I’ve had a song stuck in my head this year, coming and going at random. I’ll be minding my own business and suddenly it’s back on loop, even though I can’t recall the last time I actually heard it. It’s a song by Jimi Hendrix, called “If Six Was Nine”. It’s about refusing to conform, in a world that is going topsy-turvy.
“If the sun refuse to shine
I don’t mind, I don’t mind
If the mountains fell in the sea
let it be, it ain’t me
Cos I got my own world to look through
And I ain’t gonna copy you
Now if 6 turned out to be 9
I don’t mind”
I have finally realised why this song won’t leave me alone. It’s nothing to do with its theme of individuality : it’s more the imagery it evokes of a world crumbling down. But most of all, it’s the title. Because if 6 was 9, then we have all spent this year reliving 2016, the most unrelentingly shit twelve months in living memory, which I will forever refer to as the Cursed Year.
Someone posted a comment on Twitter in 2016, positing the theory that David Bowie had been the glue holding the world together, and that on the day he died, everything started falling apart. I imagine that this person has spent the intervening time feeling vindicated, given how bleak current events have been since.
Bowie experienced a dramatic change of heart about the new millennium. In numerous interviews in the 90s, his optimism about mankind’s future – the social and technological progress he saw as inevitable – was palpable. He couldn’t wait for the millennium to arrive – right up until it did. As early as 2000, he quipped “What a disappointing 21st century this has been so far”, and his view only soured from there on. His first album of the millennium, Heathen, makes for bleak listening, with songs full of anger, bitterness and fear. One in particular epitomises its mood : a tirade at god called I Demand A Better Future.
“Please don’t tear this world asunder
Please take back this fear we’re under
I demand a better future
Or I might just stop wanting you”
How typical it was of Bowie to have seen the writing on the wall way before everyone else. It took the rest of us until 2016 to realise how bad things had become.
It is of course simplistic to suggest that the world was all simple and innocent prior to 2016, but that year did feel like the moment that tolerance, progress and openness were replaced by populism, fear-mongering and insularity.
In the space of one year, the UK morphed from being an internationally-respected EU powerhouse into a bitter, unwelcoming pariah. Not to be outdone, the US followed suit later in the year, so bringing to an end a world order that had provided peace and stability since the 2nd World War. Under the new order, cooperation has became weakness, xenophobia is the new patriotism, and truth has become irrelevant.
In all honesty, the years immediately following 2016 were little better, but if you looked hard enough, you could still find scraps of hope to cling to. And that’s why I hate 2019 so much. Ember after ember of smouldering hope, neatly crushed underfoot. No, Trump’s impeachment won’t achieve anything. Yes, he will win re-election. No, Brexit can’t be stopped. Yes, those who cheated and broke the law to achieve these results will forever go unpunished. No, no-one can stop the extremists running what used to be the Conservative Party from winning a majority tomorrow. Yes, it’s too late to save the world from climate catastrophe. No, we won’t stop burning down forests. Yes, there are too many of us. No, we won’t stop producing more and more plastic until we’ve all choked on the stuff. No, we’re not going to make it, basically.
Maybe it’s just this decade. Maybe when we clear these terrible 10s and embark on the 20s, things will pick up. This wave of populism, xenophobia and nastiness could turn out to be a blip and not the new norm. A dark memory and a warning tale, keeping us all in line. But if not, then it will keep spreading. In 2022 France will go to the polls again. After 5 years of Macron’s reformist agenda, how strong will the reprisals be ? Enough to finally elect a Le Pen ? Where do you hide when the whole world is burning?