession that is created for failure. I don’t mean a profession in which it is possible to fail – that must be almost all of them – but one which is almost defined by failure.

I am talking, of course, of alchemy. Alchemy is the science of turning base metals, like lead, into gold. It is fairly famous, and people used to attempt to practice this art based on the proximity of lead to gold in the periodic table. Except that to successfully do that, you need to fuck with the nucleus. I failed my A-level chemistry practical (I thought a strip of litmus paper was chewing gum or something) but even I know that no amount of jiggery pokery possible in a test tube will achieve this. That didn’t stop all manner of drop-outs, dreamers and madmen from singing their eyebrows, undergoing accidental and rapid exfoliation, melting themselves into smouldering heaps or twisting the roofs of their houses through ninety degrees and generally allowing their mischief to lead to messy divorces. Really messy I mean – have you seen a pool of liquified human try to sign a form and extract a ring from a screaming woman’s finger?

Still, as part of my ongoing predicament, I have turned to the dark side and now entertain alchemy as the way forward. Though I am going to put a 21^st century twist on it. I have more value for life, notions on failure aside, than to practice this deathly art myself. I intend to become an Alchemy Consultant instead. This is what will happen:

I will rent myself a portakabin and set this up in Kelvingrove Park. Though I would hate to become a lackey for the capitalist pig-dog empire (err, only joking there sir), I realise the success of any business is self-promotion, and will do this by giving out vouchers for free lemonade, which I will distribute at street corners around this city. Once the punters arrive for their sugary fix, I will extoll the virtues of alchemy and what it can achieve, though only with my help. I intend to circulate a leaflet, called “The Midas Touch”, and specially gold-plated ladles as proof of what is possible. At £200 per hour, I should be able to comfortably make back my overheads. Thus making profit from our collective failure. It is a beautiful plan, and could allow me to increase my intake to two haggis suppers per day with all the money. A three-foot long ginger beard should allow me to remain anonymous and stop me from being stabbed 16 times in the face by a disgruntled entre-preneur while enjoying a pint of Guinness (I think a few people have ‘expired’ this way round here).

Don’t say I’m not trying to do something useful with my life now, Mr Shaw.

No, not another unnecessary third person bit, but an important link:

That’s right. Here be a link to Lauren’s blog, Credible Witness and a worthy read it is too. And she has pictures and things. I’ll get round to it here in good time…