There will be questions…

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Created on Monday, 22 August 2011 16:50

Airport off, feet into the stripe of sun from the open door, the smell of sweat and cigarettes dissipating...

Somewhere near, a hammer hits something to a kind of rhythm, and traffic continues.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how odd my job is, and it strikes me more the more I do it: displaying my Self to crowds all over the country; making them feel they know me or know themselves better; waving my crooked little mirrors around. When the riots kicked off in London I felt I should have something Big to say, some Grand Stance that’d be a place for people to hang their opinions…

In real reality though, the riots stump me, and I could talk in circles for hours: I’ve watched the news, and I’ve seen the shopkeepers mourning their livelihoods, and the people raging against the disrespect of the youth, and the youth raging against the disrepect of the people… But to hear David Cameron talking about ‘criminality, pure and simple’, and the rotten sections of society where people think the world owes them something – wasn’t that a trip?

Imagine a whole section of society where people don’t work for their money but still expect to be supported and housed; where people live amongst only people of their own background; where chemicals, promises and even weapons are traded down dark corridors; where young men form gangs and allegiances and soon wield real power. Real power? Imagine that – imagine if people from that section of society were actually in CHARGE. Jesus. Of course there’s a sickness, Dave, well done for noticing. Let’s abolish Eton – that might be a place to start.

Yeah no yeah no I don’t condone destroying people’s shops, their homes, their livelihoods. People have to take responsibility for their actions, that’s what my dad taught me. My dad was around, and he had time for me too – I’m lucky.

But like Darkus was saying, let’s at very least look at why.

THESE MONSTERS ARE DOING THIS

But of course there were a lot of individual humans with a lot of different reasons – it’s pointless trying to analyse exactly why it was each one went out there, in there. What’s easy to see is that a lot of the people in this footage are children, and personally speaking, the little prick I was at the age of 13, if I saw a window broken and a stream of people flooding in and out… I would. I’m not sure if that made me a monster? What’s a monster? A child? A follower?

I reckon once a line is crossed by one person, many more will dare to cross it. That can be exhilerating, and I can’t lie, there was something in me that found it exhilerating watching a group of people pushing police back down the street (what, you can DO that?): I’ve had shit from police enough times to know it takes a big mind-step to properly dare defy them.

Once a line is crossed… But lines being crossed can be terrifying too – I watched footage of police BEATING a young man who they caught coming out of a broken shop with goods (BEATING in capital letters, underlined – this guy had taken some goods from a shop, he’d stolen some property. That is not equivalent to an act of physical violence against another human being). A group of people were cheering the police on, shouting

“Scum! Scum! Scum! yeah get him, hit him.”

That was a line-crossing far uglier to witness than windows being broken.

(But then we’ve always been good at deploring theft, applauding violence).

THESE ARE DECENT PEOPLE, AND THE FEAR IN THEM

The fear, the fear. The more we fear, the more the people we fear will behave in ways that justify our fear.

But look, I wasn’t going to write a blog about the riots, that wasn’t my intention. Waving my mirrors…

The other night I was walking home through St Werburgh’s in Bristol, and a pair of people were peering over at me.

“What’s your name?”

“Rowan”

“Oh. You look like someone famous … yeah, yeah, you really look like Dizraeli”.

“I am Dizraeli, but look … I’m really not famous”

So we walked along chatting for a bit before our paths uncrossed, at which time she goes

“But you’re really sound … someone that knows you told me you’d turned into an arrogant prick since you got famous”

“Someone that knows me?”

Funny isn’t it? As soon as you’re any level of public, everyone knows you, and everyone’s an authority on what you are and why. In the same way, as soon as the telly is teeming with images of young people in sportswear, everyone knows the Youth, everyone knows what They are like. I can’t help feeling part of the issue here is the very fact that we’ve created The Youth (this Monster in our minds) and we cross the street to avoid it, cut funding to it, fear it fear it… If I was so widely feared, I’d probably act dangerous.

Here’s an idea: the people rioting are no uglier than you, and they’re no more insane than you. To fear, to lock people up, to throw the word Scum around like idiot darts – that’s the easy response. There’s a million threads running through this story; I think it’s our responsibility to unpick them.

But what do I know?

*all the phrases in capitals were taken from commentary on the riots.