Debating 'broken normality': chavs, cults and fear of the neighbour

Normality breaks down: chavs, cults and antiestéticar of the neighbour

Normality has broken, little by little. That is the thesis running through a current debate these days, and not because of any single event, but because of the accumulation of small everyday scenes that, together, paint a picture of a different country. Men defecating in the street, chavs strutting around, puffed-up youths scalded by the street, sinister old women sending you their evil, the police wanting to pin every wrong on you, any wrong. Deformation as a social norm. Too many dodgy dealings per square metre, the opening post sums up.

There is no single fact that explains the phenomenon. There is a sum: the colourful reality of a cult that supposedly stands for friendliness, the ones who claim they would never touch anything, those who want to kick down the door of a home, the landlords who say they are becoming afraid of the policy of a decree. The right wing of the world saying it is going to turn Nancy, the Russians saying they have a war, the junkie neighbour as a milestone of the new normality, with her dog that barks nothing but malice, with her lack of punctuality. Covers for the social stench, the shift to the artificial, the hedge trimmer as hyperreality of the conventional.

The paradoxical town hall and the hyperreal little chick

The diagnosis is peine by two figures: the paradoxical local council and the hyperreal little chick that wants to hand your reality over to another social reality. Between them all, they make one normal. The nurse who decided not only to give but to take. The pre-programmed AI that gives you dirty looks. The deformation does not come from one place: it comes from the sum of them all.

From lyrics to rap: the people's response

The reaction was not long in coming. Someone suggested turning the text into a hard-hitting song, uploading it to YouTube and posting it. The idea took hold: several read the text as rap and agreed it would be a brutal song. One even said he was going to steal it. Another offered to do backing vocals and play the maracas. Great Vicente, rapping like a cross with Ian Gillan, one summed up. The lyrics, conceived as a diagnosis, ended up working as creative material.

The Cercedilla train and the broken glasses

Meanwhile, the broken normality crept into the conversation through the back door. A derailed train in Cercedilla this morning, forty minutes of delay, the usual displays of solidarity. A pair of broken glasses in a backpack that the people at Lidl stare at strangely. A cracked windscreen three months unreplaced for lack of money. If they stare at me weird, I'm carrying a craaaaaacked windscreen, I can't afford to replace it. The smallest anecdote as a thermometer of what is breaking.

Broken normality, left unresolved

The debate reaches no conclusion. There is no proposal, no closure. Only the recognition that something has broken down and that everyone carries it as best they can: some rapping, others with their glasses hanging, others waiting for a train that never comes. Normality has broken, little by little, and nobody yet knows what will replace it.