silent signals

Sometimes a random thought will just appear seemingly from out of nowhere, thanks to some obscure short-circuit in the synapses, or owing its arbitrary emergence to a perception scrambled by the interference of new media. There was I buying a sandwich today in Marks & Spencer, listening to a good German cold-wave mix on the iPod, when I began musing upon the popular British actors turned housewives' favourites Robson and Jerome. During the 90s they'd performed a cover of 'I Believe', an especially objectionable piece of sentimental Christian propaganda. It was huge at the time. As unfathomable as this popularity seemed, it reminds me of family holidays as a child, and of seeing advertisements or game-shows on foreign television. Usually the content would be identical to the British equivalent, but being acted out in a foreign language would show up the artifice of the 'original' you had accepted as natural. It was lent a quality I have since come to know as uncanny.