Shopping centres.

I once heard someone say that shopping centres are a microcosm of modern life. I can’t remember who said it. It’s an observation that appears cleverer than it really is — after all, the modern shopping centre revolves around the proliferation of capitalism. And modern life is all about capitalism. It’s about keeping the ghost in the machine running, at all costs. We all often find ourselves in shopping centres, big or small. Especially at this time of year. I know someone else who called them ‘cathedrals of commerce’. Again, this is another statement that sounds clever at first glance, but the more you think about it the more you realise that that is an obvious thing to say, said by someone who did media studies at A-Level and feels the need to have something to show for those two years. Not that I’m knocking doing media studies at A-Level. But I am knocking those who say insubstantial things just to appease their need to say something ‘deep’. Capitalism is the modern religion and shopping centres are a communal expression of our lust for stuff. They’re about coming together, in much the same way as a Sunday church service is about coming together. They have the same purpose, just very different content. They have the same form, just a vastly different aesthetic.

I don’t want to say anything like that about shopping centres. It’s all been said before. I suppose I could say that I see shopping centres as self-sufficient ecosystems, like those terrariums you see in in-between places, like in peoples’ porches or in antique shops. But I won’t say that, mostly because I don’t. Also, I don’t think that would be a substantial thing to say. Because you could pretty much say that about anything with people in them — houses, leisure centres, greenhouses. You could even say that about places without people in them — rainforests, mountains, the bottom of the sea. After all, everything is an ecosystem because we live in a gigantic ecosystem, supported by countless other microscopic ecosystems.

The only reason you would create an analogy between something man-made and an ‘ecosystem’ is that you see it as inherently different from nature. And of course, there is an aspect of that, but by seeing man-made constructions as distinct from nature, you are in turn seeing humans as distinct from nature. We definitely have lost touch with nature, especially over the last few hundred years, but we are by no means not ‘natural’. We have simply built on nature. By calling something an ecosystem, you are really creating an analogy between the thing you want to talk about, and life. Any critical thinker worth their salt will tell you that that isn’t a very productive analogy to make because everything is a part of life. It is senseless to compare anything to something it is already part of. What you really want to do when creating an analogy is to compare the thing you want to talk about to another thing that is completely separate from that thing. Anyhow, I digress.

I don’t want to compare shopping centres to anything. I want to talk about shopping centres as though they were shopping centres. Which they are. Despite what that guy who read David Foster Wallace once has to say about it. What I wanted to say when I began writing this is that the tops of shopping centres scare me. They always have but I hadn’t really realised that until yesterday. I was in a shopping centre and we were at the top, in the food court, right next to the ceiling. There were giant Christmas decorations hanging from it — they reached almost to the first floor. This giant luminous structure was hanging from a few ropes and wires. The idea of it cracking and then falling was almost too much to bear. It seemed crushingly heavy, and I couldn’t imagine what destruction it could cause if it were to break. I didn’t trust this structure and I didn’t trust the person who put it there. What if they were having an off day, secured it to the beams in a slap-dash manner, and then fucked off for a tea break, leaving other peoples’ safety to fate?

I think the idea of being killed by falling Christmas-themed debris is a fairly rational fear to have. It’s not likely to happen, but it is possible. And it feels very possible when you’re confronted with the sheer weight of one of those things. It wasn’t just the idea of it fracturing and fragmenting and potentially killing us all that scared me though. It was the ceiling itself that terrified me. My fear is perfectly encapsulated by the image of a helium balloon floating aimlessly up to the roof, just to hover there indefinitely. I don’t know how people get them down again, but they always seem to disappear eventually. Maybe they pop. Maybe it’s some poor sods job to go and get them. I think it’s the expansiveness of the ceiling, coupled with the smallness of the balloon. It’s so irretrievable. It must be lonely up there. If balloons were conscious, I imagine they’d be scared too. I imagine myself as that balloon. I would be completely lost up there, yet everyone would be able to see me. How awful that would be. Perhaps as a child, my balloon got lost and floated up to that ceiling. And that’s what birthed the fear. The ceilings of shopping centres are like balloon graveyards, where Macdonalds-themed paraphernalia goes to die. That’s what scares me about shopping centre tops.