Daniel Seifert

Bandwidth is troubling, because it’s just one of many phrases that assume we are mere cogs in the machine Allow me to totter onto my rickety soapbox for a second, and say: business jargon has gone too far. Buzzwords have become so entrenched into working life that they have, in effect, become a second language. One that, like a much-needed laxative, we are forced to digest to keep daily operations running smoothly. If you don’t use (or at least nod energetically along with) phrases like ‘low-hanging fruit’ or suggest that someone ‘circle back’ so that you can ‘create synergy’, and instead choose to communicate like an unlobotomised person, you’ll find yourself a virtual pariah.

I am in the 70th minute of my two-hour Balinese rubdown when that John Milton line swims into my head. You know: ‘Man can make a heaven of hell, and totes the opposite too’ (I may be misquoting slightly). More than three centuries on, the Paradise Lost epigram remains apt. I’m in a sun-drenched, five-star, tropical resort – and I’m miserable. It’s my own fault; I always forget how much I hate body massages. The hole in the table is too small for my muppet-sized head. It locks my jaw fiercely open, forcing the muppet to discreetly suck in his drool every half-minute. I’ve desperately needed to pee for the past half-hour, and the masseuse is prodding my taut bladder with the insistence of a Gestapo Oberleutnant whipping a prisoner for information.

As if there wasn’t enough apocalyptic news to keep abreast of, studies show that forgetfulness is on the rise. A cocktail of causes is to blame: microplastics clogging the brain, post-Covid symptoms, Dickensian air quality… whatever the culprit, our memories are taking a pummelling. Call me an inveterate optimist, but I’m glad to have the company. I had name amnesia before it was cool, as the kids say. Place me in front of a new neighbour or colleague, and I can glad-hand, smile and make friends with the best of them. What I can’t for the life of me do is recall that person’s name. (Too busy being paranoid about leaving specks of spit on their tie, or hiding the Mark Rothko installations of my armpit stains.

Epic figures leave epic gaps when they retire. The generations that follow are doomed to be compared to past heroes by nostalgic fans. So it is with Roger Federer. Novak Djokovic might be the GOAT (greatest of all time, to use the phrase du jour) in terms of sheer numerical achievement. But tennis is art, not science. Ballet, not bookkeeping. For the aesthetes among us who drink in the sight of on-court grace like champagne, Federer will always be number one.  To answer why, you don’t need words, though heaven knows enough have been written about the grace of Rog. (David Foster Wallace famously called watching the Swiss savant ‘a religious experience’). Click on any clip and watch Fed glide on the court, near-supernatural in his poise.

There are a handful of obsessive mania-types I can get along with swimmingly. Kleptos, heavy-drinking dipsos and nymphos to name a few. But at monomaniacs, I draw the line. Give me anything, anyone, at a social occasion — but not a one-topic conversation.   Why is it that the fewer interests people have, the more boring they become? One wonders what history’s great Renaissance men would have made of today’s crypto bros or blockchain fanatics. I pick on blockchain because, as with so many problems benighting the world, technology is to blame. I’m no Luddite, but I hereby shame content algorithms in the strongest of biblical terms saying, Verily, ye have spawned dullards.