EUROPEAN

European Euro trash I'm euro trash. I purvey No taste nor lead in any field I M homogenised white human, wrapped up like a dairy lea slice and placed in a soft shallow box. I am dead, inside, and blind and deaf and dumb and stupid and opinionated. I'm scared of blood and mud and shit and life and earth. My creativity is on etsy. I want to burn but I'm atheist now, but I don't burn bibles or qurans or mahabaratas I burn pellets in stoves preparing for Armageddon I'm off the grid in Wales or Sweden or Croatia, but not off enough to survive the flood of people that spill from the killing lands that feel so close now. Not off the grid. My superiority confuses me. Why am I so fat? Awash with centuries of propaganda I will put a positive spin on that. Big is better. Fat and sexy. Armed police with yellow guns now stroll through kings cross. Tiny frail men with army scars and small man complex wait to meet the enemy like Lego figures from the box flung into dung still smiling and at attention. Blood and limbs and viscera the wrongness and pain and disarray of war implied by Ak's and hand guns. Not yet, we hope, not now, we pray. There is so much to protect, we think, so much LIBERTY. Liberty, our eternity. Advertised now in every flash of twig-like thigh and rolling eyes head lolling back in angled pose perfect for all the culture trendsetting alternative underground magazines.
Cashmere block heel spike hair taffeta bow over idiosyncratic boots are they new or old models own can I ever be that thin do I understand the message does it make any sense. Leather plastic substance cut and meaning motive we are disconnect because our viscera betrays our mortality, we would like to pretend we will live forever in an airlock of small portions and speed. Pout, pout, let it all out, this is the tweed we can do without. Something like a all wood entrance hall that most of us will never have but imagine welcoming guests in. Plant the world of unattainable into my fish like brain and I will strive forever in discontent to never have it. 
Is it organic? No? Oh, Is it robbed of its natural goodness sitting in a GM poly tunnel farmed by Chinese and covered pesticides? Yes? Two for seven pounds? Okay. 
Let me just check Facebook. Someone is saving the whales. Good, I like that. Someone's killing them too! Shit, this an outrage! I'm fucking furio.....Chinese students have been massacred. That's normal right? Oh my god look at that baby hat. I'm sharing that.
Where is our land? Where can we graze our cows? Where can we grow our stinking vegetables? Where are our beehives? Where are our families? Where are our aunts and uncles and parents and cousins? Where are we and what the fuck are we doing? I'll look on Instagram...
White Cliffs of Dover snarl at Calais. Over the briny ocean where all our boys went so willingly to battle petrol stations line the road like welcoming parties of cheese toasties. All the way to Turkey. The killing was so close then. The dread killing. Killing killing killing. Some like killing, killing life killing animals killing soil killing hope killing innocence killing culture killing God killing truth killing kindness. Dark human cancers blighting the earth with spurious intent - human death cells infecting others until their armies are ravaging all life leaving dust bowls stained black with blood. 
What of life? Life, my wilting herb garden sitting gathering dust on a top floor window ledge. Soil dry like weetabix, my crops corrupted by sloth and no routine. 
The trees survive, I don't have to water them. The trees of Europe, great Oaks, sycamores, chestnuts, willow, fir, the trees endure. They dapple us in shade in parks and gardens for a moment we lie on astro turf like grass with the trains and drains humming beneath us we look up into a thousand nodding leaves, affirming that we are okay, that we are still alive, that we are merely one of them and that when our season comes we will fall and nourish the earth, take our place in the infinite cycle, we breathe, we are at peace.

The municipal baths on Long St. Cape Town.

THE MUNICIPAL BATHS on LONG STREET, CAPE TOWN

Sucked out my airtight hotel into the humming breeze of Cape Town Streets I see a cool, low, white facade and 'Baths' picked out in arts and crafts scroll. Cemented there so long ago I wonder if it still is. The white wood door is open and inside I find a tiny turnstile in painted iron and a twenty one rand (£1) entrance fee. I resolve, of course, to go back.
Returning with my swim suit hours later I hear a strange bird call from inside. I pay at the glass office,watching the uniformed man rubbing his head in the tiled, dim-lit atrium, illuminated by a sky-light. Venturing through the blind doorway, I discover the bird calls are coming from a small boy with big eyes. He stands with his hands behind him against the ancient tiles - recognising that he is in some kind of paradise he heralds me and this watery temple with an angelic chorus of bird screeches, he also stops me from wandering into the wrong changing rooms ; "No! No" he pauses his hymn ,his eyes widen, "That's the men's!"
Suited and towelled I move timidly into the pool room. Church like the transparent corrugated panels run the length of the roof, the original simple metal frames swoop across reminding me of all the halls and gyms I have ever known. Yellow diffused light floods in and a wall of frosted glass at the far end is framed by shelves on which stand a beleaguered collection of pot plants that need watering. A doorway in the centre is open to the Suns furnace, the pure hot orange pigment of heat clashing wildly with the teal hue inside. I poke my head out and see a concrete heat trap - a boy lying on a wooden bench in the sun, a father chasing his toddler and a woman lying down, lost in a reverie which is evidently hotting up - a bent leg sways gently as she grins and bites her finger on one hand replying rapidly with the other to the texts that ping like feverish kisses from her lover.
Turning back, I take in the scene, a woman breastfeeding her tiny baby, the life guard in yellow scans the pool for heavy petting and small children splash in the shallow pee-wee pool. Aptly named I have always thought.
A twenty year old mural runs the length and height of the brick wall on my left and on my right a bank of stepped seating that sit beneath a separate sloped loggia of fine pillars. A silhouette of a Victorian man and woman in evening dress illustrates the sign which reads spectators only. No-one is swimming lengths as I ease myself into the tepid, refreshing water, at the deep end boys race widths in pairs, I begin a snail pace breaststroke, treading water as tiny arms flail in a splashing crawl race in front of me, euphoric calls of victory as one touches first. I pause further, are they coming back?No? I paddle on.
Turning back my attention is drawn to the mural. A reflection of the pool in its higher state. Ecclesiastical windows shine divine light onto a yellow blue ocean and the heavenly congregation sit and stand wearing woollen hats and jackets, swimming trunks and head scarfs on its tiled banks. It is this place as a de-segregated utopia of tolerance and peace, and while large sections peel away leaving patches to match the municipal pall of the other walls I cannot take my eyes from it. Suddenly all the boys decide to race, churning the water with flailing legs and arms an electric current surges through me, my soul soars as I snail crawl on. Slower still, an old man sits in quiet meditation in the spectator stands, enjoying the view.

ART & ARTISTS RACE & GENDER

MY DIVERSE TV SPEECH

So 'Diversity in the media' - a catch-all term for the presence or lack thereof of black male people, black female people, white female people, ability impaired people in our media. Lots of labels. Too many labels for me - I simply see art and artists, not what you are, but who you are.
What I want to try and do is explain my perception of this issue in context.
I want to talk about what makes good art and bad art - the effect it has on our cultural out-put.
I want to talk about the impact of our shared history on the present.
I want to talk about conformity and it's damaging effects and then I want to talk about some of my experiences.

The difference between good and bad art is the extent to which the creator strives for a truthful expression of their perception of experience.
When someone makes good art, makes us laugh, makes us cry, we are connected to ourselves and humanity, we are engaged, entertained, we are grateful.

But, unfortunately, there is a lot of bad art, be it stodgy television, repetitive, derivative films or boring mindless music.

Bad art is the product of conforming minds seeking gainful employment in the arts and entertainment industry. It comes from people who have a passion for success but no passion for real creative expression.
Conforming minds are created by the mindless consumption of bad art and the belief that people in general are not really discerning enough to desire anything else, let alone demand it.

This leads to a nation whose cultural muscles are weakened by a flabby narrow mainstream, in which we all drift mindlessly, atrophying into a semi-conscious brainwashed state.

The question is; Who determines the political racial gender dynamics in this flabby mainstream? Who helms the reinvention and regurgitation of our experiences for our nations viewing pleasure? 

Well, not enough 'good artists' and too many conforming, unworldly minds.
The key to improving our cultural landscape is in the collaboration between artists and producers who seek to explore the truth of human experience and to push the boundaries of our art forms. In this pursuit, race, gender and ability status are irrelevant. Nature does not bestow talent, intellect, passion, creativity on people based on race, gender or lack of disability, nature gifts the muse and the fire to souls who have something to say. The good artists who seek transcendent connection with others through themselves.

Right now however there are too many souls that society isn't listening to, souls that need to be heard, that deserve to be heard.

Why?

Well, that's why we're here right? So why are we here?

History pretty much tells us all we need to know, our social, geographic political history that has brought us to this point, this place, this era.

I'm pretty sure everyone in this room knows that we are living in a world that has systematically disenfranchised the majority in order to protect and serve the few.

While racism served as an advertisement for slavery, sexism served as justification for the control and enslavement of women.

The tools with which the advantaged maintained the status quo have not changed that much. So powerful and prevalent was the propaganda of oppression that it has seeped into our collective consciousness like the disease of greed.

Century after century as the world industrialised and the profit margin became mans obsession, men, women and children were systematically and legally robbed of their human rights, freedoms and dignities to make a sociopathic minority rich and then told repeatedly in pamphlets, books, posters, essays, vile insipid tomes...and now mainstream television and film that they categorically, biologically deserve no better.

That's where we find ourselves today.

The racism, sexism and classism that is very often at the heart of bad art is what perpetuates the mindless conformity which strangles our culture and suffocates change and innovation in societies collective consciousness.

Conformity is the enemy of change.

Or, to quote the American Ralph Ellison, author of 'The invisible man' ;
"Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway? Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many part sand you will have no tyrant states. Why if they follow this conformity business, they'll end up forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a colour but a lack of one. Must I strive towards colourlessness? But seriously and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain."

It's only when we take responsibility for identifying and shaking off the mental shackles of our social conditioning that forms us into fearful conformists who have accepted the propaganda of oppression which serves to suppress change, extinguish innovation and deny those souls who burn to create a chance to infiltrate and inspire the mainstream, its only when we do this that we can claim to be changing the world for the better.

Years ago, I urged a director to go through a cast-list of a show we were making so we could establish which parts were racially non-specific, so we could consider black actors. He looked at me with anxiety and fear and said. 'Its a can of worms,' and in that moment I realised that the difference between he and I was vast, that my experiences, gender, up-bringing and environment had led me to explore and address the nature of my disadvantage and the disadvantage of others. His had not. He was scared to get it wrong, to open the can of worms in his own head that seemed to represent the part of his brain that was primed and conditioned to believe unquestioningly the rhetoric that reinforced his choice to reflect the world through the prism of his privilege and the wilful denial of the control and limitations that that privilege put on his ability to create truth, to create good art.

So I suppose I am here today to ask commissioners, producers, directors and creators to fearlessly mine your souls, to dig into your own can of worms, because I'm telling you, theres gold there.

Emily Wilding Davison and thoughts on the origins of sexism.

One hundred years ago hundreds of thousands of  men and women in Britain and across the world were engaged in an epoch defining movement -to force their governments to recognise womens right to vote. It was a campaign of strength, courage and perseverance with heroes and martyrs - none more infamous than Emily Wilding Davison who stepped onto the race course at Epsom on June 3rd 1913 waving a suffragette flag and who died in hospital four days later having been trampled to death by the kings horse. She  took Emmeline Pankhursts instruction 'Freedom or Death' to its ultimate expression and in doing so epitomised the bravery and passion which defined the suffragettes of the time.

She lived in a world in which she was unable to live and act freely, in which her worth and identity would be measured by her abilities as a wife and mother not by her abilities as a human being so, like thousands of others, she resolved to change the world.

Emily Wilding Davison was a first class honours student in literature and science. While she was prevented from studying for a degree at Oxford  because they did not allow women in, she eventually completed her degree at a London university, supporting herself and her studies by working as a governess. 

She joined the WSUP full time in 1908, which was the year that  Cristabel Pankhurst, a first-class law graduate, who because of her sex could not practice law, first lashed out at a police officer causing a media frenzy  and putting the suffragette movement firmly on the map. Over the following two years the movement  gained enormous popularity and support through the publicity these militant stunts generated. By 1910 the government was actively suppressing coverage in order to prevent this, and many stories, including the attempted assassination of the primeminister,  were not made public. 

The fundamental frustration of the suffrage movement was that the liberal coalition refused to see womens' votes as a human rights issue. Llyod George was busy reforming labour laws for the working man and trying to get land owners to pay tax and at a time when society was built on the adage 'A womens place is in the home', votes for them seemed like a waste of parliamentary time, but the suffragettes would not give up or give in, even when things got nasty. Winston Churchill famously did an about face in parliament after Henry Brailsford had been promised a hearing of the conciliation bill addressing womens' votes in 1910.  After sticking to an agreed amnesty on the understanding that the bill would be heard, when it was rejected without a hearing, the suffragettes marched on parliament from Caxton Hall and the suffragette era took a turn for the worse. During the protest outside parliament  known as 'Black Friday' two women were beaten to death and two hundred were arrested.  In a first hand account of one of the women at that protest she describes how she was taunted, groped and thrown by poilcemen, and told to 'get back to the sink'.  When I read this I resolved to try and understand where, how and why the deep rooted sexism in our society came from and why women, one half of humanity, could be so devalued, disrespected and degraded by our own government. It convinced me that  the Suffragette movement was inevitable and necessary and that had I been alive then I would have been standing shoulder to shoulder with them.

    Womens' value during the industrial years was inestimable, in the building of the new world and the emergence of the dark satanic mills that made a few people very wealthy, men and women were working hard long days in unmodernised homes uprooted from familiar villages and families -  in womens' case they were  voteless, unpaid cogs in the machinery of commerce - women who did work were uniformly paid much less than men for doing the same job and with no hope of finding a political voice to fight for legislative justice. 

      It isn't surprising that John Stewart-Mill made himself unpopular in aristocratic circles  by writing about gender equality and human rights - his values led him to write books that would emancipate, unlike the land owners and factory bosses whose main interests were making money and maintaining the status quo.  Almost more than the endless lives began and ended in drudgery, the worst thing about this era was the assertion and reinforcement that women were intrinsically inferior to men, that they were of less value and therefore not deserving of equal pay, but far worse than that, not deserving of equal rights as human beings. Quite obviously equal rights means equal pay, no rights equal less pay or none at all.

        In the late 1700's in New York, women had the vote but it was taken away from them in 1809 presumably after someone realised that women, just like african americans were potential free/cheap labour as long as they were denied their human rights. It was a revelation to me to realise  that the seed of sexual inequality was financial greed and I realised that my research had become about much more than the history of suffragettes, it had become about investigating my own questions about the origins of the pervasive sexism in which our society is steeped.  

       The most chilling  aspect of the suffrage movement was reading all anti-suffrage material that convinced people that women were just not capable of shouldering the responsibility of choosing a primeminister, that they were in every way the fairer, gentler, weaker, simpler sex, built and intended for supplication to men. It was easy to see the parallels between this and the propaganda rhetoric that justified slavery for four hundred years - the insidious, spurious 'evidence' that suggested that african slaves were intellectually inferior and therefore not capable of being self-determining free men and women in society. 

    Exactly this kind of propaganda was used to brainwash   women into believing that they were not intellectually or biologically built for a life of freedom and choice and the powerful female-led anti-suffrage societies were a testament to its persuasive power.  

     In many ways the task facing our young men and women today is almost more complex than that of those women a hundred years ago campaigning for the vote. We are faced with society still riddled with the propaganda rhetoric of oppression, a society in which gender differences are fetishised and exaggerated, where intelligent  young women in the public eye from all professions are routinely expected to pose like porn stars in mens magazines if they want to 'get on' and instead of being valued and enjoyed for their wit, intelligence and talent  they are judged by their 'tits' and 'bed-ability'. I wonder if Emily Wilding Davison had been alive today  she would be in GQ  in her knickers under the title ' Suffrage-tits!'? I think she would have told them to f*** off.

The Real Tbilisi Article

      The last time I travelled with my mother and sister on holiday was a trip to turkey seventeen years ago. My sister beat all the men off the backgammon table, I tried to hire a moped without a licence and nearly crashed it and my mother got sunburned so bad she had to stay in her hotel room. This family trip was infinitely more sophisticated not, as you might think, because we are old bags now but because our destination is a last bastion of civilisation in an ever homogenised, sanitised and commercialised world. Tbilisi is heaven on earth. Not just because you can still smoke between courses, at the table, or because the food you eat in every restaurant is fresh, seasonal, unlike anything you've ever eaten and utterly delicious - our favourite was Badrijani Nigvizit, aubergines in a walnut paste garnished with a little pomegranate jewel, or because you can buy fresh Georgian cheese bread Khachapuri from ancient basement bakery Tone, that you enter from a tiny street door down stone steps into a Bruegal painting where industrious Georgian women pile fresh sweet bread into huge fire ovens, or because drinking Usakhelauri a light semi-sweet red wine is like being enveloped in the mountain sunshine that ripen the grapes (I am cradling a bottle to open on my sisters birthday), but because despite relentless onslaught over centuries from unfriendly neighbours the Georgian culture and spirit remains undimmed, in many respects strengthened by the blatant disregard for its borders and insidious assaults on its people, churches and monuments.

Walking into Kashveti church on Rustaveli Avenue for the first time is a profoundly moving experience. A stunning and eclectic array of framed religious paintings climb timorously up the walls but beneath is a grey wash, all the original religious murals gone - the Communists artistic contribution to this beautiful church. The church is not only bustling with Georgians, lighting candles, praying, it is bustling with history, tangible, profound history made triumphant by the cloaked priests with beards who sit in a three dimensional Caravaggio painting in the ornate vestry. My sister and I refrained from whipping our cameras out and capturing the blue and yellow light of stained glass falling on a rather handsome portrait of Jesus as it felt disrespectful, but trust me, he was gorgeous. 

Next door to Kashveti Church is the Georgian art gallery which currently houses an exciting array of Georgians most famous painters; Lado Gudiashvili, Nika Piroshmani and David Kakabadze. The gallery space is huge and grand with comfortable benches for sitting and looking which is what my sister and I did with great pleasure, this trip was a rare chance to evade the service of our children and we both loved 'Imeretia My mother' a stunning painterly portrait of his mother doing needle-work. It made me feel desperately inadequate that I have not, as yet, ever crocheted a pair of socks. Lado Gudiashvili never painted ears as he felt them to be ugly, I couldn't help thinking that Gudiashvili would have loved our cafe companion who we met later that day - a well loved Georgian underground poet Kote with only one ear, the other was sliced off in a fight. He told us he had an enormous penguin paper back collection of over ten thousand books and was an aficionado on American literature from the beginning of the last century, reeling off name after name he told  us he read for six hours a day. He was famous for posting hundreds of guerilla style poetry slogans across Tbilisi during the dark days of the Russian occupation and is somewhat of a folk legend - unfortunately the impact of his slogans are somewhat lost in translation but he told me he once broke into the parliamentary offices and stuck slogans on the inside of the toilet doors saying something along the lines of 'You're shit'. Sagashvilli, the previous prime minister though it would teach him a lesson to have another of his slogans plastered on the bins - he'd obviously never heard of Banksy and Kote became an even bigger star of the underground resistance. 61 now and leading a rather comfortable life in the Beverly Hills of Tbilisi he claimed that there was no longer an 'underground'  because there was no 'ground', and left me with one of his poems 'The past is perfect, the present is continous, the future is perfect.' I imagine there is probably an underground somewhere, we were just in the wrong cafe but it is always great to meet an artist whose fearless championing of the spirit of defiance, sense of humour and intelligence is communicated so effortlessly. He was a lovely man and it was a great honour to meet him.

If you are prone to 'craft-skills envy' don't come to Georgia, at practically every street corner hand-made socks are lovingly laid out - from booties with bobbles to man-size sacks, all hand-made by 'Imeretias' who appear to be the back-bone of this beautiful country. Apart from socks Churchkhela is also sold in abundance. Otherwise known as Georgian snickers and a healthier more tasty snack I have not found - they hang in knobbly bunches and are walnuts coated in grape juice.   The streets in central Tbilisi are wide and leafy - great piazza like pavements stepping up or down into grand classical buildings and huge trees usher you into wide squares and balconied side streets. The woodwork on every balcony is intricate and stunning - the streets and houses scramble up the banks of the wooded hill that flank the city and if you head up to the Narikala Fortress a walled church on the hill you can look down into Tbilisi botanical gardens where an extremely modern looking botanical school watches studiously over the stunning terraced hillside. Tbilisi has a dream-like quality and although the dynamic modern architecture is largely disliked by discerning Tbilisians I happen to love it. If you stand on the other side of Narikala Fortress you get the full force of the range of architectural styles , old Tbilisi,communist Tbilisi,classical grand Tbilisi and new Tbilisi. The huge mushroom like building that sprouts from behind an ornate rococo block somehow makes sense of the communist lego which litters the sky line - its organic curved modernism so different from the brutal bastardisation of Corbusier the communists inflicted on the city as to placate it, to tease it, to confuse it into obsolescence - this is no toy-tourist-town preserved in aspic like so many of our precious boring tourist cities, this is a dynamic beast, living and breathing and I suspect on the brink of its most exciting era yet.

If all this excitement is getting too much for you, as it certainly was for my sister and I after a night on the town watching Georgian dancers bounce off their knees, drinking Bagrationi sparkling wine and smoking like chimneys -  we took a trip with a Georgian friend Leo to Davit Gareja Monastery about one and a half hours drive outside the city. There are many trips you can do from Tbilisi but I particularly wanted to do this one as I had had only a fleeting visit on my last trip to Georgia and very much wanted to see the churches and chapels carved into caves on the hillside facing Azerbaijan. So often you can go to a place and forget to just sit and enjoy its peace and quiet so after sitting and trying to etch into my mind the outlines of the monks cells carved into the rock face while sitting in a pale lilac courtyard with an ancient knotted tree, we left our mother with a good book in the car and my sister and I headed off up the craggy hillside. My sister was particularly excited when her phone read 'Welcome to Azerbaijan', as were all of us when a young girl walking ahead of us decided we needed a sound track for our ascent and started to play Pink 'Try' loudly on her phone, as we reached the summit she confirmed her DJ-ing skills by playing Rihanna 'Diamonds' as we all gazed out across the lunar-like Azerbaijan landscape - and then behind us to the soft rust coloured waves of rock that carried us back into Georgia. It was a perfect moment. 'Find light in the beautiful sea, I chose to be happy'. 

 The paintings at Davit Gareja are astonishing not only because of their historical import but also because of their beauty - we bumped into one of the men who studied and  helped to restore Davit Gareja in  the eighties and nineties - an old friend of our companion and he explained a complicated but fascinating interpretation of 'The hospitality of Abraham' which was depicted on one of the many walls of the many tiny chapels carved into the side of the hill. Most interestingly that orthodox christianity in that part of the world did not permit the depiction of God the Father, believing it to be an anthropomorphising of him and therefore blasphemous, this makes absolute sense given the proximity to the muslim world so in order to depict the holy trinity in this chapel, god the father, god the son and god the holy spirit, they  reappropriated the depiction of 'The hospitality of Abraham' and gave all three men at the table scrolls, unifying them and giving the image a double meaning without overtly flouting the churches rules on iconography.

When we reached second summit there was more music as one young man began to sing a Georgian song into the warm billowing wind. His companion held her scarf above her head in appreciation and we all stood and gazed at them. When he broke into a rendition of Nina Simones 'Feeling Good' which wasn't quite so effortless we all shuffled away, started to hunt in our bags for Churchkhela and begin our descent. 

By now we were beginning to experience retail withdrawal - the Lari's were burning a hole in our pocket as everything is so reasonable its hard to spend money here so after freshening up at our sumptuous hotel - the Tbilisi Marriott, we ventured out and were catatonic with excitement to find what Georgians describe as a 'junk market' to us of course this was a treasure trove - my sister displaying her sophisticated taste and homemaking skills by purchasing antique childrens books in english a gorgeous rug, tin tea-pots while I  bought knives, maps and a pack of cards. I have always envied Zoe three things, her figure, her taste and her eye for a good bit of schmutter. She is gorgeous, well dressed and a great shopper, fact.

Our last night in Tbilisi was rather poignantly spent in Pur Pur - an establishment effortlessly embodying shabby chic as it is housed in a crumbling Tbilisi square with floor to ceiling windows and enormous lampshades. We drank Usakhelauri like it was berry juice ate mackerel in pomegranate sauce and I watched my sister and my mother enthusiastically chat to the new friends we had made. It was poignant because we learned that this old square is soon to be demolished and replaced, although nobody seemed to know what with - which was unsettling. We were there on the very last night while a string quartet serenaded us. That we should enjoy Kote's 'continuous present' was imperative. My friend Maia gifted me a book of Alexander Blok's poems and I opened it on a very appropriate poem; 'There is so little time left for us,To Marvel at these banquets here:Mysteries shall unfold before us, And distant worlds shine in the air.'

Aint no biggie My Nigga Gwynie

Rarely am I inspired by celebrity Gossip to take to my keys and write but I have come across a recent event that has fascinated and inspired me to put pen to paper. Gwyneth and her 'Niggas'. Recently Gwyneth Paltrow tweeted 'Niggas in Paris For real' next to a picture of herself and two friends on stage.  The interesting thing is the very clear line that divides people on this appears to be entirely non-racial. The people who are 'down' with Gwyn 'flossing' with her 'niggas'. Are black and white. The people who are very much NOT are also black and white, so who are these groups and what the heck is going on?

From what I have read it appears that the group who were opposed to Gwyneth's tweet imagined that the gentlemen she was on stage with were being insulted by the self-confessed 'Paella addict'. Her mistake of course was not to use a pre-fix - had she said 'MY Niggas' she would of course been implying that she was a 'Nigga' herself. I imagine that this is what she meant to tweet but was prevented from doing so by the endemic uncertainty and complexity of etiquette these kinds of occasions throw up or in Gwyn's case 'throw down.' Had she tweeted 'THE niggas' well that's a whole different article. 

So the debate here is can Gwyneth Paltrow be a Nigga, or is she just too pale? Well 'where I come from, we don't let society tell us how it's s'pose to be, our clothes, our hair, we don't care, its all about being there…..Black, white, puerto rican, everybody just freakin' - good time's are rollin'.'

If only life were that simple.

As long as people let themselves and others be defined by society's woefully limiting gender and racial stereotypes we will never transcend the shackles of our shared histories horrors. The hegemonising of the word 'Nigger' has been extraordinary. We have seen it come along way from days of slavery and segregation, when it was used  like a bullet fired off with the sole intention to degrade and humiliate. The adaptation of the word into the modern day rapper's vocabulary was a deliberate act designed to diffuse the word, to extract its poison, to destabilise it, to strip it of its powers and to re-appropriate it as street slang meaning 'homies', 'dudes', 'peeps' etc. Gwyneth in fact used the very correct term for her friends that night as it is common place in the rapping world for rap artists and the people they hang out with to refer to themselves as niggas and in doing so debase it's previous oppressive powers.  If it matters to you that she is white then you are actually  a racist. Ain't no biggie my Nigga Gwynie (next time don't forget the 'MY….)

KARL THEOBALD responds as TED

And what i needed, that never seemed to come.
However much I prodded at the opaque indifference
Of this mechanical pagent. This fury of promise.
That never seemed to come. However much I teased and
bullied and pleaded with this remote page. This empty mirror.
What I needed. I, who must now become Judas to the bond.
I who could conjure a molten fox and knew the shapes that ovid keeps.
I could not make it come. Not even through ancient beats of the chested drum.
What i needed. What I thought was rightly mine as servant of the muse.
Must have passed me by. Or maybe I was used.
What I needed but never rightly had.
That I could not pull from the memory of the lad.
What i needed to help you live.
Was love my love. I never had love to give.