Old News!
Everyone is wearing red poppies like never before. The
marketing has been a great success. I will most likely pick one up and wear
it near the 11th hour on the 11th.
A friend of mine was verbally abused for wearing a white poppy the other
day. She sometimes wears a red one too during Remembrance Week, but on this
particular day only wore the white. This reminds me of white feathers during
19th century wars, and the accusation of cowardice. And lest we forget, the
physical abuse of pacifists at the beginning of the First World War. The
collective gung ho is never far behind us; never far under the skin. It can
be accepted in a young punk band or contained on a festival field, but if
someone stands above the muddy trench and prods the nation's given
perspective then a
no-go area has been stepped upon. The connection between big business, the
media (Murdoch especially) will feed us a carefully selected diet of
harnessed broadsides, and because of the ongoing war in Afghanistan it is
marketed accordingly.
Respect, honour and gratitude are simple, and sadly becoming self-gratifying
items from a safe place, nicely packaged for the nation like anything we buy
from the supermarket. Protest is the enemy and not wearing one is now a sign
of rebellion, or that you don't care about young people being blown up on
someone else's land. It almost feels like a war on thinking.
It is always said at every useful opportunity what a free and open society
we are...Yet, oh yes, to our shame, there are certain things that are
imposed upon us that Joseph Stalin would have been proud of and would have
happily done to a
collective pool of seals with their mouths wide open. Yet is it is done with
hypnotism, in an unspoken way that is driven, with a stamp of approval from
some invisible force high in the money towers.
Every TV personality this week is wearing a poppy. Were they told to? There
is not one person on the telly not wearing one!
Television personalities not wearing a poppy would produce more curiosity.
When did it become protocol to wear a poppy? Who set this protocol? What are
we wearing them for? War, remembrance or peace? Or two of them, or all of
them?
The Veteran's Association have serious concerns about all this. It is as if
not wearing one is showing disrespect, but if this
poppy-fest continues it will soon be the other way round!
Yes, it is raising a lot of money. I have read that the British Legion is
hoping to top the £32 million it collected last year. This is only half the
amount they need. But shouldn't the armament companies be paying for the
veterans? And shouldn’t a poppy be free? Surely it would represent more
significance if it were just for a shorter time. Both my grandfathers fought
in the Great
War. One was shot in the shoulder and taken prisoner, and after treatment in
a German military hospital, became one of the Kaiser's prisoners and worked
as a slave for their war effort. Against the odds, they both came home, but
with post traumatic stress that came flowing down through the generations
and affected their children's children and possibly beyond my days in ways
too deep for a long time to uproot.
Every action changes history and shapes the lives of the offspring
consciously and unconsciously. The events of 1914-18 changed history, and so
will peace when it truly breaks out. We should consider making the age of
army service no younger than 33 and serving only under a UN peace charter.
Save our young people's lives once and for all. We don't treat young people
very well, do we? Gratitude and respect should be given before they fight,
not counting our atrocious losses later.
Sovereign nations still have too much to lose in their dirty games so this
would not be taken seriously…But I thought
war was a serious matter.
The Upanishad civilisation is believed to have had 1000 years of peace. A
different way of living is possible, beyond our
short-sighted, war-wounded minds. The causes of World War One are
complicated, we are told, but stupidly simple at the same time, and the
Treaty of Versailles was a recipe for more disaster and trauma to come.
Are we wearing these poppies for the ongoing stupidity or remembrance? It's
confusing. It's getting commercialised and messy.
It's November 5th today, not the 11th. I heard John Lennon's 'So This Is
Christmas' in a shop the other day. No it
feckin' isn't! It's November 3rd...And no! War isn't over...Not for French,
British, Polish, German and especially American young people serving in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Not for the countless wars and oppression of people on
all the continents, with unmentionable atrocity taking place in prisons and
dark corners of the globe while we wear our poppies.
I need a white poppy for Sunday...definitely a white one.
Read more:
www.ppu.org.uk/poppy
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During my concert last week in the Quaker meeting house at Brant Broughton
(built in 1703) it occurred to me how intense and animated people must have
been in the early 18th century compared to the present day. Well, it could
have been any time in our history really, but it was this particular era
that caught my imagination that night. I couldn't help thinking of how they
would have spoken to one another, enthralled in trance and total belief. A
world far removed from our information-packed, instant,
not-sure-still-sussing-it-out society which has left us with little urgency
and earnestness to communicate with one
another like those souls of the past.
Surety of God, but not knowing (or ignorance) fuelled these isolated worlds
of men, women, and children. And it can be looked back upon as pitiful. I
wondered in my not-sure-still-sussing-it-out way, wow, the energy they put
into communicating. Oh, how they must have sang, how they would have
listened to every word, how their lives depended on inspiration from one
another! Such physical intensity would have been the norm in a world of
pre-hospital, out-of-the-way death and dangers.
I don't wish to romanticise the hardship, only the animation. That is
possibly worth romanticising about!
Something is lost and something is gained. I have had people sitting on the
front row at gigs tapping their foot while scrolling through their messages
on a BlackBerry. That maybe be another kind of ignorance, as well as a
picture of how the human
body and mind have changed in this brave, new, gadget-ridden environment.
What is this lucky but poor human soul to do? "Google it!" is probably the
answer; "YouTube it." See it artificially, know, and therefore be not
ignorant. Yes, it's a whole new world. Here we have at our disposal the
ability to know whatever we want whenever we want, and keep our excitements
and discoveries to ourselves. Sometimes I feel informationally overloaded.
Our burden is knowing everything on a 24 hour news reel, and knowing the
pain and suffering of those in far off lands as well as here. We will adapt
and cope with this and make things better, and go onward, into the future
where our love belongs.
But we too are ignorant. Still ignorant. What are we ignorant of? Well, we
don't know because we are ignorant. The future, of course, will look back on
us and see our brutality and stupidity, our wars and inequality, our
chickens and cattle in a pen. We may no longer be as animated and full of
physical intensity as I imagined those 18th century Lincolnshire folk to be,
but we have as much to do, and as urgently as then. People speak of
'uncertain times', yet, there are no certain times ever.
Down the road from Brant Broughton they are building a super cowshed. It
will put the remaining milk farmers out of business. The supermarkets (the
real government) will be happy with this, and we, unanimated, will probably
not be able to stop it, and we shall be even more ignorant of what a cow is
for...unlike an 18th century Quaker.
http://www.ciwf.org.uk/news/beef_and_dairy_farming/not_so_super_dairy_feature.aspx
bye for now,
Pete
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After visits to Ely in
Cambridgeshire and the Storytelling 'Festival at
the Edge' in Shropshire during the early part of July, it was good to be
back in London to catch up on all those cyber chores.
However, more
importantly, I have been putting together all the artwork for my new CD,
‘Economy’.
I have just heard that the new label
which is going to release my
latest offering to the world now has a name: Annson Records.
It has been a slow process. I recorded all my parts quite a while ago
and didn’t get round to helping with the mixes until June. Anyway, it's
turned out really well. My producer, Dawson Smith, and Leicester's most
highly regarded music engineer, Kev Reverb, have done a splendid job.
Half the songs have been tried and tested in live performances for over
a year now, while the others will be new even to those who come along
regularly to gigs... So surprises for all!
I was lucky enough to have a
great selection of musicians on this CD: Lisa Banks and Roger Wilson,
amongst many others.
The album is due out in September with some album launches to hopefully be
arranged in October, then I will be off touring Holland and Belgium in November.
I feel ‘Economy’ is the strongest
set of songs I have written for a while. I don't believe in fillers, only
inspirations.
I‘m really looking forward to its completion, so look out for it,
everybody! It will be available from my site as well as at my gigs.
Thanks for your visit. Drop us a line here or via facebook.
Pete x
