The Artist is amazing.

The Artist is amazing. Never has so much been achieved by cost saving. It lingers like a monochrome curry stain on a white shirt. The dog is amazing. I don’t think it was played by Merrill Streeeep but it had all the hallmarks of her best performances, bark, sit and run about on demand, and makeup these days is, well amazing. But she’s not credited. After half an hour of being plunged back into its near century old technology I had acclimatised to it and its demands to observe the less to gain the more. In contrast our more recent wonders of speech, colour, CGI and 3D are like the aeroplane spoon docking into a babies mouth. And prescient amongst its many themes is men’s inability to speak. Choked by pride, hubris and fear we have been reduced to verbalising mechanical success and platitudes of technology. In some subtle sense we have become mute, reduced by the dictates of growth and economy. It’s not that we lack the vocals but that we stall at a logjam of conviction on our path to uncertainty. Which brings me to another of this weekend’s findings. How to take a cat for a walk? With a dog it’s easy, just put him on a lead and he’ll go, either as a placid heeler or your opponent in a tractor pulling competition. A cat though will balk at the mere hint of a lead. We tried to take our cat to the vets on a long string once. On passing next doors shrubbery she disappeared, knitting herself in so thoroughly it quickly took on the appearance of a loosely woven jumper with a random pattern of bushes on it. But there is a way. Wear a pair of shoes with long frayed laces left untied. Where one wants the surety of a lead the other will only follow the flapping ends of frayed uncertainty. It takes, as they say, all sorts.