Nothing’s Black&White.

The Guardian 30/3/2012: “Police face racism scandal after black man records abuse.” Police officer: 'The problem with you is you will always be a nigger.' Hold on, look at the headline. Even the Guardian doesn’t report this as an English man or a young man or simply a man, he’s a black man. I presume the officer involved was also English and an older man, who called the younger man a nigger and went on to say, “Don’t hide behind your black skin.” What was in his mind to say that? Now imagine some twat accosts you in the street: Do you remonstrate? And might you be accused of racism if he’s black? There’s a sort of mutual collusion throughout society, even including the Guardian, that there is a divide, blacks and whites. It began in the fifties when immigrants began to appear and were shunned because of their difference, the most demonstrable being colour. They spoke differently often with poor English, they lived differently with different food, smells, music and customs. Most rose to the challenge of acclimatising to their new homeland and have enriched our culture but some took their difficulties as a badge difference. They began to class themselves as different, the most demonstrable being colour, taking pride in being a black man in a white society. The successful ones simply took pride in being themselves, in the genuine nobility of overcoming the many obstacles their own choice had put in their way. So some took pride in their inclusion and some in their exclusion. Now the task of the police is to police society, which includes everyone living and visiting this country whatever their feelings, beliefs or allegiances, so how is this background reflected in this recorded conversation?  Both are playing out this sixty-year drama. The young Englishman is playing out the ‘proud to be an excluded black man’ and the policeman is offensively and clumsily pointing this out to him. In saying, “Don’t hide behind your black skin,” he’s saying don’t exclude yourself because of it. True this drama has been sixty years in the making and true the youth probably has good reason to feel excluded but there comes a point where we must all lose our own exclusivity of exclusion and join in, otherwise we’ll ‘always be an n-word.’

Try Creativity, it’s Cheaper.

Apparently in Greece people are going back or moving forward to a direct economy, personal exchange and local currencies, a creative way of iceberging the Titanic of their public spending. It won’t help the deficit but that’s in euros so it won't affect them. So creativity? It’s a bit like dyslexia or a sort of cognitive Tourretes. I was born with it as a relatively rare aberrant condition. Though I have a thirst for knowledge I don’t readily accept teachers are right, they’re just sounding off on a subject they believe they know something about. The only real teacher is my own experimentation of doing things differently, often perversely. Where as learning requires an endless supply of books and teaching and such like, creativity requires a pen, paper, a brush, a musical instrument, not cheap I admit, or whatever one needs to apply imagination to. Where a linear-ite might want new cloths, a more exciting car, a more gourmet dinner, see more interesting places, the creative, by which I mean I, will be happy considering the relative merits of pigs in space or Shauberger’s implosive energy in a shed. It drives Mothermouse mad. But I’m cheap. Guitars, admittedly more than one, have occupied me for 50 years, motorcycle mechanic for the same, DIY for 35 and pen, paper and art materials for nearly forty. And all for the price of a Citroen Picasso. And somehow one learns how everything is connected, how things work and how things not yet invented might work, and how to utilise what comes to hand. Last night our cat Britney appeared in the bedroom at 1am mewling proudly over her new kill. A raw sausage. It often happens when the weather’s nice enough for a barbeque. 

For All Things Good.

Liam Stacey tweeted “LOL he’s dead” and worse after Fabrice Muamba’s near fatal heart stop during a football match and will shortly begin 56 days in prison for inciting racial hatred. Now I didn’t get that tweet and I’d guess you didn’t either, in fact it was probably only read by a few of his mates who probably responded with, “Stacey’s pissed again.” I’m guessing from all the general outrage that few, if any replied, “Good point Liam you’ve made me realise all black people must die in unfortunate circumstances.” Definitely not because if they had they’d be occupying the next cell to Liam. So his tweet, one amongst millions, was somehow found, logged and traced to its owner, his address found and a summons sent. And now millions have read his drunken stupidity via newspapers and TV. In fact he’s now so notorious his 56 days in prison will probably be followed by a similar period in the Big Brother house. So who has purveyed racial hated the most, Liam to his pub mates or officialdom and the media? Now Margaret Thatcher is not black or dead but there are some of my acquaintance who are itching to post, “LOL she’s dead.” So should they? In case you haven’t got the message yet let me spell it out. Be careful what you post, tweet, what you say in pubs that might be overheard because ‘they’ have the means to track you down and prosecute. Say only what it is acceptable to say. Never indulge in ironic humour even to those who would recognise it as such. Speak as politicians do basically. And speaking of politicians, the Conservative Party treasurer, Peter Cruddas, caught on camera offering clearly illegal access to cabinet policy for party donations has not been prosecuted. His defence was ‘an error of judgement’, and he was stone cold sober! So if an experienced middle-aged person in a position of power can be forgiven for an illegal error of judgment surely a twenty one year old drunken student can. But no. Our social media that so evidently connects us all is connecting us all in the manner of a flock of emotional sheep running this way and that from one knee jerk reaction to another with no deeper consideration than “I’m offended by all things bad” and obviously “I’m for all things good.”

Martin Buber, You or Me?

I love ‘Outnumbered’, particularly Karen’s delivery of the potent logic of children. She showed their unabashed ego, their acute reasoning and curiosity and unconcern for the emotions of others wonderfully. It’s now a few years on and the young girl playing her has changed. She can’t quite pull off that magical trick. That’s no criticism just an observation. It’s this time of year the young highland cattle at the farm are separated from their mothers and brought into their own enclosure just like the first year of primary school. They’re delightfully unsure, curious and playful, and it only takes a few short months for them to find themselves and develop their own place in that new society. For me it defines a process of brain development where something essential, I’ll call it ego, is added to by a block of computational cognition of the self/other relationship. Karen has lost her clearly delineated ego for something much more complex.  Now earlier this glorious March morning I noticed a cat some 30 feet up a tree at the bottom of our garden. It was stuck poor thing and may be starving, should I try to rescue it? Was the way it swished its tail a sign of distress? Should I ask at doors if people have a grey cat that’s gone missing? I decided to wait and see. Later it had gone so I imagined it had summonsed up its last vestiges of bravery and, weak limbed, clambered down and joyfully regained the ground. I told Mothermouse who said she’d seen it jump down casual as you like. So there you have it. Young Karen would have said, “Why is that cat up a tree?” and maybe the slightly older Karen would have pestered her dad to try to save it. As in ‘Mice do Theatre’ she now has a long journey back to where she started. It may take some time.

SportRelief.

Some 68 years ago my parents had one child to give me the best opportunity in life from their limited finances. That or my emerging presence made them change their mind. They weren’t poor or rich either. In general developed countries have a third less children than the third world. It’s also reasonable to say that human over population is making unsustainable demands on our planet, mostly by us the 20% using 80%. The demands of a poor African family are miniscule compared with mine. So Sport Relief asks for our sympathy to redistribute our wealth to that African family on the basis every child should live and have what we have, or at least a little more. If our efforts are successful more African babies will survive to grow the population and have education, which they will absorb ravenously. In comparison our younger generation often see it as unnecessary and will join our labour market when it’s already over priced in the world market. In the last twenty years the only people who can afford to pay our labour rates is us, which is why we have been reduced to service industries serving ourselves, and why graduates work in Tescos. In the long term our life style is just as unsustainable as those African children, and when they come to fruition as a highly motivated and educated work force the boot will be on the other foot. Already Portuguese youngsters are moving to Mozambique to find opportunities because there are none at home. So in sustaining those poor African families we are fuelling the expansion of our already over populated planet and offering them the opportunities of our youth. Of course it would be callus of me to refuse them help but it would be equally callus of me to harm the planet and the future of my sons and their children. It’s not the easy emotional decision it appears to be. 

Mice Do Theatre.

I’m hoping to do a talk on Clowning in Counselling; in itself a triumph of arrogance over experience, but theatre, clowning and counselling are all about how we strut our stage in an effort to make our chosen role more authentic. This last weekend I did a training in Playback Theatre. It’s a form of theatre where ordinary mice play the stories of ordinary mice back to ordinary mice in a series of improvisations. No script, no director, no rehearsal, just step off a cliff and go. There are groups all over the world and we’ve been struggling this last year to set one up in Sheffield. People have come and gone and now we’re a settled team working on, well it’s hard to say. After giving it some thought over the morning’s washing up it’s about being really there. I some times think if on my deathbed I’ll think ‘if only I had been there.’ I’m not talking about the Taj Mahal or somewhere, just about being there, being present. It’s a deceptively difficult concept. I mean what of myself is present: The father, the toy inventor, the husband, money earner, the laconic urbane punctilious proud yet sardonically humorous well-dressed persona? Or me? And what is me without these cloths? Am I a man or a mouse? Well obviously…. And somehow in this long process of mousification I find myself more loved, a strangely unexpected benefit. And yet it’s obvious enough. We’re all involved in a constant process of reverse engineering each other, like ‘OK fine, but where exactly is this person really coming from?’ I mean it takes so much energy! And that’s just the beginning. We then have to create strategies to counteract the strategies other people are using to counteract ours. It would make Deep Blue go limp at the AI thought of it. So that’s what we’re working on, mousification. It’s a technical term. Anyway the weekend was delightful and as we stood in a circle at the end I was me. I lifted my T-shirt and proudly announced to everyone, “This is my tummy.”

No Ads for Me.

TV ads always feature beautiful kids. Whether they’re eating fish fingers or playing muddy football they’re always at the centre of an adoring mummy and daddy family, except when the daddy’s deceased and should have, and luckily did, purchase life insurance. All mothers, blissfully free of any form of harassment, glide about their immaculate kitchens as their lazy but affable hubbies watch TV. Only alcohol swigging teenagers are allowed a little mess. Men crave female lust and all Lawyers4You are 38, serious and suited where as bankers are allowed a slight hint of humour. All double-glazing men would make horrendous neighbours and supermarket workers are so normal you wish you lived next to one. Anyone over 60 is busy planning for death while phone ads feature the young, the only ones of us who live such exciting lives that they need to spend lots of money telling other young people where they are. And then there’s Bingo. Bingo ads feature lard arses that are so happy at winning ten pounds they never stop oscillating their gargantuan weight with delight. Obviously Bingo people have an enormously good time before they peg out with heart failure from alcohol poisoning. It seem no products are aimed at me, a happy, normal, highly sexually attractive 68 year old.