Nimue Brown's Blog, page 458

Nearer to the Mountain

Yesterday I read a speech Neil Gaiman made to students, about going out into the world to live and work as a creative person. It’s well worth reading. Or watching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=plWexCID-kA He described his vision of his own work as being like a mountain that needed to be reached before it could be climbed. And the importance of balancing the creativity against the need to eat and having some kind of life. But he said that when anything came in, he would consider whether it took him towards, or away from the mountain.

There are so many things in this world that waltz into our lives announcing their own importance. You must do this, or that, you simply have to do the other. Some of these pertain to paid work. Some are about the demands our families, partners and friends may make upon us. Many things are piped into our homes via the media. But of course you want a car, and a shiny kitchen, and a bigger house, and more things, and of course you should spend more time cleaning your many things, and you need, need, need the latest fashions in this, that, and also the other or people will think you’re an idiot. Because you’re worth it. Priceless. Every little helps. Things that waltz in pretending to be helpful, and waltz out again with the contents of your bank account, having deprived you of hours of your life.

Time is the most precious thing we have. You can’t actually buy it, or replace it, and you do not know how much of it you may be going to get. Every choice we make affects the time we have and how we are able to deploy it. Now, if the ‘mountain’ in your life is all about more valuable possessions and fitting in with social expectations about what you ought to want, maybe this isn’t a problem. If the mountain you identify is the home of enlightenment, or a pinnacle of creative excellence, then everything that takes your time and wastes it, takes you away from the mountain, not towards it.

What takes me towards my own, personal mountain? Anything that inspires me, and keeps me feeling able to work. Anything that nourishes my soul and feeds my mind. Poverty is not going to do that. So do I take a regular job to make ends meet, and then try and find time for the real work, or do I stick to the real work and hope I can make it pay? That’s been an ongoing issue. And there’s no clear cut answer as to which would actually take me closer to the mountain. At the moment it suits my child far better to have me around, so working from home makes more sense, and a mountain climbed at his expense is not one I’d want to tackle.

There are lots of potential mountains out there, and most of us cannot hope to scale all of them. Again, there are choices to be made. And sometimes the most obvious and direct route to the mountain turns out not to go there at all. I had a lot of advice to make a thing that would be an obvious, box ticking commercial success, after which I’d be free to do the work I really wanted to do. Only I’ve noticed that people don’t reliably buy obvious box tickers, there is no such thing as a sure fire hit, or a guaranteed publishing success. And once you’re known for putting out box tickers, are you really going to be free to follow your muse? I doubt it. I chose not to go that way.

Know what you are doing and why you are doing it. Know what you want your life to be, and how what you are actually doing is part of that. It makes as much sense for Druidry as it does for design work, or dancing. Even knowing, there will be paths that turn out not to work, and surprise short cuts, and all manner of other things.

Today, I have beaten an innocent metaphor to death. Tomorrow, I shall edit my way towards world domination. I think I know what I’m doing, but most of the time I have no idea how, or if, it’s going to work. But that’s fine. I’d lose interest, if I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Thank you Mr Gaiman. For the inspiration, and the ideas, and the possibility of mountains.

Confessions of compassion fail

Forgive me blogosphere, for I have sinned. It has been 24 hours since my last confession. Give or take. I have failed to hold a compassionate attitude towards my fellow human beings. I have allowed myself to feel anger and resentment towards my government, and to assume that their behaviour represents the prejudices of the rich against the poor. Am I any less prejudiced than they? I cannot begin to imagine the burdens and trials that immense wealth must bring, or how hard it must be deciding to cut benefits rather than going after corporate tax dodgers.

This morning I have succumbed to anger, and considered writing a class-war tirade against those who have so much and begrudge the smallest generosity to those who have almost nothing. But am I any better? I, who would take away from those who enjoy the fortunes they have inherited, the educational advantages of rich parents and a leg up from the Old Boys Network. I would, if given the power, cut them down to size a bit and require them to have standards of living more commensurate with that of some of their less affluent neighbours. I do not wish to see them suffer, I would not wish them the poverty of benefit dependence.

And of course they must have good reasons for removing housing benefit from the under twenty fives. I’m sure they’ll make an exception for the ones who have no living parents to run home to, the ones who have been in social care all their lives, have no family they can safely return to, and whose educations have probably been undermined by being moved about a lot. They don’t mean those people under the age of twenty five, do they? Only the undeserving ones. So who would those be? The ones who didn’t get to go to the top school or get the best results and cannot find jobs? The ones who selfishly went to university and are now burdened with debt, and unemployed, and want to live somewhere they might find work? Inconsiderate swine, scrounging off the people who never had to lift a finger to get their head start in the world. Despicable! Or all those girls who went out and got themselves pregnant (stop a moment consider what that phrase means) and only got pregnant to get a council house and more benefits. Because we all know when you’re poor, undereducated and female, the only way you can get on in the world is through pregnancy and benefits. Living the high life on a few hundred pounds a week. Doing outrageously self indulgent things, like eating, and buying clothes for your child. Everyone knows that poor children don’t really need shoes. It’s character building for them to go without. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Cameron?

Oh, guide me, wise ones, how do I feel greater compassion for the rich and spoiled men who want to ush in a new Victorian era? I admit, I like steampunk, I have worn a corset, I own some George Eliot novels. But the Victorian era illustrates so well what happens when the only way to make ends meet legitimately, for the poorest, means long, exhausting shifts, or multiple jobs, because the wages won’t pay the rent. Sound familiar?  It means families crammed into too small spaces, and children sent out to work. Chimney sweeps, at all, Mr Cameron? When being poor and decent means a life of drudgery, slavery and misery, people consider their options. The Victorian era was not a crime free period. It was also a time when prostitution rates were terrifyingly high. Forgive me, blogosphere for I have imagined that spoiled, wealthy rich boys might enjoy the idea of there being more prostitutes. Just because historically they were the ones paying the most to use women, boys, children, doesn’t mean that’ll hold true now, does it?

In the Victorian era, Christianity and its values still had a lot of influence. We have generations who have grown up being told that materialism rules, that wealth matters, that they are entitled to health, education and a job. What are they going to do when you pull the rug out from under their feet, Mr Cameron? Perhaps you don’t know that wealth is not created by the rich, it is derived from the labours of the poor. Real wealth, that is, not the kind of imaginary money games your old school chums and buddies are playing in ‘The City’. What happens, Mr Cameron, when people can no longer afford homes, and can no longer afford to feed their children? Perhaps you think this century’s people are sufficiently tamed with ciabatta and television. What progress we have since the days of bread and circuses! Perhaps you think a host of magical pixies will come and make it ok. Maybe you’re hoping for a pandemic to kill off the weakest ones and cut the running costs. I notice you’re closing hospitals. I guess the more people just do the decent thing and die, the easier it will be for you to balance the books. How hard this must all be for you!

But I think you’ll find this isn’t a nation of sheep, and that even sheep will fight back if they think you’re going to kill them, or harm their offspring. The future you are making, Mr Cameron, is not one in which people generally are likely to love or respect you. There’s nothing like desperation to make people do unpleasant and antisocial things. Remember Marie Antoinette? Mussolini hanging from a lamp post. The fate of those who betray their people is not always a happy one. I really hope we don’t end up there. Perhaps I can feel just the teensiest bit sorry for you after all; maybe that fine education of yours didn’t cover the causes of revolution.

Wrestling with demons

5 am. I’m awake and my heart is thundering against my ribs. I’m fighting for breath and it feels as though a demon is sitting on my chest. Or maybe an elephant. I’ve gone from deeply asleep to conscious and panic stricken in a space of seconds. Frightened, disorientated, I try to figure out what’s woken me. Where am I? Why am I so afraid?

Next to me, my man sleeps, mercifully untroubled. The canal is quiet, although I can hear a few birds. If I concentrate I’ll hear the occasional, small sounds my child makes in his sleep. The boat is not on fire. There is no marching band going by. It’s all calm, and quiet. Except my heart is still racing, I’m still fighting for breath and my guts are churning. All the things I have to worry about crowd into my head. There are lots of them, and at 5 am there’s not much to blot them out with. All the things I need to be doing. All the things that could go wrong today. All the ghosts of years past, hungry, predatory. The things I want to forget come back in the quiet of the early morning.

I have learned, from cognitive behavioural therapy that it is important not to allow negative thought patterns to continue. I know from experience that if I let this get its teeth into me, my problems will get bigger. Depression will come in the wake of anxiety and I will struggle. Already I know that I cannot face getting up. The idea of trying to put some clothes on and face the world, is overwhelming, terrifying. I can’t do it. I can’t do anything. All the fears about being useless and everything being futile are creeping into my mind.

This is the moment where I choose whether to fight, or to sink. Fighting takes a lot of energy, sinking is easy, but no kind of good. I start by trying to get my breathing under control. Concentrating on the slow, deep breaths I force calm into my distraught body. I sit up, close my eyes, breathe. My man surfaces, realising something is awry. He asks what’s up and I say ‘everything’. He reminds me that we are no longer divided by an ocean, and all I want to do is cry. I cry. I keep breathing. He holds me, and I consciously, deliberately go through the process of pushing back the darkest thoughts and keeping control of myself. I’ve learned to put a fence up inside my head and to refuse to allow certain ideas passed it.

I also step into the sensation of fear. I let myself be aware of what’s happening inside my body. The sharp edges of anxiety, the physical pain of it, the hollowness. I keep breathing, slowly, slowly. The most basic forms of meditation, the most essential kinds of hanging on to the edges of life. My heart slows to something bearable. By this point it’s nearly 7 am. I have been fighting for two hours, I am very tired, and it’s time to get up. Depression makes it hard to do things, and pushing through it is difficult, but I know I have to push. And so the day begins. Thanks to the techniques I have at my disposal, I’m moving, and doing, the teeth have slackened their grip a bit, the panic has receded. I still feel rough. I’m exhausted, and bruised.

This time a year ago, pretty much all of my days started this way. It says a lot that it’s become less frequent. It’s not unusual for me to start the day this way, but it’s not every morning, and it’s not always this bad. I’m looking for things to believe in. I’m questing after hope and inspiration, and reasons not to give up. So long as I refuse to be beaten, I am not beaten.

I could not do this on my own. It is also true that I have not come to this on my own. I’ve had a lot of ‘help’ over the years. Days like this, I question my Druidry, and I depend on it and somehow, I am still here, and still breathing. Slowly.

Comparative religion for Druids

There are a great many folk out there doing druidry and something else. There are, I suspect, a comparable number of people who get really irritated by ‘druidry and’ approaches. The trouble is that most religions have more material to draw on than we do – more books, rituals, more famous practitioners, more wisdom teachings etc. Thousands of years of evolving culture from the distant past to the present day, full of changes but with enough consistency to feel like a tradition. We don’t have that. Granted, we have some things to draw on, but nothing like the quantity of writings, teachings, practices and traditions of any other major faith.

I spend a fair amount of my time reading books from other faiths. I’m currently reading about Shinto, and that book is next to my copy of the Tao Te Ching and a book on Buddhism. But, I’m not a fan of ‘pick and mix’ – that great accusation raised so often against New Age practice. I’m not looking for things I can steal from other people’s religions to fill in where I find gaps in my own.

I’ve always felt that religions deserve to be studied as academic subjects just as much as philosophical positions do. There is a world of difference between studying religion from a position of faith, and studying it from a position of curiosity. But just as the skills of anthropology can, and I think should be pointed back at the culture they originate from, so too the study of religion can be turned round and directed back at our own habits. There are always questions to ask about what we’re doing and why.

Considering the attitudes, core tenets and activities of other faiths gives a basis for comparison. It becomes possible to contemplate more broadly what it is that people want from a religion – any religion.  What traits do religions have in common, and where do they differ, and why? What does that tell us about what it means to be human? I keep coming back to ask ‘how does this relate to druidry?’ The answers of course vary dramatically.

Druidry needs the rich diversity of thinking and practice evident in all other significant religions. It needs the breadth of traditions, the variety of ways of doing that go to make a faith dynamic and living. This of course will take time. We may be drawing on something ancient, and something else a few hundred years old, but in some ways we are also very young, very new. I don’t like saying ‘neo’ because most modern religions are a long way from how they were two thousand years ago, so we’re not alone, and do not need singling out. But we are narrow, and small, as yet.

We can learn from other religions without borrowing techniques from them We can learn what it is that people do with religions, and use that to develop what we already have as ‘Druid’ and take it forward. Of course we’re all going to disagree on the shapes, potentials, just like we do over the ‘Druidry and’ options, but every time we do it, we’ll be adding something to the tradition, making it richer, finding out what sticks.

The last thing I think we need is some kind of universal faith of homogenised, easily digestible squidge. Religions should be distinctive and different, offering diverse paths that reflect the different needs of different people. If we let ourselves get too similar, all huddled round the same hymn sheet, we reduce the chances of getting any new ideas, homogeny goes very well with stagnation, dogma and repression. Diversity is much healthier. But, we can learn from each other without turning into universal spiritual squidge.

If Druidry ruled the world

While the likelihood of us ever again having a culture that is governed by Druid principles is small, I think it’s still worth considering what that would look like. Would it even be viable to have a culture where Druid ideas underpin government, law and so forth? I think one of the measures of any idea’s usefulness is whether it would work to have everyone adopt it, or what the consequences of universal uptake would be. Foolish things which cause no problem in the hands of a few lone idiots can turn into nightmares if they get a widespread hold. We could compare atheism and fascism on this score, the first has contributed to improving the human condition, the second becomes murderous once it has power. What would Druidry become, if universal?

The next question is, whose Druidry are we talking about here? My brand of liberal, inclusive, non-dogmatic Druidry, or something more controlling? Something more about titles and people who want to feel important? I think as soon as Druidry becomes dictatorial and authoritative, it’s no different from any other kind of self serving tyranny. If Druidry was universal, it would acquire all of the self serving tyrants, and I am not confident that all of them would become liberal, benevolent Druids. What this mostly suggests to me is that it probably isn’t in our interests, or the interests of Druidry, to have Druidry be universal. I can’t help but feel the anti-materialist, liberal healer and pacifist from the desert wouldn’t be at all happy about the wars and oppression rich men have undertaken in his name. I have no desire to see that happen to us.

One of the things Druidry has in common with other faiths, is the aspect that, if everyone took it up and practiced it with integrity, we wouldn’t need much in terms of systems and mediations. The reality tends to be, in any religious climate, that most people do not go deeply into spiritual practice. There are plenty of people in the UK who call themselves Christian but only turn up for rites of passage and show no discernible Christian influences in their daily life. Plenty of people who call themselves pagan are no different, wanting to learn a bit of magic, acquire a bit of glamour, turn up in their best cloaks for the odd ritual, but not really change their lives. So far, history suggests that this is what the majority do with all religions – surface, recreation, power base, ego boost, social engagement; the non-spiritual aspects of religion tend to dominate, while the majority resent being expected to put any ideas into practice.

It is, for example, one of my most certain beliefs that a person following a spiritual path should begin by putting aside their television. TVs take too much time and energy from us, and feed us wrong ideas, wrong beliefs, wrong desires. Every time I say this there are squeals of protest from people who have so many reasons why their television is good, helpful, contributing and needed. They like it, they want it, need it, consider that it benefits them. I can call it spiritual poison until I’m blue in the face, it will make no odds. Except with those who have come to the same conclusions for the same reasons and made the jump already.

A society run on superficially druid principles would, I anticipate, be hardly any different from what we’ve got. We’d change the language a bit, we’d drape beards and robes over a few things, dangle some conceptual mistletoe and get back to business as usual. Superficial religion only has the power to change surfaces. Again, look at the kind of right wing ‘Christian’ business in America, and what you’ll see is the demand and aggression of greed, trying to use God for its own ends, wearing a mask of belief behind which behaviours utterly at odds with the essence of the faith, continue unchecked. At least being a minority faith, we don’t have to watch Druidry being perverted in the same way.

If everyone followed a spiritual path deeply, the differences in what we practice would not be that important. The heart of every major faith involves peace and harmony. The essence of every deeply observed spiritual path, is spirituality. Along with that, are versions of virtue. While understandings of virtue vary between faiths, acting with responsibility and compassion are frequent themes. In a world in which everybody made it their job, in all their waking hours, to undertake everything they did with care and respect, with compassion and honour, we wouldn’t need any systems. We would not need the police, judges, courts of law. We might need people to help facilitate mediation and figure out best solutions, but that would be it. Government would only exist as a way of facilitating bigger projects and things we couldn’t manage at a more local and personal level. We would not need much in the way of laws, we would tackle each situation as it came, seeking the best for everyone and able to trust that everyone else was also committed to finding the best for everyone. Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? But the reason we don’t have that, is because most of us, as individuals, have chosen not to do it. And when you stop to think about it, that’s pretty shocking.

To those who will inherit the earth

I had one of those parent jobs this morning, the sort that you know is coming, but dread. There are so many things in this world that it is horrible to have to explain to a child. However, I don’t believe on fobbing them off with half-truths. Once a person is able to ask a question, they need to hear an answer. This morning it became necessary to point out that the world is not an inherently fair or just place, and that the people, bodies, institutions we should be able to rely on to treat us fairly, are not always reliable. It didn’t come as a shock to the lad, I think I was confirming what he’d already suspected, but it’s better to talk about these things.

So we talked about institutionalised racism, which he thinks is crazy because people are people and judging them on skin colour is stupid. Allow me a moment of happy pride over this. We talked about the history of laws, and where they come from. Because go back a few hundred years and in most of Europe, there wasn’t much legal protection for poor people against rich ones. The UK was better than average. We talked about the way in which the crimes of poor people still seem to be taken more seriously than the sneakier financial and environmental crimes of the wealthy. We didn’t get round to huge corporate tax dodgers, but we could have done. We talked about libel laws, and how your likelihood of being taken seriously depends on how rich and famous you are. To be poor and maligned is still to be maligned. It is a life no less damaged.

There are a frightening number of things around us that I can point to, to illustrate institutionalised stupidity and unfairness. Of course he needs to know, this is the world he is poised to inherit, the one he’s going to need to survive in. The odds are increasingly stacked against the poor. The desire of consumerism still gets priority over the needs of the environment.

What I feel is overwhelming shame. This is the world I get to pass on to my son. Ugly with corruption, cruelty, and systems that cannot be trusted to deliver fairness. And ok, most of this I have not created, or planned or supported in any way, but how much time have I spent trying to make it better? Not nearly enough. Every day there is something in the news where the short-sightedness, the inhumanity, the greed and horror of human choices shocks me. And no doubt my child too, because he’s listening. A bus full of people who, between them, didn’t have twenty pence to save a girl from a ten mile walk at three in the morning. She was attacked as a consequence, by a guy high on cocaine. The small evils we commit against each other on a daily basis go to make up such wrongs.

The latest one to be grating on my nerves is this: Plans that mothers who defy court orders over access to their children, be punished by having their passports taken away. On the grounds that it’s not fair to the child to be denied access to a parent. If a guy doesn’t want to have anything to do with his children, he’ll still have to contribute financially, but he can walk away. Never see them. There are no suggested sanctions to make reluctant fathers see their kids. It’s not a gender thing. Reverse who has the kids and it still holds up. We collectively abuse the parent who undertakes to do the parenting, and let the one who is disinterested do as they please. That’s no kind of fairness or justice.

The temptation is to keep my head down and not fight the many wrongs that I run into. The fear that I live with is that by protesting, I will draw adverse attention. What, after all, is to stop any of these systems from crushing me? If I call a government body out over unjust behaviour, what is to save me from unjust treatment at their hands? And yet, to stay silent, to refuse to notice, to keep my head down, is to tacitly support any wrong I turn a blind eye to. We have a conspiracy of silence. All of us. For the sake of a quiet life, an easy life. We don’t complain, we don’t draw attention to ourselves, we don’t invite the unfairness we know perfectly well is out there, to come round and pick on us for a change.

Dear children, this is the world we have contrived to make for you. We are poisoning it, and many of its structures are corrupt. Close your eyes and ears, pretend it’s all shiny and happy. Don’t look at anything that hurts. Play this game instead. Watch another TV program. When you get older, you can use alcohol to blot it all out.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The fickle gods of technology

Yesterday the charger for my netbook died, suddenly, leaving me unable to do most of my work or get online. Armed with the internet on his phone, Tom procured a new one, and here I am, less than thirty hours on, plugged in again. But in the meantime I’ve had opportunity to contemplate (and not for the first time) how tech dependant I am. Most of my work depends on it, at least at some point in the process. Today I sorted the boy’s Dodo costume (for Alice in Wonderland) did some reading, and tackled some research notes. There is life beyond the interwebs.

Last year when we first started the floating life, I had not really sorted internet, electricity or technology. It took a few months to figure out how to make it all work. (A mobile that creates wi fi hot spots, a netbook rather than the laptop, needing far less electricity, and an uncanny sense to smell out internet hotspots on the side of the road.) So for the last few months, with extra help from friends, we’ve been doing well. But so much of my social contact does depend on the intenet – email and facebook. The people I work with are scattered all over the world, the people I like to hear from in non workish ways are liberally distributed too. When I’m miles from the nearest town, that contact is a lovely counterbalance to the isolation of extreme rural living. And I miss it when it’s gone.

The Druid community is sufficiently spread out to make the net a total blessing. I remember what it was like not really knowing any other pagans, and how hard it used to be making contact with like minded folks – especially out in the sticks where moots are not so plentiful. I thank the gods for the technology that keeps me connected, and lets me find out what others are thinking.

My ancestors of not so many generations ago lived out here without any such technology. Admittedly, they were farmers, not authors, and the pub was in viable walking distance. Still is, come to that. The items I depend on would have been unimaginable for my great grandmother. So much that my life revolves around would make no sense to her at all. If people didn’t live in Dursley, she had the option of writing or visiting – other family were in Bristol, Cornwall, probably other places too. No skype to keep them in touch.

During the year when my lover was thousands of miles away from me most of the time, we depended on the internet, able to talk daily. Even so, it was hard, and I found myself thinking about the women in history whose men went off, to war, to explore, on ships… women who waited faithfully, or not so faithfully for years, for their men to come back. Women who went to their graves not knowing if they’d been widowed, or abandoned. Reading historical novels I am frequently struck by the number of plots that work because people can’t just whip out their mobile phone to summon help, ascertain where someone is, or pass on news.

With the author hat on, the world that existed before this one, where words typed here would not magically travel to people all over the world at a push of a button, appeals to me. Brave old world, so much more mysterious, uncertain and challenging than this one. But given the option, I like the communication aspect of this one, and even when the gods of technology frown on me, and gadgets die, I am so grateful for their existence. I love my little wind up radio, that brings music into my world. I love this magic box into which I type stories and ideas. I love meeting people who are thousands of miles away and sharing moments with them. There are many things about modern living that I decry, but the things we have are tools, and we can choose how to use them, and we do have the option of using them well.

Enough meandering. There’s a review to write on a Victorian novel (I’m on goodreads) and facebook to check, and then a walk down the towpath to see if I can sniff out the internet source I use for moving all those email files around.

Solstice time

The longest day, the shortest night, and the peak of the grass pollen. At least, I hope it’s the peak, if we get any more my head will probably explode. Pollen, that over produced essence of new plant life, wind borne to facilitate reproduction. In short, the plants are trying to have sex with my nasal passages. Not that they have in any way undertaken this consciously – I assume – but here the pollen is, failing to breed with my nose, which is probably as well.

It’s the time of year I am therefore least inclined to want to be outside, or in a field. An annual reminder that nature is not designed for the convenience of humans in any significant way.

Of course we evolved to deal with a lot more disease and bacteria than the modern human is normally exposed to. Allergies are, to some degree, a consequence of our over clean lives, and underworked immune systems. I’ve never had worms, or pustulant sores, the worst things I’ve had were flu bugs and a dose of tonsillitis. It doesn’t count for much in the scheme of things. In the absence of serious diseases to tackle, my body gets funny ideas about pollen, and here I am, eyes streaming, nose streaming, feeling like there’s a brick on my ribs, and praying for rain. This too shall pass. I wonder how far back this kind of unwellness goes, though. Did our ancient pagan ancestors suffer from hayfever too? Or is it more recent? (What are the odds one of you canny people reading this knows the answer?) I imagine that a prehistoric version of me would have long since been eaten by a passing wolf. Once the sneezing fits are upon me, I am both very obvious, and wholly incapable of shambling away, much less running.

Hail gods of midsummer sun, you who fill my orifices with planty attempts at reproduction, you who make my eyes stream and my throat ache. You who convince me that perhaps winter wasn’t so very bad after all. I am entirely convinced that this world was not created for our benefit. And, wheezing my way about like the proverbial consumptive badger, I don’t feel very confident of there being benevolent deities right now. Well, not benevolent to me. The grasses on the other hand, seem entirely happy – plenty of rain, enough sun, and now a few dry days at just the right time to get the pollen on the wind – there is some wind, but not too much. And why should the deities be benevolent to me? There are a lot more grass plants out there than humans. There are far more bacteria out there than humans. There are plenty of living things for which we function well as demons and destroyers. Perhaps we’ve all been very wrong about where we fit in the scheme of things.

Handkerchief anyone?

Culture and Creativity

There was a prompt on the copperage facebook group (have you joined yet?) to discuss the relationship between culture and creativity. Particularly with an eye to the banality of the digital age. I’ve been pondering this for some days now. Online access means we can all get to a lot more content, sharing is rife, and anyone who can manage a computer can put out art, music, words, in a way that was not possible before. Well, historically you could pay to have anything you wanted produced, but you needed money for that, so not everyone could participate. One of the consequences is that the internet is full of badly crafted, low brow, derivative, plagiarised, unoriginal pap. But this isn’t new. Back before the internet people were making all the same things, they just didn’t have quite so much scope for putting it in front of anyone else.

Online, your name and reputation are the only things you have to sell your work, or even attract a non-paying audience to it, unless you’re going to pay for adverts. Some people cheat, crafting many alternative identities who go forth and write them wonderful reviews, but that uses up one hell of a lot of time. For the greater part, things, people, creativity gets known more widely by dint of being good, or appealing to its audience in some way. We aren’t all going to agree on the ‘good’ bit mind, and I think some popular things are unutterable rubbish, but so be it.

On to the relationship between creativity and culture. Obviously culture will inform what we produce – the levels of technology and training available to us, the things we have seen or read, the dominant themes and aspirations of our time, the influences and references we draw on. We are all to some degree products of our environment. At a most basic level, the language available to us informs what we might be able to think about and discuss. In English we have no word for taking pleasure in the beautiful transience of fleeting things, so it’s not a big part of our aesthetic. I gather in Japanese culture, it’s significant. We don’t have a word for the elegance of unshiny glamour – wabi sabi – very hard to explain in English, much less to hold up for other people to enjoy.

Culture as the Anglo/Japanese bit above should demonstrate, is not one homogenous thing. Even in a place as small as the UK, there are many different cultures, shaped by class, education, geography, religion, ethnicity and personal choice. The last bit is critical, because we can resist the dominant culture. Countercultures tend to define themselves in reference to the dominant culture, but inevitably go somewhere else, spawning forms of creativity that do not reflect the dominant trends. Counter cultures, I think, are often more vibrant when the dominant culture is bland and/ or repressive. There’s something exciting and transgressive about counter cultural movements that can beget revolutions. When the dominant culture makes it hard to speak literally, we turn to metaphor, to symbolism.

There are a lot of creative movements currently defying the digitally facilitated banality. Plenty of them use the interwebs to further what they do. Technology does not have to define creativity. I look at the wild stuff steampunks are doing, and all the pagan craftspeople who stick with natural materials and make real things. Despite the rise of ebooks, people are still making beautiful real books, on paper. Sometimes the challenge of the bland dominant culture pushes us towards new expression. Think about the bland music scene against which punk emerged, the wildness of Japanese counter culture, the poetry of those whose love dared not speak its name.

We can all choose. We are all capable of thinking and looking around us, and we are all capable of spontaneously rejecting the crap and responding to it by going in a new, more inspired direction.

An uneasy life

There are some potent words here http://www.vulpine.cc/Blog/health/mak...  about being alive and not being seduced into mindlessness by an excess of ease.

Not that I’m a high risk of that just now. I’d love the opportunity to be seduced a bit into lethargy. By lunch time I was crying out of sheer exhaustion. Today, 2 hours of set painting, then settling down to work, and there was an article to write – one that, if I get it right, might help thousands of people whose homes and rights are under threat. No pressure. And a request to read through the evil document related to this, to feedback what I can. We’re talking the Canal & River Trust constitution http://www.canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/documents/legal/CRT-Articles-Adopted-27-Mar-2012.pdf which does not even recognise that boat dwellers exist, much less offer them any kind of protection. I care about human rights, and I worry that once the rot sets in, it’s in. And for so many people this will be a shrug issue, they don’t live on a boat or know anyone who does.

First they came for the communists, but I did not speak out, because I was not a communist.

Another request for help in the email today as the Alex hospital in Redditch is once again hit with the threat of losing services, including accident and emergency. My son was born at the Alex, they were threatening cuts even then. But I’m not in Redditch any more, it’s not my hospital.

When they came for the socialists, I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist.

There are a thousand and one other things I should be doing. This is not the blog I meant to write today – it will have to wait until tomorrow. I need to sort accommodation in Lincoln (seriously, if you live in Lincoln and could take us in for a weekend, now would be a good time to mention it). I have to think about doing the things that make money. I’ll be honest, I hate having to think about money. I hate having to work out what might sell, and where the pennies are coming from. It’s not that I’m profligate, but there are bills to pay, and all that. But what I want to do is throw most of my time and energy at work that doesn’t pay. Protest work. Voluntary work. Things that make the world just a little bit better. I hate having to turn away from anything that needs doing. But every day, I say ‘no’ to more issues than I sometimes know how to bear. Much of the most important work that needs doing in the world, no one will pay you for. What on earth does that say about the state of our culture? We drive the best people to exhaustion and despair – let’s mention teachers, and nurses for a couple of easy examples. We pay bankers more money than any human being could possibly need. And today is one of those days when it just makes me want to scream.

When they come for me, there probably won’t be a heck of a lot of point bothering, I shall be too tired to put up any resistance, by the looks of it. It might come as a bit of a relief. But that’s the tiredness talking, and tomorrow I will pull on a fresh pair of fighting trousers and try to do something meaningful, whilst trying to make ends meet. No, I won’t be seeking out anything to make life harder today, but thanks for the thought.