Melvin B. Tolson - A Song For Myself (February 6, 1898 – August 29, 1966)

Poet and educator Melvin Beaunoris who inspired generations of students to stand up for equal rights and dignity. was born in Missouri on 6 February 1898. one of four children of Reverend Alonzo Tolson, a Methodist minister, and Lera (Hurt) Tolson, a seamstress of African-Creek ancestry. Alonzo Tolson was also of mixed race, the son of an enslaved woman and her white master. He served at various churches in the Missouri and Iowa area until settling longer in Kansas City. Reverend Tolson studied throughout his life to add to the limited education he had first received, even taking Latin, Greek and Hebrew by correspondence courses. Both parents emphasized education for their children.
In 1924 he began teaching at the historically black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. His students included James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, and Heman Sweatt, who challenged the segregated University of Texas Law School. He encouraged his students not only to be well-rounded people but to also to stand up for their rights.
 He not only taught at Wiley College, he coached the junior varsity football team, directed the theater club, cofounded the black intercollegiate Southern Association of Dramatic Speech and Arts, and organized the Wiley Forensic Society, which was the Wiley College debating club. The debating club earned national acclaim by winning and breaking the color barrier very successfully. A dedicated mentor, Tolson coached Wiley's debate team through an impressive ten-year winning streak, from 1929 to 1939. Tolson wrote all of the speeches and the team memorized the speeches and used them. Tolson became such a master debater, that he would write the rebuttals for his opponents opposing arguments before the debate. In 1935, they defeated the national champions from the University of Southern California. Under Jim Crow segregation, African Americans did not often meet elite white schools in competition, so the team's success symbolized progress and equality. The film The Great Debaters depicted this David-and-Goliath story with Tolson portrayed by Denzel Washington.
After interviewing significant artists of the Harlem Renaissance for his Master’s thesis, Tolson was inspired to write poetry exploring the African American urban experience. His poetry began appearing in  African/ American newspapers  in the 1930s. In 1939 he published his first significant poem Dark Symphony; celebrating the accomplishments of the African race throughout history,while detailing the challenges they continued to face. it would win  a national poetry contest sponsored by the American Negro Exposition. The poem was later published in Atlantic Monthly; the poem also got the attention of an editor who published his first collection of verse, Rendezvous with America, in 1944.
 In 1947, Tolson was accused of having been active in organizing farm laborers and tenant farmers during the late 1930s (though the nature of his activities is unclear) and of having radical leftist associations, but after maintaining a successful teaching and coaching career at Wiley, Tolson accepted a position at Langston University .in Langston, Oklahoma. During that same year, he was appointed the Poet Laureate of Liberia, which inspired his second poetry book. Published in 1953, Libretto for the Republic of Liberia, honored the centennial of Liberia’s founding. Tolson's greatest achievement, Liberia had been founded in 1822 as part of a long-running and controversial debate about whether to establish an African homeland for former slaves.  By the time Tolson came to write his poem, however, the question he faced was rather different. What symbolic and cultural meaning did Liberia's founding now have for blacks here and across the world? In seeking an answer, reflecting on the history of slavery and writing while the memory of World War II and of the evil of European fascism was still fresh, Tolson came to major conclusions about the shape of Western civilization through the prism's of his dense, allusive poem.
In addition to his professional work, Tolson served two consecutive terms as Mayor of Langston, in Langston, Oklahoma from 1954 to 1960. Tolson’s final poetry book, Harlem Gallery, published in 1965, helped establish him as a widely recognized modernist poet, his masterpiece chronicles, as he put it, black Americans' "New World odyssey, / from chattel to Esquire!
President Lyndon Johnson invited Tolson to the White House in 1965 to present his latest poetry, a crowning achievement in his long and remarkable career. Tolson died the following year in Dallas on Augusr  29 after undergoing surgery for cancer, having left a legacy to be proud of.
The Library of Congress holds the papers of Melvin B. Tolson, which include correspondence, drafts of writings, speeches, research notes, and materials relating to Tolson's literary career, the Harlem Renaissance, and other aspects of African American art, literature, and culture.
After Tolson's death, Langston University in Oklahoma began an archive of African American culture and literature that bore his name. Today, that collection has grown into the Melvin B. Tolson Black Heritage Center. The Center houses over 7,000 volumes related to African American newspapers and periodicals. With increasing interest in Tolson and his literary period, in 1999 the University of Virginia published a collection of his poetry entitled Harlem Gallery and Other Poems of Melvin B. Tolson, edited by Raymond Nelson.
In the  following poem "A Song for Myself," the narrator discusses the human soul. Those who are bad men cannot escape the afterlife. In death, there is truth. If the person is a bad person in life and has a bad soul, they will be condemned in the afterlife. The narrator hopes he has a good enough soul to have a good afterlife.

A Song For Myself -  Melvin B. Tolson


I judge
My soul
Eagle
Nor mole:
A man
Is what
He saves
From rot.

The corn
Will fat
A hog
Or rat:
Are these
Dry bones
A hut's
Or throne's?

Who filled
The moat
Twixt sheep
And goat?
Let Death,
The twin
of Life,
Slip in?

Prophets
Arise,
Mask-hid,
Unwise,
Divide
The earth
By class
and birth.

Caesars
Without,
The People
Shall rout;
Caesars
Within,
Crush flat
As tin.

Who makes
A noose
Envies
The goose.
Who digs
A pit
Dices
For it.

Shall tears
Be shed
For those
Whose bread
Is thieved
Headlong?
Tears right
No wrong.

Prophets
Shall teach
The meek
To reach.
Leave not
To God
The boot
And rod.

The straight
Lines curve?
Failure
Of nerve?
Blind-spots
Assail?
Times have
Their Braille.

If hue
Of skin
Trademark
A sin,
Blame not
The make
For God's
Mistake.

Since flesh
And bone
Turn dust
And stone,
With life
So brief,
Why add
To grief?

I sift
The chaff
From wheat
and laugh.
No curse
Can stop
The tick
Of clock.
Those who
Wall in
Themselves
And grin
Commit
Incest
And spawn
A pest.

What's writ
In vice
Is writ
In ice.
The truth
Is not
Of fruits
That rot.

A sponge,
The mind
Soaks in
The kind
Of stuff
That fate's
Milieu
Dictates.

Jesus,
Mozart,
Shakespeare,
Descartes,
Lenin,
Chladni,
Have lodged
With me.

I snatch
From hooks
The meat
Of books.
I seek
Frontiers,
Not worlds
On biers.

The snake
Entoils
The pig
With coils.
The pig's
Skewed wail
Does not
Prevail.

Old men
Grow worse
With prayer
Or curse:
Their staffs
Thwack youth
Starved thin
For truth.

Today
The Few
Yield poets
Their due;
Tomorrow
The Mass
Judgment
Shall pass.

I harbor
One fear
If death
Crouch near:
Does my
Creed span
The Gulf
Of Man?

And when
I go
In calm
Or blow
From mice
And men,
Selah!
What . . . then?

Remembering Rosa Parks (4/ 2/1913 - 25/10/ 05)

The “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” Rosa Parks, who sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott on December 5, 1955, was born on this day in 1913.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama,  her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was two. Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Parks' grandparents were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards' farm, where Parks would spend her youth. 
Parks' childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. In one experience, Parks' grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street, and listened in fear as lynchings occurred near her home. The family moved to Montgomery; Parks attended various segregated schools in Montgomery before attending a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes. Shortly after starting secondary school, Parks left to take care of her grandmother who was sick. She married barber Raymond Parks in 1932, aged 19 and the couple joined the the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Montgomery chapter where she would eventually serve as secretary. 
 Parks is famously known for her refusal to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. standing in the aisle on December 1, 1955.The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats.
This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African American passengers in the back. When an African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door.
As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four black passengers to give up their seats.
The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.
Three of the other black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Parks replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested.
The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail. Four days later, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. Parks was found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs.  Parks not only appealed her conviction, she formally challenged the legality of racial segregation.
Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955 , the day of Parks' trial, in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/montgomery-bus-boycott.html , as it came to be known, was a huge success, lasting for 381 days and ending with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public transit systems to be unconstitutional. And Rosa's  act of dignified defiance and courage triggered a wave of protest that reverberated throughout the United States.
Contrary to some reports, Parks wasn’t physically tired and was able to leave her seat. She refused, on principle, to surrender her seat because of her race, which was the law in Montgomery at the time.
The NAACP realized it had the right person to work with, as it battled against the system of segregation in Montgomery. It also worked with another group of local leaders to stage a one-day boycott of passenger buses, when Parks went to court.The group expanded to include other people, chose a name, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and planned an extended boycott.

But the MIA also needed a public spokesman with leadership qualities to make their fight into a wide-ranging cause.Their pick was a little-known pastor who had recently arrived in Montgomery: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws (also known as "Jim Crow laws") unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.
With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

Rosa  for many years  after would continue as an activist in the movement  for the rights of exploited people.Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the boycott,and after losing  her tailoring job and receiving death threats.  Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided.

In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, “Rosa Parks: My Story.” She  remained an active member of the NAACP and became an administrative aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr.  a post she held until her 1988 retirement.. The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute Of Self-Development was established in 1987 to offer job training for black youth. In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) also sponsors an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award. Her husband, brother and mother all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979.
When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. At the time, she was only the 30th person accorded that honor. She was the first woman to receive the honor, and her coffin sat on the catafalque built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.

Rosa  passed away October 24, 2005 at the age of 92. City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005 that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Today Rosa Parks’ legacy continues to live on in honor of her historic acts of courage. Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in the U.S. states of California and Ohio. Her monumental efforts were recognized when she won a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

In 2000, a library and museum in Montgomery were dedicated to Rosa Parks. The  Rosa Parks Museum https://www.troy.edu/rosaparks/ houses a replica of the bus that sparked the civil rights activists to boycott an important mode of transportation. The library and children's wing not only tell the story of Parks to its hundreds of visitors, but also those of Nixon, Gray, and Colvin. There is a "time travel" machine that transports the visitors from the 1800s to the Jim Crowe era and to 1950s Montgomery.

Let us remember her today, and acknowledge Rosa's act of quiet resistance, that still resonates down the corridors of time. She remains a symbol to all to remain free. It is worth noting that in the  same week President Obama honored Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday, Israel announced two newly segregated bus lines for Palestinian workers traveling to Israel from the West Bank. The “Palestinian only” buses were introduced after Israeli settlers complained that fellow Palestinian passengers posed a “security risk.”The timing of Israel’s announcement set the internet abuzz with moralizing references to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Jim Crow.
Let us also think  what would happen if a Palestinian Rosa Parks chose to sit on a segregated West Bank Bus, Palestinians in the present moment are unable  to travel freely in their own country - they even have to have permits to enter Jerusalem.
 "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust," Martin Luther King said  "All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
Like Rosa Parks before her,  Palestinians  are struggling against unjust laws, in their  case the injustice of a 50-year military occupation that denies Palestinians their land, right to travel and self-determination. Israel maintains an apartheid system of democracy for Israeli Jews - and discrimination against Israelis of colour - second-class citizenship for Israeli citizens of Arab descent, and dispossession and disenfranchisement for Palestinian Arabs in the territories.
We need more brave souls like Rosa Parks, because as history has shown.it  is possible for a single person to engage in an act of resistance against oppression that can park the seed of change. On this day, Parks would have been 107 years old. As Rosa Parks once said, “Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.

The Neville Brothers - Sister Rosa

December 1, 1955
Our freedom movement came alive
And because of Sister Rosa you know
We don’t ride on the back of the bus no more

Sister Rosa she was tired one day
After a hard day on her job
When all she wanted was a well deserved rest
Not a scene from an angry mob

A bus driver said, "Lady, you got to get up
'Cause a white person wants that seat"
But Miss Rosa said, "No, not no more
I’m gonna sit here and rest my feet"

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

Now, the police came without fail
And took Sister Rosa off to jail
And 14 dollars was her fine
Brother Martin Luther King knew it was our time

The people of Montgomery sat down to talk
It was decided all God's children should walk
Until segregation was brought to its knees
And we obtain freedom and equality, yeah

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

So we dedicate this song to thee
For being the symbol of our dignity
Thank you Sister Rosa

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks

Flags, Knobs and Broomsticks.

After Farage twit and Widdecombe
Waved their joke shop little flags,
And others  cried and held hands
In excruciating cringeworthy scenes,.
Singing Auld Lang Syne
With not a whiff of dignity,
Not in my name many declaring
Of this tin pot slippery shower,
In these moments of separation
A shocking disgrace to the nation,
As relationship with EU remains uncertain
Many still hoping, this not the final curtain,
The idea that Brexit will solve what's wrong
Will be revealed as fantasy through and through,
In peoples hearts, hope remains, but others fearing
What will happen next, as history is wiped away,
Painfully questioning what now has been decided
The rising tide of xenophobia closing in on our shore,
Afraid of nationalism, egotism, infused perfusion
Hatred and division mongering instead of kindness.

Donald Trump's One Sided Middle East Peace Plan

 

President Donald Trump claims his peace plan for Israel and Palestine will prove to be a triumph that will last for the next 80 years. But it’s unclear whether it will be viable for even 80 minutes.

That’s because most analysts believe the deal  which was finally released on Tuesday — is dead on arrival, because upending decades of bipartisan policy, the proposal gives American endorsement to Israeli annexation of broad swaths of the West Bank and limits Palestinian territorial contiguity. Trump's initiative, whose principal author is his son-in-law Jared Kushner, follows a long line of efforts to resolve one of the world's most intractable issues. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014. Palestinians have refused to engage the Trump administration and denounced its proposal's first stage - a $50bn economic revival plan announced last June.
The White House’s  peace plan which has a four year implementation period came complete with one hundred and eighty pages as well as a map outlining the proposed new Israeli and Palestinian states.   recognises Israeli sovereignty over major illegal settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, something to which the Palestinians will almost certainly object. Trump said Israel would be granted security control of the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. The blueprint would also permit Israel to extend sovereignty over all major settlements blocs in the West Bank, uphold Jerusalem as “Israel’s undivided capital,” The plan would also see a Palestinian state with its capital in “eastern Jerusalem”, though in an area cut off from much of the city by an Israeli military barrier.
 Palestinians reject any proposal that would not see a Palestinian capital in all of East Jerusalem, which includes the walled Old City and numerous sites holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians.Palestinian officials havecut off communication with the U,S after it recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in late 2017.  Israeli settlements in the West Bank would also be allowed to stay where they are.and require the Palestinians to concede far more land to Israel than in past proposals..

Trump described the plan as a "win-win opportunity for both sides,".but the agreement that he has promoted as the "ultimate deal" amounts to a two-way pact between Trump and Netanyahu. and seems consistent with the US administration’s approach of granting unilateral concessions to Israel while further isolating the Palestinians. The Palestinians were not consulted. It's a dictate of take it or leave it. But to hear Trump tell it, he has brokered the most important diplomatic breakthroughs not just of his presidency but of modern history. 

“It’s been a long and very arduous process to arrive at this moment,” Trump said in a speech at the White House Tuesday, standing next to a smiling Netanyahu. “All prior administrations from President Lyndon Johnson have tried and bitterly failed, but I was not elected to do small things or shy away from big problems.” Netanyahu, for his part, was thrilled with the outcome.

Analysts say the deal should be understood as two friends lending each other a hand at a sensitive  time in their political careers.Trump is currently embroiled in impeachment proceedings, and in November Netanyahu was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust."Trump and Netanyahu care more about electoral politics at home and less about real peace with the Palestinians," said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

"It resembles a colonial arrangement of a bygone era," he added, comparing the impending deal to past secret agreements that divided parts of the Middle East among European powers and promised the Jewish community a home in historic Palestine. 

Even before the details were released, protests rejecting it were already in full swing in Gaza and Palestinians had called for a "Day of Rage" on Wednesday in the West Bank.

"The deal of the century, which is not based on international legality and law, gives Israel everything it wants at the expense of the national rights of the Palestinian people," Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in opening the Palestinian Authority's weekly Cabinet meeting in Ramallah on Sunday.
After the announcement, Palestinians took to social media to react, comment and at times mock the plan. Often dubbed the "deal of the century" Palestinians referred to it as the "the slap of the century". The hashtags #NoToTrumpPlan and #No4DealOfCentury trended on Twitter. "It is a slap and not a deal," wrote one Twitter user, "down with the slap of the century and long live a free Palestine."
The objective of any peace proposal for Israelis and Palestinians should be to resolve the conflict in a manner that can be accepted by both sides. Unfortunately, the Trump plan is not actually designed to do so. Rather, it serves as an annexation roadmap, whereby Israel receives U.S. support to apply sovereignty immediately to all settlements in the West Bank.The deal not only  discards long-held assumptions about how the conflict will be resolved, it was constructed with only the input of one party, Israel, making it a fait accompli that the Palestinians would not consider it. The Trump plan is not a realistic effort to bring a permanent status agreement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it should not be viewed as such.It is a  a recipe for permanent occupation and endless conflict and is dishonest, inhumane and unjust.
Trump has taken what was already an Israel-centric foreign policy to an extreme:In addition to moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, the Trump administration has also slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians and recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Israel-occupied Golan Heights, in addition the United States has reversed its position and contradicted international law on the illegality of Israeli settlements, the Trump administration in November reversed decades of US policy when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Washington no longer regarded Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land as inconsistent with international law. It’s absurd to think that Trump has any credibility or interest in true peace. .
The only sustainable solution is a viable two-state outcome. While Trump paid lip service to a two-state solution, the plan does not promote any recognizable two-state vision. Although the president rhetorically acknowledged the necessity of Palestinian independence and self-determination, a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state, and a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, the details do not actually contain any of those critical elements. Palestinian freedom isn’t for Trump to give away or for Netanyahu to steal. What the Palestinians are being offered right now is not rights or a state, but a permanent state of Apartheid. No amount of marketing can erase this disgrace or blur the facts. Many Human rights advocates see the plan as a rubber stamp or the Israeli governmeny's continuing violations of interntaional law, seperate and unequal policies, land grabs and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. Any attempt to address the Israeli-Palestinian issue that does not begin and end with the full acknowledgement of the Palesestinian right to self-determination , freedom, justice and equality is quite simply a non-starter.
The plan also explicitly states that there shall be no “right to return” for the millions of Palestinians forced out of their ancestral homes during the formation of the Israeli state. The 1948 war uprooted 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, creating a refugee crisis that is still not resolved. Palestinians call this mass eviction the Nakba , Arabic for “catastrophe”, and its legacy remains one of the most intractable issues in ongoing peace negotiations.
 Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees, defined as people displaced in 1948 and their descendants. This population has long languished in a variety of refugee camps, without rights or decent life conditions.A core Palestinian demand in peace negotiations is some kind of justice for these refugees, most commonly in the form of the “right of return” to the homes their families abandoned at the time.The failure to address this issue in a responsible manner is both a deficiency in the current proposal. and a tragic humanitarian evasion..
The only plan that can  genuinely offer peace, is one that delivers. a  future not based on supremacy for some and oppression for others, but on full equality, liberty, dignity, and rights for all.

Happy Birthday Robert Wyatt; Musical Adventurer

Happy birthday to Robert Wyatt. a founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine. Born on the 28th of January 1945 in Bristol, Wyatt was brought up first in London and later in Kent. Wyatt’s love of jazz, wordplay and surreal humour stemmed from his father, George Ellidge and Wyatt grew up as part of a “Bohemian” household that loved music, literature and travel. Wyatt’s parents were part of the literary circle of the poet Robert Graves and the young Wyatt spent several summers at Graves’ home in Majorca.
It was at grammar school in Canterbury that Wyatt first encountered bassist Hugh Hopper and Mike Ratledge who would eventually become his bandmates in Soft Machine. Another influential figure was the  legendary Australian beatnik Daevid Allen (of Planet Gong fame) who lodged with Wyatt’s family and nurtured the young Robert’s interest in modern and avant garde jazz  Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor and Thelonious Monk were all early Wyatt heroes.
Soft Machine grew out of the Wilde Flowers, the now almost legendary spawning ground for both Caravan and Soft Machine. At various times Wilde Flowers involved Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Brian Hopper, Kevin Ayers, Richard Sinclair, Dave Sinclair and Richard Coughlan, the last three ending up in Caravan.
Wyatt moved to London, living in a communal house and forming a group with Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge. Originally named Mister Head they adopted the name Soft Machine from the title of the novel by Beat Generation author William Burroughs who famously gave the young Brits his blessing to use the name by drawling “can’t see why not”.
Allen had left before the recording of the first album which was released in 1968 by which time the Softs were the darlings of the London underground music scene playing all nighters at the UFO club alongside Pink Floyd, their performances enhanced by the visuals of the Sensual Laboratory lightshow.
The band also toured America supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Wyatt was much influenced by Mitch Mitchell’s drumming style. The intense touring schedule proved a bit much for Ayers and Ratledge who returned to England as soon as they could but Wyatt stayed on in the states until his visa ran out, recording with Hendrix on bass, the sessions being released by Cuneiform Records as “Robert Wyatt ‘68” some thirty five years later. They still sound terrific.
A second Soft Machine album was recorded with Hugh Hopper replacing Ayers on bass. With Wyatt now handling all the vocals “Volume 2” is widely regarded as being among the band’s best. Originally recorded to fulfil a contract its success saw Soft Machine continuing as a working band but the tensions between Wyatt on one hand and Hopper and Ratledge on the other began to grow. Famously ascetic and intellectual Hopper and Ratledge favoured increasingly obtuse, complicated pieces, the hedonistic and more spontaneous Wyatt still favoured song based works. “Third”, a double set which added saxophonist Elton Dean to the line up managed a successful compromise between the two approaches with Wyatt’s side long “Moon In June” widely considered as a masterpiece.  Nonetheless the rift began to widen leaving Wyatt increasingly frustrated, with Dean now on board he was effectively outnumbered three to one and felt himself as being frozen out of his own group. “Fourth” included no vocals whatsoever and for the first time Wyatt was uninvolved in the writing process. It was all too much for him and he quit, the resulting bitterness lasting for many years.
 After leaving Soft Machine in these acrimonious circumstances he recorded two albums with his own group Matching Mole, but Post-Soft Machine, two events changed him forever. In early 1972 he met artist Alfreda Benge, who was to become his wife, muse and lyricist. It also coincided with the beginning of Wyatt’s devotion to Communism, with politics serving as “the missing protein” in his music. Then, in 1973, came the drunken fall from a fourth- floor window at an alcohol fuelled party that left Wyatt paralysed from the waist down. The effect, he says, was truly liberating, in that it narrowed his career choices and made him concentrate on being a singer. He calls the accident a neat dividing line between adolescence and the rest of his life: “Your youth is a period of maximum physical potential. Suddenly being anchored to a wheelchair forces you to experience life in a more abstract way. You become more reflective.”
 For over forty years he has continued to make music from a wheelchair, recording a series of acclaimed albums that have featured his talents as a vocalist and songwriter as well as a player of keyboards, trumpet, cornet and hand played percussion. Perhaps his most widely known performance is his vocal on the song “Shipbuilding”, Wyatt’s singing adding an almost unbearable poignancy to this commentary on the Falklands War written by Clive Langer and with lyrics by Elvis Costello
Aside from his expressionistic blend of free jazz, folk, classical and world music, what truly sets Wyatt apart is his exquisite voice. Reedy and tremulous, there’s a haunted vulnerability and disarming candour to his singing, which his friend Brian Eno compares to “a poor innocent cast into a complicated world”.
His instantly recognisable voice is likely to set off a string of emotions and associations in the listener. Its unique beauty has come to symbolise an empathy for anyone suffering a crisis, whether personal, political, or both. Second, it is an instrument that conveys a deep understanding of the folly and recklessness of our collective behaviour. Third, it is one of the most soothing and restorative sounds to be issued from the human soul. Somewhere along the line Wyatt has, unknowingly made the transition from wilful outsider to national treasure.
The sheer breadth of Wyatt’s solo work is dizzying. As an extension of his modus operandi, he has reworked pieces by such disparate artists as John Cage and The Monkees, and recorded with Henry Cow, Eno, Phil Manzanera, Syd Barrett, Björk and Ryuichi Sakamoto, to name but a few.
Stick a pin anywhere you like,from 1974’s Rock Bottom to 2007’s Comicopera, from Soft Machine’s 1968 debut to 2010’s three-way alliance with Gilad Atzmon and Ros Stephen, For The Ghosts Within, and all of these albums are freighted with Wyatt’s rare brilliance. For all the genre-hopping, Wyatt’s work occupies a distinct corner entirely of its own.
In the course of making his solo albums, he suffered from depression and became increasingly alcoholic, even suicidal  but then in 2007 he realised that liqour had truly become to much of a burden, so he enrolled at Alcoholics Anonymous and is now (in AA terms) a ''dry drunk". Drunk or sober, he has redefined the sound and scope of popular music and we are lucky to have him.
Unexpectedly in 2014 he announced that he was retiring from music, which was sad news for his many admirers because Wyatt has produced some of the most strikingly original work of the past half century. His, he says, is “an improvised life”. One fuelled by jazz, socialism and an absurdist slant on the world around him.
Happy birthday to one of the most unusual and characterful musical adventurers of the last half century. Thank you, Robert Wyatt for being such an uncompromising, unique talent in this insular, commodified world of ours and for creating such engaging, solidly original music. a truly inspiring individual. If you do not know his work, please give these songs a listen.

Robert Wyatt - I'm a Believer

 
Robert Wyatt  - Sea Song

Robert Wyatt -The Age of Self

Robert Wyatt - At Last I am Free

Robert Wyatt -  Shipbuilding  featuring Elvis Costello

Robert Wyatt - Free Will and Testament 

 

‘Stand Together’ Holocaust Memorial Day 2020

Holocaust Memorial Day 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of  the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau,the largest Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. when the true scale of what became known as the Holocaust, was first recognised. More than one million lives were systematically murdered in the gas chambers and other methods at Auschwitz alone. This year is not only a significant milestone but is made particularly poignant by the dwindling number of survivors who are able to share their testimony.
The day aims to remind people of the crimes and loss of life and encourage remembrance in a world scarred by genocide  and prevent it ever being forgotten. Alongside the 6 million jewish people who were murdered in the genocide in Europe leading up to 1945,  the  Nazis also targetted and persecuted   many other groups,   other victims  encompassed trade unionists, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transpeople, (LGBT)  black people, disabled people, the mentally ill, political opponents and  250,000 to 500,000 Roma and Sinti people, (between 25 and 50 percent of this minority;s entire population  in Europe at the time,) who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the second world war,
The theme for HMD 2020 is Stand Together. It explores how genocidal regimes throughout history have deliberately fractured societies by marginalising certain groups, and how these tactics can be challenged by individuals standing together with their neighbours, and speaking out against oppression and all forms of racism and discrimination. The Holocaust is not just a Jewish tragedy, but it is a lesson to all of us of all faiths in all times and a continuing reminder to stand with “others” when their rights and freedoms face attack.

In the years leading up to the Holocaust, Nazi policies and propaganda deliberately encouraged divisions within German society – urging ‘Aryan’ Germans to keep themselves separate from their Jewish neighbours. The Holocaust, Nazi Persecution of other groups and each subsequent genocide, was enabled by ordinary citizens not standing with their targeted neighbours.
Let 's not forget  that the Holocaust did not appear out of thin air, it was built on hatred for "the other," politically weaponized by those seeking ever more power. As politicians today say never again, some are walking doen that same path. Today there are still those that are stoking up increasing division in communities across the UK and the world, antisemitism, racism and Islamophobia are on the.rise again. We must oppose attempts to divide us along the lines of race, religion or ethnicity.
Far right and fascist forces are growing. Many o them deny the horrors of the Holocaust. and are whipping up racist scapegoating. In Britain, we have also seen the systematic demonisation of migrants and Muslims, and a rise in hate crime, including increased incidences of antisemitic attacks in our communities.. Now more than ever, we need to stand together with others in our communities in order to stop division and the spread of identity-based hostility in our society.
Somehow  human beings around the world are capable of so much hate, we should work together to prevent this. Remember those who have resisted, shown bravery and courage.Remember the victims of the Holocaust. We should remember them all. Sadly we seem to forget from past pain and experience. There is still so much to learn, we should stand united against genocide wherever it occurs. We should never forget where hatred and bigotry can lead. There can never be anytime for passivity, and we must  stand strong against the dark forces  of intolerance, bigotry, racism and division that create them. .HMD  also marks the 25th anniversary of the Genocide in Bosnia.
It is important that we do not forget,  but  if we look at history this is not the only time that genocide has occurred, and history repeats. Humanity continues to turn against itself.Yesterday for instance was Australia day or for many others Invasion Day, when people remembered the terrible wrongs and crimes against the aboriginal people, then there is Colombus Day on the 8th  of October, you see the list is endless.
Here is a list of some other    places  and people that the world sometimes forgets.

Cambodia,

Darfur,

Siebrenica,

Karabakh, 

Liberia,

Sudan,

Holodonor,

 Armenia, 
                                 
the ethnic cleansing of indigeneous Palestinians,

The Indigeneous Peoples of  America,

Checknya,

Congo,

India

and the genocide of slavery

and on and on and on.

However we mark Holocaust Memorial Day, it is important to use the day to sharpen our awareness and understanding of extremism and the deadly violence it can licence. It is an opportunity to consider how hatred and intolerance of others has taken many forms and a reminder of the need to stand together in confronting the origins and workings of wickedness, to exercise vigilance and to prevent atrocities from happening again in the future and should  strive to work for equality , peace and justice for the whole of mankind.
Sadly  there will always be individuals, organisations and regimes who want to exploit differences for their own ends and we must have the courage to speak out where we see this happening. In a world which is increasingly fractured, where we have some leaders that are more interested in promoting division than harmony, it is vital we remember that there is far more that unites than divides the human race, to prevent a repeat of the horrors of the past

First They Came - Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the Trade Unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade Unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left To speak out for me.

Read more about Holocaust Memorial Day

We're Artists All - David Milligan (Spike)

(Poem written by David discovered among  files on his computer, that have been given permission to share, I happen to think  it's damned good, and very evocative, so long friend )

We're Artists All - David Milligan (Spike)

Hush now, softly fall asleep,
Let's go to places where we can't weep,
Snuff out the candle, lock up the keep,
Take a chance, you must.

Forget about your diet dear,
Forget about false lover's tears,
Forget about your paranoid fears,
Forget the fuss.

The price of entry is your might,
Death, rebirth, dark and light,
No point in putting up a fight,
The time is here.

No longer can you turn your back;
Lonesome wolf without a pack,
On all those things your art form lacks,
Because they're clear.

To play guitar is microscopic,
To paint a picture panoramic,
But doing neither seems idiotic,
I think, you'll find.

It makes you grieve, you know it's true,
Create no beauty, this will not do!
What would you feel if your life was through?
Would you care?

But what of the million eyes,
That love to soak up your artistic prize?
Who won't create is telling lies!
By abstaining.

So kick yourself right up the arse!
You're not the first, nor even last!
Enough of this hedonistic fast,
Please, stop refraining.

Following The News That The Victoria Derbyshire Show Is To Be Axed

The BBC in all their wisdom have decided  to axe the Victoria Derbyshire show in an attempt to save money, blaming cuts. In an impassioned Twitter thread, hours after going on air to present her show, the  51-year-old broadcaster.Victoria Derbyshire responded to the BBC’s confirmation that her programme is to be taken off air later this year, saying that she only found out after reading  about in Rupert Murdoch's The Times, rather than being informed by the BBC, her employer. "I'm unbelievably proud of what our team and our show have achieved in under five years breaking tonnes of original stories (which we were asked to do); attracting a working class, young, diverse audience that BBC radio & TV news progs just don't reach (which we were asked to do); and smashing the digital figures (which we were asked to do)."
She said she was "gutted particularly" for "all those people we gave a voice to, Love them too.".
Derbyshire spoke out as BBC director of news and current affairs Fran Unsworth told staff it had "not been an easy decision".

Victoria Derbyshire's show began in 2015 and broadcasts live on BBC Two and the BBC News channel every weekday from 10am. The programme won a Bafta in 2017 and has been nominated for several awards, including RTS Presenter of the Year.The show covered many controversial storiies that were not covered by the rest of the BBC, raising awareness and provoking conversation on so many difficult issues and was popular with a demographic which does not engage with shows like Newsnight. The BBC claims it can't afford to run the show anymore, which seems selective, considering the show has a much lower budget than many other less popular BBC programmes.has a much lower budget than many other, less popular BBC programmes.
Following news that Derbyshire's TV show is to be axed, there has been an outpouring of support for the award-winning BBC Two show. One viewer said it was a "life-saving programme" that had helped her when she was "so alone". 
Fans have called for Question Time to go instead - especially after actor Laurence Fox's appearance last week attracted more than 250 official complaints. The main issues cited in the complaints were that the "audience was not representative of the local area, leading to a pro-Conservative bias" and that the "discussion on racism [was] felt to be offensive"."Why cut this and not something useless and harmful to public discourse like Question Time?" asked Harry Samuels.
 The show's former editor, Louisa Compton, has described the cancellation as "madness", saying: "An organisation that values original journalism and under-served audiences should not be doing this."
Anna Collinson, who works on the show, said: "It's gutting for our viewers. The BBC is constantly criticised for failing under-served audiences - the same audiences we were proud to serve and served well. I have already heard from interviewees who are devastated by this news.
"We are a scrappy, feisty and passionate bunch and always did our absolute best to hold those in power to account.
"Whatever happens now, I will forever be proud of working for this award-winning programme and will never forget everything it taught me."
Shadow culture secretary Tracy Brabin has written a letter to BBC director general Lord Tony Hall, asking him to reconsider the decision. In a letter shared by Brabin on Twitter, she said that Derbyshire "is an incredible journalist and I am certain that she has a very bright broadcasting future in front of her regardless of what happens with the show in the coming months."  while Conservative MP Damian Collins, who is bidding to be re-elected as chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said the reports were "disturbing".
"There needs to be a proper review of BBC finances as well as asking licence fee-payers what they value and want to see more of," he said.
A petition demanding that the BBC reverse its decision to axe the Victoria Derbyshire show has reached   over 14, 000 signatures, the change.org campaign, launched on Wednesday by Katie Kendrick, “urgently” calls on the BBC to reconsider its decision.
It praises the show for giving voice to survivors of historical sexual abuse, poverty, mental health issues and the children’s care system.
Ms Kendrick writes: “This is VITAL journalism that brought with it campaigning and integrity to important social issues. It is a lifeline to ordinary people
“I was once a guest on the show and spoke about leaseholders trapped in the leasehold scandal.
“The Victoria Derbyshire team gave me a voice, supported me and others affected in what could have been a very daunting experience.”Her show holds politicians to account , defends societies victims, gives voice to the powerless and needs to be saved. If the decision is not reversed, important issues will be even more neglected, marginalised voices will get even less attention and the powerful will receive even less scrutiny. You can sign the petition below.

https://www.change.org/p/bbc-stop-the-victoria-derbyshire-show-being-axed-victorialive

Tears and Joy : Dedicated to David Milligan (Spike) R.I.P

You veered through life's arduous journey
Sometimes falling prey on the prickly path
When demon thorns pierced your soul
Music and art offered moments of sanctuary.

Through shimmering encounters of darkness and light
Gaping lesions and cemented scars
Uphill struggles and crushing misfortunes
You defiantly battled your beasts of torment.

Your Spanish pilgrimage, a mission fulfilled
With steadfast commitment and tenacious endurance
You consummated your dream
With heroic transcendence.

Sail away my friend to destiny's harbour
Where time is tickless and peace prevails
Dock safely comrade. Flourish anew
Spread your wings. Forever be free.

George Orwell ( 25/6/03 - 21`/1/50 ) - Prophet of our times

On the anniversary of his death, I explore the life and work of the British author George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, who  achieved prominence in the late 1940s as the author of two brilliant satires attacking totalitarianism-Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. His  novels, documentaries, essays, and criticism he wrote during the 1930s and later have since established him as one of the most important and influential voices of the century and is considered by some to be an uncanny prophet of our times.Orwell’s parents were members of the Indian Civil Service, and, after an education at Eton College in England, Orwell joined (1922) the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that later found expression in the novel Burmese Days (1934). His first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), was a  moving non-fictional account  of self-imposed poverty he had experienced after leaving Burma. He published three other novels in the 1930s: A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), and Coming Up for Air (1939). His major works of the period were two documentaries: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), a detailed, sympathetic, and yet objective study of the lives of nearly impoverished miners in the Lancashire town of Wigan; and Homage to Catalonia (1938), which recounts his experiences fighting for the Republicans against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War between 1935 and 1937.Orwell’s two best-known books reflect his lifelong distrust of autocratic government, whether of the left or right: Animal Farm (1945), a modern beast-fable attacking Stalinism, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a dystopian novel setting forth his fears of an intrusively bureaucratized state of the future. the pair of novels brought him his first fame and almost his only remuneration as a writer. His wartime work for the BBC (published in the collections George Orwell: the Lost Writings, and The War Commentaries) gave him a solid taste of bureaucratic hypocrisy.Throughout his novels, documentaries, essays and journalism Orwell relentlessly and uncompromisingly criticised imperialism, nationalism, capitalism, political dishonesty, power, totalitarianism, privilege and private education.The importance of George Orwell as a writer lies in his questioning of institutions, power structures and political statements. The state, law, religion, charity, public schools, political parties and the media all came under his scrutiny He claimed to be a democratic socialist, joining the Independent Labour Party in June 1938 until after the outbreak of the Second World War.Many of the themes in  Nineteen Eighty-Four are compelling and contemporary, foreshadowing the state of our world today and contain remarkable foresight  given that it was first published in 1949. The novel is set in 1984 in Great Britain, known as Airstrip One.The world has suffered through a global atomic war, and there are 3 superpowers called Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. The standard of living is relatively low.The media is run by the government, which is known as Big Brother and the written word is perpetually changed to suit what the government requires. People  are controlled into what to think, how to act and how to live .It uses telescreens, fearmongering, media control and corruption to control the masses.One of the Party pillars in 1984 is endless war on a global scale. The war, however, is a fabrication accepted and treated as fact. For, unreal as it is, it is not meaningless. World powers become enemies and allies interchangeably simply to keep the masses in perpetual fear, perpetual industry, and perpetual order. War provides outlet for unwanted emotions such as hate, patriotism, and discontent, keeping the structure of society intact and productive without raising the standard of living. The state of perpetual war described by Orwell is also reflected in the wars  that have raged since 1945, across the globe from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen etc etc.  
Winston Smith the main protagonist is  an editor employed by the government and is one of many citizens responsible for rewriting history..In Nineteen Eighty-Four, government surveillance is constant and at the forefront. The state knows every move its citizens make, including their habits, whom they talk to, and what they are doing at any given time. Big Brother is watching and running the show. The people are sheep who are herded and controlled.

Winston Smith embarks on a clandestine love affair with Julia, a party member, and joins The Brotherhood, an illegal organisation dedicated to the overthrow of Big Brother. He is caught,and taken to Room 101, alongside everyone else who offended is taken and subjected to torture and brainwashed and he along with everyone ends up loving Big Brother.
Today across the world there are a lock-up concentration camp style jails where unconvicted, ostensibly innocent individuals are held and openly abused. Electronic surveillance is now a common and accepted government practice: cell phone listening, cameras on corners and traffic lights, and electronic toll payment system tracking are all everyday occurrences. By using our credit cards, shopping rewards cards, and even our driver's licenses, data are collected on all of us and sold and used daily, each of us daily profiled. Orwell’s book  was supposed to be a warning, not a guidebook on how to create a surveillance state. It really is remarkable how the many tools that were used to suppress in Nineteen Eighty–Four  are now part of our  everyday lives in 2020.
Newspeak is the fictional language spoken in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is a controlled and abbreviated version of English.  Also  known as “doublespeak!”. As George himself said " Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.. "  Politicians continue to  use language to deceive and manipulate, through concealment or misrepresentation of the truth, desperately and deliberately using euphemistic or ambiguous language as they have been doing ad infinitum. One of the objectives of Newspeak is also to decrease self-expression. With the  popularity of texting, it would be fair to say that there are similarities. And today we are so busy Facebooking, tweeting, etc,  the following line  from one of the characters that works for  Big Brother.  “The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s happening.” is  still amazingly uncanny.Orwell may not have had a crystal ball, but  he did have was an understanding of the human condition and its weakness.
Orwell began writing the novel in 1944, and wrote the bulk of it while residing on the Scottish island Jura while battling tuberculosis during 1947-1948. Orwell  was recently widowed, his wife having died during a surgical procedure. He was left with his young son, and he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. There was not a known cure for TB in 1947, and physicians typically prescribed fresh air and rest. Orwell was given streptomycin, which was an experimental drug in the US, and after treatment, his TB symptoms disappeared. He raced to finish his novel, and upon publication it became an instant success. Orwell died shortly after of a brain haemorrhage on this day in 1950 at the age of 46.
Nineteen Eighty-Four has been in publication ever since, has been translated into multiple languages, and is often heralded as one of the best novels of the 20th century. Still resonating in the times we live today., still worryingly reliable. Commenting on 1984, Orwell wrote, “I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe that something resembling it could arrive.”
In some cases, what is happening in the world today is more draconian and invasive than anything Orwell conceived. Despite Orwell's influence political journalism is as corrupt as ever. The corruption of language described in 1984 is widespread in the media today, with "Newspeak" terms such as democratic, socialist, fascist, war criminal, freedom fighter, racist and many other expressions being used in a deliberately deceptive, propagandistic way to whip up mass hysteria or simply to ensure that people can never achieve even an approximation of the truth.
We are today all living in a massive prison and George Orwell predicted it. The ability of Big Brother government to observe our every activity is increasing week by week and soon each and every car journey we make, every financial transaction we undertake, everywhere we go will be fed into a computer and if there is a slight variance from what they decide is the norm then we will be taken in and questioned. Give the wrong answers and you could well end up in room like 101, or Belmarsh Jail, Guantanamo Bay etc. We should continue to be on guard, raise alarms, be objective, keep questioning and hold our individual Governments to account.
In 2003 a docudrama was released by the BBC, detailing the life and works of George Orwell. The documentary contains footage from his deathbed, and his final words are certainly chilling. You can here them in the following video. We can't say that we were never warned.

Citizens  today should support bona fide civil liberties groups and actively oppose government measures restricting basic freedoms. Freedom of speech is a basic civil liberty and people should fight to retain it. They should defy group pressure, think for themselves and speak out. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.We should continue to be on guard, raise alarms, be objective, keep questioning and hold our individual Governments to account.

“We  are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively.
We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police there is no other way.”
 
- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty- Four

Though he remains best remembered for authoring the cult-classics Animal Farm  and Nineteen eighty four, he was a masterful essayist first and last. In the following  seminal essay “Why I Write” details his personal journey to becoming a writer. It was first published in the Summer 1946 edition of Gangrel. The editors of this magazine, J.B.Pick and Charles Neil, had asked a selection of writers to explain why they write. The essay is autobiographical. It can be divided into three parts.
 The author’s childhood is described in the first part of the essay. The author pays attention to his first experiences as a writer and notes that he always knew about his future as a writer. Orwell discusses his early writing experiences in detail and accentuates the progress which led him to the profession of writer.
Orwell states that there are four great motives for writing which are typical for any writer. Orwell discusses sheer egoism, the writer’s aesthetic enthusiasm, pays attention to the historical impulse, and focuses on the political purpose.
In spite of the fact these motives can be presented in different proportions, all of them can be used to characterize a writer. The third part of the essay reflects Orwell’s personal motives in writing and the development of his style which is rather “public-spirited” because Orwell wanted to reflect the social issues in writing
Following Orwell’s motives, it is possible to state that all writing is political to some extent because the political purpose is always present in writing. According to Orwell, “no book is genuinely free from political bias”  The essay below gives a great insight to an awesome mind and intellect at work..

Why I Write - George Orwell

 

"From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’, etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost —

So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.

which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:

A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;


But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

 And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.


All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.


But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.


It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
 
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;


And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.


I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?


The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

                                                                                                                                                  1946

                                                                          THE END

 

Why I Write is part of Penguin's Great Ideas series,