can, by whatever limited means.
"Shaz was 'ere" the scrawl tells us from a wall. This and many like it,
sometimes accompanied by crude drawings in a primeval mimicry of
the 'higher' graffiti art or indeed of ancient cave drawings, scream their
creator's desire to be recognised in their existence.
As for the story telling tradition, that is alive and well in the most
unlikely of places. Look to the pub, or similar gatherings where people
flock to converse. In the simple telling of anecdotes and gossips, stories
of their lives are performed for the small audience of family and friend.
Here are the rawest forms of self-expression, the human mind declaring
its existence in the face of perpetual indifference. Perhaps it is also the
most pitiable, but in a sense it shows that some spark of defiance still
sputters in the human soul.
Some may find it difficult to perceive such notions in pointless
scrawling, or in the casual gossip and boasting of a tap room milieu.
Yet it represents in its most basic form that which lies in all human
souls - creativity and expression.
In recent years, there has been an explosion in popularity for poetry.
The muse sings to the masses and takes form in their own words and
creative explorations. Yet so many of the cultured elite talk of taking
the poetry to the masses, unaware that poetry exists there already. Like
missionaries, they take the light of wisdom to the heathen savages, only
to find the torches burning bright where their arrogance said were only
shadows.
Light already blazes, burning with the fuel of poetry and prose and
music and art. Words and deeds define humanity as something that is
not content to be bound by the fetters of capitalism, anymore than
ancient humans were content to be bound by the fetters of nature. Like
them, we lash out, consciously and unconsciously we tell the world that
we are more than our allotted function. We break the bounds, shatter
the blinkers of censorship and of sense and sensibility.
We are dissidents and subversives by the very act of writing. By
putting our thoughts and deeds into words and image and song, we lash
out against the bonds that attempt to strangle our minds. We are saying
that we are more than just a function, more than a dutiful consumer. We
aim a blow at the ideology that says we are less than human. The
ideology of cultural elitism, that trains the masses to hold themselves in
contempt, to turn away from creative endeavours until an essential part
of their mind is withered and atrophied.
The farm labourer toils on the land, he is not supposed to write. The car
worker mans the production line; he does not compose stanzas. The
secretary files her nails; she does not create images in pigments and
paint. A few insipid lines about a daffodil are mundane beyond words
when penned by a poet laureate. From the pen of a miner it is a most
revolutionary thing - because through that daffodil he has said I am
more than a digger of coal. I am a man, a human being able to
comprehend the beauty of the world and to be moved by it.
We are the torchbearers, carrying what was bequeathed to us by our
storytelling, cave-painting forebears, in the days when humanity still
knew how to love and live and dare to dream.
Art was and ever remains the primal scream of human awakening.
October 1999
Don't You Dare Publish My Collected Works!
EVER tried calling the future collect? It's difficult, and I don't mean
because the person at the other end refuses the charges. I couldn't dial
because I didn't know the number, and as yet there is no Directory
Enquiries for phones still to be.
So instead, I sent this plea as an email.
Not that this is a perfect solution, mind you, because I don't know who
it's for. But I can guess at the address and hope that it makes its way to
the right recipient. For those who don't know, the address is
[email protected].
That's all I know, other than the resonant echoes transmitted on the
retro-tachyon carrier wave emitted by my words. I know from these
distant echoes that it's some time in the future, as far away from the
here and now as possible (thank you very much), where I am in my
grave and not feeling too happy about it.
My mortality, however, is way beside the point. More important is
what is happening in this parallel universe that, for me, is yet to be. I
have to tell you that a terrible Crime Against Literature is about to be
perpetrated. So I send my message, in the hope that
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