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For all its cares and woes, life is still full of awe and wonder. For instance, music continues to amaze me. Whenever I hear some brilliant new music, especially when it’s by a genius like Bob Dylan, I’m transported to new peaks of pleasure and enjoyment, and something like spiritual bliss.
This morning I saw Macca, of all people, being interviewed on an Open University programme and talking about how for him music was always about discovery, and how much he’s always enjoyed discovering news things when he sits at a piano - new sounds, new chords, new melodies, whatever.
He’s 60+ and still has a childlike joy in discovery and invention. What a pity that our children for the most part do not - especially those who need it the most in order to bring joy into their lives, but go to school only to face drills, rote learning, tests, and so-called ‘catch-up programmes’, all of which leave no time for voyages of discovery and invention, even if they should be fortunate enough to have teachers who see the need for such things in the first place.
The more I think about what Ashley Walters was talking about on the radio yesterday, the more angry I get. “A lot of our kids are bright, talented, artistic. But they’re not given opportunities to grow and use their talents . . .” And he should know. There’s a guy who had no issues with literacy - he loved books, reading and writing. Yet he was still denied the opportunity to develop as a talented artist by his school, though he was fortunate enough to have a parent who saw the need to arrange special classes for him outside of ‘school’ hours. Most parents do not.
I had two different friends talk to me yesterday about the news regarding the House of Commons Select Committee report on testing in schools, one of whom was talking to me on Skype from Namibia! Good news travels fast, eh?. They both expressed hope and optimism that the report would cause the government to scrap SATs and put in place a more enlightened system.
I’m afraid I dampened their enthusiasm by saying that I can’t bring myself to believe that the current consensus, mind-set, conspiracy, dogma, hegemony, call it what you will, is going to collapse because of a puff of wind from a Select Committee, whose seeking after truth is not valued by the big boys and girls who seek only to perpetuate their own position and power, and pay far more attention to the editorials of the right-wing press and its owners, and can hardly be expected to recant all they’ve been doing and admit they’ve been idiots and have pursued policies that are anti-child and anti-education (as more enlightened people know it).
I also suggested that an incoming Tory administration is also very unlikely to show more enlightenment. Since when has Conservatism been about enlightenment and doing things in the true interests of the working classes and underclasses?
No - the best we can hope for is that in about 10 years time some sort of coalition of the enlightened finally comes to power, though I’m not holding my breath for that either. After all, this is the country that has a history of successful counter-revolutions against any progressive or radical movements that managed to make political headway - be they peasants and Levelers, Roundheads, anti-monarchists, anti-Tory, social democratic, Europhile and Eurocentric, educationalists, etc. We’re not still a monarchy for nothing. We’re not still on the fringes of the European Union for nothing. We don’t have a ‘special relationship’ with the USA for nothing. We’re not a world centre of business and finance for nothing, either.
Frankly our education system has never set out to encourage free-thinking, progressive, radical criticism of the status quo. No-one in government has ever set the education system the task of producing emotionally literate, creative and enlightened thinkers who will challenge the status quo and drag the country into an era of social justice, peace and prosperity for all.
No - what they want is for more kids to get exam passes and prepare themselves for ‘the world of work’, as if passing so-called academic tests actually does that anyway, as any enlightened business person or industrialist well knows - and that is not an oxymoron. Such people do exist.
Our political masters, however, can see no further than the utilitarian view of education - and according to them our schools are there to serve the university system and to regulate who has access to that system, and thereafter access to the professions, and to careers in business, the senior civil service, etc. Gatekeeping - sorting sheep from goats.
Skilling people to become productive units and to earn money is the name of the game, not enabling people to find a voice, to develop creative thinking skills, to see the rat race for what it is. ‘Education, more than wealth or power, is the key to human dignity.’ Wise words. Regrettably our education system isn’t designed to enable young people to discover human dignity, and only provides for the academically able to pursue real wealth and power.
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So what’s all this to do with a man in a long, black coat?, I hear you ask. As well you might, dear reader. Well yesterday my good friend N came round and turned me on to two Bob Dylan albums that have passed me by over the years - Infidels and Oh Mercy. I apologise to His Bobness for my slackness. I must have had my mind on other things.
It was N who’d managed to get me a ticket to see Bob at Wembley last year. When we were in the Caribbean N had played me Jokerman, the opening track on Infidels, which blew me away with its driving rhythms and lyrical & melodic genius.
Oh Mercy kicks off with ‘Political World’, which rocks and rolls as well as anything has ever done in the history of blues and rock. “We live in a political world / under the microscope / you can travel anywhere / and hang yourself there / you’ve always got more than enough rope.” Indeed we have.
Take a look at the rest of the lyrics: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/political.html
The whole album is a melodic masterpiece, with superb musicianship, incredible writing, great basslines, brilliant harmonica solos, and so on. Dylan sings as well as, if not better than, ever.
And so to The Man with the Long Black Coat. The song begins with chirping crickets, slow, echoing guitars, and suddenly, thirty seconds into it, a tapping foot (one two three, one two three,) and a piercing blast of slow, spine-tingling harmonica blues, followed by and accompanied by a low-slung bass - a single note per bar - dom . ., dom . ., dom . . . It sounds like doom, though it might be liberation. The guitars seem to gently and melodically speak of hope, but the harp wails out notes of heart-breaking sadness. “People don’t live or die / people just float / she went with the man with the long, black coat.”
http://www.bobdylanonline.com/songs/coat.html
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Margaret Mizen, mother of Steven Mizen, a South London 15 year old who was stabbed to death this week, was quoted on the radio today. “Anger killed my son. There’s too much anger in the world. My prayers are with my son’s killers and their families.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/13/do1302.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1949676/Bakery-murder-Mother-speaks-of-Jimmy-Mizen
The speaker on today‘s ‘Thought For Today’, the Reverend Roy Jenkins, spoke about angry and resentful young (and old) people who awake every day to yet another day of being treated unfairly. He spoke about millions of people who are affected by global hunger and poverty, every day of their lives. He spoke of powerful people who exploit the poor. He spoke of a need for us to engage with ‘creative anger‘.
Such an engagement is what I’d prefer to call creative channeling of one’s passions. Passion for life and for social justice. Passion for creating more joy and more enlightenment. Passion for global brotherhood and sisterhood. First we need to see things as they really are, and see clearly where the solutions might lie, and then we can begin to create a movement for peaceful change throughout our societies and the world at large.
In the words of Ashley Walters (yesterday’s blog), you can’t fight fire with fire. But we can all take a peaceful stand and insist on running the world more justly and fairly. We can all band together and stand up for human values, a more spiritual world, and an education system that will over the long term create more emotionally and spiritually intelligent people and a more enlightened world.
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I’d really thought we’d heard the last of the public schoolboy tones of Tone on the radio. I can’t stand hearing Blair speak - on any subject. To hear him talking about Middle East peace is painful indeed.
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Postscript
Trawling the net for the lyrics to Man In The Long Black Coat I came across a beautifully written San Franciscan blog that includes some excellent pieces on the Hurricane Katrina disaster and on the 40th anniversary of the killing of Martin Luther King. Enjoy them at
http://dontcallmeishmael.blogspot.com/2006/08/man-in-long-black-coat.html
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