'I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man'-Primo Levi
It is better to be constantly amazed at the inhumanity
between so many humans, than to have any other response;
such a consistency keeps alive in those who observe
what others lack in themselves, the power of observation.
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| Particularly when the choices offered means a choice of different junk food and the only health in what is on offer is in the size of the profits of the manufacturers. |
For those of us who grew up
dandled* in the lap of luxury
no subject beguiles us more as adults
than that of childhood suffering.
The sort of thing where shame
is reinforced by material comfort,
or worse, material privation,
as the child learns to replace the trust
in those say they care for them
for for the grudging gratitude
and the distanced deference,
both of which represent the best
that family life has to offer.
Shame finds so many ways
of pushing people apart
that its disguise is so skilled
that it hard to spot
before it take full hold
in places we wish it didn't.
Life goes by so fast for a child
that even if they accurately took in
the details of life as they grew
then they won't have time to recall
and reflect on them until long after,
Even the best of what children know
gets sentimentalised, to hide the envy
between adults that they half-saw at the time
that didn't know would become inevitable.
*To be held at full height when small,
so your feet touch the thighs
of the adult who is sat on a chair
and who is holding you,
Often the adult is a relative
who is not the parent,
usually it happens in a public place;
the word describes how children
used to get passed around
on big family occasions.
The Bob Dylan Problem
is not his voice, ruin that it is
when he attempts tonal breath control,
but his ambition through all the words
that he has written for himself
the hymn to the human universe,
as if he were it's only songwriter.
This problem was shown up most cruelly
when the BBC payed tribute to his song writing
with a collection of clips of covers of his songs
from a wide variety of performers of varying standards
from their six decade long light entertainment archive.
When the Dylan song catalogue is covered
as thoughtlessly by middle-of-the-road artists
as it is covered thoughtfully by those with an affinity
for the experience behind a sensitive lyric,
in a voice that can express feelings with passion,
with no sense of difference between any of the artists
then what is the point? Long thought to be barely alive,
the song writer who once wrote about 'the personal'
simply gets buried by his historic popularity.
Every time I hear the leaders
of my country say to the public
'We need to have a debate'
my first thought is 'Who is 'we' here?'
But after that I am always reminded
of that time in every teenagers life
when parents slyly hint to their offspring
that as youths they need to discuss 'The facts of life',
as if as parents they were the sole moderators
of their children's thoughts before that discussion
when every child knows that that is not the case.
Politicians may moderate the media they inhabit
but any voter based democracy with a free press
underpinned by ideas about freedom of speech
cannot rely solely on top-down moderation
if it is to be healthy and offer a life beyond itself.
'My country did it first and best'
as used to describe some generous act
towards somebody that need not have been done
but nonetheless when it was, it was a service to the future.
The ending of slavery comes to mind,
as an example of kind of virtuous action
that modern governments of countries
that once gloried in owning slaves,
and worked them to death in its empire*
like to hide behind, as if their model
of corporate finance and exploitation
was now irreversibly reformed.
Always the cliche is of the lone crusader
who fights on and on to free the slaves
until the powers that be take on his cause,
and change the laws of the land
without first looking at their bank balance.
Was there ever a bigger cliche
that disguised an even bigger lie?
If there was I don't know it.
*every empire in history has used slaves
The Romans, Egyptians, Greeks,
and the Babylonians, all had slaves
and they all built their empires
and maintained their slave stocks
from defeating smaller countries
and that nomadic tribes who had no land at all.
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| Historically, women in literature are fragile creatures. The above is a list of causes of death in women characters in the imaginations of male writers through the ages. The list surely says more about the minds of the male writers than ever they could freely admit to thinking. But who knows what hindsight will make of the literature of today? |
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| And walls that match your moods cannot be underestimated; After all home is where we reserve most right to be ourselves for the good or the ill of those around us. |
I have lived through eleven general elections.
In every one of them the party I voted for
did not become the party of government,
on many of those elections
the party that came to govern
was not even on the ballot where I voted
due to regional voting agendas
and partisan political party stances.
What I have noted most is where
a particular political agenda is on offer
then how easily it is misrepresented,
all the better to mis-sell it through a media
where the headlines tell folks
the most that they actually take in.
The headlines act like the public statues
that Victorian society put up everywhere;
The more we examine the deeds
of the men whose images are on the plinths
far enough out of reach of the public
to give them neck ache from looking up,
the more wrong we feel those men were.
And yet the wealth that these men created
through the misuse of power and trade
has become the bedrock of modern society.
How can we pay reparations
to those who are owed them
and keep the lives we now live,
built on the wealth of those times?
How much longer in our politics
will we settle for the headlines
whilst not reading the detail,
and denying the discomfort
our ancestors caused?
How long will we be as empty headed
as the statues that we refuse to take down
from their plinths, as we deny the telling, racist, details
of how we have lived, not-so-long-ago past and present?
Your guess is as good as mine
in answer to all those questions.
I am used to receiving petitions
via emails where the first word is 'act'
but the second word is 'sign',
and often I sigh before I sign,
as if I had been there, online,
one too many times before,
where if I had to act in real time
in real space with apparently real people
then I would have to relearn to like
being the stranger to others
more than they might like.
But as malign corporate interests
pay their lawyers to sharpen their suits
for court appearances where the aim
is to buy/bend the law in their favour
so I sign one more petition, like that last one,
and I hope that the collective inaction
that I have signed up to outweighs
the detachment I see in my government.
What else might good causes ask for,
beyond my signature? My life?
I had wondered where it went....
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| as it was when it was first issued forty years ago, It has changed a lot since but some part of my heart is still there still singing and dancing in celebration. |
Roy Harper is eighty years old today.
he is known among many other things
for being awkward with the music press,
but where when Bob Dylan was awkward
he was considered to be 'charismatic', 'an enigma',
when Roy was awkward it was not excused,
until after twenty years of making records
the new album launches stopped working;
the press repeated all the old false starts
he had endured in his career instead.
But he remains one of my heroes,
he said so much that my parents didn't
that stays with me, and I still process.
And like the beat poets of old
he tries to communicate with those
who value him in a common language
in which uncommon values are understood.
Here is his latest blog on the oddities
on achieving this strange longevity
and still being quite fit to play,
willing to record new songs,
but wondering when the world
will be a place ready to receive them.
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| Roy circa 1973, in hospital surviving a lung complaint but wondering at the end of the world. |
Today the leaders of the G7 will arrive in Cornwall to talk about preventing climate change & global warming amongst other things. One of the designated protest sites is Exwick playing fields, in Exeter, about 100 miles away from the conference to avoid the politicians having to be aware of people wanting to send them messages.
Meantime the whole area surrounding their hotels the leaders are staying in is fenced off with checkpoints requiring locals produce identity & proof of reason to cross the barriers. It means that some businesses inside the fence have had no custom for the last week. People have to carry I.D. permits to show where they live or they can’t get to their own homes. The local police are massively outnumbered by those from other parts of England, and despite not yet all being vaccinated, the local police have to share facilities with colleagues imported from the areas badly affected by the Delta/Indian strain of Covid 19, which might arrive with them.
Just half a mile from the hotels the G7 leaders are staying in begins one of the poverty hotspots of Europe where thousands of families have had to rely on foodbanks for several years. The people running the foodbanks are often asked for food that doesn’t have to be cooked as families struggle to find money for power meters. Many families are being forced to move away from the area because there isn’t any housing for them.
One of our newest restaurants in Exeter, Taco Boys, started on the beaches of Cornwall last year working from a trailer whilst the people running it camped unofficially in the corner of a field. Exeter was the nearest place they could find premises both for the business & to sleep. Somehow I think the G7 leaders will be unaware of the poverty surrounding them, or if they become aware they won’t be allowed to visit Cornwall’s slums, at least not without days of planning & selecting the “right” people to visit preceded & surrounded by a massive security and press entourage.
I keep wondering how many G7 members might travel by train. As they reach Wiltshire they could be told “Here your train is changing from clean electric power to polluting diesel. The UK government cancelled its commitment to electrify the West Coast mainline to save far less money than this conference is costing. In Exeter they would be told that this is the nearest protesters are being allowed to the leaders as they travel on for another 2 or 3 hours after. 20 minutes from Exeter. When the leaders come to Dawlish they could be shown film of just a few winters back when the railway embankment was washed away by extreme weather (due to climate change) & the railway lines were left hanging in the air. Somehow I don’t think they will be made aware of these things.
Rather than plying G7 leaders with all the best luxury goods the area can offer I think it is time they were made aware of poverty and climate change by having to come into contact with locals and seeing for themselves the reality people have to live with. What are the chances of this happening?
