Even Hazel Blears is blogging and on twitter and probably on facebook and myspace (i haven't had time to check)... i think we are still at this immature stage on the web, i think i am caught up in it myself, where people are just signalling achievement - "i know what's happening and i am getting involved". It seems fast and crass and urgent: is it about being seen rather than taking part and making a difference? I am interested in how we can rise above the need to show off and to just get stuff done (or maybe we can get stuff done and show off later).
I am not sure this is connected: i was watching Julius Caesar (of all tv films!) there was a slave, Apollonius, who was about to be executed by the Roman Empire and then Julia, daughter of Caesar pleaded for him to be freed (Apollonius had been her teacher), and the wish was granted. When Julia goes to tell Apollonius that he has been pardoned he tells her 'thanks but i am staying here - freedom needs to be won not given - and i am looking for something else... '.
Julia and i are thinking the same thing - "what apollonius, what???" (great storytelling device - have the audience and a character asking the same question)... "what are you looking for apollonius???" and Apollonious replies '...dignity' and turns his back on her and walks back to his cell. Camera pans to Julia and she has a troubled look on her face. At this moment i am thinking - hmm - i must watch Manderlay again.
Something else that touched me and that uptil now i chose not to blog about because it felt like something real, something genuine... that shouldn't be sullied by internet chatter... last week i was invited along to a church event on an estate somewhere in Manchester - it was to find out what was going on for young people on the estate and whether something could be started up there, activities for young people. i just went along to listen and learn and hear people's stories - there were a handful of people and at the end - when people had signed up to how they could help out - the minister (who was dressed in shorts, t-shirt and slip-on trainers) asked us to close our eyes and pray, pray to help us make this happen, to put our thoughts and hopes in the lord to make it reality, to thank him for his love and for watching over us. Whether you believe in god or not it felt like something would happen, like it was being put out there. When i came out of the church i felt confused, pulled into a moment, and then i thought about my dad and how religion robbed him of the ability to communicate with me, or maybe i robbed myself of it, not wanting to read the bible quotes he kept directing me to in his letters, because i didn't want to be enslaved by religion like his ancestors had been.
Part of me wonders whether investing hope in some entity something you can't see or touch is a worthwhile thing to be doing, is it a distraction, an abrogation of responsibility? I do know that the one thing that kept my mum going, bringing up 4 kids as a single mum on very little money, was religion. Most of her own family turned their backs on her (possibly for marrying my dad who was black, possibly for other reasons) - this was in the 1960s. She worked whilst my father studied engineering at the University of East London, down the road from where we lived. My mum recently told me one day that nearly 40 years ago, 1971, she went to David Hockney's first exhibition on
show at the Whitechapel Gallery. Three oil paintings on canvas, the love paintings, were for sale at 60 pounds each. She thought how could she buy one when she only earned £48 a month, and what about my sister and my dad, how would they eat, pay the rent?
My mum was only prompted to tell me this story when a Hockney painting was recently up for sale - for five million pounds. I can spend time thinking about these exciting things… the beginning of our family – my mother, an outsider and her life in the east end of London, supporting her husband and baby, and me not yet born. I think about my mum looking at a picture painted by David Hockney. Getting into the moment of that – of my mother contemplating that painting and wanting it but not being able to afford it – and thoughts of the family infiltrating her mind. Getting close to the realness of that conflict. My mother in the gallery – what day of the week was it, was she alone – where was she going before and after the gallery trip?
When she told me this story i was like 'ohhhh mamamamma, our lives would have been so different - if you bought the painting'. 'Well, she said, laughing 'i thought about that and if i'd bought the painting, i would never have sold it'.
There is nothing to sum this up - but maybe there is a link between putting loads of thoughts and musings on the internet and sitting there, praying for god to make things happen... you know, putting stuff, longings, wants and needs out there in the hope that someone will respond and take action...
...and also a story is emerging, of a man, lets call him Lewis, who through crime earns loads of money and he invests the money in art at the expense of his family....
Art and 'culture' in the same way i love it and i hate it - it gives you hope, it makes you think, you feel alive, creative... and for some, like those who didn't come to the church meeting on the estate i visited recently, surely art that inspires or challenges has to connect to opportunity, has to cut through and replace the fear of being different and standing out, separating from the crowd?
...Back to the emerging story, maybe this guy, Lewis, buys art, art, art, picture after picture, because someone he admires told him its good for the soul (and will make him a whole lot more money) and he is waiting and hoping to feel something because he feels empty inside, beating men to a pulp and then going home to his wife and kids, but none of the art touches him, they are obscure, fragmented, abstract, until one day...
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