Nimue Brown's Blog, page 385

Love

It may have a lot to do with the shortcomings of the English language, but love remains an unspeakably tricky subject to talk about, in fiction and non-fiction alike. Sex is fairly easy to write about, because there’s plenty of describable stuff going on there – your main risk is that it will get dull. Sex described on a page can be startlingly un-erotic. The emotional side is a lot more awkward. Rare is the occasion when you can get away with ‘and then they fell in love with each other and that was all good’. Where love features in fiction, you end up trying to convey what it’s like, and here commences the problem.

Pretty much the only way to talk about love, is to talk about what it’s like. There’s very little direct language available for that heady rush of sentiment and the cocktail of chemicals underpinning it. In non-fiction you can talk about oxytocin, endorphins, bonding processes and other sensible sounding things. Readers of romance tend not to be impressed by this, not that I write romance very often…  So we talk about what love is like, borrowing the language of any activity that makes sense to us. “Your passion’s the furnace, her body’s the coal, and love is the steel to be tempered and pressed,” is a favourite of mine, from an Archie Fisher song. Mostly we talk about love only by talking about something else entirely. When talk about divine love depends on reference to human sexual love, that can all get decidedly weird…

With the non-fiction hat on, it’s possible to talk about what love does – how it affects our choices, interacts with compassion, inspiration and ethics. With this approach we don’t talk about love as an experience, but we may think about what it means in terms of what we do.

Poetry can get interesting, not least because it invites certain assumptions. A poem about love always looks like a poem about a person you are in love with, not an expression of the experience. I’ve had a few rounds of people assuming I’d written things about Tom that are much more about me. It is all too easy to mistake the inspiration of love for the experience of love. Whatever is inspired within me, is mine, and I have learned not to lay that on other people too much. At the same time, without someone inspiring me, certain kinds of inspiration do not happen at all. Inspiration and love run close together for me, and on the whole inspiration is much easier to talk about.

Our capacity for love underpins our capacity for co-operation, which in turn makes much of what we do possible. It’s allegedly an almost universal experience, and yet we have no easy way of talking about it.

A sense of perspective

We spent yesterday in Slimbridge – somewhere we lived for several years. Going back into that landscape brought a rush of all the emotions associated with living there – the fear and anxiety, the pressure we were under, the hideous uncertainties. Those were tough times. I was surprised by how bodily my response was and how it was a response simply to location. We aren’t there any more, in any sense, but the perspective that creates is decidedly interesting.

I can’t say this last year has been easy, either. There’s been much to do, some demanding challenges, steep learning curves, vast amounts of work. There have been scary bits, too, but that’s worked out for the greater part. Much of this stems from being more in demand, having more to do, and playing at a higher level than we were.

Success creates challenges and pressures, but they are nothing compared to the challenges of failure. Working hard to get a job done is a whole other game from working hard to try and stretch a small amount of money far enough. The anxieties around house buying are nothing compared to the anxieties caused by fearing homelessness. (The Canal and River Trust routinely threaten liveaboard boaters with homelessness. Apparently they can square this with being a charity.) The stresses of deadlines and a packed schedule are as nothing compared to the stresses of not being able to see how you’re going to make it all work. We fought our way out of the one and into the other.

One of the things the ‘hard working’ can easily be persuaded to feel about the ‘scroungers’ (to borrow the divisive language of politics) is that to be unemployed is an easy life, just dossing around with everything paid for.  Much of the benefits money in the UK actually goes to working people who just aren’t earning enough to live on. The minimum wage is not a living wage, and part time jobs won’t reliably keep a roof over your head. When you don’t have much money, and have to think about every penny, thing are stressful.

If a sudden request for funding a school trip could compromise your food budget, or means you can’t replace worn out shoes yet… the jugging is intense and unending. What can we cut back on? What can we do without? And so you end up with one in five mothers skipping meals to feed their children. As the government sets up ever more bizarre and pointless hoops for the unemployed and ill to try and jump through, the pressures of poverty become dire.

We were in some ways, just plain lucky. We have privileges on our side – skills and education that enables us to get some brilliant opportunities. I had the time and space to get depression and anxiety under control so that I can work, rather than sinking entirely as so many other people do.  We never stopped believing it was possible (sometimes by dint of taking it in turns), where many people are defeated. It is possible, but that’s a hard thing to hang onto. Once we no longer had to pay solicitors on a regular basis, things became a lot easier. Not everyone’s pressures and problems go away.

To be poor and dependent on the state to any degree, is to live with uncertainty and vulnerability, especially with this current, compassion-free political culture. The stresses of getting somewhere can be huge, but when you feel like you have some control over your life, some scope for hope, that’s really not as bad as the stresses that come from being slowly crushed by life. I have, to a degree, done both. Powerlessness and hopelessness are hellish things to face on a daily basis. We could be a lot kinder to people who are in that situation rather than demonising them.

Wild water

I am deeply attracted to natural water. Given the slightest chance and I’ll get in it, even if just to paddle my toes. I’ve swum in the sea and in lakes. In recent weeks I’ve pottered in a stream, looking for archaeology, and swum in an outside pool. The last one was an interesting mix – the predictable man-made surfaces and absence of currents, coupled with the very real cold of swimming outside, and some totally unpredictable weather.

I can’t say it’s really a sensual attraction to water, because wild water in the UK is simply bloody cold and rare are the days hot enough for that to seem pleasant. Arguments may be made about whether I am just slightly masochistic, but for those of you beyond England’s murky shores, this is pretty much how you have to be round here if you want to do stuff outside more than three days in a year. My impression is that Wales and Scotland are, if anything, worse.

It’s an emotional attraction to water. I suppose that makes sense if you consider water to be the element of emotion in the first place. I have strong emotional associations with all of the elements, because this is how I relate to the world. I get some of that emotional impact from showers, bath tubs and indoor pools. Some days having running water from the tap over my hands is enough to do it. Water does something to me, something healing, releasing, liberating, reassuring.

As a child this was a particularly interesting dynamic for me, because I couldn’t swim. I was afraid of water, and of getting into situations that could kill me. I learned caution, but alongside that, the attraction was just as powerful then as it is now. I would go right up to the edge, dangle fingers, and if possible, dabble feet. We tended to do family holidays early in the year, and if all else failed I would get in the sea in my wellies, while trying to make sure the sea did not get in my wellies, because that was at least closer.

Being a confident swimmer now, and much more certain of my ability to make safety judgments around water, I am perhaps more of a child than I was when a child. I get in.

 

 

Radical ancestors of place

I’ve been interested in radical history for years – the history of struggle and change by which rights have been established. It isn’t taught in schools, this colourful history of refusal to sit down and shut up. I think that’s a great shame, and that young people would benefit enormously from knowing that much of what they have, was fought for. It’s hard not to show up and vote when you understand that people died to get that right. Knowing about the struggles of the past makes you less complacent about what we have now, and more conscious that it could be taken away.

It is being taken away.

It was with no small amount of delight that I found out about radical ancestors of place yesterday. Selsley Common, where I like to walk and sit at the burial mound, was a location for several huge Chartist gatherings seeking universal suffrage.  I heard of processions to Rodborough (another place I walk frequently) and meetings up there, and tales of Diggers down in Slimbridge (where I used to live).

I’m even more excited to find that there is a ‘Radical Stroud’ group, exploring and re-imagining local history. Generally speaking, the poor do not make it into history books. We tell very narrow stories about the past and those tend to revolve around men with land, wealth and power. I learned in the last few weeks that one of the reasons the poor are absent from museum collections is that the possessions of the poor were used until they wore out, or broke, or were turned into something else. Worn out clothes become ragrugs and quilts. This relationship with objects leaves no artefacts to curate. Many of our poor ancestors were illiterate, leaving no written record of their opinions. Their presence and activities must be inferred from what others said about them, records not free from bias.

Yesterday was the 13th July, anniversary of the birth of poet John Clare.  He was a literate worker, a rare voice from what is usually a great historical silence. There is a movement afoot to have his birthday become a day akin to Burns Night. Peasant poetry could do with a lot more recognition and this sidles towards another soap box issue of mine – the way in which anything designated as ‘folk music’ ‘folk art’ or ‘craft’ tends to be undervalued compared to the ‘high art’ that goes with wealth, patronage and social approval.

Taking the veil

Veils have roles in many different religions and traditions, serving both cultural and spiritual purposes. Generally the veil is a female item, which means it raises questions about whether the covering of the face is in some way sexist.

If you are covering the faces of women so that men cannot be tempted by them into acting inappropriately, then you have a problem. No part of the female body constitutes either an invitation or an excuse. Any culture that tells men they can’t help themselves also tells them it is acceptable to abuse women who are not covered up. This is entirely toxic for people, regardless of gender.

A veil is a barrier between person and world. You see differently when you look through one, and they reduce peripheral vision so you have to move more carefully. If you are involved in a spiritual stepping away from the world, this may be helpful. Veils are traditionally associated with grieving, and it does give you a degree of privacy around emotions.

A woman in a veil becomes a mystery – so would a man in a veil. The loss of face gives you something that is definitely a person, but not a specific person. That can be de-humanising, but it can also be powerful. I’ve used veils in rituals when I’ve been asked to plays Goddess roles. Coming unexpectedly out of the woods one winter and arriving, veiled and anonymous at a ritual circle, I was much better able to represent Goddess to the gathering because my own identity was veiled. It also created some drama, and that can be a good thing in rituals sometimes.

The hidden face makes you a little uncanny, a bit ‘other’ and people feel less certain about you. This only works when the veil is not the norm, and when a covered face is startling. In the photo I am dressed for a ‘Day of the Dead’ procession, in which being ‘other’ and startling was very much part of the plan. I also found in this context, that the veil – like a mask or a painted face – creates permission for misrule. Having marked yourself as outside social norms, it is easier to go dancing and screaming through the streets.

Of course the other thing about veiling – which religious bigot with sexist agendas should bear in mind – is all about the allure. That which is hidden can be more attractive, more seductive than that which is openly displayed. That which is unavailable easily becomes fetishised. The flash of an ankle could quite undo a staid Victorian gentleman. Cover a woman’s face and you may spend more time obsessing about her appearance than you would if you could see. As methods of control go, it’s often counter-productive. Being faceless can be incredibly powerful.

Writing about dying

We praise the dead with elegies and obituaries, send cards of condolence and put loving memories on their gravestones. We advise each other not to speak ill of the dead, but we also speak ill of them and some of them undoubtedly deserve that. Some we remember, and some we forget. While some people manage to be clever about famous last words, mostly death is a step into silence, and it will fall to someone else to frame our lives in retrospect.

In some ways this seems more comfortable, because it spares us from having to think about our own mortality too much. Thinking about the writing-up of a life, we have to ask if we will be written off. Do our actions stand up to scrutiny? Did we do anything worth commenting on? Would anyone care if we went? Who would mourn us, and how? Who would remember us, and how? Asking such questions may be comforting if you are loved and successful, but if you have any doubts about your life, then framing that with ideas about your death will not be an easy business.

My impression of our heroic ancestors – the Celts, and the Vikings, especially, is that they did think about these things. A good life, a heroic death if you can manage it, and something people will tell stories about for years to come. We tend not to think in terms of the heroic life any more or to imagine it as widely accessible. What does heroism mean in this day and age? Then there’s the Egyptians, with their elaborate funeral arrangements, their lives obviously very much informed by their ideas about death.

There are other options aside from the heroic. We can think about the love that we have brought into the world, and what of that remains after we have gone. Will the work we do outlive us? In small ways, as ancestors of place to future generations, we have all kinds of impact. Is that something to be proud of, or embarrassed about? How is history going to judge us, individually and collectively.

These are sobering thoughts, which is why the perspective of death is so greatly needed right now.

Nest building

One of the most loaded words I know, is ‘home’. It has a weight and significance to it that surpasses almost all others, for me. The role of the home in day to day functioning is critical. Our addresses are a key part of our legal identity, something I’m acutely aware of having spent a couple of years with mail c/o the Post Office. Home contributes to our social identity, roots us in a geography, connects us to ancestors of land. The space is expression of self, and the people we share it with are normally the people we are closest to.

To be absolutely certain about where home is, and what it constitutes, is to know where you fit and to feel centred. That’s not necessarily about owning a place, it can be more to do with relationship with a landscape, or connection to family. Home might be where your ancestors are buried, where your language is spoken, or where you cat is. We each have our own definitions, some more consciously held than others.

Shelter is one of the most basic things, and the certainty of knowing you will sleep securely tonight is an important one. Many people don’t have that. Benefit cuts and soaring rents are pushing ever more people in the UK into states of uncertainty. Living a transient life is fine if you’re a wild spirit called to wandering, but many people aren’t. The loss of geographical identity, or social and legal identity around loss of place, is really intimidating. If you are not secure in your home, you may not feel very secure in anything.

In the quest for social status and profit, we build ever larger dwelling places that most people cannot afford to buy or run. I’ve become enchanted with the relative simplicity of living in smaller spaces, working out what is most needed and paring down to that. Compared with many people in the world, I have phenomenal wealth and property. Compared to many westerners, I have very little.

Our security is not what it could be. Any one of us could face compulsory purchase for some big infrastructure project. It could become legal for companies to frack under our homes. Laws and by-laws influence what we can do. In this property I am forbidden from keeping chickens. In a previous location, goats were not allowed for some reason. An Englishman’s home is his castle mostly in the sense that we all get to wonder who or what is poised to stick explosives under our walls.

Perhaps because we crave security, we get the biggest home we can and we fill it with stuff, as though that stuff forms a real barrier between us and the world. Pile it high enough and they won’t be able to take it all away (whoever ‘they’ are). Be that piles of old newspapers, or more cars than we can drive, or a kitchen full of unused gadgets, their weight and solidity promise to help keep the scary things at bay. Except that it doesn’t, and more things must be acquired to protect the things already acquired and then you need more space, and it never ends. Sometimes it feels safer when you know you could pack it all up and move on within a week, if you needed to.

What does home mean to you?

How not to go mad

I watch friends struggling with depression and other mental health issues. I’ve had a few fights of my own, although am starting to feel like I may be winning. I am increasingly convinced that the regular end of mental ill-health (depression, anxiety, crippled by self esteem issues etc) has far less to do with being ill as an individual, and far more to do with living in a sick society. Ideally we need to fix the society, but in the meantime, knowing may well help.

1)      Exhaustion triggers mental illness. Lack of rest creates self-esteem issues. Being run ragged all the time with no respite makes people anxious, stressed and ill. Insufficient sleep makes people ill. This is the hectic modern lifestyle in action, ever longer work hours, ever more demands and a finite number of hours in the day. Modern work makes people ill.

2)      Being burdened with responsibility but no power to act makes people ill. We have a blame culture, it is hard to own mistakes, whistleblowers are not well protected and we’re barraged with news about all that is wrong in the world, and there’s so little most of us can do as individuals.

3)      Consumerism. We are constantly sold the idea that to be happy and socially accepted and to have status, we must buy more stuff. The stuff we have already is out of date and not good enough. This keeps us buying, which serves the economy, but it does not ever give us a sense of social security, status or success. The goalposts keep moving. We get depressed.

4)      Lack of social contact. We evolved to live collectively and co-operatively. The absence of work-life balance, the rise of solitary, technology based entertainment and the pressures of money isolate us, and being isolated will make you miserable.

5)      Lack of green spaces. There’s plenty of evidence that getting outside in green spaces, even for as little as five minutes a day, will improve your mental health. Time and money pressures don’t help us with this one, and access to pleasant green spaces can be a big issue, too. Fear of crime keeps people indoors and a culture that depends on the car far too much means we don’t walk and meet people.

There’s probably more, do add your thoughts in the comments. We live in crazy times. To seem well, functional and happy in face of all of this, I think you have to be quite a strange sort of creature. We need to stop being driven mad, and start getting mad about how we’re being required to live.

The ultimate punchline

Nothing puts life in perspective like death. Other people’s deaths can give us a lot of perspective on what matters and doesn’t in our own lives. An awareness of our own mortality will get us thinking about how we really want to use our time. Death-aware people make very different choices (there was a study, it was in New Scientist) tending to lose interest in consumerism and becoming more concerned about quality of life. So, from a practical perspective, one of the easiest ways to get people engaging with greener approaches to living, is to get them thinking about dying.

On Friday, as my contribution to Stroud’s Clocking Off Festival I will be encouraging people to consider their own demise.  As that’s not a wholly comfortable subject, there will be every encouragement to joke about, write things in terrible taste, big yourself up and otherwise not be too serious about it. I’m a big believer in using the ridiculous to help tackle the painfully difficult.

So, if you fancy coming and talking about death, thinking about death, taking a sideways look at your own journey down the curtain to join the choir invisible in a context that will provide both cake and giggles do join me!… And yes, that means cake or death…

Or possibly both. But the cake is very good, because we will be in Black Books Cafe  from 7.30 on Friday the 11th July. £2.50 on the door, all proceeds going to the funding of the Clocking Off Festival.

 

 

 

Holding spaces, sacred and otherwise

In formal ritual, we’re automatically conscious of the making and holding of sacred space. We think we craft a deliberate space, with intent, and we usually work together as a circle to make that happen. However, in every aspect of our lives we are holding space for people in less conscious ways.

What we’re able to do can be shaped by what the people around us hold space for. At the most basic level, things like whether we are allowed to help, allowed to speak, allowed to act, informs who we can be in a situation. In highly constructed environments – schools, workplaces, more organised social groupings – the boundaries around who can do what can be tightly held.

Where we have consensus about the holding of space, we get a culture. Most of us are significantly shaped by what our cultures consider acceptable. How we dress, speak and move, what we aspire to be and feel the need to own and how we spend much of our time is culturally informed. That culture is made up of each one of us helping hold the space in a certain way. Encouraging some things, discouraging others, making some actions easy and others impossible. Most of the time, most of us do that entirely without thought.

We can hold space for each other in very deliberate ways, if we are conscious of what we are doing. How conscious are our ritual circles? Are we defaulting to what we think religion looks like, or are we inventing a space that does just what we need it to do? In ritual circle we give each other permission to talk to the land and sky in a way that would be unthinkable in other contexts. Some ritual circles give everyone permission to speak, and some do not. Some ritual spaces invite raw emotional expressions and others encourage us to be dignified and stick with the script.

It is worth trying to take a mental step back from what we do, to consider the spaces we hold for each other. What do we permit in others, what are we quietly refusing? How are we constructing the spaces we share with other people? What kind of culture are we contributing to?

I’ve been struck of late, just how powerful it is to be in spaces where I feel acceptable and also by what happens when I in turn offer messages of welcome and encouragement to people who are around me. Groups where exchanges of praise and encouragement are normal are very supportive spaces to be in. Places where we watch each other mistrustfully and jump on the smallest mistakes are nerve wracking and exhausting. It’s odd how many spaces are quick to jump on small errors and entirely tolerant of the bullying behaviour of those who do the jumping. I see that online, especially. All too often, ‘correcting’ trivial mistakes and reasonable differences is treated as more important than being respectful or compassionate. Who do we become, when we step into circles such as these?