Money for Nothing

(In which Marcel Proust sits in for a brief set with Mark Knopfler)

One cannot help but contemplate, with the melancholic reverence of a forgotten age, the curious spectacle before us — a procession of figures, their gestures a mechanical mimicry of a world that has, in some ways, abandoned the very notion of work. Ah, observe them — their motions, almost imperceptible in their ease, as they, in the words of the present age, “play the guitar on the MTV.”

This, it seems, is the new labour, one unmoored from the sweat of the brow or the burden of true and worthy endeavour. Here, there is no toil; no genuine struggle against the intractable forces of fate. Instead, a reward comes, it appears, effortlessly, wrapped in the allure of something — money for nothing — while chicks, those ephemeral symbols of desire, come freely, as if by divine right.

But — what is this? The reality behind such luxuries must surely not be as it seems. Surely, in the end, there remains the same toil, the same blisters that we all must endure — albeit of a different variety, found perhaps on the little finger or thumb from the tapping of unseen chords. The world moves — yes, moves — but it does so in strange and unknowable ways. We must now, it seems, install the most curious of machines, things like microwave ovens — creatures of technology as foreign to my understanding as the customs of a distant land. And so, these new deliverances arrive, as if to supplant something more organic, more real, within the very homes that once seemed sanctified by simpler needs.

And yet, amidst these transitions, we see the curious figures who, in their particular style, take the stage. There is one, whose adornment — the earring, the makeup, the very hair — marks him as something new, something irrevocably different. His air, though distinct from ours, speaks of riches and ease, of the jet airplanes that transport him effortlessly above the earth, and the millionaire status that accompanies him like a shadow, always present, always exacting its toll. It is as though they have transcended time itself, these inverts, leaving us in our humble desires to only wonder at their effortless rise.

We, too, are compelled, though, to reflect: Should I have learned to play the guitar? Should I have chosen the drums instead, those simple instruments that might have bridged the gap between myself and this new era of sound and spectacle? Ah, but the way is not clear, the path obscured by the whirlwind of contemporary demands. One observes the woman — mama, they say — her motions directed not toward the quiet satisfactions of home or hearth, but toward the camera, that mechanical eye which immortalizes even the most fleeting of moments. And yet, amid this curious pantomime, there is something profound, something buried beneath the surface.

And all of this — this frantic energy, these whirling symbols of wealth and leisure — brings me back to the thought that haunts me with a peculiar intensity: this is not work as I once knew it. No, this is something else. This is a new form, a new mode of existence that somehow eludes me in its strangeness. Still, I remain transfixed, even as the microwave ovens continue to be installed, the refrigerators moved, the colour TVs transported from one empty place to another.

How easy it seems to sit, to be idle, to receive money for nothing and the chicks for free, and yet, there is a hollowness that underlies this seeming abundance. This is the great paradox of modernity: the accumulation of all things, yet the loss of any meaningful connection to what truly matters.