When
I started this blog over eight years ago, many of the early posts were
written in the stifling atmosphere of a former central London police station converted
into rudimentary office space. Rumours persisted that it was one of the
most haunted buildings in the UK, dating back to when a police officer
had hung himself in one of the cells decades earlier. My desk wasn’t
that far from the old cells...
Sitting
opposite me for much of that time was Matt Phipps. We both sat there
quietly despising our colleagues and tapping away on keyboards writing
instead of doing what we were (poorly) paid to do. We both eventually
got the fuck out of that job before it destroyed our souls, but we have
kept in close touch ever since. The labyrinthine machinations of life
will always ensure that the path ahead is strewn with people dumber than
you, so you better make damn sure that when you meet people smarter
than you, you hang on to them. And so I did.
A
lot has happened in both our lives over the last eight years. Matt is
now a father and writer living in São Paulo. We don’t see each other
anywhere near as much as we would like (geography can be a
motherfucker), but I suppose we are as close as two people separated by
an equator can be. And I always like to keep tabs on anything and
everything he writes, as he brings to bear a distinctive voice, an
idiosyncratic curiosity and intellectual rigour to anything his mind
alights on. And as an added bonus, there will often be dick jokes.
So
when, a couple of weeks ago, he posted a blogpost partially inspired by the tragedy
of the multiplex shootings in Aurora, Colorado, I paid attention. He
mused that he “happened to be thinking about heroes a lot in the week
before that night, in particular about how we keep returning to heroic
narratives despite living in a decidedly unheroic world. Is it OK to
like heroes? Or does it represent a failure to engage with reality?
Worse, is it dangerous?”. His thoughts on Heroes are well-worth a read and I highly recommend clicking-through and digesting the lot.
His
post started an email exchange in which I took his well-considered,
thoughtful ideas as a jumping-off point and added my scattershot,
half-baked witterings to the mix. Clearly, Matt thought that they had
merit, as he has kindly requested that he could re-post my thoughts over
on his blog. You can read my contribution to the debate here. We touch
on cyphers, spandex, sonic screwdrivers and more. Go forth and read.
Matt
can be found on Twitter here and you can read his wide-ranging array of blogposts here. There is also a light smattering of blatant Cliff
Richard fetishism. So there’s something for everyone.
