The Curtain Opens On 2024

Of finely tuned violins and battleships falling through the sky

I’ve long found the moments before a classical music concert begins to be a little eerie and enigmatic. There’s a gap between the audience shuffling in and finding their seats, usually with an air of gentle panic. There’s the mumbling and murmuring as everyone accepts their allotted space and takes stock of their position relative to the stage.

The air turns thick and heavy with anticipation as the crowd settles and becomes an audience. A “crowd” is a rabble of individuals jostling in the isles and walkways trying not to stand on each other’s toes or generally intruding into another’s space — or perhaps not caring if they do so. An “audience”, however, is to be addressed as a collective entity, a hive.

The pressure hangs in the theatre then moves away from the audience toward the stage, and the musicians. We begin to hear the tuning of violins, bum notes, wrong keys, coughing, and orders being given in the mildly aggressive hissing whisper of people who want to shout but know they cannot.

The tuning of the instruments is merely a pragmatic activity, but from the audience's perspective, it gives a sense of foreshadowing. It is the form that will dominate them in its embryo, kicking and pecking trying to burst out too soon.

There will be a time soon when the theatre is filled with grandeur as all instruments enter full flow and an intensity of feeling grips everyone, but that is not now.

There is a ritualistic aspect with which we view the stage and the anticipation of the tumult or ecstasy to come.

At the beginning of the year 2024, we find ourselves filtering in and taking our seats to watch the show of late Western political chaos reaching something of a denouement. I am writing this piece with a view to creating a violin tuning and anticipatory build of pressure all of my own as I sit down with you all to enjoy what is to come. There will, in the year ahead, be at least one moment when I hark back to this article and say “Well, we’re in the thick of it now!” but what exactly that “it” will be I do not know.

My favourite Warhammer 40K novel is Dan Abnett’s Know No Fear. The story focuses on a sneak attack by the Word Bearer traitor legion on a major planet called Calth, home of a loyalist legion, the Ultramarines. Abnett begins the novel by offering us snapshots of (for Warhammer) mundane normalcy in an hour-by-hour structure. Tension is cranked up gradually - a monitor crackles with static, and a cargo ship doesn’t seem to have its registration quite in order. Soldiers on the planet’s surface mull about going through their usual routines. It’s all a bit humdrum. Then, the cargo ship begins increasing the speed at which it is approaching the giant dockyard in orbit above the planet. Somebody will have to explain protocol to the captain. No response. It increases its velocity. No response. Down on the surface weapons are being fired and communications are breaking down. Above, the cargo ship is now approaching lightspeed and it is heading for the giant dockyard containing an entire fleet of battleships. The Astartes soldiers on the surface are now under siege by the traitors and above the cargo ship slams into the dockyard. Battleships five miles long begin to drop through orbit, out of the sky, slamming into the ground below creating tidal waves and earthquakes as the beleaguered soldiers look up at the carnage in astonishment.

Writer Dan Abnett made us wait for the payoff and then gratuitously rewarded us for doing so. As it rained starships the size of cities we could, in honesty, say “Well, we’re in the thick of it now!”

I have never known a year to begin with the expectation and trepidation that 2024 has. People may point to 2016, but that was a year of jolts and unexpected shocks dealt to the system that few saw coming. On the other hand, 2021 was the winding down of an arc — Trump’s Presidency. In 2024 we begin the year with multiple narratives already in motion all of which demand conclusions to be reached within this year.

Take to your seats, ladies and gentlemen. The violins are making those screeching noises as they’re tuned. Stage managers are hustling and bustling. There’s some odd static coming from the monitors and that cargo ship isn’t following regulatory protocols…

Something tells me that at some point this year I will be writing an article called “Well, we’re in the thick of it now” but until then, enjoy the show.