Last Sunday, we held our third annual Sudbourne Road Street Party. As ever it was a personal, neighbourly and community affirmation of the simple power of human connection (http://www.shanepcarmichael.com/2010/07/the-big-lunch-2010-and-the-importance-of-social-capital).

Place and our association with it is a funny thing. The two places I tend to speak of most often are Belfast and Brixton. I’m always interested in how others respond to my stories of these two extraordinary places and how they (among others) shaped and continue to shape me.  The stereotype is of course of two troubled places; gritty, associated far too often (and always sadly) in the minds of others with division and decay (social, economic, political, economic). And yet, for those of us lucky enough to call either of these places home, that is just one story from among a multitude. And one which denies both them and us the glory of their true, complex, gritty, divided and yes, in parts decaying, selves. And in doing so the stereotype prevails, grows stronger, pushes out the possibility of another reality, an alternative narrative.

The danger, the limitations, the challenge of these “single stories” is articulated in this wonderful talk by Chimamanda Adichie: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html 

And last Sunday as I watched neighbours and friends come together in a simple celebration of shared place I was struck by the limitations and distorted reality of Brixton’s oft told “single story” and the possibility in the alternative story we – in a simple act of gathering to celebrate our physical communion in SW2 – were (and are) writing. As I watched friends and neighbours come and go I wondered at the multitude of stories that made last Sunday what it was and our street what it is and Brixton what it really is more often than it is not……and in doing so we too regain(ed) a kind of paradise.

Related articles

• The dangers of a single story- Chimamanda Adichie (elainepratley.wordpress.com)
• Chimamanda Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story (jenninmanagua.wordpress.com)
• London riots: before and after the destruction in Tottenham, Brixton and Enfield (telegraph.co.uk)
• The Who I Am Story and the Dangers of a Single Story (writingartlife.wordpress.com)
• Brixton recovers after night of disorder (cllrstevereed.wordpress.com)
• Brixton community slams ‘pathetic’ rioters (independent.co.uk)
• Robots Riot In Brixton – Eye-Popping Short Film Discusses Civil Rights With Machines (singularityhub.com)
• Belfast…in the lead up to the annual riots! – Belfast, United Kingdom (travelpod.com)
• My kind of town: Belfast (guardian.co.uk)

I’m conscious the last few posts have been focussed on human mortality – though I prefer to think of them as a celebration of life if you read more closely. But at the risk of distressing still further…..

You may have heard of Alice Payne. And if not then you need to: http://www.alicepyne.blogspot.com/

I tweeted (a little tearily I admit) about Alice’s inspiring (if a little heartbreaking) blog on the morning of 8th June and then again that afternoon.

And so, it transpires was everyone else. And so by this morning Alice was tweeting about how the twittersphere was making a series of wishes come true….while newspapers as far aways as Sydney were running her incredible story.

There are a few lessons in Alice’s story. One being the power of the Internet to spread news/share stories/inspire action among many. Another being of course the power of connected consciousness – when harnessed - in the service of good. But the most important is a very human one….

The most important lesson perhaps that Alice has taught us all is that we should never underestimate the ability of one person – even in the face of the most insurmountable of all human obstacles – to affect many for the greater greater good.

I doubt Alice has heard of Victor Frankl, the celebrated psychiatrist and of course, holocaust survivor. And why should she. But in his famous book: “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Frankl wrote something that I recalled as I read Alice’s blog the other morning.

Frankl wrote of the lesson he learned from simple acts of courage and humanity he observed among the devastation of the internment camps,  in the face of the most insurmountable of all human obstacles, death itself:

“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”

In Alice, Frankl finds the modern embodiment of that sentiment. She is choosing her own way, her own – incredible – attitude in the face of her given set of circumstances.

I hope Alice completes her buckletlist. I hope she outlives her diagnosis. I hope. But whatever transpires she has served many of us in a more profound way than she might ever imagine….a 15 year old girl, writing with such gentle sadness and wonder reminding us and perhaps challenging us to ask the question….do we truly appreciate and exercise that last (and maybe the greatest) of all human freedoms….the ability to choose how we might live. Even in dying.

Alice. Thank you.

Related articles

• Live Like you are Dying #AliceBucketList [Dean 'Warrior Coach' Grimshawe] (ecademy.com)
• What Is Alice’s Bucket List & Why Is It Trending? (socialtimes.com)
• Alice Bucket List Is An Internet Sensation (worldnewsvideos.wordpress.com)
• “Alice Bucket List” on Twitter, 15-year-old with terminal cancer Alice Pyne reaches out online (cbsnews.com)

Image via Wikipedia

On 27th May, the celebrated ”bluesologist” Gil Scott-Heron sadly passed away, aged 62 years old, to what he might allow us to refer to – in a nod to one of his most notable works - ”The Other Side”.

Gil Scott-Heron was many things to many people: writer, composer, poet, recording artist, long time drug-addict, son of Chicago (and an ex-Celtic footballer!), resident of Harlem, father, convict, cultural critic, “voice of Black protest culture”, husband, anti-apartheid activist, friend, inspiration….to quote Chuck D, the leader of Public Enemy, speaking in The New Yorker in 2010, “You can go into Ginsberg and the Beat poets and Dylan, but Gil Scott-Heron is the manifestation of the modern word”.

I came late to Gil Scott-Heron. While aware of his early work and influence on the music and social culture of the 1970′s, I hadn’t engaged at any real level with his music. I picked up his last album, “I’m New Here” in early 2010 just after it’s release. It was a crucially important time for me personally and perhaps as a consequence of that, something in him and this album, at this moment deeply affected me. In particular the title track struck a deep chord. When you understand Gil Scott-Heron’s own life story, what he achieved and lost; what he succumbed to, suffered and ultimately overcame (however briefly in the end), the lyrics take on a genuine power and for me, at that time, a deep and important resonance. From opening with a searingly honest two line admission of personal responsibility (or at least complicity) for what we may each become,  it plays out ultimately as a celebration of and a testament to the ability to change; to redeem oneself; to renew and redefine a life, however late, in the face of any adversity; in spite of any past.

Gil Scott-Heron has come full circle in this life. And wherever he is now, I’m sure he’ll find someone to show him around. But I’ll always feel sorry that I never got a chance to express to him that while our respective challenges were, of course, very very different, he reminded a fellow seeker in this life that whatever we face, however daunting the road ahead, whatever we carry with us from the past – in an echo of the great Invictus - we can always, always, turnaround.

And so thanks, at least in part to Gil Scott-Heron, as the first hour of my 36th birthday rolls past, I truly feel that after a long long time….with a voice of reason….I am new here again. 

Gil, RIP.

I’m New Here lyrics
I did not become someone different
That I did not want to be
But I’m new here
Will you show me around

No matter how far wrong you’ve gone
You can always turn around
Met a woman in a bar
Told her I was hard to get to know
And near impossible to forget
She said i had an ego on me
The size of Texas

Well I’m new here and I forget
Does that mean big or small

No matter how far wrong you’ve gone
You can always turn around

And I’m shedding plates like a snake
And it may be crazy but I’m
the closest thing I have
To a voice of reason

Turnaround turnaround turnaround
And you may come full circle
and be new here again

Related articles

• Gil Scott-Heron, “Godfather of Rap”, dies at 62 (cbsnews.com)
• Gil Scott-Heron, the ‘Godfather of Rap,’ Dies in New York Hospital (foxnews.com)
• Gil Scott-Heron dies aged 62 (guardian.co.uk)
• Gil Scott Heron Harlem Tribute (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)

On this date….still hidden among the stars.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

~ Song of Myself, LII by Walt Whitman

Image via Wikipedia

Last night I saw the much anticipated film version of Haruki Murakami‘s famous novel, “Norwegian Wood“.

Anyone familiar with the novel will probably suggest it isn’t the most obvious choice for Saturday night “entertainment” and true to the original work, while beautifully shot, it undoubtedly makes for bleak viewing. However, while watching it I was most particularly struck that it comes to cinema’s here precisely as a larger, albeit also very human, tragedy unfolds in Japan where the book and film play out and the parallels one might draw between two apparently very different stories.

For while the novel and film are dominated by the themes of unfulfilled promise, love, loss, death, regret and displacement it seemed to me that at it’s heart it is really a story of survival, of human endurance, embodied in the experience of and ultimate commitment to living of the protaganist, Watanabe.

And while the loss of so much life, in such shocking circumstances, can never be measured nor made right, it is the struggles of those left behind in today’s post earthquake Japan that I kept thinking of last night; people who’s lives, loved ones and therein very meaning for (and proof of) being has been stripped from them. The same people who are now faced with the task of recovering, rebuilding, reclaiming, reinventing, remembering, regretting, restoring….

I’ve often felt those who are left behind suffer as much – if not more – than those who have departed. And yet what is there to be said? What words can ameliorate such pain associated with the loss of one loved one, or the loss of thousands?  And as I watched the film last night and thought of those coming to terms with what has happened in Japan today, I kept running the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald over in my mind:

“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it”.

It seems a rather cold and unsettling contemplation and it doubtless offers little comfort to those suffering in the towns and cities of NE coastal Japan today but it goes to the very heart of what it means to be human and to inevitably experience the suffering that entails. Most importantly it reminds us that “to forget” or “try to forget” is futile and indeed to remember is exactly what we must do.

Some scars run deeper than others but they are scars nonetheless. And it is these which enable us to understand – at some level – what others experience in the face of loss and tragedy; it is what helps us to empathise; it is what reminds us to reach out, to offer ourselves in whatever way we can to those whose time it is to suffer and it is what propels us forward as individuals, as families, as communities, as countries, as a population….helps us to evolve, to learn from (and not forget) what has gone before so that we might look to and prepare for the future with greater understanding, readiness, hope and indeed, as we are reminded of the fragility of life itself: humility.

Related articles

• Nowegian Wood (15)(independent.co.uk)
• Tran Anh Hung enters Norwegian Wood – and emerges to tell the tale(guardian.co.uk)