LIVING
wishes and dreams
There is so much to write about, so much to photograph and make films about While going through my notes I came across this reflection from 30 years ago and thought it may be of interest how hopes for the future were dealt with events and ever more corrupting politics and greed..
Again I have printed the text below and also recorded it. Please let me know which you prefer.
. It is called: I HAVE LIVED FIFTY YEARS
I have lived fifty years.
I have lived in history.
I believed and wanted to believe there was hope for us.
When I was young and suffering on the Great Plains to understand
the world and my life in it…
I read 'in the future the flowering of humanity would one day occur
on the lusting lips of history's twisted stem'
and that we, my generation:
marching, chanting, drugging, celebrating,
screwing, sloganeering, fighting, dying while singing
those oh so hopeful sweet folk melodies,
we would participate in a blossoming.
Black brown red yellow white would share each other’s bread.
Workers would own the product of their hands and imaginations.
Peasants would possess their land held dear.
Work itself would be shared,
eased by electronics and rationality,
its every action transformed
into a celebration of creativity.
Poetry would be carried in the back pockets of every sailor.
Children would run nude and uninhibited in gardens.
Old folks would be embraced for their knowledge and their stories.
Under the linen sheets, lovers would respect surprise and enjoy.
The photographer in me would reveal truths.
Truths would expose injury.
Injury would be healed by the encyclopaedia of justice kindness fairness.
But the encyclopaedia became a bible:
the Bible became the ruler’s book of orders
with a beginning in celebrating greed
a middle in lost dreams
an end in sorrow.
Unlike most people
I live neither on the surface nor inside of life.
I am a photographer
a storyteller
a visitor
I live on life's boarders
with my nose pressed against other people's windows
watching, pondering and then commenting,
while guessing what I think I see is truth.
I left America.
I left not for fear but perhaps disillusionment.
I left for longing to track down a vein of beauty and truth
I knew was out there
that 'there' of Europe, my blood's soil
and I left to find some form to express it.
I left to find the loft, the poets,
the banquette years of conversation and lovers and landscapes,
the temples and poets and film makers
and those who love knowledge, reason and truths.
I left to feel the breeze in the corridor
long ago filled with the whispers of those claiming beauty and freedom as their birthright to be cherished
and from amongst those distant relatives,
rounded up, brutalised, slaughtered.
I left to hear the Klezmer's violin on the fringes of the steppes
the bargee's squeezebox on the boats on the Seine,
playing under the humming voices of men with balls and hearts
turned out to love and drink honest schnapps
and women whose feet dug deep into the black loam
talking, singing, scolding
about what is right and wrong for all of us
while the band plays and the children dance and wine is drunk.
Romantic?
Idealistic?
Without a dream we have no place in history:
yesterday exists to be remembered
today is here just here
and tomorrow is something to celebrate or suffer.
He knew each person walks alone to their grave
unless a romance of time and place accompanies him,
holding the hand of his soul
tugging into the past of his roots and the future of his dreams.
By walking to his grave he knew he would join
those before him
with blossoming to follow.
Behind the pay wall there is
•part 12 of TRANSFORMATION TO THE NEXT SYSTEM
A PROCESS DEPENDENT ON CREATING
AND WINNING CULTURAL STRUGGLES
•The story of this weeks photograph
•the interviews with the composer Graham Treacher and the painter Ricky Romain.
• there is a 4’16” film I made with and for Ricky Romain, honouring several musicians who created the original music and song called
MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH LOVE.
Next week there will be a third interview, this time with the inspirational Lisa Glybchenko, a wonderful, dedicated, Ukrainian artist and teacher/aid worker.
The story of the photograph above:
This photograph represents 2 problems for a photographer.
The first is what right do I have to use my camera, to record others in such a devastatingly tragic situation? This is difficult in simple human emotional terms.
Do I want to interfere, show disrespect with complete disdain for the pain of the moment? No. So then, how do I dare lift my camera to snap?
I do so because the world - that shallow, imperfect, all to uncaring world of people, close there souls to the horrors perpetuated by our munitions makers, politicians and bankers. They must have their eyes opened.
Second, whose voice do I have to claim a right to speak in such conditions?
I see no difference between these agonised people and my humanity. I will use this moment to make a claim for our shared common decency.
It is not easy.
•This is a 4’16” film I made with and for Ricky Romain, honouring several musicians who created the original music and song called
MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH LOVE.
TRANSFORMATION TO THE NEXT SYSTEM
A PROCESS DEPENDENT ON CREATING AND WINNING CULTURAL STRUGGLES by Robert Golden
part 12 A PROVOCATION
We may know the shape of the world we wish to create,
we may know what systems we need to develop that world,
but do we know how to convince a racist plumber,
a gun touting fireman,
or a nurse who has lost her disillusioned son to a drug overdose
that the changes we believe to be so necessary
are the changes which will give them a better life?
Some of us labour, work in factories, run the railroads, forge steel;
some of us design buildings, provide medical care or bake bread:
some of us edit newspapers, study economics and history:
some of us engage in public service.
Although we may drive a taxi or be a cop on the beat,
as partners in an equal society
we have a right to demand that the intellectuals, academics,
religious leaders and those in the Media
serve society rather than vested financial interests.
That right exits because our labour
builds the buildings to house the schools,
prints the books and runs the power systems that illuminate the shadows
to educate the brightest of us,
a debt which needs to be honoured.
This is not a map for future programmes.
It is a provocation asking about how,
in practice, on the streets, in the bars and in housing estates,
the Transformer’s messages will be constructed and delivered?
It is time to remember the work of Sol Alinsky, (http://www.bestofbeck.com/wp/activism/saul-alinskys-12-rules-for-radicals) to connect directly with people,
to form the flying universities as mentioned below.
If our cause is sensible, humane, kind and embracing of every group,
class, religion, and of ever person of whatever sexual orientation or ability or colour, those pink bishops and wavering politicians,
and those who have always needed a clear moral direction,
will choose to be with us.
As they come, so will others.
Central to TRANSITION,
we need not only direct contact with people
but also a new Media capable of reaching, entertaining
and engaging large swathes of the public.
The old Communist Party and Trotskyists newspapers do not serve as examples.
They were stiff and paternalistic, often talking to the workers and students
as though they were only capable of absorbing the party line
and listening to combinative language.
In a functioning democracy people need to be word and image literate.
To be literate is to be able to think and evaluate for one’s self.
It alone provides the way for each individual to live in freedom.
We must all share the responsibility for the state of our nation and our world.
But, we all have a role and often we have distinct abilities to contribute.
Next week: ARTISTS AND REALITY