Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi

• "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster." • "Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky." • "A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.”

Hopi are a North American nation that call themselves the peaceful people.  They and their philosophy provided a background for Godfrey  Reggio’s film Koyaanisqatsi which literally translated means Life out of balance. The soundtrack, composed by Philip Glass compliments and enhances the visual images that carry such an important message.

You lie in bed reading the sunday papers. It is cool outside and there is something nice about a lazy sunday.  After a long week at work you deserve it. You sip your tea and turn on your radio which is tuned to radio three. Sunday morning at this time on radio four is focussed on religion, and that is the last thing you need on a sunday.  Bach plays quietly in the background as you browse the summary of the week’s news.  Mostly you find the news depressing and you wonder why you bother with the papers.  

Most of the front page is devoted to the continuing story of conflict between America and North Korea, and how like confused adolescents, the two leaders have continued to hurl insults at each other. You sigh deeply at the announcement that Kim Jon-Un’s regime had exploded a hydrogen bomb over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.  This of course had been met with outrage by the International community, while the Korean leader continued his diatribe against Trump and the USA in general.

Tired of this ongoing saga of pessimism you turn the page to find an article that postulates a link between the current abundance of Earthquakes, to mining and extraction of oil by fracking. Cavities in the earth’s crust have caused in imbalance and imposed  stresses that the earth has to equilibrate.

It is only a working hypothesis but the evidence seems overwhelming.

You close the paper and turn instead to the colour supplement and flick through the pages, mostly devoted to celebrity and fashion. You finish your tea, by now quite cold, sigh and get out of bed to look at the day. It is another beautiful autumnal day, the trees ablaze with colour, the sound already covered with leaves. You think that you must start raking them up. Perhaps this morning as you have nothing planned. You stretch, and half heartedly go through some morning exercises that are supposed to increase your chances of living a long life and smile, knowing that your fate  will probably be determined by others.

You turn on the shower and step in, enjoying the hot water and the caresses of water on your skin. You stay there longer than usual, it is sunday after all. You step out and grab a towel, wrapping it around your waist, and you return to the bedroom. The radio is now playing Monteverdi and you smile and turn up the volume. You towel yourself down and again gaze out of the window.  The blue sky is criss crossed with vapour trails as it so often is.  You wonder what all of this air travel is doing to the atmosphere and realise that whatever that may be, we are all complicit.

The music stops suddenly and an announcer apologises for the break but states that there is important breaking news.  North Korea have shot down an American bomber that was operating just outside their territorial waters.  The USA have responded by launching an attack on Pyongyang. Missiles carrying conventional warheads have been targeted at last known locations of the Korean leader.

In return the Koreans have exploded a nuclear device over Guam and the North American military bases have been wiped out.

The American response is awaited by the rest of the world.

The radio is silent.

You realise that raking up leaves  is of no importance whatsoever, and like so many others throughout the world you wait for the inevitable.

Originality

Most of us have never had an original thought and probably never will. Having said that, it is possible that we may have them all of the time, but because our minds are not prepared, we don't recognise them. This makes the distinction between ordinary people and this with genuine talent or the ability to make a difference.

Every time I think I have had an original idea, I find that someone beat me to it, thus negating the originality that I was hoping for. Maybe I am the wrong environment for such a thing. perhaps I need to be in a working environment along with colleagues with which ideas can be exchanged. In such situations at least people can tell you if you are barking up the wrong tree or simply talking complete rubbish.

I do like to see the sorts of changes that improve things for most of us, but deplore change for the sake of change. In the art world it must be very hard to come up with something new. I my lifetime we have had so many changes and ideas, some of them good, some less so.  I am probably talking rubbish, but it seems that the bottom of the barrel has been reached and now we are drilling through it.

Modern art seems to be graffiti, any surface can be victim to spray cans and random offerings, some of which are clever and attractive, and some like Banksy who produces images with political messages behind them. Unmade beds and diamond encrusted skulls leave me cold; it looks as if ideas have just run out.

Music seems to have hit a low. Not just pop music but what some call classical music. Tunes seem to be absent and atonal noise has taken the place of music.  There are some who think that this is a good idea, but then they would.

There is good pop music out there, but you have to look for it. The whole pop scene is based around the stuff that is promoted by TV reality programs and what will fit into the mould. There is no more anger or protest in the scene and that is sad.

Redneck America has bucked the trend of establishment  I guess, in their electing an orange megalomaniac as president. That is pretty original, and we see to be going along the same lines in allowing  a few lying sped politicians to persuade our equivalent of rednecks to force us out of the European Union. The world has, in recent times begun to divide.

An idea, though not original, is that we should focus on uniting, that might deter the likes of North Korea fro feeling isolated and threatened by the man with the orange face.

Equinox

We have reached that point in the year where day length and night length are the same. It heralds the time of year that I like least. There is something about autumn that I find depressing. the falling leaves mean that the trees will soon be bare and skeletal. Fungi will appear in abundance, feeding on decay and recycling death.  Within a few weeks the clocks will go back an hour and the nights will be longer and the days shorter.  Temperatures will plummet and so the heating has to be turned on, and then there are the bleak days when it never really gets light. Spring is far away and we have winter to look forward to.

Apart from all of this we have to put up with the Americanised halloween fiasco and the highly commercialised Christmas, that simply serves to indoctrinate children to become consumers, and to encourage the greed and acquisitiveness that powers the capitalist system. thousand of tons of plastic crap is already here or on its way from China, and millions of pounds are on their way back.

Gone are the days of seasonality, We have access to the same foods all the year round and so there is no real benefit to the change in the year. Diets will remain equally unhealthy and supermarket profits will go up along with prices.

I heard someone talking about all the things that they were looking forward to. This include a range of reality TV shows, which I despise, and the aforementioned festivals of stupidity. I look forward to it all being over and we can begin the drudgery of winter. At least then we can look forward to spring again.

So those of you that love Autumn, or fall as the Americans like to call it, find in it what you can and enjoy it. Just remember that not everyone does.

What's it all about?

We have a Tory government that appoints ministers that know nothing about their departments but are ready to confront and divide those who work in them. Each new minister has to make their mark in order to appease the hard line Tory supporters who by and large live in the world of the colonial past.

I can only talk about Education, and that with a limited knowledge, but is does seem that each time there is a chance of minister, there is a major change in the system. It is no wonder that recruitment is failing and that so many are choosing to leave their profession in order to seek new and better opportunities.

I remember the catastrophic days of Keith Joseph and Kenneth Baker, the  latter who introduce Baker days, for in service training. Of course they took away a day's holiday in order to make them happen and as a result, most of those days were met with resentment and had no real value at all.

There is of course plenty of room for improvement is the educational system, but so many babies have been thrown out with the bathwater. There was a time when children had access to a wide variety of courses that were suitable for them. I remember that  we offered woodwork, metal work, boat building, drama, music, arts well as the normal academic courses.

Academia is not for everyone and yet the government believe,  in their infinite wisdom, that it is, and so children are forced along a route that ignores the needs of this with practical abilities and cranes them into a system that is inappropriate.  Practical work is all but gone in many schools, partly because the curriculum is overcrowded, bu also because it is expensive and it is hard to attract people to teach those subjects.  More students than ever are driven into university courses that have little real value and land the students with huge debts, from which private companies make profits. There was a time when around twenty percent of students went to university  because courses were demanding and were a route into professions.

The system is in dire need of many changes. I maintain that schools should, as they were, give students choices and opportunities that match their abilities and skills. The academic courses should be available to those that are suited. Perhaps subject barriers could be lowered and the weekly program made more relevant,  Of course literacy and numeracy should be focussed on and perhaps information technology should be given a high profile, but maybe citizenship and life skills in general should be emphasised.

I am no longer teaching, but I remember most of my career being both rewarding and enjoyable. Mostly students were happy and were not assessed at every turn, Some were very successful in academia but many went on to become successful  in other ways.

So here we are again with a system unfit for purpose and a bunch of sycophants being urged into support for a division  between Grammar Schools and the rest. The idea being that some deserve privilege whilst others do not. My grandchildren go to a private school and I find it hard to accept that they have such a wonderful experience of school that so many do not have. Let us get rid of the noxious political dogma and produce a working system that does not divide. I doubt if that will happen whatever government is in power, but under the conservatives there is no hope at all.

Reading and writing

I don't remember not being able to read, and then again I don't remember being read to as a child. Learning to read is a valuable and long process that we rightly put our children through at an early age.  I was hospitalised at three, and my the time I was transferred to the special school at six, I could read very well. I am guessing that it was nurses that taught me to read but I don't recall.

I know that I was taught to show respect for books. I was told to turn pages from the top corner, not o fold pages, not to bend the books far enough to damage the spine, not to deface them and to handle them carefully.  I found out from an early age that in books there were escapes and they helped me through long years of lying in a bed. I read everything that Enid Blyton had written and was deeply ensconced into the world of both the famous five and the secret seven.

I must have read thousands of books in my life and the sad thing is, that very few of them have lodged in my mind. Each book is an experience, a vicarious journey through the mind of an author, Each one carries us away to far off places or into experiences that we may never have nor want to have. I still love to read although I tend to read in bed. Only then can I stay awake long enough to manage several chapters. Reading during the day puts me to sleep.

Many of us who read a lot, would like to write a novel. They say that there is at least one novel inside everyone. I am not convinced that it is true, though we all have  stories that may well be worth telling.

I have  joined a book club. There must be thousands of them; they seem to be growing as people live longer and have more time on their hands. This is my second book club, I left the first because it was rather stilted and disciplined. There was discussion about the books and that was it. There was never any real social interaction and for many it was an intellectual exercise and a chance to show off their superior intelligence.  My current group is far more entertaining. We do discuss the book of course but that is not the sole point. We drink a glass of wine and talk about all sorts of things other than that.

I have also joined a creative writing group, and am on the cusp of joining another. Each session we are given a choice of topics and are restricted to one side of paper. The following session we all read out what we have produced, though there is rarely any real feedback. Everyone makes polite noises and so therein no learning.  The group itself is made up of elderly people, some of whom no longer produce anything new, but regurgitate stuff that they wrote years ago. Some write about their lives and some about their careers. One is an accountant; enough said.  I do enjoy writing and having a topic set is ideal as that give a starting platform, which is not always easy to find. It struck me today that the number of entries into this blog would be sufficient to fill a book but it would have no coherence and certainly no audience, so I won't go there.

I have difficulty parting with books. I have shelf after shelf filled with books. They are like treasures and each one begs to be read again. I doubt that I will read any of them for a second time but giving them away is almost unthinkable and I find it hard to resist adding to that collection.

I pity those who do not read or cannot read. From my point of view they miss out on so much, but of course the counter argument is that so much time is devoted to fantasy worlds that could be better employed focussing on reality. It is a valid point.

Annoyances

The people, it is said, wanted us to leave the European Union. The word Brexit was coined during the noxious  and dishonest campaign that did more to divide the country that even Margaret Thatcher managed to do.  As in any election or referendum, the bulk of voters do not know what they are voting for and tend to go along with what their tabloid newspaper tells them to. As a result we get the result that some of us deserve. Annoying as it is, we have to accept that Nigel Farage has got his way and that Boris Johnson is manipulating his way into deposing Teresa May,

In the US we had the surprise election of Donald Trump, who, only an idiot would think that he is presidential material.

There we have it, the world is swinging in favour of the unthinking and blinkered. Ruled bu the will of the tabloid press, which of course is run by the right wing.

The media provide a diet of crap for us to escape our own miserable lives. Celebrity and reality TV seem to be the norm and so many are absorbed by these banal TV programs. North Korea could invade us at peak TV times and no-one would notice, or care.

It is the age of blandness and lack of talent. Only those who are promoted by the likes of Simon Cowell are likely to find success, while those with any real talent tend to be ignored and are destined to stay in the background. There is nothing new anymore, just a revamp of things that have gone before. The present day make the Punk scene of the eighties seem pretty good; they were original if not particularly talented.

Kids today are often victimised by peers if they show any sign of wanting to learn, and gang culture, another vile import from America is on the rise.  We are in a sorry state and yet we hear about a need to protect our culture, the theme song of Brexiteers. I suggest that we have little culture that is worth preserving as anything of real value is no longer respected.

I am reminded of a one liner from someone on the fringe who said. "I went to a tough inner city school, where your chances of being beaten up increased exponentially every time you used the word exponentially."

On that note I will stop ranting.

Absence

If I have any readers left, I apologise for my extended absence. I have no excuse really other than a spell in hospital to have a knee replaced.

As we get older, some of us begin to fall apart, just like an old car. Cars can last a long time if they are taken care of, and humans too can evade some of the wear and tear through careful use of their bodies and healthy diets and exercise.

My knee had been failing for quite a while and the pain of walking, or even sleeping was getting unbearable. X-rays showed that there was very little cartilage left and what there was, was torn and not doing anything must at all. So I was put on a waiting list for a replacement. having been told that the waiting list was six months long, we looked into the private option. We visited the private hospital and were given the sales pitch and told that a three day stay, with the operation would cost more than ten thousand pounds.  

We saw the surgeon again and told him that we were investigating the private route. He looked surprised and told us that we did not need to do that, and that we could get it done on the NHS. Within two weeks we had a call from the hospital to invite me for a pre operative examination and so I complied, and was told that I had been booked in for the op the following week. I suspect that the surgeon had pulled a few strings.

Most people dread surgery and I am no different. I checked into the ward and was given a bed. I lay there for what seems a very short while and barely took in my surroundings and found that I was first on the list. I walked, hobbled from the ward to the theatre and sat on the table. I was given an epidural and within second I was paralysed from the waist down. A Cannula was put in my hand and a sedative pumped into me. Darkness descended and I woke up in the ward, still paralysed from the waist down.  It was only when the epidural wore off that the pain became obvious. and it grew and grew. The pain killers seemed to have little effect but I wasn't going to risk not taking them.

Anyway, after that came the slow recovery process, beginning the following day when I was forced out of bed by a physiotherapist. I hadn't imagined that the pain could get worse, but it did. The agony of that first step out of bed is still stuck in my mind.

the worst was almost over. Because I hadn't peed in two days, I had the pleasure of  having a catheter inserted. That is also an experience best avoided, as is having it removed.

Two days later I was kicked out, to make room for the next batch. And the rest is just a slow process of getting used to the new knee and the exercises that I have to do. I walked a couple of miles today so I hope that I will soon be able to play golf again. I don't suppose I will play any better though.