Richard Foreman's Blog, page 6
May 15, 2017
Comedy and Politics
I should think most of you have heard it by now, the little joke about what President Trump’s bodyguards would have to shout if he came under fire. Yes, of course you have. “Donald! Duck!” It’s actually one of those ones where, if you give it some thought, you realise they probably wouldn’t shout that at all. It would be more like: “Lower yourself, Mr President!” Or perhaps, given the reportedly regal nature of his audiences with the media of late, “Get down, your highness.”
But of course, Donald doesn’t duck. He would not so much as consider lowering himself. He’s so high he can’t get down. And if he remains standing, bold and pugnacious, and there’s an accurate shot, perhaps his last words will be: “You’re fired!”
So there we are, at this point the joke backfires completely.
As probably - if some of the complaints I’ve heard from some comedians are to be accepted - do most jokes about the current incumbent. “You can’t make it up,” they say. “Reality outstrips you every time.” Which feels about right – many of the darkest, funniest routines about Trump seem merely to involve straight description of the activities and pronouncements of the president and his cohorts. A bit of canned laughter can be added to the soundtrack to keep us chuckling - if, at any point, we forget to think it’s funny.
I love a bit of satirical comedy as much as the next vaguely leftie old hippie, but here’s the thing. Sometimes when I appreciate the commentary it’s making, I find myself thinking: ‘These men and women are so wise, thoughtful and observant. They make their observations with insight, their deductions hold logic. Why can’t they run the country instead of…?’ (conclude with an expletive of your own choice concerning politicians). And it seems to me just about credible that they could do a better job. And of course the media coverage would be lively and fun. It would boost public interest no end. In the UK we could have Jeremy Hardy and Alexi Sayle as the Corbyn and McDonnell of the labour party; Stephen Fry heading the lib dems and Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown helming what’s left of UKIP into oblivion. Though for some reason I find myself struggling to think who might do for the conservatives. Jim Davidson?
In fact it probably wouldn’t work out. I’ve been a great admirer of Eddie Izzard for many years (even if I don’t always get his space age approach to cross dressing) and have observed with some interest his efforts to get involved with political activism on behalf of the labour party and the ‘remain’ campaign during the run up to last year’s referendum. But he doesn’t appear to have distinguished himself on this front or to have added a great deal of worth to the debate as yet. Maybe the crossover requires a character with a bit more grit. Mark Thomas springs to mind. Or perhaps (and it has occurred to me that I’ve so far failed to include any female comedians) Josie Long.
I guess my conclusion is that it’s obviously one thing to diss the politicians, quite another to replace them. It isn’t that difficult to take the piss or point out the flaws, especially if you ignore the fact that not all politicians are 100% venally motivated. Pockets of integrity do crop up amongst them and sometimes even endure – providing they don’t get assassinated, as one of ours did last June. The simple logic of my initial thought dissolves into the complexity of the world as we know it.
It helps to have a laugh, as one despairing friend of mine remarked after I’d re-posted a video clip of Mark Steele doing one of his affably scathing rants about Teresa May’s election u-turn on my Facebook page. That inane joke around Trump’s first name with which I began this piece certainly made me laugh the first time I heard it. And there’s not much that causes me to laugh about DT, or the power structure that now finds it advantageous to have him presiding.
Laughter does put it into a different perspective, presents another facet of reality in which foibles are made transparent. I’m not talking about caricature so much here, which often slips too easily into insult alone. It’s the observational comedy that works best for me, the stuff that points out the inconsistencies, contradictions, self-interest and deceits that lie behind the pompous facades. Comedians can do that pretty well, even if they’d be no better at running human affairs than anyone else.
Of course, ‘Donald! Duck!’ doesn’t fit into that category. That’s just silly.
But then, I think there’s room for a bit of silliness as well.
But of course, Donald doesn’t duck. He would not so much as consider lowering himself. He’s so high he can’t get down. And if he remains standing, bold and pugnacious, and there’s an accurate shot, perhaps his last words will be: “You’re fired!”
So there we are, at this point the joke backfires completely.
As probably - if some of the complaints I’ve heard from some comedians are to be accepted - do most jokes about the current incumbent. “You can’t make it up,” they say. “Reality outstrips you every time.” Which feels about right – many of the darkest, funniest routines about Trump seem merely to involve straight description of the activities and pronouncements of the president and his cohorts. A bit of canned laughter can be added to the soundtrack to keep us chuckling - if, at any point, we forget to think it’s funny.
I love a bit of satirical comedy as much as the next vaguely leftie old hippie, but here’s the thing. Sometimes when I appreciate the commentary it’s making, I find myself thinking: ‘These men and women are so wise, thoughtful and observant. They make their observations with insight, their deductions hold logic. Why can’t they run the country instead of…?’ (conclude with an expletive of your own choice concerning politicians). And it seems to me just about credible that they could do a better job. And of course the media coverage would be lively and fun. It would boost public interest no end. In the UK we could have Jeremy Hardy and Alexi Sayle as the Corbyn and McDonnell of the labour party; Stephen Fry heading the lib dems and Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown helming what’s left of UKIP into oblivion. Though for some reason I find myself struggling to think who might do for the conservatives. Jim Davidson?
In fact it probably wouldn’t work out. I’ve been a great admirer of Eddie Izzard for many years (even if I don’t always get his space age approach to cross dressing) and have observed with some interest his efforts to get involved with political activism on behalf of the labour party and the ‘remain’ campaign during the run up to last year’s referendum. But he doesn’t appear to have distinguished himself on this front or to have added a great deal of worth to the debate as yet. Maybe the crossover requires a character with a bit more grit. Mark Thomas springs to mind. Or perhaps (and it has occurred to me that I’ve so far failed to include any female comedians) Josie Long.
I guess my conclusion is that it’s obviously one thing to diss the politicians, quite another to replace them. It isn’t that difficult to take the piss or point out the flaws, especially if you ignore the fact that not all politicians are 100% venally motivated. Pockets of integrity do crop up amongst them and sometimes even endure – providing they don’t get assassinated, as one of ours did last June. The simple logic of my initial thought dissolves into the complexity of the world as we know it.
It helps to have a laugh, as one despairing friend of mine remarked after I’d re-posted a video clip of Mark Steele doing one of his affably scathing rants about Teresa May’s election u-turn on my Facebook page. That inane joke around Trump’s first name with which I began this piece certainly made me laugh the first time I heard it. And there’s not much that causes me to laugh about DT, or the power structure that now finds it advantageous to have him presiding.
Laughter does put it into a different perspective, presents another facet of reality in which foibles are made transparent. I’m not talking about caricature so much here, which often slips too easily into insult alone. It’s the observational comedy that works best for me, the stuff that points out the inconsistencies, contradictions, self-interest and deceits that lie behind the pompous facades. Comedians can do that pretty well, even if they’d be no better at running human affairs than anyone else.
Of course, ‘Donald! Duck!’ doesn’t fit into that category. That’s just silly.
But then, I think there’s room for a bit of silliness as well.
May 3, 2017
Averse to verse? Then look elsewhere!
My Opposable Thumb
You ask what does my thumb oppose?A set of fingers, I suppose.It’s likely that I’d let things slip,if I failed to get a grip.
If this digit was a critic,would it tend to be arthritic?If I took a strong position,would it rise in opposition?
And should I need to offer thanks,would it wag a stern phalanx?Take me to task by hitching lifts,instead of buying thank-you gifts?
Though there’s no reason why it oughtto be equipped with conscious thought,it’s still my opposable thumb –and I suspect it just plays dumb.
_____________
You ask what does my thumb oppose?A set of fingers, I suppose.It’s likely that I’d let things slip,if I failed to get a grip.
If this digit was a critic,would it tend to be arthritic?If I took a strong position,would it rise in opposition?
And should I need to offer thanks,would it wag a stern phalanx?Take me to task by hitching lifts,instead of buying thank-you gifts?
Though there’s no reason why it oughtto be equipped with conscious thought,it’s still my opposable thumb –and I suspect it just plays dumb.
_____________
April 17, 2017
My Hand-Me-Down Phone
The things are everywhere. On the streets people are talking into them. On the train, they’re watching movies or tapping messages on finger sensing screens. At any time of day they’re pulling them out of pockets, bags or those whaddyacallit slipcases they keep them in to see if there are any incoming messages. If they lack information of any kind, they’re there for googling. If they want to know the weather, the screen throws up cloud, sun and raindrop icons to guide them through the remaining hours of the day. If they want to know where on earth they actually are, the things can tell them with seeming pinpoint accuracy. If they want to know how something’s done, the things have videos to show them.
I’ve tried to keep up with technology. I went from an Amstrad to a PC with all of a massive two gigabytes of hard drive memory, to the laptops I use today with their squidgywiggabytes and more. But somewhere in the last decade or so I found I’d stopped being an up-to-date sort of guy.
At first I was up for resisting them altogether. I didn’t need them. Good grief, I’d lived for a full fifty years without them and I was still here to tell the tale. Why should the future be any different?
The first crack in my defences was driving. I have next to no idea what happens under the bonnet of my car and if it goes wrong, the job goes to a rescue service. Some bugger or other pointed out to me that phone boxes are getting pretty thin on the ground these days, and if I had a phone with me in the car…
Damn! I could not deny the logic. I think my younger sister had something to do with that. She’d ‘updated’ and had an old one I could have. It was a clunky great thing compared to what’s around today and when you charged up the battery it would last up to a good… ooh… ten minutes or so. But fine. I could keep it in the car, switched off. Just use it in dire need. I didn’t want to go a step further. I could just about handle it.
It got broken. I forget how. By then my sister had got her first smartphone and was cultivating a taste for it. The road of temptation for her began with the inbuilt solitaire game. Now she plays Scrabble on it with people from the USA. And checks for messages, and the weather, and… Yes. She’s hooked.
So I got my next hand-me-down. A Nokia something something something, I believe it’s called. Somehow against my better judgement I was forced to learn to text message on it, which I still do clumsily and slowly with a lot of cursing. By day, I use it to make phonecalls, because somewhere along the line I got on a ‘contract’ which I have no idea how to get out of, and my landline costs money if used before 7pm on weekdays.
But that’s it. I’ve reached my limit. I don’t want to tap screens with greasy fingermarks. I don’t want to make things get bigger and smaller by sweeping with my fingertips. I just… I just don’t.
One thing haunts me. What will I do when my Nokia something something something finally gives up the ghost? Will my sister have one of those things ready and waiting for me, because she’s updated to a device on which she can play Hyper-Scrabble with creatures from Proxima Centauri?
Oh, good grief… Will I finally have to crawl, protesting grouchily all the way, into the twenty first century?
Okay, behind all this 'grumpy old man' foolery there's a serious point to be made on this topic, which returned to my attention after reading a review in New Scientist magazine of a film shown at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London. 'Complicit', the film, documents the suffering of Chinese workers in the factories where smartphones are manufactured. They are exposed to toxic chemicals on the production line, chiefly benzene and n-hexane, which give rise to leukemia, nerve damage and paralysis. In addition, anyone making a protest is subject to often brutal repression. Although Apple have, since 2014, banned benzene and n-hexane in final assembly manufacturing processes, these are by no means the only unethical aspects of most smartphone production. Should I ever find myself having finally to 'update' to one of these devices I would go to a company known as Fairphone (https://shop.fairphone.com/en/) which appears to be bringing the principles of fair trade to smartphone production, along with considerations around re-use and repair issues. So they probably deserve this plug.
I’ve tried to keep up with technology. I went from an Amstrad to a PC with all of a massive two gigabytes of hard drive memory, to the laptops I use today with their squidgywiggabytes and more. But somewhere in the last decade or so I found I’d stopped being an up-to-date sort of guy.
At first I was up for resisting them altogether. I didn’t need them. Good grief, I’d lived for a full fifty years without them and I was still here to tell the tale. Why should the future be any different?
The first crack in my defences was driving. I have next to no idea what happens under the bonnet of my car and if it goes wrong, the job goes to a rescue service. Some bugger or other pointed out to me that phone boxes are getting pretty thin on the ground these days, and if I had a phone with me in the car…
Damn! I could not deny the logic. I think my younger sister had something to do with that. She’d ‘updated’ and had an old one I could have. It was a clunky great thing compared to what’s around today and when you charged up the battery it would last up to a good… ooh… ten minutes or so. But fine. I could keep it in the car, switched off. Just use it in dire need. I didn’t want to go a step further. I could just about handle it.
It got broken. I forget how. By then my sister had got her first smartphone and was cultivating a taste for it. The road of temptation for her began with the inbuilt solitaire game. Now she plays Scrabble on it with people from the USA. And checks for messages, and the weather, and… Yes. She’s hooked.
So I got my next hand-me-down. A Nokia something something something, I believe it’s called. Somehow against my better judgement I was forced to learn to text message on it, which I still do clumsily and slowly with a lot of cursing. By day, I use it to make phonecalls, because somewhere along the line I got on a ‘contract’ which I have no idea how to get out of, and my landline costs money if used before 7pm on weekdays.
But that’s it. I’ve reached my limit. I don’t want to tap screens with greasy fingermarks. I don’t want to make things get bigger and smaller by sweeping with my fingertips. I just… I just don’t.
One thing haunts me. What will I do when my Nokia something something something finally gives up the ghost? Will my sister have one of those things ready and waiting for me, because she’s updated to a device on which she can play Hyper-Scrabble with creatures from Proxima Centauri?
Oh, good grief… Will I finally have to crawl, protesting grouchily all the way, into the twenty first century?
Okay, behind all this 'grumpy old man' foolery there's a serious point to be made on this topic, which returned to my attention after reading a review in New Scientist magazine of a film shown at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London. 'Complicit', the film, documents the suffering of Chinese workers in the factories where smartphones are manufactured. They are exposed to toxic chemicals on the production line, chiefly benzene and n-hexane, which give rise to leukemia, nerve damage and paralysis. In addition, anyone making a protest is subject to often brutal repression. Although Apple have, since 2014, banned benzene and n-hexane in final assembly manufacturing processes, these are by no means the only unethical aspects of most smartphone production. Should I ever find myself having finally to 'update' to one of these devices I would go to a company known as Fairphone (https://shop.fairphone.com/en/) which appears to be bringing the principles of fair trade to smartphone production, along with considerations around re-use and repair issues. So they probably deserve this plug.
April 3, 2017
Wilful Misunderstandings - One Year On
‘Wilful Misunderstandings’, my collection of short stories was published a year ago more or less to the day. Regular readers of this blog will know that hard sell is something I find rather difficult to take on seriously, which may have proved to my detriment sales-wise. Nevertheless on the whole I prefer to live with myself as I am, rather than aspire to any kind of slickness. Sales, I tell myself, are not a reflection of quality, and it’s quality that jolly well counts.
Besides, ask any writer who isn’t in a position in which s/he doesn’t have to self promote, and you’re likely to hear a similar story. We’re mainly into knocking the stuff up, not pushing it through people’s letterbox slots. Hence the fact that I generally prefer to fill this blog with anything that it crosses my mind to write about, rather than the book it was set up to promote. However, now and again, bullets have to be bitten.
So here we go.
Accolades (not the kind you drink):
“Richard Foreman’s Wilful Misunderstandings comprises thirty four stories based around the twist or misunderstanding of an English word or phrase. They are utterly beguiling and often unsettling, combining quirky humour and philosophical thoughts within slightly off-centre fictional worlds. The stories veer between fantasy and surrealism yet somehow hold a balance of credibility that make them disturbing. This variant Oulipo fiction with added humour is simply a tour de force of storytelling.” David Caddy, editor Tears in the Fence magazine, issue 65, spring 2017.
“Within five minutes of picking the book up and reading it for the first time I was immediately entranced. These stories are a delight, and I have spent much of the ‘Festive Season’ proselytising about Foreman to anyone who would listen. I have found myself using the words ‘delight’ and ‘delightful’ far more often than I would have wanted to, but I truly cannot think of a better adjective. My life has been enriched for having read these stories. I cannot wait for the next volume.” Jonathan Downes, editor Gonzo Weekly magazine, issue 215/6, January 2017..
“Expect the unexpected while reading Wilful Misunderstandings. The oddball characters and their quirky concerns will attract your attention. Richard Foreman demonstrates how deep his imagination is, and how the simplest of ideas can make interesting prose. He writes fluently, wittily, and his stories tend to approach the dark side in a humorous way.” Michelle Stanley, Readers’ Favorite website.
And from Amazon reviews and some reader correspondence:
“Stories like dreams half remembered, tapping into a seam (or seeming) of the unconscious mind.”
“I love the feeling of shifting, malleable realities. It is so much fun and encourages thinking in new ways about the world.”
“The book is bloody brilliant. I read it in nearly one sitting. It totally messed with my head.”
“This is a collection to reread, a book to tickle and amaze, to ruffle and amuse and sometimes to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.”
“Unafraid to tread off the beaten track into vivid, unsettling worlds where nothing can be taken for granted. Where anything can happen.”
There, now that wasn’t too painful, I guess, being a simple copy and paste operation. So you’re reading this and you still haven’t bought yourself a copy? You can get it from online retailers and even order it through bookshops, but by far the best way is through Lepus books. Just go to
http://lepusbooks.co.uk/wilful-misund...
skip the blurb because you’ll have already read most of it here, click on the relevant payment buttons and you’ll get a pristine copy, lovingly signed by me (ask if you want a message). And I’ll get to use up some of the padded envelopes I bought in specially. Win-win or what?
Besides, ask any writer who isn’t in a position in which s/he doesn’t have to self promote, and you’re likely to hear a similar story. We’re mainly into knocking the stuff up, not pushing it through people’s letterbox slots. Hence the fact that I generally prefer to fill this blog with anything that it crosses my mind to write about, rather than the book it was set up to promote. However, now and again, bullets have to be bitten.
So here we go.
Accolades (not the kind you drink):
“Richard Foreman’s Wilful Misunderstandings comprises thirty four stories based around the twist or misunderstanding of an English word or phrase. They are utterly beguiling and often unsettling, combining quirky humour and philosophical thoughts within slightly off-centre fictional worlds. The stories veer between fantasy and surrealism yet somehow hold a balance of credibility that make them disturbing. This variant Oulipo fiction with added humour is simply a tour de force of storytelling.” David Caddy, editor Tears in the Fence magazine, issue 65, spring 2017.
“Within five minutes of picking the book up and reading it for the first time I was immediately entranced. These stories are a delight, and I have spent much of the ‘Festive Season’ proselytising about Foreman to anyone who would listen. I have found myself using the words ‘delight’ and ‘delightful’ far more often than I would have wanted to, but I truly cannot think of a better adjective. My life has been enriched for having read these stories. I cannot wait for the next volume.” Jonathan Downes, editor Gonzo Weekly magazine, issue 215/6, January 2017..
“Expect the unexpected while reading Wilful Misunderstandings. The oddball characters and their quirky concerns will attract your attention. Richard Foreman demonstrates how deep his imagination is, and how the simplest of ideas can make interesting prose. He writes fluently, wittily, and his stories tend to approach the dark side in a humorous way.” Michelle Stanley, Readers’ Favorite website.
And from Amazon reviews and some reader correspondence:
“Stories like dreams half remembered, tapping into a seam (or seeming) of the unconscious mind.”
“I love the feeling of shifting, malleable realities. It is so much fun and encourages thinking in new ways about the world.”
“The book is bloody brilliant. I read it in nearly one sitting. It totally messed with my head.”
“This is a collection to reread, a book to tickle and amaze, to ruffle and amuse and sometimes to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.”
“Unafraid to tread off the beaten track into vivid, unsettling worlds where nothing can be taken for granted. Where anything can happen.”
There, now that wasn’t too painful, I guess, being a simple copy and paste operation. So you’re reading this and you still haven’t bought yourself a copy? You can get it from online retailers and even order it through bookshops, but by far the best way is through Lepus books. Just go to
http://lepusbooks.co.uk/wilful-misund...
skip the blurb because you’ll have already read most of it here, click on the relevant payment buttons and you’ll get a pristine copy, lovingly signed by me (ask if you want a message). And I’ll get to use up some of the padded envelopes I bought in specially. Win-win or what?
March 20, 2017
Neil Young's jeans.
It all started with my first glimpse of the back cover of Neil Young’s ‘After the Goldrush’ album. Below the track titles and credits, the photo showed the arse of Neil’s denim jeans, resplendent with patches – paisley and otherwise patterned and textured. To my eyes now, they look machine stitched, but at the time I assumed they were rather neatly hand stitched. They get a credit on the cover – they were the work of Young’s then-wife Susan. You get a shot of a youthful Neil on the inside gatefold. He’s lounging on a leather sofa with a lot of guitars around him and he’s wearing the same jeans. You can see more patching on the upper legs and knees. He'd either been wearing them for some years until the material had worn to fraying holes, or Susan just figured the jeans would look good with all those patches. It’s hard to tell how worn the jeans were from the cover shots. He was doing quite well for himself by the time that record came out. I guess he could have afforded a new pair of jeans if he’d wanted. But at that time, patching your jeans was considered pretty cool. Neil certainly looks that way in the gatefold – serious, thoughtful… and cool in his patched jeans.
So what started for me was the idea that it would be a really good thing to have my jeans covered in patches like Neil’s. Back in 1970, feminism hadn’t really connected that properly for me, so my first thought was that I would have to find a woman who was willing to do the job for me. I didn’t have any money to pay for the work, so they’d have to do it out of love for me – like Susan must have done for Neil, until she divorced him after two years of marriage. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t manage to find a woman who was willing to patch my jeans for me out of love, so in the end I thought I’d better learn to do it myself.
Because I was a boy, I never got a chance to do needlework at school. I had to do metalwork instead, and I don’t know why because metalwork has never been the slightest use to me in all the years I’ve lived since then. And because I was a boy my mum didn’t think it would be appropriate to show me how to do needlework, because she probably thought that sooner or later I would marry a woman. And then it would be her job to do any needlework I needed doing out of love for me. So I got a woman who was a friend of mine to show me how to stitch on a patch, and I got a sewing needle, and some thread, and some random scraps of patterned coloured materials, and I started sewing my own patches on my own jeans.
It was easier to sew on patches by hand than I thought it would be, except where you had to sew through a seam and it was really hard to push the needle through all those tight layers of denim. Mostly, I discovered that I quite enjoyed it. The bit where you have to pin the patch on before you start sewing was kind of a drag, but once you had thread on your needle and you were pushing it through and pulling it out over and over again, that part was kind of soothing. You could listen to music or watch TV even, and that repetitive action – in and out, pull it tight, in and out – just had its own pleasant flow. And when you were done, got right the way round to the point where you started and tied the end in a knot so the thread didn’t start to work its way out of the material, well then you had a fine patch to show for all that time and energy.
And after a few years of wearing holes in my jeans and sewing on those multi coloured, patterned patches over those holes, I had one or two pairs of jeans that were starting to look just like Neil’s did on the cover of ‘After the Goldrush’. Whenever I saw pictures of him or saw him on TV, I kept watching out for those jeans. Had he got any more patches sewed on as more bits of the original denim carried on wearing away like they do? But I never saw those jeans again. In fact, after that I never saw Neil Young wearing patched jeans at all. Not ever. Maybe it was the trauma of being divorced by Susan after just two years of marriage, but he seemed to go right off wearing patched jeans altogether.
Actually, what it was really was something I hadn’t taken into account. Fashion. I thought that, once we’d got away from our parents and stopped wearing the kinds of clothes that they thought we ought to wear, we’d find the kind of clothes we decided we actually liked and carry on wearing them for the rest of our lives. And when they started to get a bit worn, we’d repair them as best we could for as long as we could, and when they were really shabby we’d just wear them for doing messy jobs in ‘til they fell apart and we used them for rags. How wrong I was! I hadn’t taken fashion into account at all.
In fact, by the end of the 70s, people were actually buying new pairs of trousers that were ready ripped at the knees. And they wouldn’t have even dreamed of putting patches over those rips, though sometimes I remember they did sort of join them together with safety pins. I don’t think Neil Young ever did that, though. Not even when he wrote that song that mentioned Johnny Rotten.
But fashion can get under your skin. It can change your perception. I hadn’t taken that into account either. By about 1975, even I was starting to think my multicoloured patched jeans looked a bit silly. Intrinsically, they probably didn’t at all, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling. The trouble was, I still didn’t want to throw away a pair of jeans just because of a little bit of wear and tear. I liked my jeans. They were friends. So I started doing my patches with just other pieces of blue denim, from even older pairs that had worn out or that I’d grown out of. With all the different tones of blue and levels of fading, that looked kind of good - and it didn’t look silly at all to me. It still doesn’t, and I still do it. So it really doesn’t matter these days whether I see Neil Young wearing patched jeans or not. Though I’m quite glad he still sometimes wears those kind of checked shirts he’s always worn. That shows some sort of integrity.
As for me, when I go out wearing my patched jeans, I do sometimes feel a bit self-conscious. It would help to see at least one or two other people doing the same. But there we are. I don’t intend to stop. And if ever it does become fashionable again to patch your own jeans, I shall be so far ahead of the pack, I will be feted as a fashion icon. Everything comes around. All I have to do is to live that long.
So what started for me was the idea that it would be a really good thing to have my jeans covered in patches like Neil’s. Back in 1970, feminism hadn’t really connected that properly for me, so my first thought was that I would have to find a woman who was willing to do the job for me. I didn’t have any money to pay for the work, so they’d have to do it out of love for me – like Susan must have done for Neil, until she divorced him after two years of marriage. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t manage to find a woman who was willing to patch my jeans for me out of love, so in the end I thought I’d better learn to do it myself.
Because I was a boy, I never got a chance to do needlework at school. I had to do metalwork instead, and I don’t know why because metalwork has never been the slightest use to me in all the years I’ve lived since then. And because I was a boy my mum didn’t think it would be appropriate to show me how to do needlework, because she probably thought that sooner or later I would marry a woman. And then it would be her job to do any needlework I needed doing out of love for me. So I got a woman who was a friend of mine to show me how to stitch on a patch, and I got a sewing needle, and some thread, and some random scraps of patterned coloured materials, and I started sewing my own patches on my own jeans.
It was easier to sew on patches by hand than I thought it would be, except where you had to sew through a seam and it was really hard to push the needle through all those tight layers of denim. Mostly, I discovered that I quite enjoyed it. The bit where you have to pin the patch on before you start sewing was kind of a drag, but once you had thread on your needle and you were pushing it through and pulling it out over and over again, that part was kind of soothing. You could listen to music or watch TV even, and that repetitive action – in and out, pull it tight, in and out – just had its own pleasant flow. And when you were done, got right the way round to the point where you started and tied the end in a knot so the thread didn’t start to work its way out of the material, well then you had a fine patch to show for all that time and energy.
And after a few years of wearing holes in my jeans and sewing on those multi coloured, patterned patches over those holes, I had one or two pairs of jeans that were starting to look just like Neil’s did on the cover of ‘After the Goldrush’. Whenever I saw pictures of him or saw him on TV, I kept watching out for those jeans. Had he got any more patches sewed on as more bits of the original denim carried on wearing away like they do? But I never saw those jeans again. In fact, after that I never saw Neil Young wearing patched jeans at all. Not ever. Maybe it was the trauma of being divorced by Susan after just two years of marriage, but he seemed to go right off wearing patched jeans altogether.
Actually, what it was really was something I hadn’t taken into account. Fashion. I thought that, once we’d got away from our parents and stopped wearing the kinds of clothes that they thought we ought to wear, we’d find the kind of clothes we decided we actually liked and carry on wearing them for the rest of our lives. And when they started to get a bit worn, we’d repair them as best we could for as long as we could, and when they were really shabby we’d just wear them for doing messy jobs in ‘til they fell apart and we used them for rags. How wrong I was! I hadn’t taken fashion into account at all.
In fact, by the end of the 70s, people were actually buying new pairs of trousers that were ready ripped at the knees. And they wouldn’t have even dreamed of putting patches over those rips, though sometimes I remember they did sort of join them together with safety pins. I don’t think Neil Young ever did that, though. Not even when he wrote that song that mentioned Johnny Rotten.
But fashion can get under your skin. It can change your perception. I hadn’t taken that into account either. By about 1975, even I was starting to think my multicoloured patched jeans looked a bit silly. Intrinsically, they probably didn’t at all, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling. The trouble was, I still didn’t want to throw away a pair of jeans just because of a little bit of wear and tear. I liked my jeans. They were friends. So I started doing my patches with just other pieces of blue denim, from even older pairs that had worn out or that I’d grown out of. With all the different tones of blue and levels of fading, that looked kind of good - and it didn’t look silly at all to me. It still doesn’t, and I still do it. So it really doesn’t matter these days whether I see Neil Young wearing patched jeans or not. Though I’m quite glad he still sometimes wears those kind of checked shirts he’s always worn. That shows some sort of integrity.
As for me, when I go out wearing my patched jeans, I do sometimes feel a bit self-conscious. It would help to see at least one or two other people doing the same. But there we are. I don’t intend to stop. And if ever it does become fashionable again to patch your own jeans, I shall be so far ahead of the pack, I will be feted as a fashion icon. Everything comes around. All I have to do is to live that long.
March 6, 2017
Thoughts on 'I, Daniel Blake' pt2 - 'Two Days, One Night.'
Last time I wrote about my personal response to Ken Loach’s latest film ‘I, Daniel Blake’, welcoming the way it highlights in detail the pernicious modifications that have accumulated within the UK benefits system in recent years, but critical of its ‘tick box’ approach to storytelling.
The film I’d like to describe now is one that, I felt, told a gripping story (managing to do so without resorting to car chases, explosions etc.) at the same time as it exposed the plight of low waged workers within the corporate system we have built around ourselves. It was made in Belgium, released in 2014 and its English title is ‘Two Days, One Night’.
The story concerns a factory worker, Sandra, who returns to work after taking time off for depression, only to find that her bosses have decided that, in a period of austerity, they can get by with one less worker. She is to be made redundant unless a majority of her co-workers vote to keep her on. But if this is what they decide, they each have to sacrifice a 1,000 Euro bonus.
It’s a small factory, manufacturing solar panels, with a work force of 16 men and women. A show of hands vote has gone against Sandra, but she persuades her employers that there has been a degree of intimidation on the part of a supervisor who is determined to get rid of her and secure the bonuses. They agree to a secret ballot and she finds herself with a single weekend to persuade enough of her colleagues to support her, so the vote will go in her favour and enable her to retain her livelihood.
It’s a gruelling challenge, involving bus journeys, hours of foot slogging, searching for addresses, fruitless doorbell ringing, constant rehearsal/modification of the arguments she will use when she does get face to face with one of the 13 people she hopes to speak to. Some of the confrontations are heartbreaking – they are all people for whom the 1,000 Euros could make a positive difference in their lives, or in some cases who are under family pressures to bring home that additional money. Sandra herself understands all too well the difficult choice she is asking each of them to make. And remember, her own mental balance is still frail. The actress who plays the role, Marion Cotillard, is superb. We are made to feel the strength of her determination; we are touched by her many moments of weariness and despair; we share her occasional moments of encouragement when someone agrees to vote in her favour.
The suspense builds as the weekend winds to a close, Monday morning and the secret ballot arrive. It is not clear how the vote will go. The story’s end can be found online, but I’m not going to put a spoiler here. Suffice to say that a final twist presents Sandra herself with an acutely difficult moral choice. That she makes it with clarity and compassion is a testament to the way in which her own strength of character has been developed by her efforts.
Okay, this film has a somewhat different brief to ‘I, Daniel Blake’. But there are a good many parallels. Both films highlight, as the gap continues to widen between rich and poor, the unnecessary and humiliating shit the latter have to face just in order to live. Both focus on the harsh, soulless environments in which working class people now find themselves more often than not living. Both tell of a possibly hopeless quest for some sort of justice in the face of a profoundly unjust system. Where ‘Two Days, One Night’ scores is in making out of this kind of material a story that cannot fail to affect anyone of a reasonably sensitive disposition. It’s a film that makes you ask questions and think, rather than to nod along numbly and say: ‘Oh yes, isn’t that terrible?’
It’s been said to me that in this particular slough of the twenty first century, the oppressed lack articulate voices to speak in their favour. This may well be true and the likes of Ken Loach are to be treasured for speaking up and for going resolutely against the grain. But in terms of doing this effectively, in a way that might just bring the situation home to those who prefer to think otherwise, I think Ken may have missed a trick. One that the Dardenne brothers (directors and screenplay writers of TDON) managed to achieve compellingly.
The film I’d like to describe now is one that, I felt, told a gripping story (managing to do so without resorting to car chases, explosions etc.) at the same time as it exposed the plight of low waged workers within the corporate system we have built around ourselves. It was made in Belgium, released in 2014 and its English title is ‘Two Days, One Night’.
The story concerns a factory worker, Sandra, who returns to work after taking time off for depression, only to find that her bosses have decided that, in a period of austerity, they can get by with one less worker. She is to be made redundant unless a majority of her co-workers vote to keep her on. But if this is what they decide, they each have to sacrifice a 1,000 Euro bonus.
It’s a small factory, manufacturing solar panels, with a work force of 16 men and women. A show of hands vote has gone against Sandra, but she persuades her employers that there has been a degree of intimidation on the part of a supervisor who is determined to get rid of her and secure the bonuses. They agree to a secret ballot and she finds herself with a single weekend to persuade enough of her colleagues to support her, so the vote will go in her favour and enable her to retain her livelihood.
It’s a gruelling challenge, involving bus journeys, hours of foot slogging, searching for addresses, fruitless doorbell ringing, constant rehearsal/modification of the arguments she will use when she does get face to face with one of the 13 people she hopes to speak to. Some of the confrontations are heartbreaking – they are all people for whom the 1,000 Euros could make a positive difference in their lives, or in some cases who are under family pressures to bring home that additional money. Sandra herself understands all too well the difficult choice she is asking each of them to make. And remember, her own mental balance is still frail. The actress who plays the role, Marion Cotillard, is superb. We are made to feel the strength of her determination; we are touched by her many moments of weariness and despair; we share her occasional moments of encouragement when someone agrees to vote in her favour.
The suspense builds as the weekend winds to a close, Monday morning and the secret ballot arrive. It is not clear how the vote will go. The story’s end can be found online, but I’m not going to put a spoiler here. Suffice to say that a final twist presents Sandra herself with an acutely difficult moral choice. That she makes it with clarity and compassion is a testament to the way in which her own strength of character has been developed by her efforts.
Okay, this film has a somewhat different brief to ‘I, Daniel Blake’. But there are a good many parallels. Both films highlight, as the gap continues to widen between rich and poor, the unnecessary and humiliating shit the latter have to face just in order to live. Both focus on the harsh, soulless environments in which working class people now find themselves more often than not living. Both tell of a possibly hopeless quest for some sort of justice in the face of a profoundly unjust system. Where ‘Two Days, One Night’ scores is in making out of this kind of material a story that cannot fail to affect anyone of a reasonably sensitive disposition. It’s a film that makes you ask questions and think, rather than to nod along numbly and say: ‘Oh yes, isn’t that terrible?’
It’s been said to me that in this particular slough of the twenty first century, the oppressed lack articulate voices to speak in their favour. This may well be true and the likes of Ken Loach are to be treasured for speaking up and for going resolutely against the grain. But in terms of doing this effectively, in a way that might just bring the situation home to those who prefer to think otherwise, I think Ken may have missed a trick. One that the Dardenne brothers (directors and screenplay writers of TDON) managed to achieve compellingly.
February 20, 2017
Ken Loach’s ‘I, Daniel Blake’ – a personal response
Ken Loach is a British film director, reputed for his presentation of stories concerning oppressed and impoverished men and women and their struggles to gain any measure of respect, fairness and decency from the agencies of State. Yesterday, I went to see his latest film, ‘I, Daniel Blake’ and came away with both mixed and troubled feelings.
I cannot fault its message. Recovering from a serious heart attack, its central character – a Newcastle joiner – is refused Employment and Support Allowance payments on the basis that he does not meet the utterly rigid criteria on which payment decisions are currently judged. Although under doctor’s orders not to work, he is therefore forced to apply for Jobseeker’s Allowance and so finds himself in a ‘Catch-22’ situation in which he nevertheless has to go through the façade of job seeking for 35 hours a week - and then provide detailed proof that he has done so. The film is the story of this and his attempt to appeal against the ESA decision. Decent, honest but with little educational advantage, it becomes clear he is extremely ill-equipped to make any progress. His fragile health begins to fail as he sinks into a situation of rapidly escalating destitution.
Through Blake’s story, and that of a number of other characters in similarly troubling situations, the film quite meticulously details the impact of an inhumane system on the health and emotional wellbeing of those who are – frequently through no fault of their own – caught in the ‘poverty trap’. In the words of an old folk song: ‘There but for fortune go you or I.’
It’s a harrowing watch, as Loach’s films tend to be. Though in the past he has effectively made use of humour (I have fond memories of Ricky Tomlinson in ‘Riff-Raff for example), it does not play a strong part in this story. Of course, it’s no laughing matter. It’s the best part of a couple of decades since I last applied for Jobseeker’s Allowance and I could tell which way the wind was blowing even in the ‘New Labour’ era. Under recent Conservative governments in the UK, the misery and lack of fair treatment has escalated. Now 80, Loach, I’ve read, came out of retirement to make this film and I can only applaud his commitment.
But in terms of my personal response to ‘I, Daniel Blake’ I have to strike a more critical note. To me, the very meticulousness with which it details the dire situations facing these characters is to its detriment. It provokes empathy certainly – most of us, even the wealthy, have some experience of dealing with difficult bureaucracy – but for me the characters were not sufficiently well portrayed to evoke strong feelings of sympathy. Almost every scene seemed designed to highlight some aspect of their plight. I could almost imagine the tick-boxes being filled in. “Impact on children of displaced families. Right, we’ve got that one in…”
All important boxes to tick. Of course. But the film comes over too strongly as a piece of propaganda, the characters as cyphers – adequately but not effectively drawn. It’s a dramatised documentary in many ways (as some of Loach’s work has been in the past). As a story, there’s really not much to it.
Does this matter? I think it does. For a start it’s too easy for those with a vested interest in this hideous system (no names but the initials IDS do spring to mind) to dismiss it as such. “There’s old Loach banging on again.” But maybe too there’s a disrespect in this work, a failure to acknowledge the complexities and contradictions in human experience. This leads to some distortion. In the Job Centre scenes, we see every worker (with one exception) presented as a rather unpleasant ‘jobsworth’ – seemingly unable to deviate from the script that accompanies the rules they have to enforce. In my experience, and that of people I know who’ve done the job, it’s a bloody tough row to hoe working in a Job Centre. And for some, it’s the only job they could get. I’d say a much higher proportion than are shown in the film, do try at least to be sympathetic and to assist their clients as best they can. I’m sure this was not Ken Loach’s intention, but in his film they come across far too much as people you want to boo and jeer at.
All this tended to alienate me. There were scenes that should have brought me to tears and they didn’t. As such, it’s my guess that ‘I, Daniel Blake’ will tend to preach mainly to the converted. There’s not enough about it to grab the attention of and perhaps open the mind of anyone who hasn’t already experienced or at least considered these appalling conditions that successive governments (and commercial interests) in the UK and much of the rest of the world have perpetrated . If a piece of art is going to do this kind of political job, I think it has to use more subtlety, it has to find a way to get further under your skin. It has to put a lot more emphasis on depth of character, even if that’s at the expense of a few tick boxes. In the case of a film like this one, it has to work better as a story.
I’ll mention in passing Alan Bleasdale who, in his best work at least, has succeeded in this endeavour. I was going to go on to discuss another film from two or three years back that really had a powerful impact on me. Same sort of territory in many ways, but one hell of strong story. But alas my blogging time has run out for this week, so consider this part one of a two parter…
February 7, 2017
The Allure of Dub
I can’t remember exactly when I first heard dub music. Goes back for sure to a time when it was what they did with reggae records only, at a guess during a year spent living in London, 1976/7. For the first 6 months I was living in Shoreditch as a volunteer helper in a hostel for people who had been released back into the community from psychiatric hospitals, for the remainder in Tufnell Park with a guy who was living in and rebuilding the interior of his house. Dub music crept up on me from various sources. Heard on the streets, source unidentified. On local radio shows – the name David Rodigan springs to mind. In the hostel – a young Jamaican guy, quite disturbed, haunted by duppies, possessed this one early album by melodica man Augustus Pablo. Record shop windows – Prince Buster ‘The Message Dub-Wise’, said by some to be the first album of dub mixes. Lee Perry interviewed on the radio (perhaps by Rodigan) giving it large with his incomprehensible, vaguely biblical patter. These are fragments I remember, how it seeped into me.
I’d been a bit snooty about reggae up until a year or two before, associating it with skinheads and cultures beyond my ken, then won over by Marley and the Wailers somewhat. Oh, and Desmond Dekker, ‘The Israelites’. But this dub stuff, it was huge, stately, booming. One minute it’s just the steady throb of drums and the bass, then bursts of magnificent, heavenly horns, laden with reverb, exploded by flashing fingers on the equalising slide-bar. Ghostly voices way down in the mix, suddenly hitting the foreground, trailing off in echoes and distortion. To me it was about as psychedelic as psychedelic gets. When the mood for it takes me, still feel that way, forty years later.
First dub album I bought was called ‘Rasta Have Ambition’, a compilation album featuring mostly d.j. cuts on side 1. But on side 2 – what I was after – five dubs by King Tubby, one of the great dub production artists and another claimant for the originator title. It started with a track called ‘Invasion’, which had all the qualities of those many unidentified dub tracks I’d heard on my rounds in the Smoke. Got to admit, the album trailed off a bit after that. Some dub stays on the spot for too long, forgets to startle, lacks resonance. But ‘Invasion’ was the business. I’ve heard other mixes of it since, under different titles, claimed by different artists. With what appears to be a blurring of the roles of producer, mixer or engineer, and a plethora of ‘versions’ to boot, it’s hard to know what’s what. Best to just find what you like and enjoy it.
Bit further down the line came Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and the Upsetters’ ‘Super Ape’, which was the business from beginning to end, made me a devotee of Perry’s Jamaican ‘Black Ark’ productions, and remains a favourite to this day. Mixes like thick soup, the sound rolling through layers of distortion, constant unexpected insertions… But also tunes, riffs, melodies that lodge in your memory.
Within a few years, dub techniques were in common use well beyond reggae. Plenty to be found on the web about the history of all that, I’m sure. Just wanted to relive and share that first thrill.
I’d been a bit snooty about reggae up until a year or two before, associating it with skinheads and cultures beyond my ken, then won over by Marley and the Wailers somewhat. Oh, and Desmond Dekker, ‘The Israelites’. But this dub stuff, it was huge, stately, booming. One minute it’s just the steady throb of drums and the bass, then bursts of magnificent, heavenly horns, laden with reverb, exploded by flashing fingers on the equalising slide-bar. Ghostly voices way down in the mix, suddenly hitting the foreground, trailing off in echoes and distortion. To me it was about as psychedelic as psychedelic gets. When the mood for it takes me, still feel that way, forty years later.
First dub album I bought was called ‘Rasta Have Ambition’, a compilation album featuring mostly d.j. cuts on side 1. But on side 2 – what I was after – five dubs by King Tubby, one of the great dub production artists and another claimant for the originator title. It started with a track called ‘Invasion’, which had all the qualities of those many unidentified dub tracks I’d heard on my rounds in the Smoke. Got to admit, the album trailed off a bit after that. Some dub stays on the spot for too long, forgets to startle, lacks resonance. But ‘Invasion’ was the business. I’ve heard other mixes of it since, under different titles, claimed by different artists. With what appears to be a blurring of the roles of producer, mixer or engineer, and a plethora of ‘versions’ to boot, it’s hard to know what’s what. Best to just find what you like and enjoy it.
Bit further down the line came Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and the Upsetters’ ‘Super Ape’, which was the business from beginning to end, made me a devotee of Perry’s Jamaican ‘Black Ark’ productions, and remains a favourite to this day. Mixes like thick soup, the sound rolling through layers of distortion, constant unexpected insertions… But also tunes, riffs, melodies that lodge in your memory.
Within a few years, dub techniques were in common use well beyond reggae. Plenty to be found on the web about the history of all that, I’m sure. Just wanted to relive and share that first thrill.
January 23, 2017
On the Face Of It
On the Face of It
We possess so many faces. Freeze one frame per second of a minute’s footage and you’ll see some portion of the parade.
Joy is radiant, clear, open as an ocean in satellite view. Anxiety’s a clench, a knot work of furrow; taut, twisted and strained. Grief ups the ante, filling anxiety’s template with pale skin tones, red edged eyes and a darkened swell below. Confusion contorts the eyebrows, engenders rippling creases and slightly parts the lips. Love is a softening glaze, lost eyes, the face of a question.
We’ve all looked at photos of ourselves and regretted their existence, perhaps admitting that there is something about them that we do not recognise. Or do not wish to recognise. We want what we think we see in the mirror, but more often than not, that’s just our looking-in-the-mirror face that no-one sees but us. We want what we want, but here on the screen or in the print are strangers, canny devils who have stolen our clothes and approximated our features. They look back at us and laugh.
In human experience, the face is critical. In each of our brains a vast proportion of clustered neurons is devoted to facial recognition. Those with conditions in which this ability is compromised suffer, as do all who lose what the rest of us take for granted. In language, we enshrine the facial image with significance. If we fail to maintain our social standing, we speak of ‘losing face’. When we do not wish to comply, we ‘fly in the face of’ whatever we choose to challenge. But we recognise its superficiality, perhaps, when we ‘put on a brave face’ or assess a situation ‘on the face of it’.
Some faces can close and hide, in poker poses of utmost self-control. For as long as the situation requires, those faces resist change. When freed of the need, do they burst into paroxysms of gurning? Others cannot hide. We say what they feel is ‘written all over their face’, a graffiti of anguish, a scroll of pleasure or a document of despair. Faces change. Sooner or later, all faces change.
Look at those you encounter as you clamber through another day. Watch them for long enough and they do not stay the same. Light and shadow play games of chance with them. Muscles tense and relax. Flesh re-arranges around them. The old for moments look young. The young for moments look old. Everyone has a repertoire. Beauty has an ugly look. Disfigurement’s exquisite in its originality.
Perhaps this is an indication that the face is not so superficial – that the soul or the psyche of the person possessing the face can influence its features. If those with what we define as ‘beauty’ also have a hardness and a harshness within, does this harden and harshen the face with its habitual expression? Similarly, if there is beauty where many see the lack of it, maybe inner beauty can shine through – beauty of thought and intention, of compassion. But I use the qualifiers (‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’) as a caution here, remembering ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ even as I thought I’d stumbled upon a truth!
When I was young, I thought that age brought only decay. Now I’m here, that’s not so clear. It’s so with some, that can’t be denied, but others find a fine sort of form that in youth was denied them, a grace they never knew before. A gauntness or conversely a thickening of flesh can enhance a face that once, perhaps, lacked character. (Compared to such a process, plastic surgery seems a crude tool, botox the bluntest of instruments.)
Change can also bring loss. The face of the child, for example, does not always survive into the face of the adult. A woman I know spoke of her three sons: in two she can still see the child face; in the third, she says, changes at puberty were so drastic she can never again find the features she knew before. Doused in acid, chemicals or combustion, that which was once is now, more often than not, irretrievably gone.
But maybe still, despite any losses, the repertoire tends to build. We store more faces with time. At least until time brings that parade to an end, and our one final face is composed.
January 9, 2017
Charles Eisenstein – A Glimmer of Hope
Charles Eisenstein – A Glimmer of Hope
I have some good hearted (no, really…) but somewhat cynical friends to whom I would hesitate to recommend a book entitled ‘The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible’. I had some doubts myself when the book was recommended and lent to me. But its author, Charles Eisenstein, won me over.
You can find out about him and his ideas on his website ( charleseisenstein.net ) – so I’m just writing this to outline some of the stuff I found myself connecting with in his thinking. His basic riff is that we humans have shunted ourselves into a state of what he calls ‘separation’, where we are disconnected from awareness of our truer, deeper and better natures. This to me bears some resemblance to what I was told in sociology lectures long ago about the concept of ‘alienation’. Eisenstein uses this term also, so I infer that in his mind there is a distinction. Maybe so, but whatever you want to call it, it’s the root problem we need to sort out before we can deal with our current fan-load of shit.
A good many people I consider friends tend to be of a liberal disposition. Post Brexit, facing the oncoming US presidency of Donald Trump, looking on with horror at what’s unfolding in the Middle East and the giddying acceleration of global warming, they tend to be pretty depressed as 2017 begins. Me too, much of the time, and maybe I’m clutching at straws but in the thinking of Eisenstein I see some remaining cause for hope.
Eisenstein writes that, globally, we are embedded in a story we have created for ourselves. That story includes many aspects of what capitalism has wrought – the idea that economies must ‘grow’, that planned obsolescence fuels trade, that we must build and deploy arms, that we must exploit fossil fuels, that we need ‘strong leaders’ etc. It embeds us in the feeling that this is just how it is. Human beings can’t get along any other way. That’s how we’re wired. It blinds us to the consequences of our flawed activities.
Within this story, mindset or whatever you’re going to call it, change cannot happen. You can campaign, you can lobby – but you are still playing a part in the existing story, so cannot achieve real change. Change cannot come about until we change the story, change our consciousness, accept responsibility etc. Eisenstein suggests that the old story is becoming less robust now. Although the democratic decisions for the UK to leave Europe and for Trump to become US president seem pretty disastrous for the world, they were brought about in part by a growing disillusionment with politics and politicians amongst a growing number of ordinary people.
The hope this engenders is by no means of a blissful, Aquarian nature. As our current knee-jerk decisions lead us into instability, breakdown and chaos, people will suffer and people will die on perhaps unprecedented scales. Nevertheless, he foresees the possibility that ‘the public’s frayed loyalty to the existing system could snap’. (I’m quoting not from the book here but from a recent online essay titled ‘The Election: Of Hate, Grief and a New Story - http://charleseisenstein.net/hategrie... ) This is a point of opening possibility. Something better could emerge from this turmoil. In the closing chapters of the book, Eisenstein at least sketches in how this might come about.
What I like about him is that he makes it sound possible, but does not shy away from the likelihood that the new story might never be established. He is pointing to a chance, not a certainty. He may have something of the guru about him, but he does not trade in false confidence. Throughout the book he is constantly putting a check on his own statements, questioning the thought processes that have led to them. He makes no pretence that he has everything sussed out.
The occasional contentious statement does pass unchallenged – but the feeling I get (wrongly or rightly) is that if one pointed this out to him, he would at least listen and consider. The virtue in his approach, for me, ties back to something I considered tentatively in my first series of blogs concerning the genesis of the ideas behind ‘Wilful Misunderstandings’. If my stories in the book share any such virtue, it is because they are intended to promote what I termed, back then, ‘mental flexibility’. They invite us to consider that consensus reality, no matter how solid and certain it may seem in our present world, is not the only version. Get to this point and the opportunity to create a better reality seems just that little bit more available.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Wilful Misunderstandings gets a review in the latest issue of online magazine 'Gonzo' . Check it out at:https://www.flipsnack.com/9FE5CEE9E8C/gonzo215-6.html
Then, when suitably impressed, go to http://lepusbooks.co.uk/wilful-misund... and treat yourself to a signed copy. There will be no regrets.
I have some good hearted (no, really…) but somewhat cynical friends to whom I would hesitate to recommend a book entitled ‘The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible’. I had some doubts myself when the book was recommended and lent to me. But its author, Charles Eisenstein, won me over.
You can find out about him and his ideas on his website ( charleseisenstein.net ) – so I’m just writing this to outline some of the stuff I found myself connecting with in his thinking. His basic riff is that we humans have shunted ourselves into a state of what he calls ‘separation’, where we are disconnected from awareness of our truer, deeper and better natures. This to me bears some resemblance to what I was told in sociology lectures long ago about the concept of ‘alienation’. Eisenstein uses this term also, so I infer that in his mind there is a distinction. Maybe so, but whatever you want to call it, it’s the root problem we need to sort out before we can deal with our current fan-load of shit.
A good many people I consider friends tend to be of a liberal disposition. Post Brexit, facing the oncoming US presidency of Donald Trump, looking on with horror at what’s unfolding in the Middle East and the giddying acceleration of global warming, they tend to be pretty depressed as 2017 begins. Me too, much of the time, and maybe I’m clutching at straws but in the thinking of Eisenstein I see some remaining cause for hope.
Eisenstein writes that, globally, we are embedded in a story we have created for ourselves. That story includes many aspects of what capitalism has wrought – the idea that economies must ‘grow’, that planned obsolescence fuels trade, that we must build and deploy arms, that we must exploit fossil fuels, that we need ‘strong leaders’ etc. It embeds us in the feeling that this is just how it is. Human beings can’t get along any other way. That’s how we’re wired. It blinds us to the consequences of our flawed activities.
Within this story, mindset or whatever you’re going to call it, change cannot happen. You can campaign, you can lobby – but you are still playing a part in the existing story, so cannot achieve real change. Change cannot come about until we change the story, change our consciousness, accept responsibility etc. Eisenstein suggests that the old story is becoming less robust now. Although the democratic decisions for the UK to leave Europe and for Trump to become US president seem pretty disastrous for the world, they were brought about in part by a growing disillusionment with politics and politicians amongst a growing number of ordinary people.
The hope this engenders is by no means of a blissful, Aquarian nature. As our current knee-jerk decisions lead us into instability, breakdown and chaos, people will suffer and people will die on perhaps unprecedented scales. Nevertheless, he foresees the possibility that ‘the public’s frayed loyalty to the existing system could snap’. (I’m quoting not from the book here but from a recent online essay titled ‘The Election: Of Hate, Grief and a New Story - http://charleseisenstein.net/hategrie... ) This is a point of opening possibility. Something better could emerge from this turmoil. In the closing chapters of the book, Eisenstein at least sketches in how this might come about.
What I like about him is that he makes it sound possible, but does not shy away from the likelihood that the new story might never be established. He is pointing to a chance, not a certainty. He may have something of the guru about him, but he does not trade in false confidence. Throughout the book he is constantly putting a check on his own statements, questioning the thought processes that have led to them. He makes no pretence that he has everything sussed out.
The occasional contentious statement does pass unchallenged – but the feeling I get (wrongly or rightly) is that if one pointed this out to him, he would at least listen and consider. The virtue in his approach, for me, ties back to something I considered tentatively in my first series of blogs concerning the genesis of the ideas behind ‘Wilful Misunderstandings’. If my stories in the book share any such virtue, it is because they are intended to promote what I termed, back then, ‘mental flexibility’. They invite us to consider that consensus reality, no matter how solid and certain it may seem in our present world, is not the only version. Get to this point and the opportunity to create a better reality seems just that little bit more available.
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Wilful Misunderstandings gets a review in the latest issue of online magazine 'Gonzo' . Check it out at:https://www.flipsnack.com/9FE5CEE9E8C/gonzo215-6.html
Then, when suitably impressed, go to http://lepusbooks.co.uk/wilful-misund... and treat yourself to a signed copy. There will be no regrets.
