Gliff

by Ali Smith

Because – how do you explain that it is never inspiration that drives you to tell a story, but rather a combination of anger and clarity? Valeria Luiselli

It was quite usual and acceptable now for photos that purported to be true pictures of reality not to be what they were or appeared to be.

Our mother thought smartphones were liabilities. So, what you want, she’d say whenever we begged her for a smartphone or a smart anything, is to have a device that means you see everything through it, as if everything is at your fingertips and you can hold it all in the palm of one hand. It would certainly make you feel very important to yourself. What you’d be preoccupied with would be so important to you that there would be no point in you looking at anything else.

And why do they want us to feel so temporary?

Sometimes I think you’re a very old and wise person disguised as you, I said. Thanks, she said. And sometimes, I said, I think you’re one of the youngest greenest people I’ll ever know. I am all my me’s, she said. I am complete.

Does it make it easier to control other creatures, or even peoples, us deciding that because we don’t know what they’re saying, what they’re saying doesn’t get to mean anything, or that they don’t get to have a say?