Chapter five begins with me poking fun at those ‘team spirit’ motivation talks that were so popular at the turn of the century. As a piano player I often played at such functions during dinner and so often found myself standing on the sidelines watching some ‘young dynamic leader’ gesticulate his way through his speech.
I am not saying that every presentation was so bizarre, naturally no, but for the use of my book, I have chosen to mirror image the more ridiculous cases from my memory.
In the next section, I deliberately remember being confronted by the word majestic. In the book it has a footnote, but still… I will elaborate. The word is often used to describe mountains and things of a spectacular nature, and it seems to swim with romance – but for me the word seems to be saturated with blood and domination. I am not against modern Royalty – because it is not in anyway, associated with the darker side of the family history. This would be like blaming young Germans for the atrocities of the second world war. Today, royalty, like everyone else, has restrictions, probably even more so. Therefore, describing something in nature as being majestic means, it is deadly, uncompromising and rules with an iron hand. There is nothing romantic about it at all.
Having said all that, such beauty and power is to be admired. In this chapter I have tried to show a more beautiful side to nature, starting with the rainbow colors of the sky, the moon and stars and even the snow. The fact that George heard the storm coming, is taken from my own experience. Twice at least. One time in the hills of Nepal, in a village called Rising, and the second time at the front of a cruise ship. Both times, the wind was the fanfare to the storm. While everyone was busy collecting towels and chairs, or locking up shutters and sheds, I stood and listened, enjoying the way the song of the wind changed. It was incredible. I honestly loved it. It was as if nature itself was singing.
Once having painted this beautiful scene in the book, I introduce the polar bear and how quickly the sky and world darkens. It’s actually quite a nice piece of descriptive writing, (I haven’t read it for a while – smile) and it bounces back and forth between a narrative and metaphorical style, preparing the reader for the horrors to come.
This is the chapter where I describe the fantasy-end of the mountain gorillas.
Personally, I did not enjoy writing it. I did a lot of research into the tale, and had a French woman check the French translations, and after, I asked my bilingual nephew (French and English) to make sure it all sounded realistic. The scene is extremely vivid inside my mind, and hopefully, something that may never happen, but I do have my doubts. In a footnote I mention how in 2017 people broke into a zoo in Paris and killed the Rhino for its horn, demonstrating how little chance any animal has, if money is involved – the worst thing about the story is how I mock our own human reaction to the event, and although the scene where the baby Silver-back gorilla is brutally killed goes viral, it opens the floodgates to slaughtering every other animal that stands in the way of progress, putting a price tag on their lives.
And so what inspired me to write this story? I really don’t know. It was not the idea of ‘save the mountain gorilla’ as I feel we are too late for that. I believe we are too late in general, to stop the planet from becoming seriously ill. Of course, what my book describes I am sure won’t happen in such a gruesome and obvious fashion, but any animal that gets in the way of ‘human rights’ will definitely have a hard time. Here in the west, we live in a world where animals are being tortured daily, whether it is penned up pigs, battery hens, or monkeys being tested on, (the list is so long it’s shameful) and all done for humanity and profit. I am not here to preach or have an argument with anyone about the rights and wrongs of it all, I am just writing a story – the story of the last gorilla, in a world far in the future, where are world, with all its beauty and wonders – from the snow-covered mountains, the Big Five, and the Amazon Forest – are all preserved, in a digital game.
I do not believe the future is going to be a golden age. I believe I have lived in this time. It is not meant to be arrogant, or big-headed, but sad, as it would appear we have been too foolish, greedy, wasteful, and care-less, of the world around us for too long. (Not everyone of course – but certainly I must include myself, unhappily) and we have damaged the planet big-time. I hope not. As this would mean what we are leaving the next generation is a polluted and environmentally spoiled place, with all the animals awaiting extinction – It’s not much of an inheritance.
