//reviews //discourse //art
Summer 2014
On Kawara, Jan. 2, 1933 - Jul. 10, 2014
welcome to the second issue of
BLEAK BLEAK BLEAK a place for debate. edited by Alice Seville & Emily Watkins, with guest editor, Gary Zhexi Zhang. many thanks to our contributors: Ëpha J. Roe, Sasha Silberman-Hanks, Alex Foley, Zan Ko., Benedict Spence, Josh Kitto, Esme Armour, Hollie Pycroft, Ellen Davis-Walker, George Garthwaite, Alex Jenkins, Brendan Cleary, & Elissa Franken. If you would like to send us feedback or contribute, please e-mail bleakzine@gmail.com Inside cover, opposite page, and throughout: photographs from ‘The Waves of an Afternoon’, a series by Ëpha J. Roe. For more Ëpha, visit www.epharoe.com
COMMENT Hospitality Blues In Praise of Pederasty Gaza Rules Women Bishops & Modern Patriarchy NO ONE LIKES A HOMOPHOBE
Emily Watkins Zan Ko. Benedict Spence Josh Kitto Hollie Pycroft
FEATURE paintings
George Garthwaite
REVIEW ‘So It Goes’ Marina Abramović & Ed Atkins
Ellen Davis-Walker Gary Zhexi Zhang
illustration by Sasha Silberman-Hanks
FICTION ‘Fear of Flying’
Alex Jenkins
POETRY a selection two poems
Brendan Cleary Elissa Franken
HOSPITALITY BLUES
EMILY WATKINS
P
lenty has been written recently, from personal perspectives, on women’s experiences with “everyday sexism”. In many of these cases, it’s a question of attrition, a wearing-down by degrees, rather than the sharp shock of a physical assault or something even graver. Seeing as the power of these accounts lies in their volume, their multiplicity and their quotidian relentlessness, another voice is another voice and here’s mine. For efficiency’s sake, I’ll begin my own story a few weeks ago, when I got a summer job in a cafe. I won’t name the establishment - for all their faults, the management are pretty sweet, and I’m grateful for the
work. Also, there’s very little the owner/ staff can do to control their clientele, and only so much I can reasonably expect them to care - as I say, although the comments are constant, they’re pretty low level on the scale of objectification that elicits these things. Some of the comments are funny - a few days ago, a man came in to order a cup of tea for 80p and asked me if I’d like to come and live with him on his yacht. Now, I like yachts as much as the next girl, but this man was (forgive me for making assumptions) not the owner of one. I work in a real greasy spoon (and must note, emphatically, that class has nothing to do with this kind of attitude - I’ve had far worse in my waitressing career, often in Super Classy Joints). Anyway, it’s the sort of place where the tea
bag stays in the mug until the customer decides to take it out themselves half an hour later, with a little plastic spoon. It is not haute cuisine - in fact, its function on our high street seems to be to strike a balance between serving the cheapest meat possible, while incurring the least amount of food poisoning. It’s a dive, it’s a caf, and that’s part of what I like about it - one could accuse it of many things, but pretention is not one of them. So, unless this guy was an up’n’coming movie star, immersed in his method acting preparation for his part in Scorcese’s new project Sad, Sexually Aggressive Builders, and my (frankly astounding) beauty forced him to forget years of drama school training and principles, this guy did not have a yacht. Less amusing is the way groups of men sit together and dissect your body with their eyes and their conversation, all the while implicitly daring you to say something. Part of the real nastiness here is the power imbalance between customer and server - they know, they know I know, they know I know they know - that I absolutely cannot kick up a fuss, I can’t throw them out, I can’t tell them to shut up of fuck off or anything else I would do if they were approaching me on the street. They know, they know I know, they know I know they know, that the rudest I can be in return (and keep my job) is to not smile back or meet their gaze. Even that little act of defiance sometimes provokes a teasing “Ooooooo!” If I was really stringent, and responded how I’d like to, I’d have to refuse to serve every second or third male customer (and ban a whole lot of regulars). Although the jabs and jibes and come-ons begin to wash over you, I’m still always a little taken aback by them. I remember my mother telling me, when came I home crying at eleven, after the first such incident - construction workers I think, something about being just the right height (“For what?” I wondered; even though the details were lost on me as a child, I knew that they were something dirty,
something scary: it’s implicit in the tone and the swagger), that as soon as the barbs stop stinging - as soon as you get used to the comments and the yells and the thrusts and the explicit hand gestures and the car horns and the shouts and the pats and the pinches and the approaches and the wolf-whistles - they stop. Of course, most of it is water off a duck’s back. I can deal with “Baby” and “Sexy” and “Gorgeous”, I can even ignore being discussed, when the express intention of the discussion is my overhearing it. I can laugh off a whoop that comes when I bend over to pick something up off the floor, or to wipe a table. If I’ve had enough sleep, if I’m in a good mood, if the sun’s out and the cafe’s quiet, I can even retort something funny enough to put the guy back in his place without being explicitly confrontational. But then, my ability to let it all wash over me is troubling, isn’t it? I don’t think I want to get used to it, as my mother predicts I will. I decided recently to talk back, shout back, to street harassers. I’ve learnt the hard way that this is not necessarily safe in all situations; please don’t read this and resolve to tell silent men following you in cars, as you walk home alone in the dark, to go fuck themselves - it’s just not worth what might happen, no matter how much they need to hear it. But (and perhaps this is for an article all of its own) you’d be amazed how floored other men are when you ask them to repeat the propositions they just muttered in your ear, loud enough for everyone else in the lift or the bus to hear it too. Even if they don’t learn anything, it’s massively satisfying to stop being silent and unsettled, and claim the right to humiliate someone who’s just humiliated you. illustration by Alex Foley
Zan Ko. ‘When the lover is able to contribute towards wisdom and excellence, and the beloved is anxious to improve his education and knowledge in general, then and then only is it honourable for a boy to yield to his lover.’
A
Pausinias’ speech, Plato’s Symposium
few weeks ago, a professor whose lectures I had attended for a while asked me if I wanted to meet for coffee. Always keen to ventilate politics with politics professors, I happily agreed. After all, to find an interlocutor beyond the flock of angst-ridden, well-dressed twenty-somethings is rare when you are one of them. But ’coffee’ turned into ‘wine’, a ‘5pm meeting’ became ‘9 o’clock at the pub’, and when he asked me twenty minutes in about my relationship with my father - apparently he had only skimmed the introduction of Seduction for Beginners: After Freud (1921) - it slowly dawned on me that he wasn’t chatting to a student, or a friend, but a woman. If he had anything, it was the potential to be a wise and slightly ridiculous older lover; your Uncle Monty, or even Hector. He bore none of the hallmarks of a Colin Firth, or an Al Pacino; his was sartorially plain, ever-so-slight-
ly too ‘American’, and his movements expressed neither charm, intellectual fragility, nor masculine prowess. All in all, I was a little insulted that he even considered himself an apt seducer for a twenty-three year old. It turned out that he thought I was a twenty-eight year old French Erasmus student, who would leave these shores by the end of the semester (which was fast approaching). He chided me for buying him a drink because “no woman in France would do that”, upon which I ordered him another gin & tonic, to prove that I was, for one thing, not ‘French’, and moreover, unwilling to toe the social dogma he apparently believed in but to which he was evidently unable to adhere. (For had he wanted to impress me with financial capital in the “old-fashioned way”, he wasn’t making a very convincing show of it.) After the ‘father’ inquiry gained him little traction (for my part, I failed to offer any divulgences of anorexia, loneliness or depression), and an inelegant probe at my amorous vita offered little useful traumata, he made what may have been an attempt to save himself. A last-ditch appeal to youth, perhaps; he mentioned that his favourite drug was cocaine, and weaved a rather ineloquent story featuring lines of coke, the Smashing Pumpkins, girls(!), and even a motorbike. And so there I was, left in the pub with a plain, teenaged boy in the sagging body of a fifty-something year old man. Rant over; message: look at this miserable creature, yet another flabby gingerbread man pressed from the ever-inflating dough of “patriarchy”. Feminists of the world, unite! Or else, cue a backhanded, red-pill feminine-empathetic apology for the sad state of masculinity, maybe a nostalgic lament for the extinct ‘alpha-Man’… However, what if one were to disregard that time-less dichotomy between those penisblessed, and those cursed with ovaries - only for a moment - to examine a different power relationship? THE GENERATIONAL CONFLICT That eerie little infanta of Spain with her crinoline, accentuating her latent fertility, now isn’t that fucked up? Strapping a little girl into the bind of sexual difference before her first moon has come, before the earliest sign of
reproductive potential? And little Louis XIV, whose governess taught him how to masturbate long before his time, at some stage between his early strategy schooling and his first fencing lessons? Now then, what about those eerie, weary fifty-something ladies, strutting in shoulderless dresses up the holy steps to accept their Golden Globes? What about those sixty-year old marketing executives with their made-to-look-worn 200€ Converse? Now isn’t that ever so slightly fucked up too? In a society in which precious youth remains the universal currency of erotic capital, where being angst-ridden, cocaine-curious and in love is its non-plus-ultra. Where the only change that comes with age is that the old are “uglier”? - but that won’t stop them trying… According to Sloterdijk, capitalism needs a generational conflict; without a juvenescent market, there’s no new demand - progress is only possible when one generation inevitably cannot satisfy the demands of the next. The Summer of Love and the crusaders of ’68 liberated youth and sexuality from the shackles of bourgeois, antiquated notions of decency represented by their forebears. Forty years on, sexuality and youth has become the bitch of capitalism, and the subversive power it once might have had is the stuff of legends.
he did not pass on a single piece of interesting information, no joke hinted at the grasp of societal relations that one might expect from a professor of politics, no chime of recognition sparked in his eyes at anything I threw on the table in an attempt at stimulating a conversation so utterly dull - in short, he completely refused to further reason and virtue, or to pass on wisdom; he was entirely useless for making his willing young erastessa any wiser. Who would deny that there is an erotic component to all great conversation, or that it is precisely erotic tension that produces good social intercourse? Lacan famously addressed his students with the words “In speaking to you, I am fucking you”; you’d end up pregnant with some interesting ideas. (Alas, no intellectual offspring would ever be fathered by the discursively impotent Prof.) Just like the word ‘pornography, ‘pederasty’ only properly attained its sexual meaning in the 19th century.
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR PEDERASTY ‘...as they say, a lover is the best friend a boy will ever have.’
Plato’s Phaedrus
Consider the Greek approach to intergenerational love, the education and wisdom of the older lover, the youthful beauty of his charge ... Nietzsche was one late defender of the value of relationships between the erastes (“the beloved”: a boy who has hit puberty, and therein lies the difference between pederasty and paedophilia) and the eromenos, the lover. ‘Rarely have students been so attentive’. This professor has already lost on the two most crucial fronts of erotic warfare: beauty or charm, and a talent for exploiting weaknesses. It would have made sense, then, to use his intellect and knowledge. Yet (despite the fact that he’d taught at various high-brow institutions in the States and Europe - he didn’t fail to mention “Harvard”… thrice, if I remember correctly)
BUT IT’S NOT ABOUT PORNOGRAPHY ‘I had affairs with a few girls of my own age, and they taught me that no girl, however intelligent and warm-hearted, can possibly know or feel half as much at twenty as she will at thirty-five.’ In Praise of Older Women, Stephen Vizinczey Stephen Vizinczey’s autobiographical bildungsroman (subtitle: the amorous recollections of Andràs Vajda) waxes lyrical on the virtues of experience, as well as of youth, ‘- and the connection between the two is my proposition.’ On a less romantic note, in the face of recent developments such as the rise of websites such as sugardaddy.org (which delightfully links lonely ‘sugardaddies’ with enterprising ‘sugarbabes’), there’s a refreshing rejection of the necessity of love in sexual relationships, Just think! A contractual intellectual relationship, analogous to the mechanics of the sugardaddy/sugarbabe dynamic, could have provided the gentleman Professor with a comfortable blueprint for his conquest; (that is, were he to present himself as worldly, experienced, and not uncharming; fine potential for a learned mentor). And yet he chose to talk about drugs and sport, as if he were the boy.
Gaza Rule
BENE
es
EDICT SPENCE
A
quick skim of his work, or the internet if you’re in a rush, produces these pearls of wisdom from George Orwell on the subject of association football: “The lovers of football are large, boisterous, nobby boys who are good at knocking down and trampling on slightly smaller boys.” Orwell was, as you can imagine, no great aficionado of the ‘beautiful game’, and managed to come up with many more disparaging sentences on the topic. It was through no great insight into the mechanisms of football and its culture that he did so; merely, as is so often the case, that at school he was a delicate boy who grew to detest this particular sport because the curriculum required he play it. A separate observation he made was that: “…every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.” This is something the uninitiated can spot in today’s press with every match report; the Spanish who are ‘boring’ and ‘slow’, the German are ‘ruthless’ and play with ‘organised efficiency’, and the Italians who are ‘cynical’ and ‘defensive’. Between them they have won nine World Cups to England’s solitary success, and by virtue of their different approaches to good, old fashioned 4-4-2 and ‘long ball’, these nations’ triumphs are considered just a little unsporting by the Great British public. Football is a world in which the tribalism of another era is given a platform; where chauvinism and partisanship, from the armchair to the terrace, rear their heads with unbridled energy. It is appalling and enthralling to those who do not care for it in equal measure. It is not uncommon, during the summer months when the league winds down, for supporters to experience mild bouts of depression, as
they search desperately for somewhere else to aim their passion. Try as one might, golf just does not cut it. Not this summer, however. This summer it has been near impossible to escape the pageantry and pomp of the World Cup. The euphoria of the Brazilian public whilst watching Neymar propel them through the early rounds, and the subsequent agony at the images of his stricken body stretchered from the field after breaking his back. The horror of those same fans as their side slumped to a record defeat to Germany in the semi-final. The wave of fury aimed at the player responsible, the Colombian Juan Zuniga, who subsequently received death threats for his tackle. The hostile, blind nature of tribalism also made itself apparent when the Uruguayan Luis Suarez bit an Italian opponent in a group game; despite the plethora of evidence arranged against him, as one a whole nation rose to his defence. When football occurs, all sense of proportion ceases; the slightest misdemeanour by a player has the potential to be an outrage, but can be smoothed over as long as they perform on the pitch. As one observer said of Cristiano Ronaldo’s turbulent time at Manchester United ‘it was a rocky marriage, but the sex was great.’
T
he most shocking story of the summer to concern football, however, did not come from the World Cup. It didn’t come from the Premier League or Spain or Italy. It didn’t even happen on the transfer market. Instead, it happened on a Mediterranean beach during a small game played out by a group of ten year olds. There is nothing unusual about this scenario. It must be a fairly common sight throughout the Mediterranean to see boys playing beach football. What makes this the most shocking story of the summer is that whilst playing football in broad daylight, on a beach, these boys were targeted and hit, deliberately, by an Israeli shell.
Orwell has another, more unfortunate line concerning football, this time focusing on the issues of Gaza: “If you want to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at the moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs…” If only we were in a position to stage such a match. It seems a rather far-fetched idea that we will ever see the tie played out while Israel is bombing the Palestinians at youth team level; tactics that just don’t seem fair. In Judea at the moment, large boisterous boys are repeatedly knocking down and trampling on smaller ones. The tribalism there isn’t lived out on the terraces or the pitch. It manifests itself through violent nationalism, through military incursions, suicide bombs, rockets, embargoes and apartheid, where the language of both sides babbles the rhetoric of holy war, racism and patriotism. Israel defended shelling the beach. It regretted, it said, the killing of civilians, but asserted its right to defend itself in the face of terrorism. As if the ball could have been a sea mine. Hamas and its sympathisers, meanwhile, hailed the dead boys as martyrs in the fight against Israel. As if emulating Maradona on the beach is a facet of Jihad against The West. I never realised when I was eight, weaving between other boys in my replica Italy kit, that I was striking a blow against Zionism; if I had, I might at least have worn a Germany shirt to wind people up. In Scotland, they look at the English enviously, and try to emulate grassroots policies to improve the quality of their football. In England, they look to Spain to do the same. In Gaza, they look at the charred patch of earth where they once had grass, or where they think they once had grass as no one can honestly remember, and sigh wistfully as play is held up by a tank trundling through it. That’s football, ‘Gaza Rules’. The elected government, Hamas, doesn’t really ‘do’
youth sport programs; it’s a bit busy blowing all its money on rockets. Rockets they know will kill and maim few, but that will give Israel all the excuses it needs to rain God’s own thunder upon this troubled land. Even if Hamas did fork out for a couple of astroturf pitches as a sign of goodwill to its public, it wouldn’t be the best idea to congregate in such an obvious open space, especially with Israel’s ‘shoot first, deny questions later’ approach to urban pacification. Perhaps a better token of goodwill would be to invest in some bomb shelters for its people, but Hamas doesn’t really do that either, as human shields lose some of their value if safely encased in concrete bunkers.
E
nough, frankly, has been said on the Israeli-Arab conflicts of recent years without the need for my opinion; I have no interest in persuading you how one side is justified in its actions against the other. Both sides hate each other and it’s not difficult to understand why, nor is it difficult to see that both sides have cause and are in the wrong. What I’d like you to consider is this. In 2014 the World Cup, the most celebrated international football tournament, was played out in Brazil. Palestine didn’t compete, not because they didn’t qualify, but because they aren’t allowed to take part. Their nation does not officially exist. Palestinian boys will never get to see their national team, their players, their idols, play at the World Cup. In fact, they will never have any professional players to speak of. There will be no stereotyping of Palestine in the English press for their kamikaze defending or set-piece play. Ironically, these boys may never experience the brutal side of football, the violence, the spite and the bitterness, the ‘knocking down and trampling’, because their world mimics these aspects of the game so utterly that it is too violent a world to accommodate games. The sad thing is, though, that with these negatives, Palestine’s children must also give up the conversely pure, unsullied experience
that football gives; the emotional release, the ecstasy and joy, the endorphins sport brings us all, the moments that turn people on to football in the first place. That last ditch tackle. That impudent trick, practiced for hours after watching it on television, executed to perfection and to the acclaim of all on the pitch. That last minute goal, and the pride taken in all of the above, and the memories. The happy memories they will forever be denied. Orwell’s quotes aren’t necessarily right about football, but if we take his view of it as the most accurate portrayal, they do convey well the links between the sport and the ways of the real world. So one more that, sadly, does real justice to the history of the Holy Land: “Football has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” In Gaza Rules, the shooting is left in. photograph by Alice Seville
Women Bishops &
Modern Patriarchy JOSH KITTO
T
he General Synod’s vote last week to allow women bishops has broader significance beyond the Church of England. It’s not simply about the Church ‘catching up’ to secular institutions in allowing women leaders: there are broader questions about patriarchy in general and the British constitution. Questions about the CofE’s role in public life can only be coherently engaged with if this broader context is appreciated. The famously complex legislative process requiring two-thirds approval in each of the Synod’s three houses stalled the approval of women bishops. But the principle of women bishops was agreed in 2006: the debate has concerned the timetabling of implementation, trying to accommodate the Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical dioceses that oppose women bishops. The typically Anglican compromise of ensuring legislative protection to this minority may have threatened the Church’s long-term stability. The complexities of this process mean it is unhelpful to suggest this is a question of secular modernity vs. religious conservatism. While the appointment of 5 women Cabinet ministers out of 24 is described as “historic” 96 years after women first entered Parliament, 32% of CofE clergy are women despite only allowing women deacons in 1987 and women priests in 1994. Admittedly this relies on women as part-time workers rather than full-time clergy, reflecting gendered divisions of labour in secular institutions. But women priesthood was the real revolution
making the vote last Monday inevitable. Feminist pressure convinced the CofE – ‘The Tory Party At Prayer’ – to accept this change. Similarly while opposing same-sex marriage for the sake of Anglican unity now, political realities will ensure the CofE eventually recognises same-sex marriages. The CofE is ultimately a political institution. As with the Catholic Church they are concerned less with women bishops theoretically than the threat posed to bureaucracy and hierarchy in the Church in reality, that married priests or even contraception do not – it involves unqualified men giving up their roles. Though the CofE prioritises short-term Anglican unity above all else, it is not overtly interested in reactionary moralising. They aim to reflect a public morality rather than inner spirituality or abstract evangelical morality. It is effectively already disestablished but seeks to be a force in maintaining democratic balance. However this balance is no longer the holy trinity of British conservatism of maintaining social hierarchy – ‘Flag, Queen and Church’ (in addition to the bishops there is a Queen on the board as well). Though Anglicans still generally vote Tory and Catholic voters overwhelmingly vote Labour, they are also more likely than non-Church attenders to oppose welfare cuts. Partly this is because the bedroom tax is understood as destroying families and communities. But more importantly for the Church, reversing the explosion of food banks or payday loans for example is believed to be of greater importance in
maintaining public morality than preventing gay marriage. Other than the issue of Europe, the Church provides the only challenge to establishment consensus. This is seen in a physical sense with the Occupy St. Paul’s camp forcing the Church to become the leading establishment voice for financial reform. Disability campaigners are using their protest at Westminster Abbey to pressure the Church into taking a similar stance on cuts to the Independent Living Fund. Even some republican campaigners who support disestablishing the CofE to “break” the monarchy’s legitimacy have simultaneously advocated using the church as a ‘moral’ voice to advance their cause. The Tories realise their foundations of ‘Flag, Queen and Church’ are threatened more by this kind of split than their implementation of gay marriage – a Yes vote for Scottish independence and a Church beyond their control threatens to completely unravel their entire basis for existing. This is why David Cameron is attempting to use evangelical Christianity to solidify a Tory base in long-term decline. There are broader flashpoints between the right and the Church. When Rowan Williams – then Archbishop of Canterbury – advocated in 2008 for sharia family courts that operated under UK law, it provoked hysteria on the right. In a climate where halal meat and the niqab are inconsistently condemned, misinformation about Dr. Williams’ proposal proliferated. Dr. Williams was talking more about how Muslims should be incorporated as UK citizens despite having a different relationship with the state than Anglicans do – sharia courts could exist as Jewish Beth Din courts do under UK law. What Dr. Williams spoke of was neither religion nor tradition for its own sake, but a more democratic balance – fundamentally, the CofE’s conception of its role is no longer about underlining a conservative hierarchy. A largely secular left often sees the CofE merely as a parochial aberration. But on
everything from education to reproductive justice, there needs to be a clearer understanding of the CofE’s role in the broader political context. Anglican identity still packs a great deal of political meaning – even though the Tory right is increasingly amenable to Anglo-Catholics after the CofE allowed women priests, the influx of Polish and African immigrants to the UK Catholic Church may lead to an anti-Catholic backlash at some point. Ironically a lot of atheist attitudes deny reality i.e. the political and social circumstances as they currently exist. There is a tendency – as exists in the left – to blame people for not sticking to theory, to pretend all religious belief is ‘false consciousness’. Atheist movements don’t consider their own failures to tackle misogyny, or engage with self-identified women’s realities in how their beliefs relate to broader economic and security concerns. Women’s rights shouldn’t be narrowly conceived as solely concerning the appointment of women bishops and cabinet ministers. There should however be more constructive engagement with the Church. A more democratic, disestablished church may better handle cover-ups of child abuse, and the greater democracy in the non-established Church of Scotland has encouraged a more literate citizenry and political culture (strikingly having no bishops). But disestablishment would not inherently unleash a wave of radicalism. The appointment of women bishops is not simply a question of whether the CofE is now less parochial and more legitimate for the 21st century – the CofE’s more complex role as a check on the British establishment needs to be engaged with. It requires coalition building on welfare, constitutional reform, Islamophobia, and – most crucially – a more complex understanding of patriarchy. Josh blogs at http://cromulentjosh.wordpress.com preceding photograph by Ëpha Roe
NO ONE LIKES A HOMOPHOBE Hollie Pycroft
marbling by Esme Armour et al.
O
n the 21st of July, US President Obama signed an historic executive order, bypassing Congress, prohibiting businesses with federal contracts from discriminating against employees or potential employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. This extends the provisions that already exist, protecting employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It sounds like a relatively small and innocuous step. This, however, applies to 28 million workers - or one fifth of the American workplace - as well as providing a vital stepping-stone in the path to getting the Employee Non-Discrimination Act passed. That long-stalled piece of legislation that would prohibit such discrimination in all workplaces. The reaction to this executive order has been characteristically magnificent. For years, the fight for LGBT rights in the land of the free, home of the brave has been fraught with difficulties. On both sides (although, one side more than the other) religious zeal impassions campaigners. A smaller team of religious groups argues that scriptural doctrine must not be used to discriminate and/or hate. A much wealthier, much more powerful group argues, well, the exact opposite. A blog post by Matt Barber, a Christian conservative columnist (and ex-professional boxer) went viral following the news of the executive order. Having heard it mentioned across twitter and in other blogs, I tentatively loaded up the page, fully expecting to roll my eyes and sigh. What I saw, though, was far more shocking and far more worrying. If Barber’s blog post is in any way indicative of current conservative thought in America (and I believe, to some extent, it is) then the LGBT community and its supporters may need to work a lot harder. The page opens with a civil rights-era photo of three black people, pressed against a wall while being hosed with a water cannon. Superimposed over it is a rainbow-coloured filter. Combine that with the title ‘The Coming Christian Revolt’, and I knew I was in for a ride.
The blog doesn’t just read like the inane preachings of an out-and-out lunatic – it feels like something Barber thoroughly relished, and really enjoyed writing. And that doesn’t surprise me. The whimsical metaphors and biblical comparisons read like a rather well written work of fiction, a narrative constructed in Barber’s mind that provide entertainment and distraction from the mundanities of everyday life. That is, I think, exactly what it is for most peddlers of the ‘War On Religion’ idea. A fun way for rich, powerful Christians (Barber is a high-profile lawyer and columnist) to feel persecuted and victimised like Jesus himself. Of course, were it not for the real victims being created, such lunacy would be relatively harmless. It’s not. “From behind a smoking sniper rifle high atop his ivory tower peers the secular “progressive.” He surveys his many victims, strewn across the American landscape below and mockingly sneers, “War on Christianity? What war on Christianity?” These are the opening words of Barber’s blog post, and it doesn’t get any less unhinged. Referring continually to non-conservatives as ‘Pagans’, he sketches out his narrative of persecution. Scandalously quoting Martin Luther King Jr., he hopes to paint his desire to discriminate against others as entirely righteous. The efforts to stop such discrimination are attacks on par with the racial abuse others have suffered [at the hands of white, powerful religious men such as himself]: “Indeed, if, in the spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we, his fellow Christian travelers, must again face the water hoses, then face them we shall.” Of course, it’s laughable. Of course, it’s extreme, and not necessarily representative of conservative Christians at large. But at the root of the argument is a deep-seated fear that LGBT rights are going to thoroughly destroy the lives of Americans. A fear that, by becoming full members of society, with equal rights to employment and marriage, the LGBT community will flood the nation with toxic heathenism. The post closes with this relatively shocking statement: “Christians must peacefully come together, lock arms and redouble our resistance to evil. Even when that evil is adorned with the presidential seal and signature.”
Hollie writes at http://www.twoleftfeetblog.co.uk
Although Barber stresses here that by ‘evil’ he is referring to Obama, I can’t help but feel gay people are included. Perhaps it is fundamentalist religion that leads people to this way of thinking – if you believe there is a literal devil, why not believe that some people are just ‘evil’? Why not look at the world through this lens, viewing only archaic ‘good’ or ‘evil’? In doing so, and thinking in this childish way, extreme conservative Christians fail to have any compassion for those who are different – they either love, or they hate. This vicious attitude towards ‘evil’ people is alarming, but the fact that this blog post could become so popular is even more alarming. I look forward to an (inevitable) future where people like Matt Barber are thought of as the oppressors, the discriminators and the extremists that they are. The tide, already, is turning in the US, where a majority of young people now believe LGBT people should receive entirely equal rights. For now, though, it is important to be aware that in the richest country in the world, it is still perfectly legal for private companies to fire employees for being gay. I’m inclined to believe that even when that changes, the fallout from the furious right wing will be explosive. Barber’s blog post is a drop in the ocean of anger that possesses some Americans. Equality happens not just in law, but in the mind.
Perhaps… one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly forever. Perhaps mournin has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation… the full resu of which one cannot know in advance. There is losing, as we know but there is also the transformative effect of loss, and this latter cannot be charted or planned. Judith Butler, ‘Violence, Mourning, Politics’
REVIEW, ‘SO IT GOES’ Ellen Davis-Walker
Perhaps… one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly forever. Perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation… the full result of which one cannot know in advance. There is losing, as we know, but there is also the transformative effect of loss, and this latter cannot be charted or planned.
Judith Butler, ‘Violence, Mourning, Politics’
I
s there something to be gained from grieving? Is it possible to salvage, even from the most unspeakable sadness, a sense of resolution: a means by which we can ultimately constitute a ‘grievable life’? This final question, originally posed by Butler in her 2004 work Precarious Life, is one that underpins On The Run’s debut show, ‘So It Goes’. Devised by the company’s founders Hannah Moss and David Ralfe, ‘So It Goes’ is a deeply personal exploration into Hannah’s own experience of losing her Father when she was 17. The story, like the above citation, is one of transformation; a means of chartering Hannah’s own journey as she learns to live with, and adapt to, the legacy of loss. A virtually silent piece that sees the actors communicate primarily through the medium of mime, movement and the ingenious trope
of a white board, ‘So It Goes’ provides an unfaltering portrayal of an individual grieving process. With no spoken word to grab our attention – and with Hannah and David playing all of the characters from Hannah’s own Mum to members of hospital staff who treated her Dad – the immediacy of individual movements and actions becomes all-consuming, palpable, at times painful. The play’s episodic structure provides a seamless passage between snippets of stories and anecdotes, leading us along with Hannah on her journey through memory and mourning. Although Hannah and David’s playful use of scenery and music gives the piece a tightly crafted feel, no individual scene remains confined to one emotion for long The play’s rapid shifts in pace and tone ensure that the narrative, like Hannah herself, is in a perpetual state of motion – constantly evolving in front of our eyes.
Perhaps the most powerful example of this is Hannah’s re-enactment of her university Fresher’s ball. We see her dance – her movements as carefree as they are expressive – and we watch as she mimes drinking cocktails and edging away from unwanted male attention on the dance floor. Slowly, gradually, as more drinks are handed to her and she receives an unwanted call from her Mum, the scene begins to transform. We see the increasingly laboured nature of Hannah’s dancing, the rising tempo of her stamping feet, and the raising of her arms as the rhythm of her drinking accelerates. We witness her desperate desire to push grief away: her determination to preclude any possibility of remembering. It is an insight that feels so identifiable, so painful, and so incredibly raw, that it makes for uncomfortable and difficult viewing.
It is a story of how to consolidate grief with a liveable life. It is a story that teaches us about the importance of making peace with the sorrow in our past, as we allow ourselves to open, so apprehensively and so hopefully, back out to the world.
Although ‘So It Goes’ is, in many ways, a play about grief, perhaps the show’s greatest strength is its refusal to lament grief ’s ‘transformative effect’. Hannah’s reflections on her Father’s diagnosis, illness and eventual death are beautiful and poignant, but never over-laboured. The darkness of illness and the shadow of death are never allowed to linger. Hannah’s determination to seek out the light – her blazing resolve to remember her Dad as he was when living – and her ability to inject humour into even the darkest of memories – all this testifies to the extent of her own transformation. This is illustrated particularly beautifully in the penultimate scene, where, in her own words, Hannah ‘gets the chance to say goodbye.’ She does not linger on regrets, and she does not dwell on negativities. Literally effacing an ‘I thought’ and an ‘I wish…’ from her ever-present whiteboard, she replaces them instead with the one message that really matters to her: ‘Bye Dad.’
Image Rights: Stage production image, approved by Hannah Moss. Photography by Richard Davenport Above image © On the Run.
Perhaps, then, ‘So It Goes’ should not be seen as a direct answer to Butler’s original question, for Hannah’s is not the story of a grievable life. In choosing hope and embracing transformation – in bravely standing on the edge of Holkham Beach and staring out into an ‘uncharted and unplanned’ future as the stage lights go down – Hannah’s story is one of reconciliation.
‘So It Goes’ will be showing at the Edinburgh Fringe (Venue 61) from the 31 July to 24 August (not 12th).
For more information on On The Run, visit www.ontheruntheatre.co.uk
George Garthwaite is a painter of pictures...
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FEAR OF FLYING Alex Jenkins
A
s he stepped through the brick toothed hole that just yesterday had been his bedroom wall, he was elated. He looked around at the broken buildings, and onwards to the fires breaking out all over the city, turning it into a great birthday cake. Corpses littered the street. Stepping over them he walked down to the corner shop from
which he bought his regular morning papers and can of ginger beer. The cheery blue sign, previously emblazoned ‘ARFAN’S CONVENIENCE’, was gone. Half of it was embedded in a car bonnet across the street. Skipping into the shop over the remnants of the window, he grabbed his drink from the fridge, heading through force of habit to the counter, where he found the other half of Arfan’s sign, which had actually landed in the man himself. Slumped over the counter, he decided Arfan looked rather like a stegosaurus, with the fine addition of a blue metal fin, dotted a complimentary blood red, protruding from his spine. It was nice to have some element of routine he thought, sipping his drink, but it was a shame the shop had been hit; the lack of electricity meant his can wasn’t cold. As he left the shop strolling and sipping, he closed his eyes for a few seconds, letting the taste of the drink flow through his mouth. The bubbles worked their way up his nose to meet the sickly fruit rot scent of the corpses, harmonising in turn with the bleating wails of an ownerless car’s alarm, waiting for someone to take it to work. No commuters today obviously, not even him. His work of course, was done. People, when they had been alive, always doubted the idea that he could be an anarchist. If he mentioned it to anyone they would look up and down at his stained tie or slightly too-small nose, their eyebrows would rise, soon followed by an excuse to return to their cubicle. Even Mr. Arfan knew, despite the clockwork nature of visits to his store; he had told Mr Arfan that he burned The Sun. The Times and Guardian too, if he had enough change in his pocket. He bought them, took them home and burnt them without reading them. He imagined the headlines that would have run today, if they were still being printed: ‘APOCALYPSE COMES – PANIC AND RUN AROUND’. People would probably still skip to page three. He sat down on a broken, smoke scented sofa that had fallen from one of the many floors of the crumbling tower block beside him. The braver people at work would, those who stopped to listen, had asked him if he was planning to put on a Guy Fawkes mask and sneak under the Houses Of Parliament. No imagination for the large scale, these people. He remembered when he had still lived with his parents, his father’s little sigh whenever he read the latest political scandal headline. A sigh, the most action he would ever take. But it wasn’t about government, shambolic mess that it was. The journalism probably irritated him more, the manner in which the inked information was taken as gospel. Although at least you could burn a newspaper, if not the government. Or so he had thought. None of it mattered now. He was happy, and they had the closest thing to freedom they could have achieved in their brainwashed state. Speaking for the first time of the day, he shouted “Hooray!” and threw his empty can at a dead traffic warden who was hanging off the pavement.
His stomach informed him that it was time for ice cream, so he walked the quiet half mile to the post office, clambering over a buckled food truck that smelt like meat on the verge of decay. It was worth the walk because they had Mint Feasts, his favourite. They made him feel like a little boy. It was sad that he would not be able to get ice cream again; without power it would soon all melt. Waves of ice cream would wash down the streets and he would watch from some rooftop as everything was swept away. It would be a joyous moment despite the tragic loss of frozen goods. Shaking the daydream away, he hopped over a badly parked scooter, stinking of heady petrol, and entered the dark post office, which was still fairly intact. It was odd that yesterday’s events hadn’t managed to destroy one post office, when the local council had managed to close down the other three in his end of the borough with such ease. He remembered the postal workers demanding they be transferred to the branch he stood in now. Of course it didn’t work; they thought they were being active but it was just another form of passivity, like a pointless prayer, as if asking harder would make a difference. The ginger beer had made itself known, and whilst relieving himself onto a rack of mother’s day cards he remembered his own mother, complaining to him that whenever he sent her a letter it was always horribly stained in the corner, from where he had spat on the queen. Perhaps, now that he had all the time in the world, it was time to enjoy living in the capital; there was a colourful stand of tourist-baiting leaflets right in front of him. Surely it was not too difficult to drive a scooter. Maybe he should head to Buckingham Palace. Although really, there were probably better places to go. He exited Buckingham Palace with a swing in his step, the thick taste of chocolate in his mouth and a new hat on his head. He had, of course, looked for the crown, but it was nowhere to be seen. The new choice of tall bearskin suited dark hair and a slightly portly frame. If a guard can’t even guard his headgear then it deserved to be stolen. As he stroked the fur above him he puzzled over why no-one else had survived; perhaps he’d done something right, or wrong. Next stop on the leaflet’s suggested route was parliament, could be amusing. He was glad to be back in silence, broken only by the low groans of failing architecture and the occasional carrion cry from far away birds. No more engine roar; the scooter had sadly run out of fuel, luckily he had not. Sugar, that’s what it was all about: anarchy, energy, revolution. Perhaps he was enlightened. Knowing things are never the same from moment to moment, people, places things, whatever, and that anyone who thought otherwise was kidding themselves. One man can press a button and shape the whole world around his finger. He didn’t need to look far for proof. All around him on his stroll buildings were going, their masonry falling in slow waterfalls, the pitter-patter of concrete chunks smashing the street. He was looking up, to where Big Ben stared with a hole through his face, claiming six o’clock forever. He was looking up, so he missed the road’s expression - impact cracked, finally giving up under the weight of trucks, dead bodies and a fat man in a large hat - sagging sadly. He was looking up as the road sighed and broke before him, his moving feet walking into thin air, like a cartoon from a childhood VHS. He fell.
Flying, as he plunged down, for the first time that day, he felt scared. Then nothing. He woke up in a room. His legs, previously so jaunty, were broken, shattered and crumbling. There was a door, not much else; sand was built up around the walls, although further up some disgusting flock wallpaper peeked through. Around him, sand and pieces of tarmac, high above him a gaping lack of road; a window to the vague sky. Too high above. He went through a few cycles of passing out and waking up, looking through the hole at the moon, passing out, waking and looking through as sand, the gradual reduction of buildings and bones, crept over the edge and down, hissing as it fell. He knew a phrase, all in the gutter but some of us looking at sand, something like that. After some number of cycles he eventually dragged himself to the door, which was a pleasant door, shining knob, good woodwork. A few cycles again and he was pressed up against it enough to turn the ornate handle and slouch slug-like into the next place. It was huge. It had lights, bright bright lights. Even once his eyes adjusted he still didn’t understand. Some way in front of him was a solid wooden bench, which faced the eagle. A golden eagle, atop a sceptre stand, head thrust forwards, wings backwards, the gilded feathers turning into wires which swooped upwards, left and right, becoming cables leading up to two monolithic structures on either side of the room which blinked with light and hummed noiselessly. Confusing. Where the hell was this, he wondered. Soon, he instead wondered if the bench was comfy; it turned out to be about as comfy as sitting with broken legs could be expected to be, creaking as his useless limbs swung limp off its edge. As he sat the eagle’s beak opened and it began to speak. The eagle spoke incessantly in its calm, genderless computer voice. Eventually he nicknamed it Peter, which seemed as good a name as any for a crazy talking sexless bird machine. It spoke names, nothing but names, people, forever, stating each one, pausing a second and moving on. Only the beak moved and it named so many people. At first he wished he could move properly and explore the odd chamber. After three minutes he concluded that there were no other doors, so began trying to work the salty sand out of his teeth. After three hours, the voice of the bird lulled him into fitful sleep. After three days hunger began to eat away at him. The vault felt like an hourglass, filling with sand whilst his senses filled with the rich oak of the bench and the poor smell of his body. His broken leg, his broken stomach and broken brain whispered and told him that if he was going to stay trapped here unable to eat then it was mightily important to listen to this list. Occasionally he recognised a name; he listened for people he knew, his parents, Lucy from work, Mr. Arfan. After about a week he did hear some Arfans, but he realised that he had no idea what his ex-cornershop guardian’s first name was. He waited and searched his tall hat for chocolate crumbs. He waited and searched the air for his own name. Day by day sand strolled through the door and surrounded him. The eagle spoke forever and he was waiting to hear his name. illustration by Gary Zhexi Zhang
CLEARY BRENDAN
On the Stairs 'Southern Man' blasting down from the attic
Burger Tuesday Bizarre coincidence our very first nearly date & this is Burger Tuesday.
& you're up there with Pauline or Whatshername?
Don’t talk to me about relish or offers on the blackboards or the juice of my youth.
but I'm curious about this sex thing so I hang about
Burger Tuesday again. Fancy that! & us here nearly kissing like back in the old days.
hoping to see Pauline cos I love her hair & her smile as well
Prestwick just passing through in uniform, chatting to folks, smiling, saying 'where am I?' to the Loch Ness monster & Glasgow tenements gleaming, rock n roll over all the trees & in the sky over planes & in the departure lounge you just dance forever.
illustrations by Gary Zhexi Zhang
ELISSA FRANKEN Heliotrope “Arriving too late… the wind swam against Them/ letters intercepting on the way” I too am in deep too wading too In Sensitive, Sincere. Twofold times too passionate Everything tinted amaranth tickled and licked pink. The bloody mouth swims in deeply read over bloodstone basins Ready? This is all a looming helio-trope anaphoric crypto crystal lines cannot avert the haemorrhaging of words yet still it will emerge pickle your lines as crinkled eggs, a string of veritable psychological peaches. Apart. Deliberate.
the eggshells block your ambulations. just strive to walk away not over
Commotion Sickness A rouge rage tips its bonnet in your general direction Are you killing me right now? Blood-lost-love-loss-lust Diana? the dear rear hind will never reason with your stag don’ts upfront. Garnet resin from the roadkill is not squirted to lubricate your auto-rodomontade after the chase, chased, chaste. Granted, ‘You’ mean as much to me as a red lorry painted viridian; the cherry red pick-ups are dubitle sulphuric, self assured reasonably dubitable “doo doo do nots” sang trapped inside a tin radio; canned laughing at her candour heavy and troublesome as traffic jammed under your doughnut nose, sincerity came and went, démodé as yesteryears’ acid rain jumping off the ridge, fuming by the wayside. what did you derail when you reached the decision to deride the old models of intimate collision? Exactly the sum of immeasurable hurts truncating your own bust, never mine. The she-shellac roof under which I anxiously ground no particulars rolled away down the interstate, leaving the stench of risibility well-rounded in your driver’s seat; that warm as leather severity corroded my cochlear, stretching it out for brute miles too loud and long in the end your On-The-Road inner state ran me ragged round the bend Must dash. Bored. illustrated by Emily Watkins