Somebody Stop Me

The next time I sneer
at the falsity of the category
'world music', where the aim
is broad commercial appeal,
and support folk musicians.

Please, tell me think again.

In many places across the world
the language of local peoples
is prohibited by rules designed
to destroy local diversity.

There are minority languages
struggling to survive in Estonia,
Basque, Galician and Catalan in Spain,
Occitan and Breton in France, and Ukrainian
in Ukraine under Russian control,
are amongst many, many, examples
where empires and their ghosts
threaten local history and local life.

In these places the local languages
hide in music native to the region,
to which the locals cling to for life.  

Where music producers see life
in well preserved local languages
in folksong, and in local choirs,
remind me to be grateful...

The Post-Hoc Claim To Selective Infallibility

is more common to life than we recognise.

I used recognise it most when folks
talked about The Pope's claim
that when he was writing about doctrine
he was infallible-as well he ought to be.
The Catholic Church only started to claim
to be infallible on doctrine from 1870 onward,
in direct response to Italian troops
annexing the shrinking Papal estates
and then gifting them by plebiscite
to King Victor Immanuel II of Italy.

Nowadays the flummery of the past
seems so clunky that we discredit history
-it seems like chatter that changes nothing.

Our modern sense of infallibility
comes from the latest technology 
-where the less we know
how a bit if kit works
and the better it works
when we pay our fees,
the more infinite our sense of ease,
until our electronics fail us.

Whereupon we throw the electronics in the bin,
not knowing or caring if they will be recycled.   

Pay Attention To What You Want to Avoid

wanting to avoid something 
may be your best guide as to
what actually needs your attention...

 

Every Day Is Wash Day

For people with something to hide.
First there is the advertising that is pure greenwash
that makes individuals feel better for saving so little 
whilst using so much what they save hardly counts,
to the purchase of world scale sports events
-sports washing-by countries who torture their citizens,
where hosting the event disguises their human rights record,
to the last, and least, identity theft of all,
the annual summer theft of the identity
of the fragile LGBTQI+ 'communities' 
by supermarkets who promote Gay Pride,
and inclusivity generally, as their latest loss leader,
which it becomes when the promotion passes,
and the summer event is over, until next year. 

The Stepford Gardeners

I have no difficulty with having neighbours
as long as we are the right distance from each other
for our neighbourliness to be mutually beneficial.

Where being the good neighbour gets harder
is where I have to visit one of them
and pass so many more of their gardens
which have there are so few plants
and they are so lacking in character.

Most people over sixty will know something
about the film 'The Stepford Wives',
the modern feminist gothic thriller
and the perfect looking women
who live on a perfect looking estate
where their husbands are plastic surgeons
who secretly keep their wives looking young
through emotionally abusive plastic surgery. 

From the distance of my wild garden
I can't avoid seeing my neighbours
daily employing the Stepford Gardeners
sterilizing the world one garden at a time.   

'This Blinding Absence Of Light' (1)

is like the prison it describes,
not a place for the weak of constitution,
it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...   

Chapter 5, Page 18...

'Now I had to feel unaffected before that fateful day [when I was arrested], Even if words or images broke into my night and prowled around me, I would beat them off, send them packing, because I would be unable to recognise them anymore. I'd tell them "You've got the wrong person. I have nothing to do with these phantoms. I'm no longer of this world. I have ceased to exist. Yes, it is me speaking. That is precisely it: I'm no longer of this world-of yours, at least, yet I have kept the power of speech, and the will to resist, even to forget. The one thing I must not forget is my name. I need it. I'll keep it as a testament, a secret in the gloomy grave where I bear my fateful number: 7." I was seventh in line when we were arrested. It didn't mean much.

  My dreams flourished. They visited me often. They would spend part of the night with me, disappear and leave scraps of my daily life at the bottom of my memory. I did not dream of liberation, or of the years of imprisonment. I dreamed of an ideal time, a time suspended among the branches of a celestial tree. If it is the child within us who awakens when we are afraid here it was the wise man and the lunatic in me who revealed themselves as ardent opponents, each striving to take me the farthest from myself. Smiling placidly I watched the tug of war between these two extremes.'.

For the second blog entry in this series please left click here.   

Picture Set Of The Month - July - Posters Designed By Sam Maitin

'Imaginative Printing' by American artist Sam Maitin (1928-2004)
 He was a painter, teacher, political activist, sculptor,
graphic designer, and muralist. 

'Abstract' (1966) as designed by Sam Maitin, known
 in his lifetime as Philadelphia's 'Mayor of the arts'
for how much he helped other artists.

 

'The Print Club' as designed by Sam Maitin
who in his time as an artist designed murals
for many public places such as children' hospitals
schools of dentistry and many less well off museums.  

'Kraft Printing Company' as designed in 1962
by Sam Maitin (1928-2004)  

'Printing with an impact' as designed in 1962
by Sam Maitin (1928-2004) 

'Speed Service and Superior Printing' 

'We imbue everything we do with
spirit verve and a touch of magic'