by Vivienne Pratfall on the City of London’s duck, the art of stopping traffic by simply existing, and the seductive power of total indifference.
Loves, the single most inspirational figure in London this week has feathers, no qualifications, and absolutely no interest in your approval. I am speaking, of course, of the duck that brought the entire City of London to a standstill and became the Square Mile’s most trusted economic adviser despite displaying no credentials whatsoever. I have found my icon. I have found my guru. I want to be that duck.
The Charisma Of Not Caring
Here is the thing about that duck that the bankers, in their fitted shirts and their fear, will never understand. The duck stopped the City not by trying, but by not trying. The duck did not want the attention. The duck did not negotiate, did not pitch, did not slide into anyone’s messages at one in the morning. The duck simply was, completely, and the entire machine of money bent around its indifference.
This is the most powerful force I know, and I have studied power the way some girls study for exams. The most attractive person in any room is the one who does not need the room. The most desired thing is the thing that does not desire you back. The duck has accidentally achieved the state that every great seductress spends a lifetime perfecting: total, genuine, unbothered indifference. You cannot seduce the duck. The duck has already won.
My Failed Experiments In Duckhood
I tried it last night. I went to a party determined to be the duck, to want nothing, to stop the room by simply existing in serene detachment. I lasted, I am told, eleven minutes before I asked a beautiful stranger what he thought of my coat, thereby revealing that I needed the room desperately, that I was the opposite of the duck, that I was, in fact, the City: gleaming, anxious, and entirely dependent on the opinions of passing waterfowl.
The stranger said the coat was an interesting green. Interesting. That word. The word people use when they mean something they cannot say to your face. The duck would not have asked. The duck does not have a coat. The duck does not have anxiety. The duck has transcended the entire economy of approval that the rest of us are drowning in.
What The Bankers Cannot Buy
According to the people who study these things at the Zoological Society of London, urban wildlife is becoming bolder, more present, more willing to share our spaces on its own terms. And I think that boldness is exactly what unnerves the City. Here is a creature that cannot be bought, cannot be impressed, cannot be made to want a bonus or a corner office or an interesting green coat. The one thing the Square Mile cannot acquire is the duck’s indifference to the Square Mile.
That is real wealth, darlings. Not the seventy-percent sale, not the corner office, not even the twelve-minute Northern Line romance. The real luxury is not needing it. And the cruel joke is that the moment you start performing not-needing-it, you have already lost, because the performance is the need. The duck does not perform. The duck simply does not care, and never will, and that is why the duck is free and we are not.
Tomorrow, The Pond
I have decided to learn from the duck. Tomorrow I will go to a pond and sit and want nothing and impress no one and simply exist, magnificently, in the green coat that is apparently interesting. I will fail, of course. I will last eleven minutes and then ask a passing dog walker how I look. But I will have tried, and trying to want nothing is, I suspect, the most human thing there is, which is precisely why the duck, who is not human, is so much better at it than all of us.
Long live the duck. May we all, one day, stop the City simply by ceasing to care. Until then, I have a coat to defend and a room to need.
At The Pond, Briefly
I did go to the pond. I did sit. I did, for a full eleven minutes, want nothing and impress no one, achieving a state of duck-like serenity that lasted exactly until a jogger complimented my coat, at which point I lit up like the City’s Christmas lights and the spell broke and I was, once again, gloriously, hopelessly human.
The duck, meanwhile, ignored me entirely, which only made me admire it more, and reminded me of how completely it had stopped the Square Mile without trying. I will never have that power. I want too much, too visibly, too often. But there is a strange freedom in admitting it. I am not the duck and never will be, and accepting that is, perhaps, the most duck-like thing I have ever managed: wanting, at last, to be exactly the needy, coat-defending creature I actually am.
I walked home from the pond the long way, past the lit windows of people wanting things, and felt enormous tenderness for all of us needy creatures performing serenity we do not feel. The duck floated on, sovereign and unbothered, and I waved at it, which it ignored, which was perfect, which was the whole lesson delivered one final time: want what you want, wave at the duck, and forgive yourself for being the kind of creature who waves. We are not built for indifference. We are built for wanting. The duck is the exception that teaches the rule.
For more on London at its most ridiculous, try The Poke.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
