No secret, I hate SUVs. As a cyclist in London, I'm more and more often experiencing that near-death feeling at the business end of some chunk of over-heated metal driven by some over-cool yummy daddy or mummy - is it a BMW, an Audi, a Merc or one of the originals, the Range Rover series? - as they push their chrome-plated noses across the mini-roundabouts of South Kensington.
And then I think back to one of the dodgy heroes of my youth, the jazz and rock drummer Ginger Baker. And I think, fuck you Ginger - you helped kick off this whole SUV thing in 1971 by driving one of the first Range Rovers across the Sahara, on your way to the shrine of shrines for all jazz and rock drummers of the time - Fela Kuti's Shrine in Lagos, Nigeria.
So, swerving out of the way of one of these monsters, I had this thought. If you'd stayed back home, or gone by plane, Ginger, would London today be quite so clogged up with these inflated and unnecessary automobiles?
The new film, "Beware Mr Baker", is a wonderfully entertaining documentary about that strange period in London's musical history - late 50s through to 1970. Thanks to the producer/director/writer/narrator Jay Bulger's bravery, it was an unusually good film, revising and reviving ideas about these old rock idols, and yet never detracting from the skill and showmanship that made Baker such a natural star in the first place.
But he deals with other stars in that strange 1960s/70s constellation, as well. Oddly, Eric Clapton came out of the whole thing smelling only of the finest roses.
But Ginger! Oh dear! Now, everyone seems to agree he was a monster, a violent, selfish bully who also happened to be a drum genius. And a bit of a sad case, in his old age.
Well he surely was a great drummer, even though some of us found those solos a little overpowering. And at least 20 minutes too long. Unless it was live and we were there, moving.
I love drumming, and I love the way Mr Baker, etc, made us all think back to the origins of the rhythms of jazz, just as Miles Davis and a number of others did, in those days, the very early 1970s, that time of Tony Williams, Miles, Sly, James Brown, and the amazing wake-up call we were just beginning to get from Jamaica.
By 1971, when that veneer of fame was begining to wear a little thin, perhaps, Ginger decided to check out these roots in person. He would go to Nigeria. He would go in a large British vehicle built by that British establishment bastion, Rover. And the whole thing would be filmed by the BBC TV arts director of the moment, Tony Palmer.
The resulting film - Ginger in Africa - now seems like half a brilliant advertisement for Rover's brand new offering, the Range Rover, a gentrified version of their military/agricultural workhorse, the Land Rover – and half a fascinating pilgrimage of one our best jazz/rock musician's search for his rhythmic roots in West Africa.
I love this film. Watch it if you can. Or, if you can't find it, watch the new documentary - parts of Tony Palmer's original documentary seem to be in there. But pleae, if you live anywhere in the UK, apart from on a large farm, please don't buy a Range Rover or any other SUV. Unless, like Ginger, you are planning to drive it across the Channel, across Europe, across Algeria, across the Sahara Desert.
And then on to Lagos.
Spinning happily at thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions per minute, not wanting to stop
Thursday, 4 July 2013
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
When saying nothing is a crime
One of those awful moments of epiphany, but in a bad way - the moment the rose-tinted specs were suddenly ripped off your nose. Today, on the District Line, Earls Court Station, platform 2-3, Eastbound, at about 5.20 pm.
Two trains arrive at the same time, there's that interval of uncertainty where people are trying to decide which one to get onto as both go East. But one will leave a minute before the other.
I choose the emptier train, the one going, I think, to Upminster. I am followed into the carriage by three jovial middle-aged men, casually dressed, chatting in what seemed a good natured way about the vagaries of the tube system.
As we wait for the doors to close, the impression that these are three nice gentlemen is reinforced as they joke with people jumping onto the train. They look like three good dads on a day out, late 50s maybe, all a bit stocky, checked shirts and chinos and trainers, nothing unusual there, they're just a little bit noisy.
Yes, they are talking rather more determinedly, more pointedly, than you'd expect at this commuter time of day, as though they'd been drinking a little. But still good natured, cheery.
The doors close and then one of them says something in a way which - suddenly, decisively - transforms the atmosphere in that half-full carriage, and turns the solid contents of my bowels into water.
He says something so shocking I cannot remember the exact words, and he says it in such a way - in such a different, aggressive way to the way he had been speaking - that you know it is his intention that everyone in that carriage should hear him and understand his meaning.
He says, "Well, well, this carriage is almost all white."
As he says this I think, what does he mean? And I actually look up at the ceiling of the tube carriage and see that it is off-white but quite clean and think for about a millisecond that this must be what he means.
And then of course I realise that that is not what he means because his two mates are grinning and swivelling their heads around looking at the people in the carriage, and nodding, and I think I hear one of them say "Yeah not many scum here" or something to that effect, and looking around too I realise that indeed what he meant by almost all white was that there were no black people in the carriage.
But there were a couple of women who were already sensing something extreme and unpleasant in the air.
The train drags itself through Gloucester Road, and now every yard of its progress seems to take forever, as though their words had not only polluted the air, but made it heavier. I try not to listen.
I continue to read my Evening Standard, I fold over the page, and the man who spoke earlier looks very hard at the page I folded.
"I can't believe it", he said. "Look at that. That fucking scum. That fucking shit, and those other shits those scum, look at that, they're at the 02. At the O2. Can you believe it?"
As he says this he's trying quite hard to catch my eyes but I bury my face deeper into the newspaper. Already I know what he's referring to. The page I have folded away from me to face him has a quarter page ad for a benefit conceert at the O2 for the Stephen Lawrence foundation, with a stylised portrait of Lawrence superimposed onto a Union flag.
I feel that at exactly that moment everyone else in the carriage also realised we were witnessing a display of hard-core racist provocation.
Perhaps they feel safer in the "almost all white" carriage, but I don't think that is it.
It's clear they are saying these things in this new and completely frightening tone with the specific purpose of challenging anyone there to take them on. To challenge this utterly astonishing racism.
And to make it so that if you do not challenge them you are actively condoning what they are saying.
And no-one does challenge them. So they continue, and then one of them says, "Well perhaps we should quieten down becuase it looks like we're upsetting a few people here."
But still no-one says anything, there's that sort of stupid stretched skin smile on a few faces, heads down for most.
So this is my greatest shame for today. I imagined saying out loud, something, anything, just to show that I'd heard what they were saying and that it was not OK to say those things like that. I should have said something like "fuck you, you racist pigs, get back to your styes in the shit-filled fields of wherever you emerged from into this sad world, so much sadder thanks to your presence within it."
But I didn't say a word. I din't even give them a filthy look.
For pity's sake - in 2013 in London - why?
Pure cowardice. When I looked at them again I realised it. These were the same men - older, plumper, but the essentially the same men - as the thugs I'd last seen in the wallowing down the King's Road chanting racist obscenities as they went to their football match.
Here, they were committing a crime and we were all accessories. These men were testing the water, and they must have felt very satisfied at the result, even though they would really have loved a fight, the chance to put the boot in.
By not saying anything, I have strengthened racism in Britain in 2013, and I am ashamed of myself.
Two trains arrive at the same time, there's that interval of uncertainty where people are trying to decide which one to get onto as both go East. But one will leave a minute before the other.
I choose the emptier train, the one going, I think, to Upminster. I am followed into the carriage by three jovial middle-aged men, casually dressed, chatting in what seemed a good natured way about the vagaries of the tube system.
As we wait for the doors to close, the impression that these are three nice gentlemen is reinforced as they joke with people jumping onto the train. They look like three good dads on a day out, late 50s maybe, all a bit stocky, checked shirts and chinos and trainers, nothing unusual there, they're just a little bit noisy.
Yes, they are talking rather more determinedly, more pointedly, than you'd expect at this commuter time of day, as though they'd been drinking a little. But still good natured, cheery.
The doors close and then one of them says something in a way which - suddenly, decisively - transforms the atmosphere in that half-full carriage, and turns the solid contents of my bowels into water.
He says something so shocking I cannot remember the exact words, and he says it in such a way - in such a different, aggressive way to the way he had been speaking - that you know it is his intention that everyone in that carriage should hear him and understand his meaning.
He says, "Well, well, this carriage is almost all white."
As he says this I think, what does he mean? And I actually look up at the ceiling of the tube carriage and see that it is off-white but quite clean and think for about a millisecond that this must be what he means.
And then of course I realise that that is not what he means because his two mates are grinning and swivelling their heads around looking at the people in the carriage, and nodding, and I think I hear one of them say "Yeah not many scum here" or something to that effect, and looking around too I realise that indeed what he meant by almost all white was that there were no black people in the carriage.
But there were a couple of women who were already sensing something extreme and unpleasant in the air.
The train drags itself through Gloucester Road, and now every yard of its progress seems to take forever, as though their words had not only polluted the air, but made it heavier. I try not to listen.
I continue to read my Evening Standard, I fold over the page, and the man who spoke earlier looks very hard at the page I folded.
"I can't believe it", he said. "Look at that. That fucking scum. That fucking shit, and those other shits those scum, look at that, they're at the 02. At the O2. Can you believe it?"
As he says this he's trying quite hard to catch my eyes but I bury my face deeper into the newspaper. Already I know what he's referring to. The page I have folded away from me to face him has a quarter page ad for a benefit conceert at the O2 for the Stephen Lawrence foundation, with a stylised portrait of Lawrence superimposed onto a Union flag.
I feel that at exactly that moment everyone else in the carriage also realised we were witnessing a display of hard-core racist provocation.
Perhaps they feel safer in the "almost all white" carriage, but I don't think that is it.
It's clear they are saying these things in this new and completely frightening tone with the specific purpose of challenging anyone there to take them on. To challenge this utterly astonishing racism.
And to make it so that if you do not challenge them you are actively condoning what they are saying.
And no-one does challenge them. So they continue, and then one of them says, "Well perhaps we should quieten down becuase it looks like we're upsetting a few people here."
But still no-one says anything, there's that sort of stupid stretched skin smile on a few faces, heads down for most.
So this is my greatest shame for today. I imagined saying out loud, something, anything, just to show that I'd heard what they were saying and that it was not OK to say those things like that. I should have said something like "fuck you, you racist pigs, get back to your styes in the shit-filled fields of wherever you emerged from into this sad world, so much sadder thanks to your presence within it."
But I didn't say a word. I din't even give them a filthy look.
For pity's sake - in 2013 in London - why?
Pure cowardice. When I looked at them again I realised it. These were the same men - older, plumper, but the essentially the same men - as the thugs I'd last seen in the wallowing down the King's Road chanting racist obscenities as they went to their football match.
Here, they were committing a crime and we were all accessories. These men were testing the water, and they must have felt very satisfied at the result, even though they would really have loved a fight, the chance to put the boot in.
By not saying anything, I have strengthened racism in Britain in 2013, and I am ashamed of myself.
Thursday, 20 June 2013
A pox on your blaring horns!
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| Warning: this vehicle's horn can damage your eardrums. |
These fat cats in their bloated-people-carriers seem to have forgotten that is an offence to sound your horn other than in emergencies.
The police seem to have forgotten this too, although their helpful website, AskthePolice.uk,
spells it out:
"A horn should only be used when warning someone of danger, not to indicate your annoyance at a manner of driving.
A horn should not be sounded when stationary on a road at anytime, other than at times of danger due to another vehicle on or near the road.
A horn should not be used on a moving vehicle on a restricted road (basically a road that has street lights and a 30mph limit) between the times of 2330hrs and 0700hrs."
If only these rules were enforced in London's plumpest suburbs, where the residential streets are thickly populated with big fat shiny vanity-wagons, each packing a heart-stopping sound-blast with more wattage than the Rolling Stones had in Hyde Park in 1969 (it seems).
No, I wouldn't mind if all the car horns were 1960s style poops and honks and beeps.
But, as with engines and headlights, the power of these devices seems to have undergone a dreadful inflation. So often now a bladder-emptying, over-trebly, eardrum-piercing blast emanates from even the smallest, meekest and most modest looking of vehicles.
Of course as a hugely prejudiced anti-fat-cat cyclist (as well as fully piad-up motorist and pedestrian) I am most offended by the noisy, arrogant horns of the posh set in their hideous Range Rovers and Audis and BMWs and so on. These vast, shiny vehiclkes with their exaggerated comic-book angry face chrome grilles, they are caricature ugly. But how how can they be so noisy? The way they sit in stationary traffic, hitting the noise button, as though that will do any good.
All it does is make the rest of us highly likely to drive like lunatics to get away from them, or better still to switch off our engines, get out of our cars, find the sledgehammer in our car boots, walk calmy over to said Range Rover or Mercedes or BMW - the shiniest, biggest one of the lot - and make a large dent in the most sensitive crease of its obese body-panels.
Oh, sorry.
Back in the 70s I remember people used to pay extra for something called an "air horn". Is that what they use now, or are they some sort of fiendish digitally enhanced devices? Who knows. All I know is that there should be some sort of horn tax. And perhaps the chance to avoid that tax by paying heavily to buy a hooter-tone that precisely subverts the machismo of your motor.
In my ideal world, there would be an inverse law, so that the biggest, fastest, ugliest, most testoserone-packed cars would have to have the most ridiculously meek and mild and silly horn-sounds. One of those huge muscle-bound things - are they Humvees? - would, for example, be legally required to play a Pink and Perky number whenever the horn was sounded.
All Rolls Royce and Bentleys would have "Buddy, can you spare a dime" fitted as standard before being allowed out of the factory.
Most 4 x 4, SUV style wagons would have to choose between various British comedy actors' voices of the 1960s and 70s, especially the really camp and nasal ones: "OOOoooh, you are awful! ( but I like you)", "fancy yourself do you? "; "I say!" etc and so on.
I would have a reverse law for small, pretty cars. Genuine Fiat 500s, for example could have full-blast snatches of Pavarotti (or better still) versions of Nessun Dorma at twice the dciebels of anyone else. Just becaue they are lovely little cars with small...
A beautiful little Citroen 2CV could choose any chanson it eanted, and I wopuld npt object. It could even play Serge Gainsborough if it wanted, or Edith Piaf, or even Charles De Gaulle himself.
Smart Cars, I am afraid, would need to leanr some humility: I would have them utter only very basic sounds at their moment of need: "Doh!": "You what?", "Uhhhh?"
And Beetles? Will I be banned forever for suggesting that original VW Beetles might be allowed a little stridnet Wagner - Ride of the Valkyries, etc - but anything post 1999 would have to take a 5 second loop from certain Kraftwerk and Can tracks.
Which just leaves the middle market. What would be the ideal, the approrpriate hooter-tone for your Ford Focus, your Vauxhall Astra? It would have - in the spirit of this experiment - be something incredibly rare and exotic. The last cry of ecstasy from some endangered species, the call of the - what?
Sunday, 9 June 2013
Hey, Jude! Don't make us sad...
What a strange weekend in London. So many contrasts - beautiful warm sunshine on Saturday, icy wind from the east and overall cloud on Sunday. So many contrasts, and so many confrontations, as always in this curious patch of Thames-side mud. Huge dirty city-settlement, big rats abound. Little rats come out to play and are splattered, all over the streets.
We - us, me and you, the gutter-rats of this joke-metropolis – we call on some other, higher power (maybe who, or maybe what, the world president himself, Fela Kuti? Is he really dead? Bob Dylan? Yes, the old bastard really does need to come down and do some work at the grass roots.)
But probably the other Big Bob would be more likely to act in defence of these beautiful nether parts of a once hated building. It was his music, along with that of Big Youth and Prince Far-I, blasting out of a sound system, that attracted me and hundreds of others to this unnatural, perfect amphitheatre beneath the South Bank Centre.
So, one of the Bobs, please tell Jude Kelly that it's not a good idea to turn the undercroft of the Queen Elizabeth Hall (part of the South Bank Centre, which also includes Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery, BFI etc) into more coffee shops and restaurants.
Thank Bob that there's a really tough group of campaigners fighting to save this space for the people who appropriated and cultivated it, in the best traditions of the English squatting movement. Long Live Southbank are taking the great, good, publicly funded arts organisation to the courts - it's a bitter and really very sad battle, but i support them.
This whole area has played a huge part in the lives of millions of people, not just Londoners, and in any other circumstances I would be shouting at anyone trying to attack Jude Kelly and the organisation she heads. But this time, I just can't believe what is happening. There's no plainer example of a direct clash between the two definitions of culture - popular versus elite or corporate.
Skateboarding doens't appeal to me at all - when my son was hooked onto it, all I did was worry about the fractures. But the way they've transformed this space is something quite rare, at least in our proft and marketing-driven culture. Its more in the spirit of the Watts towers. Yes, it is on this level - a very fine example of a rare species - a real cultural space that has grown entirely out of the work of an almost invisible community. 20 years back this was an ignored space beneath a building that was loathed by architectural critics, neglected by its owners, and unnoticed or even feared by most of the public walking past.
Now it is the sort of spiritual home of the UK skater community, one of many loved places for this worldwide subculture.
But, largely because of its strategic position, across the Thames from Parliament, the Savoy etc, on the site of the 1950s Festival of Britain, they that run this world are always wanting to prettify this prime plot of north Lambeth. Luckily they usually fail to agree on a plan, or they run out of money. It almost seems that this weird amalgam of 1950s optimism and 1960s concrete brutalism has a last come into its own and won some place in the affection of the arts-spending segment of the tourist population.
So, they want to change it all again.
Jude Kelly, we've never until now heard anything bad said about you. You are a modern-day artsworld Jeanne D'Arc! You fought and fought for good theatre for the people of Yorkshire, good everything for the people of south London and all London and all the arts-loving world, you deserve your OBE, etc.
The Southbank Centre works so hard, it is almost painful to criticise an organisation that has so enriched lives - well, certainly my life, what with all those Robert Wyatt and Lee Scratch Perry curated Meltdowns, etc, ecc.
My god, I was 16 when the Hayward Gallery had an exhibition of Henry Cartier Bresson photos - this chnaged me and my life.
But - that article in the Evening Standard, 7 June 2013? You say these skateboarders should what?
Should "budge up"?
Into some space under Hungerford Bridge? Well, nothing against this Bridge, but - please excuse me - wouldn't it be more in keeping with rules of civility, etc, to build the new education and children's centres in this space "under Hungerford bridge"? After all, these kids will not remember a dearly-loved space 200m to the East.
Forget all my words, just think - if some great and revered artist, Leonardo say, or Banksy, had set up in the undercroft and painted these frescoes and a shrine had developed - would you butcher it in this way?
If the need to raise tons of money is really, really so great, why not lease out one of your concert halls to Tesco or Asda? There's not a decent supermarket within 10 minutes walk of this ghastly cultural desert!
Remember too that most of the biggest recent tourist attractions in this venal city on the Thames' mudbanks emerged from conflict and appropriation - old Covent Garden market, saved by campaigning hippies in the early 1970s. Camden Market, created by hippies in the 1960s, saved by fashion and music and art in the 1980s, now almost completely appropriated by commerce which may or may not have roots in those earlier, idealistic days. Punk rock, created by ex-hippie-capitalism in the 1970s, folded on on itself. Virgin Airways!
Steady on, I am now arguing against myself. As usual.
And then I look at Brick Lane! I look at Broadway Market. I look at Brixton Market. I look at Portobello Market. I look at the sponsorship of almost everything we used to regard as anti-capitalist, by capitalists!
Jude, I understand this dilemma.
It is horrible.
But please, whatever happens to that QE Hall undercroft, don't allow Costa Coffee to have a branch there. Please!
Saturday, 8 June 2013
A Saturday in London
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| World Naked Cycle Ride 2013 reaches Waterloo Bridge |
Run into trouble if you can. But no , the only trouble was avoiding the publicity seekers - the good, honest demanders of justice, the shiny-eyed, pink-arse-cheeked, body-painted-blue-and-gold naked cyclists, the angry Turks, the oppressed Zimbabweans, the ones who protest on behalf of the hungry of the planet.
Reach Waterloo, wander to Thames, South Bank side, find kids on boards and bikes putting on shows, hear sounds of strong music, hear the great Big Youth chanting so loud and clear, like he's still alive, over the wandering crowds of tourists and culture-vulture folk, the London eye people, the festive hall people, the National Theatre people, the BFI people, the arty ones. But this music rings so clear, and it's another protest.
The kids under the Queen Elizabeth Hall are protesting, because the Arts Centre Folk are going to fill in their dangerous skating place.
The big South Bank plans do not have room for this only - this ONE and ONLY bit of real folk art, of real local art, or real art - in this absurd, now almost completely ersatz zone.
The tragedy is so clear, once you visit South Bank. All those dear old 1950s and 60s buildings - Hayward, QE Hall, RFH - have been glossed over with a whole lot of 1990s public-funded arts initiative stuff. Words written on banners. Bright splashes of Central American colours, a vain attempt to do something about the death-dark grey of the stained concret casts, the cladding.
As though they needed to do anything to these buildings which have hosted so many of the greatest artists on this planet over the past five decades!
They try so hard to do this. Why do they have to?
Will it ever work? No, not while it's basically just a ploy to sell overpriced fish and chips to tourists.
Oh yes, thing like Meltdown are marvellous for the 35-55-year-olds who can afford the tickets to listen to the radical artists of their collective younger selves. Themselves now worn down and only too happy to pick up a late cheque or two.
Art? It only worked it's magic in this strange undercroft that the skaters and BMX kids took for themselves, they were uniquely qualified to make huge things out of those hostile angles and geometries, which to most seemed like some sort of medieval fortifications, warning you of the depredations of the art within. Fuck off if you don't appreciate what we appreciate.
So, I cycle away from this place for a thousandth time, I cross Westminster, where already large beer-bellied fellas on mountain bikes are striking out to score another hit for public nudity. I see hundreds of old men, naked on their bicycles, their tired genitalia bobbing and bouncing on the crossbars.
Why am I not joining them? I too should be inflicitng my ghastly nakedness on this Saturday afternoon audience of theatre goers, tourists, lost fans of the Royal family, people on the look out for a better demo, we are all here for some reason, or no reason.
Next year if I am here and they are here I will do the ride, although I doubt if the day will be as good as it was today.
Thursday, 6 June 2013
Thoughts from a body-bag
One hour inside a white plastic body-bag, lying on the cold slab stones of Piccadilly Circus, just outside the tube exit, supposed to be a dead body.
An hour was quite enough; you begin to understand, in this curious position, just how Edgar Allen Poe's buried alive character might have felt, if it had not been foe the coffin and the weight of the soil.
Oh, well I suppose I could ays that once again I am fulfilling my destiny, that is to act the corpse.
And yes, once again at the behest of Belarus Free Theatre. If ever you've seen them you'll know why I was happy to get up at 6am and cycle to central London to be one their bodies.
And if you haven't, read this BBC article on Belarus for an introduction to the techniques of a government which seems not to have noticed the passing of Joe Stalin.
It was meant to be warm today, but at 7am there were low clouds and an icy east wind buffeted central London The coldest place of all was at ground level.
I couldn't quite fit into my small to medium body bag. It felt like a useless sleeping bag, too short and too wide and too thin. But, as the marvellous Belarus Free Theatre's Fenella said, the main thing was that they were breathable.
Not that it would've made much difference to me, as half my face was sticking out into the freezing air.
Apart from that, each bag really made a little cocoon for each of us - the 10 or so volunteers, at this location, many more in the more high-profile spots, Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square - who for whatever reasons had chosen to lend our bodies to Belarus for a couple of early morning hours.
Last year, we gave our bodies, naked on the ice-cold concrete paving of Hammersmith's Riverside Studios for Fuck Realpolitik.
This year, we were part of the Belarus give-a-body-back campaign.
Our carcasses were there to represent the bodies of Belarusians who had died - no, who had been executed - in Belarus, and whose bodies had never been returned to their families.
Each time I meet or see or listen to any of the BFT people, who are always so delightful and friendly and appreciative - but I se in their eyes that there are dreadful, urgent matters to be dealt with, they are driven - they are driven because in many cases, their friends and partners and lovers and family and colleagues and neighbours have already become victims to what is now (again thanks to BFT) widely known as the last dictatorship in Europe.
By comparison, being a corpse for an hour was easy stuff. Or so I thought.
The trouble was, once zipped up in your bag, you could see nothing but the vaguest shadows of passing people. Voices came and went. In the first few minutes, loud male scorn seemed to be pouring in - "oh dead bodies, but are you really dead?" "you're going to get very stiff mate - watch out for piles", they said, on their way to god knows where.
After that, a strange silence descended - punctured ever few mintutes by the voices of our supervisors, trying to interest passers-by in the demo. Sometimes you'd hear the clip-clop of high-heeled shoes getting closer, and closer , and about to stamp on your face - and then they'd pass. Office boys and office girls on their way to work, gasping on their last fags before the working day began. Lost tourists failing to meet he people they'd wanted to meet, phoning, texting, cursing. A few vaguely amused arty types on their way, perhaps to some gallery or auction room. "oh my god, dead bodies! Cool!".
Then again just you and your aching, freezing body. It is June but there is a cold East wind coming in over the back of my head and my legs are about to walk away from all this on their own.
Feels like it's blowing all the way from Minsk, just for us.
Have I been here long now? Is it half-time yet?
Then - amazingly, the voice of our friendly organiser: "Volunteers! Ten minutes more."
The last 10 minutes seemed much longer than the first 50 - nothing but white and grey shadows to see, and disembodied voices to hear. And then, oh thank god, the 9am call, the tricky unzipping, staggering back to vertical, staggering past Eros to reach the bit of the square in sunshine.
www.freebelarusnow.org/bodies.
An hour was quite enough; you begin to understand, in this curious position, just how Edgar Allen Poe's buried alive character might have felt, if it had not been foe the coffin and the weight of the soil.
Oh, well I suppose I could ays that once again I am fulfilling my destiny, that is to act the corpse.
And yes, once again at the behest of Belarus Free Theatre. If ever you've seen them you'll know why I was happy to get up at 6am and cycle to central London to be one their bodies.
And if you haven't, read this BBC article on Belarus for an introduction to the techniques of a government which seems not to have noticed the passing of Joe Stalin.
It was meant to be warm today, but at 7am there were low clouds and an icy east wind buffeted central London The coldest place of all was at ground level.I couldn't quite fit into my small to medium body bag. It felt like a useless sleeping bag, too short and too wide and too thin. But, as the marvellous Belarus Free Theatre's Fenella said, the main thing was that they were breathable.
Not that it would've made much difference to me, as half my face was sticking out into the freezing air.
Apart from that, each bag really made a little cocoon for each of us - the 10 or so volunteers, at this location, many more in the more high-profile spots, Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square - who for whatever reasons had chosen to lend our bodies to Belarus for a couple of early morning hours.
Last year, we gave our bodies, naked on the ice-cold concrete paving of Hammersmith's Riverside Studios for Fuck Realpolitik.
This year, we were part of the Belarus give-a-body-back campaign.
Each time I meet or see or listen to any of the BFT people, who are always so delightful and friendly and appreciative - but I se in their eyes that there are dreadful, urgent matters to be dealt with, they are driven - they are driven because in many cases, their friends and partners and lovers and family and colleagues and neighbours have already become victims to what is now (again thanks to BFT) widely known as the last dictatorship in Europe.
By comparison, being a corpse for an hour was easy stuff. Or so I thought.
The trouble was, once zipped up in your bag, you could see nothing but the vaguest shadows of passing people. Voices came and went. In the first few minutes, loud male scorn seemed to be pouring in - "oh dead bodies, but are you really dead?" "you're going to get very stiff mate - watch out for piles", they said, on their way to god knows where.
After that, a strange silence descended - punctured ever few mintutes by the voices of our supervisors, trying to interest passers-by in the demo. Sometimes you'd hear the clip-clop of high-heeled shoes getting closer, and closer , and about to stamp on your face - and then they'd pass. Office boys and office girls on their way to work, gasping on their last fags before the working day began. Lost tourists failing to meet he people they'd wanted to meet, phoning, texting, cursing. A few vaguely amused arty types on their way, perhaps to some gallery or auction room. "oh my god, dead bodies! Cool!".
Then again just you and your aching, freezing body. It is June but there is a cold East wind coming in over the back of my head and my legs are about to walk away from all this on their own.
Feels like it's blowing all the way from Minsk, just for us.
Have I been here long now? Is it half-time yet?
Then - amazingly, the voice of our friendly organiser: "Volunteers! Ten minutes more."
The last 10 minutes seemed much longer than the first 50 - nothing but white and grey shadows to see, and disembodied voices to hear. And then, oh thank god, the 9am call, the tricky unzipping, staggering back to vertical, staggering past Eros to reach the bit of the square in sunshine.
www.freebelarusnow.org/bodies.
#GiveABodyBack
Thursday, 9 May 2013
South circular: a day out
Was it 2010? The years flash by so fast, I cannot be sure.
It was a warm day, I remember, that I drove across my old cycle route to Goldsmiths. Brixton, Camberwell, Peckham, New Cross, and then kept going on, as far as Woolwich, then turning left down towards to the river, down towards Belmarsh Prison, parking and meeting the already quite successful playwright in the Visitor Centre.
This place was already familiar - I had been visiting my former workmate, who became a friend, in this prison quite regularly since his sentencing in 2006. Then he'd been sent away to a prison in Nottinghamshire for a year or so before being returned to this (it seemed to me) exceedingly vicious and soul-corroding place on the jagged south-eastern edge of estuarine London.
Belmarsh! A great name for a prison, with its echoes of Dickens, mixed so well with the late 20th century's love of euphemism - "bel" up against the "marsh" of Marshalsea. Not far from that delightful settlement, Thamesmead - oh, the mead, with its echoes of flowers and honey! Oh ! The lovely marsh!
Each time, visiting, getting off the train, crossing that dual carriageway, getting onto the shining way down a sort of emaciated linear park, past stained concrete crime scenes, past a trading estate, past caravans selling saveloys and so on, past the bike track through the trees too short to look over the great walls of the prison and its attendant Crown Court - more echoes, this time of Venetian fortifications, and of the great fortress cities of 16th century France. Smooth high walls, like a Jarman film set for Ken Russell. Featureless. The gate. The double airlocks and the fingerprint checks. And then another airlock. Crossing an inner courtyard. Waiting with the child-brides and babies of the villains, the sniffling mums and the super-well made-up girlfriends, and the leery mates. Standing in numbered rows, being sniffed by eager doggies.
Then into the visiting hall, like a big school canteen, the table-and-two-chairs set up, the yellow lines which the inmates must never cross. In they come, some swaggering, others stumbling, seeeming dazed by the light, their high-vis sleeveless orange jackets making it all seem like a lunch break at a motorway building site.
Usually he was cheerful and upbeat, eager to get the most out of each visit. I would go and buy coffees, crisps and chocolate from the WI volunteers. He would scoff it all and then start on the latest news. We had about 90 minutes. Sometimes it was too much time.
Sometimes a visitor would sit there and their prisoner would never arrive. Sometimes - more often - you'd see an anguished prisoner waiting, their loved one never appearing.
But this day was different. We were not visiting, we were collecting. Still, we had to wait in the centre, watching the great gate. After an hour there was sudden activity. A small bald man, stooping, with a heavy bag, fell out of the tiny door in the gigantic gate, fell into the arms of one woman - his mum? And then another - his aunt? And then more waiting.
We decided it was time to cross over to wait nearer the gate, and as we did so, out he came. Ridiculously thin and nervy, the formerly plump old friend shot out of the gate, spotted us, looked back into the prison, said something, then asked, where's the car?
"In the car park".
My companion - what shall we call her? had her tape recorder ready and waiting for this crucial scene, this liberation. Of ocurse it was an anti-climax. I can hardly remember now - did we embrace, or did I just pat him on the shoulder? Probably the latter. Well done, old man. You're out.
But not free, became clearer as we traversed that south circular route back through Plumstead, Woolwich, Blackheath, New Cross, Peckham, Camberwell, Brixton, Stockwell. Talking excitedly, congratulating himself on his own writings about these dodgy areas which so often featured in his stories and those "Clapham Omnibus" columns for Prospect magazine.
It was a warm day, I remember, that I drove across my old cycle route to Goldsmiths. Brixton, Camberwell, Peckham, New Cross, and then kept going on, as far as Woolwich, then turning left down towards to the river, down towards Belmarsh Prison, parking and meeting the already quite successful playwright in the Visitor Centre.
This place was already familiar - I had been visiting my former workmate, who became a friend, in this prison quite regularly since his sentencing in 2006. Then he'd been sent away to a prison in Nottinghamshire for a year or so before being returned to this (it seemed to me) exceedingly vicious and soul-corroding place on the jagged south-eastern edge of estuarine London.
Belmarsh! A great name for a prison, with its echoes of Dickens, mixed so well with the late 20th century's love of euphemism - "bel" up against the "marsh" of Marshalsea. Not far from that delightful settlement, Thamesmead - oh, the mead, with its echoes of flowers and honey! Oh ! The lovely marsh!
Each time, visiting, getting off the train, crossing that dual carriageway, getting onto the shining way down a sort of emaciated linear park, past stained concrete crime scenes, past a trading estate, past caravans selling saveloys and so on, past the bike track through the trees too short to look over the great walls of the prison and its attendant Crown Court - more echoes, this time of Venetian fortifications, and of the great fortress cities of 16th century France. Smooth high walls, like a Jarman film set for Ken Russell. Featureless. The gate. The double airlocks and the fingerprint checks. And then another airlock. Crossing an inner courtyard. Waiting with the child-brides and babies of the villains, the sniffling mums and the super-well made-up girlfriends, and the leery mates. Standing in numbered rows, being sniffed by eager doggies.
Then into the visiting hall, like a big school canteen, the table-and-two-chairs set up, the yellow lines which the inmates must never cross. In they come, some swaggering, others stumbling, seeeming dazed by the light, their high-vis sleeveless orange jackets making it all seem like a lunch break at a motorway building site.
Usually he was cheerful and upbeat, eager to get the most out of each visit. I would go and buy coffees, crisps and chocolate from the WI volunteers. He would scoff it all and then start on the latest news. We had about 90 minutes. Sometimes it was too much time.
Sometimes a visitor would sit there and their prisoner would never arrive. Sometimes - more often - you'd see an anguished prisoner waiting, their loved one never appearing.
But this day was different. We were not visiting, we were collecting. Still, we had to wait in the centre, watching the great gate. After an hour there was sudden activity. A small bald man, stooping, with a heavy bag, fell out of the tiny door in the gigantic gate, fell into the arms of one woman - his mum? And then another - his aunt? And then more waiting.
We decided it was time to cross over to wait nearer the gate, and as we did so, out he came. Ridiculously thin and nervy, the formerly plump old friend shot out of the gate, spotted us, looked back into the prison, said something, then asked, where's the car?
"In the car park".
My companion - what shall we call her? had her tape recorder ready and waiting for this crucial scene, this liberation. Of ocurse it was an anti-climax. I can hardly remember now - did we embrace, or did I just pat him on the shoulder? Probably the latter. Well done, old man. You're out.
But not free, became clearer as we traversed that south circular route back through Plumstead, Woolwich, Blackheath, New Cross, Peckham, Camberwell, Brixton, Stockwell. Talking excitedly, congratulating himself on his own writings about these dodgy areas which so often featured in his stories and those "Clapham Omnibus" columns for Prospect magazine.
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