Thoughts in Progress

It must have happened about a third into my run a few days ago. I was listening to my mp3 player as I usually do, my training getting more Brighton-Marathon-focused these days, each song propelling me up, incline after incline. Then, all of sudden a particular track kicked in and I felt a strange sensation. For some reason, the lyrics seemed to unveil a secret hitherto buried: Way over yonder/Is a place that I know

Where I can find shelter/From a hunger and cold/And the sweet tastin' good life/Is so easily found/A way over yonder, that's where I'm bound.

I must have listened to Carole King’s Way Over Yonder a thousand times before. One of my favourite records is the Tapestry album. But on this occasion King’s timeless composition took on a different meaning.

January has come and gone and for those who make New Year resolutions, a fresh start along with practical strategies is de rigueur. How to identify and maintain willpower, stick to a plan, set one goal at a time and learn from failure, are some of the elements that make up this “New Year, New Me” approach.

Not for me, though. For starters, I do not make New Year resolutions. Secondly, for the last four or five years, I have begun to reach more into myself, to attempt to deepen an understanding of who I am. This is where King’s song comes into the picture. A first listen (and multiple ones after, perhaps) might make one think that Way Over Yonder is a religious-themed tune. All this talk of “garden of wisdom” and “the land where the honey runs” invites a Bible-friendly reading of the song.

And yet, for me, this garden of wisdom is to be found within myself and not in a holy book. It is the place where I would like to believe I have planted myriad plants, flowers and trees throughout my forty-seven years (and counting) and which I need to tend to regularly.

Last summer I began to impose a social media curfew on myself. There was a strong reason for it which I will not discuss here (no, there was no addiction. It was more creativity-related). There were such positive side-effects, however, that I decided to extend the curfew beyond my six-week-long, annual leave. Add the meditation I have been doing for the last three or four years, plus mindfulness, plus a more positive attitude in general (less anger, more thinking) and my body and mind together have become Carole King’s land where the honey runs.

Without wanting to sound too preachy, sometimes we look at external elements to help us keep a healthy equilibrium of brawn and brains. We tend to forget – and that’s happened to me – that the real balance lies within. Start from within and everything else falls into place. Well, most of the time.

© 2019

Thoughts in Progress

What if we were to wander onto the canvas of an artist painting a landscape? Stroll in at the precise moment when the painter is trying to capture the choreographic movement of a field of wheat? Would we be considered accidents, errors to be erased and painted over? Or would we be incorporated automatically into the piece?

That seems to be the dilemma facing Kate Northrop in Affair with Various Endings. Of course, her two lovers, meeting “outside Kempton, with the creek rising behind us?” have plenty of reasons not to want to be included in the painting. Editing reality out of a canvas is a form of lying, albeit benign. Editing our own reality in order to create a story that casts us in a good light is also a form of lying. At times like this I think of couples around the world attempting to erase the meaning of “the last of the light lifting this evening from the field of wheat”. Perhaps one is the painter and their view does not include the other one anymore.

To paraphrase Nick Cave, one of them is still a good muse, but the other one is still not much of a poet.

© 2019

Thoughts in Progress

In the The Young Karl Marx August Diehl smirks a lot. He displays a smug smile when he meets his future comrade-in-arms Friedrich Engels. It is there again when he takes on the apocalyptic- and evangelically-sounding rabble-rouser Wilhelm Weitling. And we come across Marx’s scornful expression again when he confronts a rich mill owner, friend of Engels’ father, on child exploitation. That such a dialogue-rich movie contains such strongly-conveyed facial messages speaks volumes about the quality of the direction, script and performances.

Whereas in I am Not Your Negro, director Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated, James Baldwin-inspired documentary, the film-maker  uses the late civil rights movement writer’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House to put contemporary US society in the dock, in the The Young Karl Marx, he injects both Marx and Engels with a dose of much-needed humanity. The script suits Diehl’s bruising Marx and Konarske’s arrogant Engels, both of whom have plenty of scores to settle. Rounding up the leading roles are two actresses who rise up to the challenge posed to them even if their contribution is not as evident as the men’s. On one side we have Vicky Krieps, who was last seen poisoning Daniel Day Lewis (admittedly, with his consent in the end) in Phantom Thread, in the role of Jenny Marx. Although here the Luxembourg-born actress seems to play second fiddle, there’s still fierceness in her performance as a staunch defender of her husband’s ideas. On the other side we have Hannah Steele, she of Wolf Hall fame, as Mary Burns, Engels’ lifelong partner and a working-class, Irish woman who adopts both Marx and Engels’ ideas as her own.

The elephant in the room is the theory both thinkers come up with. Whilst Engels acquires first-hand knowledge of the conditions of the English working-class (chiefly with Mary’s help), Marx is busy polishing up his ideas on the inner workings of capitalism. Their findings are valid but their solutions controversial, and sadly history has not been kind to these men’s communist- or socialist-driven agenda (it is always amusing to find a group of western intellectuals locked in a verbal brawl over which system is the better antidote to modern-day capitalism).

In believing that the way to accelerate the demise of capitalism and usher in a new equalitarian society was by transferring power from the ruling elite to the working class, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels created unintentionally a virtuous oppressed Other. This oppressed Other was cast in an angelic and almost-perfect light. Nuance went out of the window, along with the power of the individual.

To be clear: the underage children slaving away in coal mines were real, the poor families with barely anything to eat and in constant fear of eviction were real and the workers deprived of their own rights and voice were real. It is just that the solution to their plight was not and should never have been Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Fidel. When these leaders introduced their own version of socialism, the last thing on their minds was that oppressed Other. The irony was that they used the nuance-free image created by the followers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and manipulated it for their own power-grabbing purposes. This was not Marx or Engels’ fault, any more than the writer(s) who cobbled together those first passages of the Old Testament are to blame for the current situation with abortion in Ireland. Socialist dictatorships’ first step when they come to power is to wipe away any kind of joyful expression that does not match the incoming government’s revolutionary zeal. And if that includes self-satisfying, smug smirking, so be it.

What, smirking again, Herr Marx?

© 2018

Thoughts in Progress

Three and a half months into the New Year, how are your resolutions going? Remember them? They’re the ones you thought up as you knocked back that fourth glass of cheap prosecco, bought from your local Lidl. The Lidl where you definitely do not wantto ever be seen by your fellow middle-classers, but to which you elopefurtively at almost closing time when no one’s looking and your pockets lackthe depth they once had. Anyway, back to my main point, how many resolutions have you kept? How many have you thrown overboard, into that big ocean called “Real Life”?

Late December and early January have that self-satisfying, fresh-start effect that animates many a New Year’s Eve shindig. It is that sense of finally, finally! beginning that much sought-after, new chapter in our lives. Yet, beyond this burst of motivation lies a not-always-perceptible threat: disappointment.

What killed Icarus? Hubris or failure to realise his New Year's resolution: flying as close to the sun as possible?

There are both mental and physical consequences as a result of this grandiose vision of the year ahead. Namely, we tend to overlook small but equally important changes in our lives. Hitting the gym and attempting to go from a size 16 down to a size 10 takes precedence over going for a brisk walk in the local park regularly. The former might burn more calories in a shorter time, but it is the latter that manages to leave us more fulfilled and complete as human beings in the long term. Another mental minus is that we set the bar for our resolutions so high that not even the former pole vault legend Sergey Bubka would have been able to clear it. The outcome? Frustration.

On the other hand, having low expectations does not help either. Based on close observation, I have noticed that pessimists or those prone to having a negative outlook on life, tend to have a body language that mirrors their attitude. Slouched shoulders, bent posture and solemn-looking faces are some of the signs I usually come across, even if they are not conclusive evidence.

We live in a world full of expectations, both made of us and by us. The problem is that constant target-setting is tiring and it takes the joy out of the life we, ironically, are trying to live well. My advice? Do not ever expect perfection. Give New Year’s resolutions the heave-ho. We are broken humans after all.

© 2018

Thoughts in Progress

I still remember when I was growing up in Cuba, a prevalent mindset amongst us, habaneros. A certain city vs country dichotomy. As an “habanero”, I, together with most of my family and friends, looked down on rural folk, seeing them as unsophisticated and simple-minded. Jokes were made at farmers’ expense and there was an air of superiority amongst us that betrayed the notion of a socialism-driven, collective society.

I changed my ways long time ago, especially when the economic crisis hit Cuba in the early 90s. All of a sudden we re-discovered a “new” passion for all things rural. Habaneros were no longer ashamed to be seen growing vegetables in any available space in modern flats, or rearing animals that usually ended up on their plate.

I was reminded of this recently after watching on telly one of the many analyses on the Trump/Farage/Sanders/Corbyn phenomenon.

Of course, although lumped together, these politicians are all different. They all, however, share one trait: they have shown up the “establishment” for the sham it is. In the process of doing so, they have also, like my fellow Cuban rural folk, taught some people some lessons. The question is: will we learn them (the lessons) and are we ready to listen?

Let me state something very clear from the outset so as to avoid any confusion: I hate everything that both Donald Trump and Nigel Farage stand for. I hate their open xenophobia, racism, misogyny and homophobia. I hate the way they have got away with whipping up hatred and twisting the political discourse for so long.

But guess what, both Donald Trump and Nigel Farage are necessary if one is to have a healthy democracy. That sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t, for what I am interested in is not what comes out of the mouths of messieurs Trump and Farage but their supporters’.

Both Britain and the US political systems are characterised by a two-party structure that allows very little room for other candidates to manoeuvre. Even in the UK, the recent electoral success of the Liberal Democrats (if we can call it that. After all they went into coalition with the Tories in 2010) met an early death after its then leader, Nick Clegg, reneged on most of his pre-election promises. What this means in practical terms is that we enter a non-stopping hamster-wheel of electability-friendly leaders. Said leaders move swiftly to the centre and thus become the purveyors of meaningless, vote-wining pledges that are rolled back the minute they move into Number 10 or the White House. Just remember “Make Poverty History” and Guantanamo.

The left-behinds

This situation has created a backlash in the last fifteen to twenty years. Just like my compadres and I could not see the importance of the person tilling the land back when we were children, politicians in the west (especially countries such as the UK, USA, Spain and France) have ignored for far too long the shopkeeper, the soldier, the nurse, the small business owner and the lorry driver. These people, however, have not forgotten what they have and they can use: the vote.

Enter Trump, Farage, Corbyn and Sanders. They have all understood that a) the political system needs to be shaken out of its complacency and b) there are rich pickings here for the right leader with the timely message. Forget for a second that Corbyn and Sanders trade in hope and openness, whereas both Trump and Farage deal in fear and hatred. The real scandal is that the “establishment” did not have an answer ready for the hundreds of thousands of people who have allied themselves to either the new left or right.  Remember David Cameron? The blandest – and apparently worst – Prime Minister in living memory was shown up for what he was: a leader with no direction, no agenda, no Plan B (not even Plan A) and, ultimately, no support from his own party.

As the US election fast approaches, there is a lesson here for the winner (it goes without saying that I support Clinton and yet, I have to admit that she and her husband are part of the problem). Currently on both sides of the Atlantic there is an atmosphere of mistrust which has led to insecurity, which at the same time has begotten fear. Over here in Blighty, if we were to chart Labour’s rich political history, we would see that what started as a party for working class people mutated into a middle-class-aspiring outfit. Blair’s administration failed to see, or did not want to see, the changes and challenges ahead. In catering to the urban, metropolitan “elite”, they, unwittingly, created a narrative that has been hurled back at them over and over, like mudballs.

Listening to people with whom one does not share the same opinion does not mean that we agree with them. Listening to other people means that we engage with them at a human level. After all, we share the same space. Politically speaking, to ignore this huge chunk of the population is political suicide (David Cameron, I’m looking at you). The biggest danger we face in neglecting this group is that they will default to a charismatic demagogue who will sweet-talk them into doing things and behaving in ways that maybe would have been thought impossible weeks before. The irony here is that someone like Trump, for instance, is a billionaire who had a leg-up from daddy in order to make it in the world of business. On the other side of the Atlantic, we have a Jeremy Corbyn who, although honest, cannot see that the times of partisan, binary voting are long gone. Nowadays a Labour voter will look at immigration, globalisation and employment and their effect on their lives before they even look at internationalism. In fact, many do not even mention the s-word (socialism). It makes no sense when unemployment is le mot du jour in many parts of Britain.

It is easy to point fingers at people and call them names when they do not share our political views. It is harder to try to understand their frustrations and listen to their opinions. But listen we must. It is the only way in which we can get out of this mess. After all, we all depend on the farmer and the land they till.



© 2016

Next Post: “Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music… Ad Infinitum”, to be published on 26^th October at 6pm (GMT)