I haven’t posted the last few Budos. This one was apt as Ms. Goody has finally passed away. I was weirdly moved by the news; I don’t think I’ve ever had any strong feeling towards her, except when she insulted Shilpa Shetty. Otherwise, there was just nothing going on. But I recognise a brilliant story and god, I wish I’d written it. The times quietly side-stepped the news and instead reported the death of Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia and Ted.
Plath’s friend, the poet and critic Al Alvarez, once said: “I would love to think that the culture’s fascination is because Plath is a great and major poet, which she is. But it wouldn’t be true. It is because people are wildly interested in scandal and gossip.”
I admit to that. Which is why the sudden change in tone has been so disconcerting. The newspapers want stories because we want stories. When someone is alive and well we do everything we can to find out the moist, intimate, details, then we broadcast them as loudly as possible. I’ve never noticed this before, but the redtops shout stories. Then, when someone is about to die or dies, we change. We forget completely the hatred and irritation we felt.
Two-faced? Double standards? I was listening to Radio 4 soon after Cecilia Tsvangirai died and the interviewee said that where he comes from there is a saying: a man can be bad in his life, but once he dies he becomes good. You can feel compassion towards the worst child-murdering bastard who is being ill-treated. I, for one, do not support the death penalty or torture or anything else that reeks of revenge, because it goes against my basic, primal, knowledge that people are helpless in the face of death. We’re pathetic when it comes to The End. I wouldn’t (seriously) wish death on anyone because there is nothing more terrifying or more final. That’s it! You’re gone! Curtains! You will never walk on this earth again. This brilliant, magical thing called life which can be so oppressive, is all we have. There’s nothing else. So as hypocritical as the papers seem, I think the sudden shift in attitude is a sign that, at bottom, we’re still humane – we wouldn’t go on slating the woman out of spite or stubbornness.
I have no problem with Jade’s, or anyone else’s, funeral being televised. Why do we see the births, marriages and deaths of royalty, but not an ordinary woman? Why was it tasteful, even obligatory, to film the two princes slow-marching at their mother’s procession? We live in the information age. There are far more sordid, vulgar things on TV, but perhaps we’re wary because Jade Goody is something of a construction; she isn’t quite real, and her death, with the accompanying twist of fate, means she has blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction to an uncomfortable degree.
“Wow. Are we still exploiting her?”
“Yes, yes we are.”
“Well, we’ll follow her to the edge of the universe, but uh, I think we should stop there…”
Her disappearance from our television screens is not the ordinary passing which is usually forgetfulness and neglect, nor is it the spectacle of a car crash/assassination/suicide. It’s tragicomedy. It’s ridiculous. It’s farce. It’s awful. It’s in digital. It’s a compelling mix of stark flesh and indignity. It’s pornographic. It’s like being sucked in to the strange rhythm of two people going up and down. It’s ‘Ugh!’ But it’s ‘Oh…’
I'm thinking of printing a t.shirt...
During the open mic I doodled some of the readers. Not all, mind, as I ran out of space, but most. I’m thinking ‘Bastard Surrealist Coppers’ deserves a t.shirt of its own…
Part of the crumbling abbey right by the coast.
So I went to St. Andrews in Scotland to do a reading for this festival. Ben Wilkinson (another of the young writers) and I were trying to work out how many festival-y type things we’ve done. At the time I could only think of LitCamp which took place last year, but on second thoughts there’s been YLAF, SpitLit, The Battle of Ideas… I like this festival thing. St Andrews was tiny – smaller than Oxford – comprising three main streets, many crumbling castles/abbeys/cathedrals, and a lot of coast. On my first night I wandered around a haunted beach, ate at a nice little place called BeanScene, then went to a reading by Kate Clanchy and Robert Crawford. Well, the latter was brilliant. I later discovered that he has a very academic Glaswegian accent, but since I am deaf to the subtleties of any accent above the Watford junction, I just appreciated the boom in his voice and the very soft Rs and the fact that melancholy/ irony/dead-pan humour sound so much better than in RP.
But I am liking Fart Party by Julia Wertz. How true this comic is.
A little more activity over on My Place or Yours…
That there is a sizeable population of black Iraqis. Though it doesn’t surprise me that they are treated badly.
Another irony, I suppose.
This is Olive Morris in Brixton. She died in 1979 from Leukemia aged 27. The Lambeth housing office is named after her, though very few people know that she was a radical black lesbian who squatted and mouthed off at the police.
I had an awesome time and am only sorry I couldn’t have stayed longer. Dashed off after a talk by a panel who’d been involved in organisations such as Cherry Bomb Comics and See Red. The woman who spoke about her work with OutWrite was particularly good. I hope, one day, to have a free and easy oratory style. I also hope that the twenty-year-olds of 2029 are as inspired by the stuff this generation has done, as I am by the work of women in the 1980s. Whenever I hear about people ‘who were there’, and who talk about the collectives / groups / bookshops / workshops they were a part of, it seems to me they lived in a brief, D.I.Y utopia. What’s more, none of them seem as disgruntled and disillusioned as I already am. Why is that? How is it a woman can be a part of something like See Red, watch it disband, watch that entire culture / ideology fall away, and still be an active, forty-odd year old visionary?
This weekend I am contributing to the zinefest at the Women’s Library in London. I’m talking about layouts for zines, specifically different ways of folding / photocopying and presenting text/graphics. I think I’m still a novice when it comes to zines, but it’s only five minutes and what the hell.
