De Party Now Start

Bass. The throbbing beat lashes its full bodies’ presence against the walls, badding up the window panes and rushing through the floor. Its electric pulse runs up my tiny legs and pushes through my body until it’s in my chest, going toe to toe with the beat of my heart. It sends unrideable, un-breaking waves through the air and we’re all caught in a reverb backwash, lashing smoothly from one wall to the other. Only strong swimmers are allowed to swim in this vicious swell of sound. But then, that’s what these parties are all about.

Eight years of age. My tentative strides navigate me through the swarm of bodies that have begun to invade my nana’s house. Newcastle. New Years Eve. A hardened frost has gathered on the road outside, and warm condensation has gathered on the inside of the windows. It must be cold, the Geordie’s are wearing jackets as opposed to their customary winter wear; a solitary t-shirt. The door gets thrown open and a blast of the icy outside intrudes in our warm sanctuary. Another body enters the foray. At first it’s just a shadow contrasted against the white outside. Then, moving into full form under the light, I glimpse the sparkle of the golden ropes around his neck.

He is big. Loud. A booming laugh trickling out from under a droll Trinidadian accent, mottled with Geordie mannerisms. Rocky. His name is Rocky. Every year i see him and I’m mesmerised by his jewels. I call him the shiny man, because i always thought he shone like the gold he wore. He places a massive golden chain around my neck, and until i get used to the weight, I’m in bondage. He laughs at my weakness and strides past me to the kitchen, where many more big people are.

I scurry again through the dense forest of legs and over the foliage of discarded shoes back into the sitting room. Uncle is sitting in his chair. He is muttering to himself, i can’t make out the words. I don’t know about his illness. To me he is just my gentle, funny Uncle. I never knew about any sickness that had already taken hold and shaped my uncle’s life, trapping him inside his own mind, muffling his voice amongst a hoard of others. He would talk to himself in his favourite chair, listening to his music like clockwork, and my juvenile mind could only come to the conclusion that uncle was funny… The bass slaps me again in the face and I’m forced out, back through the forest.

Auntie drags me over to the sofa and makes me sit with her. She is talking with the big people. They speak in a patois I don’t quite understand, and they laugh at my eagerness to become familiar with this new and exotic tongue. The words form shapes and sounds, but their meaning is unreachable for me, despite my eager attention.

It was mo-town before. A laid back, but still strong sort of bass. Not many people were in the house, so a bass to deliver a knockout blow wasn’t required just yet. Not until more had come.

I spring from the sofa, out of the clutches of the alien talking adults and buzzed into the kitchen. Nana is standing over a pot, stirring. She was always stirring. The smells from that pot would make her china figurines salivate. She offers me a small plate. I try to inhale the meal just to engulf the whole taste. The smell of rum and Angostura bitters come from her glass. And hang in the air. She smiles warmly and I see sandy beaches and brightly coloured birds in her eyes.

More bodies has turned up. The bad boy bass is ready. Uncle turns off the laid back bass and unleashes the bad boy. Calypso. Woi. De party now start. Feet start chipping away at the carpet. Moving forward and back like the sea on the Mayaro beach, lapping at the Trinidadian shore, making headway and then retreating back into itself. The forms of the big people start swaying in unison, like nettles in a gentle zephyr. Shouts and calls try to escape from the room, but the bass beats them back. Steel prangs ring out. Drums beat the floor away until the house feels like it’s flying.

I stand outside and stare. I look at them all. Perfect intuitive understanding in their movement. I am entranced. Many of the big people made walking seem like an issue, but under the hypnotic power of the bass, their legs have gained a renewed youthful energy. Even my young and bendy frame can’t contort like them. I’m amazed.

Mummy comes and scoops me up, cooing in my ear “time for bed, little one”. Every year i see the party start, and wake up to it still going on the next day. But it only lasts until halfway through the next day until people start to leave. I wriggle around in the bed, trying to fight away the clutches of the blanket on top of me, but it is no use. My eyelids start to slide down over my eyes while my mummy stands in the doorway, mocking me with her imperviousness to sleep. And I slip away.

To this day, I have never had the chance to party with the big people in my nana’s front room.

One day. Maybe one day, i will.

2011
12/31
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Spectrums of diversity

Wow it’s been a minute. With all the writing that I been doing outside of my blog I haven’t found any time to out anything on here. But i’m getting better at time management now and even managed to blog about that lovely London Tram woman a little while ago. So yeah, i guess i’m back.

Looking over that video how ever many times, it did make me think about a few other things. I was very interested in her young child (non-paedophilically of course) who sat stoically upon his mother’s knee while she savagely berated other tram passengers for their skin pigmentations and ethnic origins. In looking at the glaze that fell over the young boys face, a glaze that intimated he had heard it all before like an old record, it brought me back to someone i have been thinking about for a while.

Allow me to go through my usual digression before reaching my point…

The other day, trapped in a pathetic spiral of regret and self-deprecation, trying to hide from how difficult the industry I’m trying to crack will be, I was reminiscing being young (before the world had the chance to pour scorn over my optimistic ideas about the future and the state of life in general). I recalled when i was in primary school, the incredible mix of people and ethnicities present in my classroom. In fact, white people would have been the minority in my school as opposed to the normal majority.

I can remember talking to everyone in my class, some liked, some un-liked, some friends, some perpetual life nemesis’. Despite the clear difference’s between us, we still had a sense of community within the classroom. And what was most interesting, was that the difference was not clear to us.

Seeing that little boy sitting on his mother’s knee, amidst a barrage of racial hatred, made me think about us, as people. When we grow up, we change, we start to notice differences within other. We see how they are different to us. But what i want to try and figure is when do we, while going through growing pains and figuring out life, when do we lose our ability to be colour blind?

I can remember when i was younger being aware of the difference’s between me and others, but it never once occurred to me that the difference’s between myself and the others around me were to do with colour. Back then, I can remember thinking what made and other different was height, and weight and things like that. I think we must have always been aware that we were different colours to each other, but it was something that we were simultaneously blind to.

In Toi Derricotte’s book The Black Notebooks, she recalls an experiment carried out in a school she taught at. She asked all the children to bring in a picture of themselves when they were babies, to see if they could work out who was who. Most of the children in the class were white, in fact there was only one black child. When the children were going through the pictures of other baby-version peers, they had difficulty n finding out each other’s identity. However, each child was easily able to work out who the black baby was. This led to the black child becoming incredibly confused and breaking down in tears, asking the teacher ‘how do they know it’s me?”. The children could not even say how they knew.

In this experiment, carried out using children under 6 years old, it becomes clear that race and racial definition is an inherently learned phenomenon. We may always be able to distinguish people via their colour, but doing so through race is not something natural to us.

Children remind of what our natural instincts are. What our innocent perceptions are before the world corrupts us.

So i ask again. At what age do we stop being colour blind? Or, more specifically, at what point does become a factor in our definition of each other?

2011
12/16
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Our Leading Light

Well, its been a hot minute and I thought, what better way to start my blogging again than with this fine lady above.

For those that haven’t yet seen the video, it feature’s a lady of supreme intellect, unwavering perspective and monstrous bravery telling it how it is. She sits on the tram, surrounded by various types of undesirables and just let’s rip. Unfortunately, around the world (as this is now a worldwide trending topic) people have been quick to lambast her colourful language and condemn her discerning eye.

And I feel I have to ask, why? In this country, we have come to value honesty, and this woman is just expressing her opinion. She should not fear an attack for her views on the world encroaching upon her. Instead, we should be saluting her.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that she can be a leading light for our ever darkening country. She holds the torch that can navigate us through these troubled times into the bright future that this rich land so desperately deserves. Personally, I think her words should be revered and her face should be on money. That is a dream that is rapidly becoming clear to my heart.

The best leaders are never appreciated in their own time, and for this unfortunate orator, her words have filtered through to ignorant, hard of hearing ears.

So I salute you, tram stranger. Your words have brightened up my ever darkening winter days.

(Please not, this whole post is not lightly veiled, but fully immersed in scathing sarcasm. If you feel that I am being truthful and we should revere her words, then please navigate your way to the nearest EDL rally. You must indeed, be as moronic, petty, brazen and deserving of a good thrashing as she. But hey, when there’s still so many people like her about, I guess sometimes you just have to laugh)

Look out for more from me soon!!

2011
11/28
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Deforestation…

I was thinking it was probably best for me not to write anything else about the London riots for a little while. Too many people were producing knee-jerk reactions to the whole thing, and when people get emotional about something like that they often don’t make all that much sense. Hence the reason that i decided to wait before offering any more opinion on the riots and the state of society in general…

Let face it. London is a metropolis, an urban Jungle full of different species all vying for their survival in a volatile environment. The high-end Canary Wharf type structures, along with the Trellik Tower of the Jungle dominate the sky line and come to represent a metal canopy. The inhabitants of Canary Wharf are free to swing around the top of the canopy without any trouble, whereas the other creatures at the bottom are left to scrap it out for a chance of climbing a little higher up that canopy. Please note, if you do not get the imagery that i am going for here, slap yourself in the face and get down to Waterstones, sharpish!

So again. The riots – if they can even be referred to as riots. I suppose in the actual definition they could be, but in my mind they weren’t riots, they were a mixture of cold-blooded criminality and defiant rebellion bordering insurrection. Watching all the commentary from people in ‘higher’ positions about the riots and those taking part in them actually makes me shake my head and will for more disorder, just so these cretins will get the shock realisation that there is a message in these actions. And that will hit them like a bucket of ice-cold water on a rare English summer day.

Should i even bother talking about the MPs laundering money. No. But i will talk about the MPs. Sitting high in their ivory towers, playing the puppet master trying to control the poor people beneath them that just want a start and a chance to show what they can do. They must take a fair share of accountability for what happened. Too often, they speak to many of the people in our society in a Coded language that is full of lies and hollow promises. How many times have we heard about what they will give us only for them to go back on their word and hand us empty opportunities? The fact is, that they are succeeding in ruining the country through a substantial lack of communication.

How on earth can people that went to Oxbridge, Eton et al; people who had everything handed to them on a platinum-diamond rimmed platter, ever hope to establish a viable link of communication with people adept at scraping the bottom of the butter? How are we expected to listen to these people when we know that they have no idea whatsoever what it is like to live in sub par conditions. They have never been in the street (the ground level, not the actual streets like drug dealers and what not) like the vast majority of people out there. They have never needed to scrap through the fallen foliage of the canopy above for morsels of food like so many, so how can they look down and hope to preach to people about how to improve their lives?

The riots have helped to illustrate further the growing cultural gap between the people and the institution. Us and them. Of course the institution is made up of people as well, it’s not just some moving monster engulfing all the citizens that it comes into contact with.

In my mind, the thing the government should be looking to establish a viable means of communication so that everyone knows whats going on. By involving more members of the community (far more members than there are already) then they can talk to everyone in a language that they understand. Having more community meetings and panels will give the MPs (if they ever accepted this) a chance to hear from more people. They would know how people are feeling about things and we would be living outside this dangerous ideology of the assumption.

But, in all honesty, we all know something like this will never happen. The way the country is run is based on the rich maintain their power while the poor continue to suffer. And that needs to change. But alas, even the brightest optimist knows that this will sadly never be the case.

What still gets me is that so many people appear to be surprised that this happened. They stand there with shock plastered across their faces and lament the way the nation fell apart. But what happens when you put a menagerie of different species together in an increasingly uncompromising habitat with a lack of food? Obviously, they’re going to start fighting to get what little they can.

And the longer this goes on, the worse things will become. These riots will just be the start of things when we look back, i really believe that. Unless changes are made, the social fabric that holds everything together will disintegrate. A fire will sweep through our jungle that we call home and engulf us all..

2011
09/10
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Hyros

They speak in coded words like we don’t understand them,

Juxtapose oxymorons,

Mix up metaphors and slew verbs in tandem

To construct the walls of our world around us,

And try and pull the veil over our eyes

To keep us down and drown us.

They talk their chit chatter,

And we make our clips clap at

The idiocy they seem to be

Trying to force on to we.

They try and exclude us from the system,

Listen,

My words are truthful but get ignored,

So I talk with a pistol.

That’s not the way we want it,

But that was given to us at birth,

Beat down the mother’s spirit

And she gives birth to a curse.

Feed a hungry mind

With nothing but hollow words

You end up corrupting a bad mind

To one much worse.

Now I need you to open

Your mind,

Your eyes-close them.

How many times

Can they steal from their own guys?

Stab them in the back

And then ignore their angry cries?

When are we going to realize,

That they supply us with real lies

And the truth aint been this elusive,

Since the days that Jesus died.

We are made to live in levels,

But they are always a step beyond,

Offering bleak hope

Then taking our ideas to feast on.

They said they were gonna direct funds

And when it comes down to it they all get dumb,

Forget the promises that they made

And leave us alone to dig our early graves.

Now we’re fucked out of our freedom

And they never wore protection,

So right now we bleeding

Into each others borrowed moments,

Left seeking solutions for the problems they gave us.

No, we aint imprisoned,

But we definitely caged in.

And this aint a war on skin colour or background,

This is some cultural ting.

They tell us they come to help

But them words are bare,

Lacking all care and feeling,

Sky is the limit for some,

Their lies ensured for us,

It’s the ceiling.

And as a solution, well,

I can offer none,

Work on deciphering that code

So that we can get some

Of what we deserve.

Open a real line of communication,

And give us our reward,

Stop conjuring up lies

So we can move forward.

2011
09/09
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Circular motions

Well… The London riots… need I really say more? I’m sure everyone has been inundated with news through TV, internet, twitter, broadcast messages etc. Hoards of excitable goons flooded towards where they may get a deal of the century, I even saw some people driving down my road with the iMac boxes in a pickup truck – cue my cutting jealous eyes.

But from something that started off as a peaceful protest, escalated into animosity towards the police and then ascended further into plain anarchy and carnage on the streets of London. To be honest, I completely understand the rage towards the worlds biggest gang, and as yet the worlds only legal and lauded gang. As someone who fits into the demographic that is often targeted by police, I can understand the anger from people against a group that is meant to help them; yet more often than not show hostility and aggression towards the people they are meant to ‘serve’.

The original anger that was felt was partially justified (especially after the beating of a woman in the peaceful protest) however, this changed so quickly into volatile rage that so much more happened than it needed to. People’s houses got burnt down, businesses destroyed and a whole community left decimated by mindless thuggery. And the worst thing about is that the family of the man who started this whole thing (poor Mark Duggan was executed by police) wanted none of this and have been calling for this madness to stop.

But this leads me to my point. Is this not familiar to anyone? Have we not gone through something incredibly similar in the past. 20 years ago, there were wide-spread riots across London. Added with unprecedented unemployment rates, rising inflation in a faltering economy, and an increasingly infuriating and out of touch Prime Minister, are we not in the eighties all over again? Is this not the same thing?

Well no, technically it’s not, but there are many parallels. Back then people were actually fighting for something. These riots (the first one in Tottenham) started off in similar fashion by fighting for a noble cause, but the dynamics quickly changed into something more sinister. People were revolting against the powers above that were widening the gap between the rich and poor, and treating the often misunderstood ‘other’ as a domestic enemy. People are angry and the continued breakdown of communication between authority and communities will only breed more hatred.

Whats more worrying is that all the signs point to things getting much worse than they are already. Many more will fall by the sword wielded by the state. And many more will bleed in a battle that shouldn’t be had.

Despite all the madness occurring, what I think needs to be remembered more than the riots, is the death of an unarmed man. He may not have had the best background, but he was not violent. He did not pose an immediate threat to anyone, and was heartlessly gunned down (based on accounts of the people that knew him best and other community members, not the portrayal of him in the media) in the middle of the road, like some kind of animal. Before it gets worse, I think people should take the time to think about the needless death of another person.

R.I.P Mark Duggan. Lets hope your death does not continue to be overshadowed by these events.

2011
08/08
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Plain White With Black Scratchings pt I

Nothing. Not a damn thing! A tumbleweed rolled through the empty white space, and to confound the ultimate misery of mental sterility, even the crickets had packed their bags and fucked off to a more interesting climate, somewhere where their mocking chirrups would be appreciated. This sour, barren, empty white cavity couldn’t even rot, because for it to rot, would suggest the presence of bacteria. But nothing. Not a damn thing!

After the publication of a book of short stories, Maxwell was once labelled one of the writers to watch out for. The tales chronicling his fantasies about the parallels between social deprivation and the neo-sociopathic hero figure he conceived during his late nights working as a security watchman had received rave reviews from all literary corners. He was even being compared to some of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, due to his spellbinding wizard-like command over the narrative. One magazine had proclaimed him to be a young Tobias Wolff-like writer. All of this praise and adulation came from a few measly short stories.

Three months later and his life was in tatters. A half-finished novel lay undressed on his bed, winking at him, seducing him with its promise yet never quiet delivering the goods: he called it a book tease. He was very familiar with female that employed these tactics to get the attention they craved from certain types of men, but he never once thought that he would be on the receiving end of such a dirty trick from a book; making it worse still was that it was a book that he himself conceived. It some contorted kind of incest, his own child was book teasing him. Yet one more pathetic irony that had scabbed onto the body of his life.

He was in the white spot. That barren place that all writers feared more than a homophobe feared San Francisco. That awful wasteland that made people want to dip their eyes in lemon juice to convince themselves of their own reality and confirm that their minds had divorced all creativity, all colour.

Since his last word was scrawled across that final piece of paper, Maxwell had found himself constantly searching around that empty white space in order to find his next word. Try though he did, nothing popped into his space. Even his inner monologue had become a drawl, unenthusiastic nag. All he could do was sit, and wait, and pray for something to happen. But no, there was nothing.  He begrudgingly gave up after a seventeen-hour staring competition with blank page. Needless to say, the page won.

Out of the corner of his bloodshot eye he could see that book. That tease. It was just laying there with its pages spread open, knowing that even with his pen in hand, there would be nothing he could do. He could jot down no words to develop the plot, which in itself was about as limp as a dead snake. His ink could not impregnate the book with the words it craved, and that tease knew it!

For days he had toiled to no avail. But now, enough was enough. Maxwell decided that in order to make any progress, he just had to write. It didn’t matter what he put down on that blank page, it just needed to be words. Maybe that would build a bustling motorway in his blank space and gentrify his thoughts. Maybe it would kickstart that choking sterility into rampant creativity.

He put his pen to the paper. Just moving seem like he was hauling a barge across a field. His eyes shut hard, tightly strangling the light into darkness made some flicks and curves. He could feel the familiar scratching of the pen against the rugged white surface. Finally his wrist tailed off and slackened, signifying that it was at the end of a word. Expectantly, he opened his eyes hoping to see a word of substance, shit, any word would be enough. He peered down at the scrawled words on the white paper. Blowfish. Oh how excellent he thought. His novel was charting a journey of discovery for an urban youth in Mumbai, coupled with inserts of magic realism and meta-fiction…and his mind had managed to come up with blowfish.

Well, it was a word at least. He held a lingering flicker of hope alive and thought to repeat his methodology. He shut his eyes tightly, banishing any distracting light from his iris’. His wrist began to flick and roll, his fingers meticulously gripped at the pen and willed words onto the page. He pursed his lips and gritted his teeth until his wrist became slack. Gingerly, he opened his eyes, hoping to see another product of his recovering mind… Muchjak… Well that proved everything that he needed to know. His mind was empty. In an effort to kickstart his white space into accepting some colour into it, he thought that throwing his hefty brow onto the wooden table would be a good idea. So he did. Faceplant. Straight onto the white paper with two words etched onto it.

The next thing Maxwell could remember was looking through his eyes onto a warped world. Everything was sideways – his bed, still with that book tease flaunting its pages, had somehow crawled onto the wall. What was once the wall that housed his shelves and books had shifted onto the ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a thin dark red stream snaking across a white sheet. He came to the realisation that his faceplant versus the table was another battle that he had lost and he had briefly incapacitated himself. Probably lost some vital brain cells in the process, or maybe his experiment had worked and his mind had kick-started all over again.

Hauling his head of the desk, the proportions of the room asserted their regular dimensions. He noticed a hot tickle down his forehead and onto his nose. That red stream he had seen meandering towards the end of his table was from a cut on the top of his forehead. In a way though he was glad. He had soiled the perfect whiteness of that paper. The whiteness that mirrored the spot in his mind had gained some colour, weaving straight through the middle of the whiteness was a bright red river.

If he had managed to add some colour to the whiteness on the table, then surely, in his slightly dazed state, he judged that the next logical step would be for some colour to float into his internal white spot. Maxwell ran his finger through the line of crimson above his brow and flicked his finger across the soiled paper, splattering more colour onto its blank surface. He held his pen and waited for the colour to drain down from his brain into his wrist and nimble fingers. But nothing. The internal white spot was bleached clean.

“Hey” Maxwell heard, startling him. He looked around his room puzzled, he was alone. It came again – “Hey Asshole”. With a thick, distinctive Austrian accent resonating in its speech, the voice irked Maxwell. Finally, a booming command came  at him, making the origin of the voice clear “Hey!! STOP IGNORING ME”.

2011
08/05
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Blame Game

Can you imagine the thoughts going through the mind of a young, black/mixed race teenager as he waltzes up to an unsuspecting victim and blows their life away? Imagine him snaking around a corner and cutting into the soft flesh of someone completely innocent, all over the 80 pence remaining on an Oyster Card. Now imagine a couple of years earlier, that very same boy, who has done away with the lives of others; when this youngster was curious and as yet, uncorrupted.

Well i say uncorrupted, but perhaps that’s not quite what i mean. Perhaps i lean more towards being uninfluenced. In some younger children, you can see that they will probably grow up to be in trouble for most of their lives. You can see the violence caged behind their eyes and the pain etched into their demeanour. Often times, this can be put down to their environment at home, or socially, or whatever. They are grouped into a identity-less mass that represents the antithesis of ‘british society’. But for me that excuse is becoming petty, condescending and painfully arrogant.

Imagine that young boy in school again. lets say from an age as early as six. He is being taught history by an overly jolly primary school teacher. Let’s have a look at what that history consists of shall we? 1066-the Victorian era? Yep, that appears to be in there, so much so that we can recognise the battle of Hastings in insurance adverts, and most of us remember the limerick to aid us in how many wives Henry VIII had (divorce, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived…). The Ancient Greeks? Yep, that was definitely there. So, from these little historical episodes, at the age of six or so, that boy would have been able to tell you about a series of mythical figures and creatures and maybe even recount the whole British time line from 1066 on-wards (with the ‘dark ages’ being an obvious omission). So what on earth could my problem be, after all, every one needs to learn history surely? Well yes, of course they do. But behind that innocent looking learning curve, lies a quite sinister motive.

Far be it for me to question the Eurocentric conception of our society, as without it we would have nothing that we have today. Well, perhaps we would, and technology and things would have developed further and faster than what we already know. When you’re thinking about something like that it’s impossible to think about how things could have been different if civilisation were based on a different centre. However, i digress. To get back to my point about history, there is something sinister involved in what is taught to children in the UK curriculum. Unlike Arabs, Asians and to an extent Latino’s (we were at least able to learn about the Inca’s in Tin Tin), Black and mixed race children (coz let’s face it, mixed kids are identified as black) have no way of seeing the accomplishments of themselves in history.

Pretty much every other social group is able to see themselves in some sort of historical spectrum. They are able to see the accomplishments of ‘their people’ in the past. But when it comes to black and mixed raced kids, what are they taught about ‘their people’ in reality? The only real images we get exploring so-called ‘black history’ in depth, through standard education, is that of slavery. And of course that happens to be a negative image for younger children to grow up with identifying with. Of course, there is always the slight exploration into the civil rights, but again this happens to show black folk having to fight against the white mass in order to gain equality and status as ‘people’.

With no celebration of culture or achievement notable in education apart from the civil rights battles, what kind of image does this provide to the youth of today? Eurocentric institutions of education culturally annihilate black youth from an early age. The only images that young black people are given during their compulsory education is that of pain, struggles and shackles. Well, i suppose the black kids had folk like Frank Bruno and Dr King. And of course, the mixed kids had Bob Marley. I guess in retrospect i shouldn’t be complaining, listening to Buffalo Soldier makes everything melt away into its throbbing bass line.

So again, think of the boy that ruthlessly gunned down someone in the street. Was it because he was a bad egg in the cluster? Or was he created to be that way by the way education depicts the people that he can see images of himself in? The history of Kemet  (Ancient Egypt) is  completely disregarded as a black culture even though professor Chiekh Anta Diop proved the melanin content in mummified remains meant that the leaders of the longest running civilisation of all time had to be black. If something as pivotal as this to world history has been glossed over, then what else has been kept away from eager minds? How many people are motivated to find out more about what the dark ages actually referred to, or to learn more about one of the early cultural heartbeats, Timbuktu?

Ice cube once said that ‘the ghetto was invented for us to fail’, and although ghettoisation refers to the separation and clustering of social groups geographically, the process of ghettoisation is not limited to town planning. Clearly people are ghettoised from an early age. The Eurocentric educational system helps to separate people as children and implants a lifelong message to easily corruptible young minds, that one group is worth knowing about and the achievements of the other can be readily thrown away.

One must wonder, who created these ‘teenage assassins’? Is it all down to the people around them? Or is there more to it than what we see on the surface? The media always blame the person’s family and friends. Has the judging finger of blame pointed in the right place? Obviously, I don’t condone the murder of people, but i think it would be better if people thought about why this happens a little more before throwing blame and accusation around water balloons; hoping that they will explode and shame a group of people. Can the blame be the people? The society? Both? Neither? Seems impossible to say really.

Tis a shame.

 

2011
07/03
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Reading between the lines

So the other day I got asked a question that really got me thinking about the future and about how I am going to be defined. How I would define myself appears not to matter as there are many other people who would be very quick to define me, no matter if the definition was far off from my own.

Someone I know (not dropping no names like that, aint no informah!) asked me what I thought it would be like for me when I start writing full-time since there aren’t that many black uk writers around, that they knew of anyway; i guess they were speaking about commercially viable or whatever. At least there are far less in comparison to white writers in the uk. Obviously i gave the answer that i saw they wanted to hear, but on reflection that question that was posed to me was quite disturbing.

Fact is, I aint black. I am mixed race; half white, half black. But despite this, I’m often categorised as being black. And i know when i start to write and act, in that trade I would be categorised as black (more often than not.) Not that i have a problem with being categorised that way. Anyway, that wasn’t what irked me.

What disturbed me was the realisation that in the field of work on which I wish to embark, I will always be viewed as an ambassador for my people. Sherman Alexie, a native American author, once spoke of about when you are writing from an ethnic minority, you become a figurehead for that ethnic minority. In other words, if you live outside the hegemonic power structure that rules the world, then you are defined as being outside through your craft.

I find this whole idea of a person becoming an ambassador for their people really troubling. I don’t think that a writer/actor/sportsman should be regarded as a figurehead for the people they come from. And I’m not just talking about ethnic minorities because you often see white people who are regarded as the best white this or that when they ply your trade in, for example, a black dominated industry like hip hop.

This whole system of labelling people just serves to keep up boundaries when there shouldn’t be. How many times has someone walked into a book shop and asked “any idea where the white writers are?”. This would sound a bit out-of-place, no? However, if someone wandered into a book shop, sheepish eyes hiding behind thick glasses, and asked for the whereabouts of black writers, or asian writers, there would be a whole section for that.

What about these poor talented artists who are constantly niched into a category many of them wouldn’t have placed themselves in? It comes to a point where someone just wants to be defined through what they do, not who they are in what they do. By this, i mean many writers would much rather be defined as writers than as niched writers. I have read many authors from different ethnic minorities speaking about their struggle with publishers who continue to pigeonhole them.

If I were to become a fully published, successful writer, I can’t help but think about whether I will have this battle on my hands. I would rather be regarded as a writer than as a black writer, or a mixed race writer. I don’t mean in the sense that i want to deny my ethnicity, but in the sense that I would want to be regarded as a good writer, not a writer that’s good despite a lack of whiteness.

When I become an actor (well more like if, for both practises I suppose) I would like to be seen as an actor, judged on my ability to act. Judged on an ability to portray a role and bring a character on a page to life. I want to be judged on my talent. What i don’t want is to be judged on my talent within a demographic. Sadly, whether people like it or not, this seems to be the case for the foreseeable future.

And don’t think that I am disregarding or shaming anyone that is happy to act as the figurehead for their people. More power to them. But in that position remember that everything you do, no matter what it is, every action, every inaction, everything. It becomes a lens for people who don’t know on how the ‘other’ lives. Any mistake you make, and uninformed people will be quick to point the finger and assume all ‘your people’ are like that. If you wanna live with that then, ok, cool, that’s you init.

Really I think I’m just having a vent, as I seem to do at the start of every summer. Blowing off steam before the disappointment of another lucid couple of months. Anyway ill continue on into the niche that will define me, even though I don’t want it too. But ah well, i’ll on with it.

2011
05/09
CATEGORY
My Mind's Eye
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2 comments

Hitting The Concrete Wall

Writers block, you are not my friend!

I find see myself searching around the darkest chasms of my mind,

Hoping not to find the answer that I dread, you cannot rhyme.

Brainwaves are broken there is no mending here, thoughts pending

To be scrawled down somewhere, anywhere,

Before they sprout wings,

Flap metaphors and fly away,

So I’m left sitting here alone with my sterile brain.

What kind of nonsense is my life

If I’ve grown into a writer that cannot write?

Instead call me criminal, let me crawl into my empty head cell

And scratch around, poke at all the lines

So I can steal the thoughts I need from my own mind.

Time after time this head creates more than I need,

But see

When it’s inspiration I want,

My mind turns into shy bint and goes frigid on me.

So boy, it looks like I aint getting nothing tonight.

A mocking empty paper sits in front of me

Crying out insults

About when sullen words will be plastered down.

Now the opportunity has been put right in front of me,

But no! My pen is limp, its failed me.

So I hold my pen,

And I told my pen

Talk the talk of my inner thoughts’ zen,

Concise these frenzied thoughts of mine

And let me put down something wise.

So I go to write my masterpiece down

And yet again, that limpness strikes my poor old pen,

Writers block! You are not my friend!

2011
05/06
CATEGORY
My Creations
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