Bole: Chant 3

—You’re always listening to Palmieri, where my first words as I entered the kitchen of our apartment block to find Casuarina cooking.

—Well, when the weathers white, you gotta listen to music that’s colourful, she says.

She liked her music and I liked to think she was full of all the passion I heard in it. She was wearing a long dress, dropped at the shoulders, held with a waist belt, sort of a Régnier’s fifties fashion. And if I had not known she was against the thing, I would have believed she was an allegory of vanity.

—What are you making? I ask

—Just a stew.

—Enough for two? I ask looking over the pot

—Eh, stew for one, stew for two.

—Thanks, I say gratefully

I moved to the table and pulled out the chair which faced her.

—S’how you been? I say sitting down. Alright?

—Not bad, she says, spinning round to add, if that’s the same thing.

—Close enough, I say. But it sounds like you’ve got something on your mind.

—Oh . . nothing. Just stew and you, she says playfully.

I had learnt by now that a woman speaks her truth from her eyes not from her mouth.

—Casuarina, I persist.

—When I listen to music like this, she says turning to me. I feel as though I am on a tropical island under the hot sand, on sandy beaches, where everybody is dancing.

—It does have that effect, I say.

—I know, but then look around, we live under a grey cloud, she says parting her hands and shrugging.

—Yeah, but you can’t change the weather.

—Short of turning off a light switch now and then.

—Right, I laughed.

—Wouldn’t it be lovely to be living like that? she says, returning to her cooking.

—It would certainly be nice.

—Or to be the musicians themselves. Who get to travel the world and visit so many more of these places.

—Well, envy is to be found in all places.

—And think sometimes what it would be like to be famous, and everything good that would come.

—Are you planning on becoming famous? I ask

She laughs and turns her head to me.

—Fame? she laughs. How twentieth century of me.

—Well, do you not think you could be?

—What have I got to offer?

—Everyone has a talent.

—Maybe, she says. But you could.

—Me? What with?

—You have talent don’t you?

—Perhaps, but I think I should focus on something more realistic.

—But you have gifts, she says.

—My parents think I should pick one and follow it.

—But surely one inspires the other, she says. Picking one would be like cutting off your right arm because you don't use it as often as your left.

—Yeah, I feel like that sometimes. I think of what I would let go of, if I were to drop one.

—And just indulge in to the other one?

—Yeah.

—But it is good to submerge yourself in to it, right?

—For a while, but it can become quite claustrophobic.

—Yeah, it’s nice to have something else.

—Perhaps excess is bad.

—I don’t think so, she says. I just think excess leads to something bad.

—It’s the same for Birka.

—Is that the girl who lives on the top? she asks raising her finger.

—Yeah, she’s an artist.

—Another artist in the building? she asks delighted.

—I’m not an artist. I just like to do things.

—What kind of art does she make?

—Lots of things. Canvas paintings, pottery, wood carvings, she’s always busy working on a thousand things.

—She must be good.

—Yeah, she finds it hard though, because it’s hard to be an artist.

—Oh, I know. You have to trade it to be a media star if you want any kind of success.

—Definitely. Where is the art today?

—Yes, she says. It has been such a decline of art to media.

—I suppose it’s because media makes more money.

—Right, she says. It appeals to a wider audience.

—Plus you reach most of the audience through media outlets.

—Yeah, course that way it’s just a competition of popularity.

—And the best is always rare.

—All methods of art eventually suffer from popularity.

—Who said that?

—Vihta I think.

—In fact think about it, she says placing the ladle in the pot and turning to me. How many real artists can we think of, and not media stars?

—Not many, very few who are living.

—Exactly, because its been set up that success is channelled through media outlets.

—It has been that way for so long though, do you think it will ever change?

—They are so eaten up with pride and vanity that they’ll soon end by eating up each another.

—It’s certainly a threat to art.

—Media, she says, is the mechanism of popularity, machine of mediocrity, and the destroyer of individualism.

—The destroyer of individualism?

—Yes, she says. Because media tends to unify opinion.

—Art certainly loses its originality.

—This music, she says referring to Palmieri. I love it, but how often do you hear this?

—Not unless you’re cooking, I say.

—But not on the radio or on television, or on these heavily promoted festivals. We see the talented only become a talent and lose their full roundedness. No longer becoming a talent, but instead, becoming just an act. Like an imitation of talent.

—Sure, but I don’t listen to the radio, and watch almost no television.

—Well, most of our living is enclosed by the media. It’s the glove around all our lives.

—I suppose, almost every aspect of our social lifestyles I think involves media in some way.

—Some people enjoy media because its subordinate and inferior to them. Others were born with it around them and merely accept it, almost as a fact of life. And so, admire it and enjoy the jolt of restlessness and self-judgment that it creates through that envy. It's a way of silencing ourselves, I think. Those who gravitate towards it inevitably become like cattle.

—Yeah, I believe it’s hard to break out of thinking in a way that you’re brought up.

—It starts with schooling, she says. They school you to adapt to the world, knowing nothing about the years that have already made you, in to a world that’s pre-designed.

—Designed by who?

—Whoever profits.

—Well, you know, it doesn’t have to affect everyone. A lot of people just get on with their jobs.

—Of course. We’re specially skilled. Fortunately my parent’s taught me outside of school as well.

—You should write a letter to the government.

—Well they won’t listen, she exclaims. Politics can't handle opinion and speculation, it needs facts and evidence. You approach them with mere concerns Enough! Send in the jesters! they’ll say.

—Yeah, getting politicians to do anything is getting a child to wash dishes. It seems like such a chore to them.

—Exactly, they’d prefer we’d be occupied with other things.

—Yeah, just watch some TV, listen to the radio, buy those magazines.

—It's easier now to shape the minds of the public than ever, we all flock to the same pond to drink, she says.

—It can be pretty manipulating. I hardly watch TV because I feel I can’t think, as though my mind has suddenly poured out what’s inside. No, I correct myself. That it’s being filled with garbage and needs to make room by pouring out the other stuff.

—It’s like the production and distribution of states of minds, she says. But of course you have to realize that, when you get down to it, the audience is in control. Without the audience, all media is meaningless.

—Yeah, we could just shut it off and turn away from it.

—The problem is, she says. People rely on the media for their information. Newspapers, the TV, the radio, magazines, and in certain countries it is even down music and cinema.

—True, but not everyone. There are people who don’t involve themselves with media.

—Yeah, but it is not often they’re doing anything better.

—I don’t know, I say. They’re just enjoying their time perhaps, just relaxing.

—Well. there's no better relaxation than basking in your own accomplishment. But what is our leisure now but celebrated idleness?

—True. Hanging out at the Agora, or just walking around the city for no reason, I say.

—Yes, she laughs. The modern phase of idleness.

—But then, I say. We have more opportunity to. We have more appliances and technology that helps us have an easier life.

—But our living has increasingly become second and no longer surviving on its own, not dependant on itself, but on these achievements that have ever more supported our idleness.

—But I think it gives us more time to work, and more time to relax.

—I don’t know, I think we still work long hours. Any longer would too cruel, she says.

—I suppose, and technology replaced people’s jobs.

—But improved productivity, that’s what counted for them.

—But their conditions weren’t really favourable. The work they had to do then was too cruel. It was a good thing it was replaced.

—If it provides work for those it replaces, but a lot of people lost their jobs. And the important thing is that people need work, and there can be no fair economy that puts people out of work.

—Then if you have to work, people should work for the pleasure it.

—So they love what’s cruel?

—No, so they’re in a job that they enjoy most of all.

—So working is enjoyable, you mean?

—Yeah, so that they’re not working to earn their leisure, but all work is their leisure and when the air of leisure arrives it is not in the air of idleness between the hours of work, but in the air of achievement between the hours of that working leisure.

—But then you would work all the time and have no earned leisure, she says.

—I suppose, I say. Plus people need time out of work to go to places and buy things. And if you work so hard, you will want to see the rewards of that by up-scaling your house, and buying nicer things. We all have those kind of compulsions.

—But we are burdened by more and more unnecessary compulsions, she says. Driven in to a mad frenzy by numerous distractions to living we have forgotten how to live without.

—Yeah, we kind of adapt to every new thing we’re given. And in turn that thing relies on getting something else.

—And usually it’s sold by the same people, she says.

—The amount of money that I’ve spent on things because I was attracted to the idea of them. And even the idea that it’s expensive.

—Well, what isn’t expensive, she says quickly.

—True, I say. Prices are always rising.

—It’s a great disappointment that the lesson of the value of a pound gets shorter with each new generation. To where the lesson teaches that the value of a pound will buy you nothing of value. That in order for a pound to be of value, you must first spend a hundred.

—Well, we need to buy these things.

—Exactly, she laughs. We pay through the pocket for what we want, we pay through the nose for what we need.

—But what are you going to do? I say. We need money. What else would we trade with? If I didn’t trade with coins, everything I own is instantly a liability. I would buy things only to exchange them.

—I agree what that, she says. Money is a good exchange. When you have no goods to spear, or when there is no available goods to exchange, it is practical to have these pieces of nothing that are worth something. But it is when people value these pieces of nothing itself when problems arise. When these pieces of nothing are worth more than useful goods themselves, and when these pieces of nothing are worth more than people themselves.

At this point of our conversation, I said to myself: Thank you very much, Mr. Adam Smith.

—Always how its been though, right? I say. Someone’s rich, someone’s poor. Whether it’s for money or for food. Someone has always got more than someone else.

—Well, one person can’t gain unless another person loses. And what a person loses is determined by what another person gains. You can only gain as long as someone else has something to lose.

—It’s the distribution that’s the problem, I say. More than the money itself.

—And think about what happens when people have nothing to lose.

—They steal from each other.

—Exactly, she says. Poverty and crime are destined to flourish.

—But not everyone has that intention to lash out.

—Are you kidding? she says. Do you think a person who is dying of hunger will just lie in the street?

—What else can they do?

—Not stand for it.

—Do you think people would do that?

—The spirit of rebellion exists in every great city.

No, that is not quite right, prevalent was the word I believe she used, rebellion is prevalent. It was a strong thing to say and I understood her reasoning. And I believed it was the great task of governments to keep it dormant, as if it wakes, it may be a force which not even Heracles may restrain.

—Every city is an army.

—Well said, she says. Governments says that too.

—Except they prefer the people to battle it between themselves.

—Right, we have all this street violence, and what do they do? Film it for reality TV.

—And there’s all kinds of fatal crimes, over domestic issues, racial issues, and any kind of prejudice. Where is the government in that?

—Well they’re experts in that. They hire people to sow prejudice. That’s how wars get started.

—Well, I suppose the military has to do something.

—As long as there’s those within government whose job and duty is it to cause prejudice between nations how can we feel . . . She begins, but leaves her sentence to sum up in another. A government that can not protect the well being of the nation is not a government at all.

Hearing her talk like this, she looked to me like a Frémiet statue.

—People have to rely on their governments though, I say.

—Well, exactly. I mean you don’t have local people at peace treaties.

—Well, I don’t think it would so wise to.

—Why?

—Because, its not the chain, I say. It’s too far from them. Their responsibilities are local. They should at least start from their communities if they want to change things.

—But why then should they have to rule over their community to make it better? she asks.

—People sometimes need to be lead.

—They should learn to lead themselves.

—But there has to be authority, I say.

—Well, real freedom is when one beats their conditions, and stand against bad authority.

—Well who has the right to grant that? I ask.

—No one, she says. Only themselves.

—Yeah but, I say. If they don’t know what they’re doing, and they haven’t thought it through, they could end up much worse.

—If you were told to dig a hole and you found yourself deep in this hole you had dug, and there were no hands to pull you out, not even from those that ordered you to pick up the spade initially, would you remain there, or would pull yourself out?

—Well be careful, Casuarina. All advantage has disadvantage, and Vasta and Vihta both say: those who do the most good, are they who do the most harm.

—Well, I’m just saying for some things could be better. And remarkably enough, if you want some good things in this world, you have to do something more than ask for it.

—You think people should rule their own local communities? But don’t you think in doing so, they will not be ruling themselves but only each other. And since it’s visible to them, it will be under tighter control than how government is now?

—I just think the way of government is backwards and a method that is very old.

—What would you prefer? I ask.

—There needs to be an emphasis on a love for your country not a love for your government. No love for your master that renders you a slave. A love for your country and those who share it, no love of a hierarchy, but a love for the lack of.

—Yeah, it is admirable that the Vespucci always express love for its land no matter how bad it gets.

—Yes, you have to love it. Or what positive changes could you make.

—But what if one country loves their country more than another, and so wants to enforce their country on another.

—Then they’re foolish.

—Of course, but you must understand, there does exist bordering nations?

She sighs and stirs the stew with more energy.

—We insist on marching with flags and badges of our nation, a patriotism not only for our countries but against another’s, whilst remaining fixed to the one home, this our planet, and we should sooner realize for the better that we are all as one, of one home.

—I guess we’re all human after all.

—Ha! she laughs. That’s giving credit to some.

—Do you think we’re more divided?

—Probably the same, she says. But in different ways. I mean, how far could William the Conqueror get today? Probably not as some economists.

—True, we have changed in our habits, but I think if you were to break it down, the intention is still the same.

—Maybe yeah, they say power is money, or weapons. But an armed wealthy man might not get too far if he’s outnumbered by those the same who oppose him.

—Yeah, I suppose for something to thrive, there must be a collective attitude, I say.

—The only society that thrives has only ever been one of love for each other and love for their territory. A society, to thrive must always have a shared goal.

—Yeah, but, that too hasn’t always been used for good reasons.

—True, I suppose from the mob to the military it is a collective attitude, she says.

—Generals are something of a larger version of their armies.

—That’s also true, but what if there were those who demanded like that but for good?

—Demanded to act?

—No, demanded to live.

—If only there were more people like you, I say.

—We’ll there should be, she replies quickly. There’s more people everyday.

—Yeah, population numbers are going up.

—And yet we talk of an overpopulation crisis as if there's no work to be done.

—I agree, I mean it’s a problem for us. Not for nature.

—No, she says. Nature doesn’t really care. Nature’d be here with or without us.

—More likely without us, with how much nature we tear down.

—I know, it’s not like we don’t find ourselves complaining so much about the world, that we’re not at unrest with the state of things?

—I hear it all the time.

—Surely then there is plenty of work to be done, plenty of work to be found, and plenty more purposeful than where you are nothing but a small cog in a big wheel.

—Totally, it’s opening up avenues for all kinds of work.

—But instead what do we run to? The popularity and recognition, not in the form of achievement, but in the form of fame.

—Well, it also shouldn’t stop the rest of the world from happening. I mean, Palmieri still needs to make music.

—Of course.

—But I suppose people who are skilled for these things should follow a path where the higher duty lies, I say.

—Yeah, but they don’t, she says. Because they’re too few signs for how to get involved or what the reward is for doing it. And so they end up following the regular routes and then complaining that there are fewer jobs.

—People will always turn to the most obvious route first, I say.

—Well, it would make sense to, but there are other ways.

—I suppose they prefer to do what is easier.

—There will always be the feeble-minded, she says. And they will always respond to the same thing. To take considerable concern in things which fill their empty lives with purpose. Because no matter how much energy, time or money, they will always believe it is easier to please themselves than to please others.

I liked to hear her speak like this, and she proved she had all the passion from her music, but I was worried for her, that she, like I, lived in a setting she was not found.

—Remember, that all the things you hear me say, she says turning to me. Are ramblings from flood gates and not to be taken seriously, compared with the serious ones that I keep to myself.

—Well, I say. We all have the thoughts we keep to ourselves.

—When I speak like this, it is only the culmination of thoughts. Although they are thoughts from the tip of an ice berg, there are much larger thoughts beneath them still. But you have to trust that I don’t speak against the larger thoughts they stem from.

—I don’t imagine you’ve spoken a single word you don’t believe. But I also know that you feel comfortable to speak freely with me, and so you may have said things you may later withdraw.

—I don’t like to take back my words, she says. If I have said them, there must be some reason for it. And if I change my mind later, I will redeem myself with some other words.

—Sometimes I find it hard enough just to say what I mean.

—They what do you say?

What is well received.

—Enough, I say.

—It’s good to let yourself out and speak, Zylitol. I would like to let go of my past, she says. Cast it off like a worn out garment.

—What’s wrong with your past? I ask curiously.

—It lingers too long, she says. At least longer than the present.

—You don’t like the present?

—I suppose nostalgia is just sometimes better.

—Much better than the present? I ask.

—Just . . . life, she confesses. We don’t get to experience much of it around here.

—You feel you’re not experiencing life?

—Well, my grandfather was in the war, and my grandmother worked in the R.O.F. here.

—You think your life would be better in war?

—No, I think they perhaps experienced life more than me, because they lived closer to losing it.

—What are you saying? That you want to . . .

—No, nothing like that, she corrects me. And then smiled to restore her composure, having felt she went deeper than she initially wanted, and that I no longer seemed to be understanding her words.

—Anyway, I just meant that I’d been thinking about it.

—About something to . . .

—Something to wake up my life. she concludes.

—Yeah, I say. I know what you mean.

—There’s so much misery is the world, she says. I sometimes feel I’m without hope.

I saw her body tremble and she began to weep, in a mixture of joy and fear, and not knowing which to rest at. My mind rummaged for the correct words to lift her from her tears, but as she had turned her back to me to weep, I could only believe she had not wished for me to notice.

—How’s the stew? I asked, having thought of nothing else to say.

—Bubbling, she says staring deep in to the pot. Full of life.

I felt bad that I could not continue our conversation. But I didn’t know what to say at the time. I could have come out with some remark, some words that I perhaps needed myself, but I didn’t want to sound like a tumbleweed existentialist. And there was a perspective was not open to her yet. She still believed in death was the pathway to life. It is so foolish of people to believe they need to experience death to experience life. That is the kind of people who leap out of aeroplanes, believing they are going to be welcomed with a new perspective on the world and on their life, only to be disappointed that it is the same words, the same life, they had meet them on the ground. These are things I wished I had said to Casuarina, but I did not believe she would have readily taken my words. She was clever, but not knowing where to apply it, she was insistent on untangling complex thoughts, which prevented her from seeing its larger frame.

After feeling I had nothing to say to Casuarina on the subject and felt more like changing the subject than continuing it, given the state it had brought her to, I leaned back in my seat and looked out of the window, where I saw a couple of children playing on the grass outside the apartments, the kitchen being on the ground floor. They were happily playing whilst their parents were talking to each other, running around them like young wild and laughing as though it was the most fun to be had in the world to which all adults and young persons are unable to participate. Looking at these children, their care free sense, though acceptably too childish to be intelligible, I admired it, and thought to myself, what do these care of politics, these whom still know how to live.

I do not like to speak of politics, my reader, as I find it to be only a nuisance which hangs above my head. And though it follows me wherever I may travel, I do not partake in its concerns. If I act consciously, I act politically, whether for or against. But if act politically, by legislation, I’m acting with no conscience whatsoever. And for the most part, all I will say of politics is that when it improves it is good, and poor when it fails, and each political detail is a shaving of iron that gravitates to either pole. Yet, if we should think for ourselves, we should at least first think well.

However, my concern is with the culture. A culture is the expression of lives. And we have favoured amusement over values such as family, communities, work and education. I almost await the day a young street satyr riding past on a low-riding BMX, would sneer and curse at me in Gallia or Suetidi.

There is no earlier record of human thought than the paintings found on the walls of inhabited caves. There is no greater defining aspect of life during a civilization than its arts. Yet how that declined and rapidly. I do not believe we have ever celebrated such unoriginal, uninspired music, and I expect my reader will echo my words when I say, I have heard clocks with more originality and cinema still struggles to be considered as an art form.

Yet these channels of culture have created panels for confessions of complaints, and not a proposal for improvement. Whilst I have walked around this town and passed by people who are standing at bus shelters and staring down an empty road as they wait for the hopeful arrival of a scheduled bus, I have heard the blame pointed to the House of Hades.

—I had a child and I can't afford to feed them, and it’s the fault of House of Hades.

—I'm a drug addict and can't make rent, and it’s the fault of House of Hades.

—I have qualifications and yet can't get a job, and it’s the fault of House of Hades.

—Violence has risen on the streets and it’s the fault of House of Hades.

—We are under too much surveillance and too strict police discipline, and it’s the fault of House of Hades.

But to these people who wait, tormenting themselves, frustrated by the machine they have chosen to rely on, I have desired to say to them:

—If you were take away this House of Hades for one day, it would be the same, and then who would you have to blame?

I have worried for the child who is born in to unfair conditions. And question for what good reason have the responsible been less favoured over those who have offered life to a child even after the evaluation that the years of the child would be spent in hardship?

What life has been arranged for the well being of that child before its birth? You bring in to the world not a baby, but hopefully the being who will bury you, you bring in to the world not a child, but hopefully too a grandparent, you bring in to the world not a crying infant, but hopefully a happy husband or wife, a happy father or mother. And yet I question where does this priority lies against adding a child to a house, or marriage, or that it may give purpose or responsibility. Forgetting a life is not simply equated to its living.

Once I had finished thinking this discourse over in my head, when Casuarina was ready to serve, I offered a hand to set out bowls and cutlery us both, and she poured the stew. When I sat back down, glancing back to the window, there were no longer only two children and their parents but several, who must have all arrived whilst we had been setting the table, and were talking to each other in such a familiar way that it would seem that it were a regular meeting place, since the park was not far away. And yet despite to myself who did not recognize a face amongst them, there was distinctive behaviour between them, as some would seem more inclined to speak with some than others, though it seemed friendly. And putting these sights together, there was a clear difference between the people that seemed to order themselves naturally. And after eating, having changed to lighter subjects, clearing up and thanking Casuarina for the meal, I left the kitchen and returned to my apartment.