space
I've been unable to clear a space for myself of late. Going on the Arvon course with other gay and lesbian writers earlier this year in Devon showed me how much my everyday life has hemmed me in and compromised that space.
What do I mean by
'space'?
I suppose I mean a situation, not necessarily one in which I'm alone, in which I - and we're entering fluffy cliche-ville here - feel I'm free to be who I want to be, or who I might potentially be (or, rather, who I already am - which is a slippery pail of fish at the best of times...). In Devon I felt so relaxed, so open. I wasn't son, or teacher, or husband. Surprisingly, I wasn't even gay man. I wasn't reading from any of those scripts, from any scripts at all. I just was. And being surrounded, of course, by people with whom I had huge amounts in common, despite our various cultural backgrounds, felt enormously supportive and safe. I'd found my tribe. Maybe by 'space' I also mean some sense of belonging to a community. Some sense of asylum.
Which is perhaps why Myspace and Facebook and similar websites are so successful. They allow us to stake our claim to our own patch of virtual earth and build on it what we will - yet allows us to gather round ourselves a community of friends / 'friends' who acccept whatever version of ourselves we choose to give them. And it's safe. We're in control. In the real world, especially in urban life, we usually have neither our own space nor a sense of community. Maybe this is why the scripts constrict us, because without 'space' the scripts are all we have.
This is about creating a space / time unlike mundane space / time. It's about creating sacred space, if you like, through a disciplined and willed act of imagination. Drawing a circle of fire around myself and the page I write on. And like sacred spaces, it's also, potentially, a confessional space where I can reveal choice morcels from the narrative of my life and, in the act of doing so, make myself, refashion myself. Hence the popularity of therapy. And blogging, of course. They fulfil that need, in a world where there is no longer the traditional space to confess.
The crucial question is: how do I replicate that space I found in Devon on a daily basis, here in the real world where I live and work - since it's so obviously vital to my creativity and well-being? Is blogging my sacred space?! I resist that notion... First and foremost, I have to find the time to write and the place to write - AND a way of quickly getting into a frame of mind where writing is possible...
I went on a demo to free Amdani Juma who's been detained by the Home Office and is booked on a flight back to Burundi later this week. I used to teach him English. He escaped Burundi where he was a pre-democracy activist. He survived torture there and now suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He came to Britain and was granted three years Humanitarian Protection. He's worked tirelessly in Nottingham for fellow asylum-seekers and refugees, and has particular interest in HIV prevention work. And now, stupidly, illogically, and despite his brother and sister and cousin already being granted refugee status in the UK or The Netherlands, he's being sent back to a country where he could well be put straight back into jail. It was an emotional demo. He's hugely respected. The idiocy of the Home Office astonishes me.
The good people of Nottingham drifted past us, wondering why we were causing such a fuss. Some chavvy lads stole some placards, laughing, and started scribbling on them. A man in his sixties who I've seen propping up the bar in many a gay pub in Nottingham walked up to me, read the placard I was holding, sneered and said "What a load of shit!". Then walked off. Maybe if he'd known about Amdani's record of work in the AIDS and HIV field he wouldn't have been so ignorant. I find it incomprehensible that some gay people can be just as racist and xenophobic as straight people. Don't they know it's just an accident of birth - being born in a different place and time - that has saved them from the Nazi concentration camps? They could just as easily have been alive then, there... with the Jews.
A white cadillac pulled up for a wedding party. Guests looked worried we might spoil the photos. The sun was shining. It was summer. The emo's greeted each other, uninterested, and checked out each others' make-up. An old lady grimaced and shook her head when I offered her a leaflet. And there was a stall raising money for the recent earthquake in China. How could Amdani possibly compete with all of this? And then I walked home...
Talking about space... there's a space for poets and artists where they can talk about what Queer Theory means to them and to their practice. It's called Queerpo, short for Queer Poetics Workshop.
Queerpo was founded this afternoon.
Queerpo is a space in my head which comes into being whenever I say 'Queerpo'. But very soon this space will open up in other poets' heads (and painters', sculptors', performers', musicians' and filmmakers' heads) and it will become a communal space where ideas are exchanged, where work is done, where art is produced.
I understand now the Coleridgean and Lawrentian dreams of wanting to found artistic communities.
I'm founding my Pantisocracy, my bohemian neo-tribe, my circle of fire, my sacred island, my Tahiti, my Mykonos.
Is it real? Is it virtual? Is it bullshit? Are you in?
Maybe, when people like Amdani can be disappeared by the British Government, these homes in our head are the only homes we can rely on...
