POST 16: Austerity and Abundance--and the forward march of time

In the wake of the Tory Government announcement of ‘austerity measures’, the London arts community quakes.  Now there is a precedent in Australia, with George Brandis’ particular version of rendering artists’ lives even more austere by siphoning arts moneys into a self-managed fund (see: “Coalition Arts Slush Fund”—the $104.8 million heisted from the Australia Council to fund the new “National Programme for Excellence in the Arts” http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue127/11963).  Some wag asks Brandis to agree to a quarter of his personal income being taken away and ’managed’ by someone else. 

A precedent in law or policy is unfortunately like the flutter of a butterfly: it spreads out from the shudder where it begins. Once such a policy is out in the world, it's hard to dis-appear. What can halt the forward and cross-continental march of this narrative?  Kindness, generosity, respect, compassion, sustainability, and useful employment –for artists and whoever else, and what they contribute to culture--are too thin in that storyline.

ELDERS, AGING, AND CONTIGUITY.

Kindness, care, and relatedness is key to a future which has to face what to ‘do’ with an ageing population. Entelechy, in their work with Elders, asks key questions central to most people’s lives: What makes life meaningful? How can I contribute?—questions which are strange to think of having a cut-off point at age 65.

Accompanying the ‘forward march of time’ (our brains just keep growing, did you know?),  some parts become more frail. So do we focus on the frailty, or the resilience? The brightness, or the decay? Colin talks of  ‘curved space time', which seems to indicate that linear time does not exist. It is a partial consolation and mental reprieve for those experiencing the 91 years in their bones. 

Later, at the airport for a trip to the Continent, I wonder at the grace of people who  have to wait. As I, too, wait in a wheelchair, due to a temporary ailment, I see all the others who are used to waiting, for hours, without information about when they will be moved or tended to.  As if they do not need to be spoken to.  

I am aware that for every one sitting here, there are hundreds and thousands who also wait. So, too, with marches, where those present represent the multitude of others who could not come. I look here at the pram and think there was probably a woman who wants her voice counted, but is busy giving birth at home...

"Anti-Austerity" March, Bank, London, June 2015.

If appearances can ever be trusted, there is wealth still here in Britain, and we are marching through the marble heart of it. ‘Everyman’ ‘everywoman’ and ‘everybaby’, perhaps marching for themselves,  but also representing all the other everypersons who worry about the rent, education, and enough food on the table.  

The march makes it on to Channel 4, which is notorious for avoiding such events. Notorious, indeed, for every so often plying tricks of the trade such as reversing film footage, turning the assault of a civilian by police into an attack by civilians (see http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/12/ipcc-will-not-investigate-orgreave-police-action-during-miners-strike). But here, the Beebs  broadcasts the aerial shot of some 200,000 who came  from as far away as Wales. Railway workers, nurses, teachers, the Greens, and vegans who distribute pamphlets proclaiming their diet will solve all the problems of the world. Bless them. Abundance in their austerity.

A few pipers and drummers by the side, cheering.

A group of Hare Krishna followers in their saffron robes, adding colour, chants and bells.



                                                                            With thanks to Rebecca Swift and Julia Honess.

c. Z Soboslay 2015.