back up, and dancing

Going out to a performance each week is certainly keeping Red Fudo on his toes.  Dancingthrough the balloons of creative planning as you will see below.

More importantly those who knew Mr Tails held a celebration of his life , had his funereal , I say his life offered others , though sadly not him latterly , so many opportunities, pleasures and creative treats. I noticed when scrolling the pictures and contributions  on facebook. how  many people were one friend in common with Tails. I felt I was  only one link away too.   Sadly not enough to keep him safe though.I was on the periphery of the wonderful network he was part of. I miss you Mr. Tails along with many in Bristol.

This week I went to see the Newes at the Arnolfini  meeting  by chance Liz  Clarke who was also intent on seeing her friends through their innovative performance. So many different cultural reference from comic book monsters to indonesian shadow puppets.from ritual  procession with staff of office  to hindu wedding through tarot and travelling pedlar. Sorry there’s no pics up yet but the Arnolfini should have some in their archive section soon.I went wishing to think more about performance and the exhibition I was planning in my head which might have dancers in it… and looking for ideas about bodies in space. Thank you guys I came away with plenty of ideas and  ready to plan a visit to Bristol’s Puppet Place in a week or two.

I also saw Robert Garnham at a special Poetry Can Event .

Wild and whimsical and ,as ever, an enjoyable contrast between the external and the internal Robert . Sofa time with the octopus !!! Perhaps he would enjoy ‘ Other minds: The Octopus  and the Evolution of Intellingent Life’  as reviewed by Peter Godfrey Smith in the Guardian. His set was very cheering , and sometims pink.  I hope to see him back in Bristol very soon with or without the Octopus.  Paighton’s  far away when its public transport as I am aware.

The main picture is  is of Rachel Dolezal who has been in my thoughts for some time this month.  She has said of herself that she is transracial  a term new to me and as I feel strongly about trans gender and LGBTQ issues  felt that her ideas  and her struggles were of interest to me.  Her auto boigraphy ‘Full colour ‘ should be an intriguing read.

But the articles I read , including the linked one  , above, did not really  answer my question if gender and race are social contructs cannot one choose to be anywhere on the spectrum, by choice alone.

it would follow that an accepting society  would come to accept a persons choice. With transracial  however  it is not a case merely of sustituting a binary  state (m or f) with  more nuanced spectrum  but with something more complex about percieved identitiy as well as internalised identity. Rachel identifies  ( internally) as black , and can be percieved so but not without artificial aids… ( bronzer / skin colouring,hair dyes and perming etc. )  And as one  black interviewer said ”Rachel You can undo this, I can’t...”  so the parallels with transgender begin to break down at the edges. I think this is because transgender  changes are caused by internal forces in the person and racism is external. Sure it has an effect on the inner identity of a person but its learned from the outside.

here’s my poem about Rachel :

Rachel Dolezal

Rachel Dolezal’s white parents adopted four black babies who she helped care for.. She describes herself as ‘Trans-racial’ She became a civil rights worker.

What did Jesus witness at my birth.

My white parents were sure He was there

holding my black brothers’ close

the black college dining rooms became home

accepted as one of many among our community

As my conviction grew I struggled with the sisters

Waving my hair, plaiting the braids

drawing my face with the brown crayon

brown face,

blackface,

brownface,

drawing my face with the brown crayon

Waving my hair, plaiting the braids

As my conviction grew I struggled with the sisters

accepted as one of many among our community

Still the black college dining rooms became home

holding my black brothers’ close

The first trans-racial life to be publicised as a lie

Escaping my parents denial, in the TV’s glare

(end of poem)

I can’t wriggle away from Rosa Clemente’s righteous anger though.

“As people of color, no matter how hard we try, we cannot achieve whiteness, but the fact that a White woman can achieve Blackness and lie and take space and take resources and on top of it be belligerent when confronted is the epitome of White privilege.”
Rosa Clemente, civil rights activist and journalist
Facebook

If you look at Rachel and her struggles  on line you rapidly come across the cutural appropriation/ cultural adoption debate  which has also kept me mentally dancing on the head of a very important pin. I offer you (with the links)  some definitions

cultural appropriation

and from the cambridge dictionary cultural appropriation

Katy Perry has been accused of this..

Whenn singer Katy Perry performed as a geisha at the American Music Awards in November 2013, she described it as an homage to Asian culture. Asian Americans disagreed with this assessment, declaring her performance “yellowface.” The Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Yang said that her performance did not celebrate Asian culture but misrepresented it entirely. He found it particularly problematic that Perry dressed as a geisha to perform the song “Unconditonally,” which describes a woman who pledges to love her man no matter what.

“The thing is, while a bucket of toner can strip the geisha makeup off of Perry’s face, nothing can remove the demeaning and harmful iconography of the lotus blossom from the West’s perception of Asian women — a stereotype that presents them as servile, passive,” Yang wrote, “and as Perry would have it, ‘unconditional’ worshippers of their men, willing to pay any price and weather any kind of abuse in order to keep him happy.”

 Thank you for this    Eyob Fitwi Abraham, (For now, just a Quora addict)

Practising a culture is cultural appreciation.

Adapting a culture to your own is cultural adoption.

Talking credit for that culture, and in the process denying the people who created it or ignoring them is cultural appropriation.

The boundaries may not be clear, but you’ll know it when it’s way past it.

 

 

 

is

 

Originally printed on March 16, 2017 in the Bristol Evening Post .
Viewed by 8 Visitors.

McCullie David Stuart (Mr Tails) David’s family would like to thank all relatives, friends and neighbours for their messages of condolence, cards and generous donations. The attendance of so many at the funeral service, especially David’s friends, some of whom travelled a long way, was of great comfort to the family. Thank you to David Hayes for his visit and comforting service and Ian Waterhouse at T.W. Birks & Son for his funeral arrangements. Thanks also to The Woodland Glade and Greenhead Masonic Lodge for their welcome and wonderful refreshments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another dance with Red Fudo.. plaiting

This particular dance seems to have a different rhythm. I have had to take another look at the question of pace. Firstly, the pace of ageing which varies such a lot from person to person, secondly the pace at which learning and hence change can be absorbed and thirdly how creative work – mine and others impacts on this.
Fudo and I have had to get plaiting on this one….
Strand one – my body is giving me grief at the moment and although its not pleasant I feel such a relief that its not dementia. Friends and I went to see ‘Still Alice’ such a well researched piece of work, taught me more than the Alzheimers Society and my little personal experience had managed to impart. Sort of comforting and scary to see most of the afternoon’s audience were the silver haired variety !!!
Back to the plait
For my very few friends whose lives are getting smaller and more domestic I am learning to share that focus when they call, (rather like looking at spring violets and take my pleasure with them in the detail) How different my pleasure for a best mate who found that she wanted to paint, draw and celebrate the visual – I celebrate too. I know now she shares my gourmet style appreciation of that moment when you open a new box of oil pastels or to look along the range of colours in a box of pencils or tubes of paints. Giving herself an artists treat indeed, straight from ‘the Artists Way’. So does this visual or artistic response stay all your life? How long before it is destroyed if you get dementia ? ‘Still Alice’ did not answer these questions but I do remember my mother being frustrated in her nineties that she could still ‘see’ the picture she wanted to paint but not being able to execute it. Her brushes would not do what her brain told them any more…
Strand two: The media seems to think that younger people can only learn through the use of sound bites – ‘that’s all they can manage’ – completely forgetting the hours of concentration people use up on games and on composing music or lyrics. Yes of course there is a place for quick, clear Ted Talks just in the same way as there should be space for juggling and durational performance pieces. I can’t resist a plug for Liz Clarkes’ latest piece. She is an artist who understands the pace of the performance for the audience supremely well. I also enjoyed the more considered recent tv documentary Hockney. Called feature length two whole hours, it was the pace which allowed one to see his artistic development over a number of decades.

The Punch

no reliable statistics are kept nationally on domestic violence

Strand three: Deadlines, the creative ‘cooking’1 process, revision, editing, self assessment, waiting for inspiration to strike, slightly (or more than slightly) ritualistic preparation , – all those things that affect the pace of how one works. I happily find tips on face book and other media about how to deal with these and sure you can ‘trick’ yourself into changing your habits….

I have found these tricks work temporarily but the deepest change for me has come from considering tattoos and kintsugi. Tattoos because they are permanent and made me recognise that the only way to experience time is forward, you cannot erase experience.
The Japanese art of Kintsugi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi because it acknowledges this and shows how something can be beautiful even after a life changing trauma…can acknowledge its past. I made a series of memorial tea cups last year to (female) victims of domestic violence. These were shown at the Easton Arts Trail last year alongside poems on the same theme. The one above was made in response to a poem by Andi Langford – Woods’ ‘She Burns’ .The glaze in the cup looked to me like the dirty bubbles referred to in the poem.

SHE BURNS

The kids have done their worst and
all the neighbours give her grief
when she comes home from the fields —
from chasing cows, catching sheep…
the ragamuffins down the lane have scratched
and scarred their gang name
on the side of her brothers car
the cash she made at the Boot Sale
won’t get them very far

The TV’s on the blink again, the dish is
falling off the roof
The Ann Summers party was a flop
now her only friend from the village
is being quite aloof…
Her mothers coming down for Christmas
there’ll be no sex that week
‘cos her mum can’t stand her latest bloke
calls him a bloody hippy freak

Her lips are dry and cracking with
the winter air doing it’s best to bite
Her lack of motivation leaves her
finished for the night.
The kids are in bed after shredding her
with normal childlike needs
she hardly feels the innocence
under voices shrill as reeds

Wiped out before she hits the sack
body and mind unconnected
Auto-pilot gets her there
thoughts senselessly directed
Almost asleep as she climbs the stairs
legs stiff and stained with dirt and grease
her prize, her bath, her moment
warmth, silence, sanctuary, peace

The sky is burnt in violent red and
clouds explode in purple anger overhead
Her night time world a battlefield played
out inside her head
Joan of Arc, and Xena, Boudicea too
all stand beside her rage her passion
shrieking banshees mourning justice
furious powerful full of fire
she burns pianos in her dreams
in protest at banality
the only way she ever sees
to change the sound of vanity
the loss of rhythm in city life
the absence of a friendly smile
the war, the greed, the poverty
integrity reviled
she burns pianos in her dreams
she can’t think of anything worse

I was lucky to have poems from other local poets too including Deborah Harvey, Jo Bell and others too as well as my own poem about the Vodoun Goddess Erzulie Dantor – patron of Lesbians and battered women https://thefggoddessprinciple.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/ezili-dantor-or-erzulie-den-tort among her aspects. I will be writing more about her in other posts.