An insignificant human being

I suppose this is the end. This book is not a history book, but just the plain tale of an insignificant human being. Countless hosts are to be maimed, killed, wasted, ruined. For what? For Poland? For the Greater Reich? No. These are just the slogans that cover the whole damnable, wicked, crass stupidity. Great God in Heaven, why did you create Man just a little lower than the angels, just a little higher than the beasts?

(extract from diary of Ted Pates, 01/09/39)

Last month, I spent three days in Berlin. The occasion was a family reunion that centred around an uncle’s birthday, and which brought me together with many people I hadn’t seen in several years. I’d passed through Berlin once before, spending a few hours in the place whilst en route from Prague to Amsterdam in the late 90s, but this was my first change to actually soak up any of the ambience of the place.

Berlin is a city that wears its scars on the outside, as a place that has been location for such historically significant events as it has can only do. These days, it also has a great sense of what can be achieved when divisions no longer divide so deeply. Eventually, I’ll put the pictures up here, as I'm sure they will do the city far greater justice than my stumbling words can attempt to achieve.

Many years ago, following on later from the death of my grandfather’s brother Ted, I inherited a sheath of papers from this same uncle whose birthday we had come to celebrate. This set of mercifully-legible dot-matrix printed pages spanned September 1939 to March 1944, and contained Ted’s personal diary from World War II. I’ve always intended to do something with this resource, but haven’t known quite what.

By ending in early ’44, the diaries are also incomplete. Tracing the parallel story of his life with that of the development and conclusion of the war is not possible without the missing parts of the puzzle. To my great surprise during the Berlin trip, I had a conversation with a cousin where I discovered that she actually possessed some of the remaining parts of this journal. I found out today that her copies go up to August 1945, so although there will still be parts of the puzzle missing (Truman officially declared the war over in December 1946, and that leaves Ted’s perspective on a year and a half of aftermath still hidden from view), that is a much more complete picture than I have now.

I mention all this here and now because I am contemplating preparing an abstract to submit to a conference on ‘War and Life-Writing’ at Oxford University in November this year, and Ted’s work seems like a gift horse of a resource for making a contribution to this conference with.

The problem I have (aside from not having the complete diary or even having completely read through the years that I do have) is that I don’t know what to do for it. I’ve spoken at conferences before, but doing so at Oxford’s kind-of taking it to a whole different level. I guess that even getting accepted for speaking at a conference at Oxford is bit of a step up in itself. I’ve also given myself very little headspace recently in which to think up things like this, so I’ve a thing (the diary) and a place (the conference) but I haven’t yet got a ‘what to do’.

In scholarly pursuit, a question always marks a beginning. Possible research questions that this conference seeks to address include:

• How do the genres of life writing (and/or film) mediate the experience of war?
• How does war impact upon the genres of life writing?
• What is the significance of the emerging digital genres of life writing for war representation (i-journalism, Twitter, social networking sites)?
• What are the relationships between gender and life writings about war?
• How can the phenomenon of missing or silent testimonies be theorised?
• How do representations of war in the life-writing genres challenge or support ‘official’, governmental, or archetypal depictions? 

 

One of the interesting facets of Ted’s diaries is that he was a pacifist, as far as I’m aware throughout his life, but certainly during that war. Although British men were no longer court-martialled for refusing to fight by the late thirties as they had been during WWI, pacifism nevertheless remained a socially taboo position to hold, particularly when London’s skies darkened with Luftwaffe and a rising tide of solidarity against an external threat produced certain common positions amongst neighbours.

Would this stance of Ted’s be considered a ‘missing or silent testimony’? How indeed could that be theorised? When today it is possible to give voice to a peaceful opposition to conflict by tweeting live from the war zone, what implications does that have for the silencing of testimonies? What challenges do his representations of the war present for contemporary readings of the period, ‘official’ or otherwise?

I do not know yet how or whether this one will pan out, but it is certainly tempting to try and get something together for the conference. I’ll report back if I manage to put an abstract/proposal together for it, but in the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions for an angle of pursuit, feel free to add in the comments below.

Images from Sydney and New South Wales

Last year (and to my very great surprise), I was asked to go to Sydney on a business trip during the first month into a new job. I stayed in the Central Business District, slap-bang in the heart of the city, and although I worked fairly solidly throughout the two weeks I was there, I also managed to make good use of my moments of free time. Got a few friends there and a relative or two as well, so I made sure I caught up with a few folks and saw some great sights while I was at it - the Opera House, sunset over Harbour Bridge, Bondi and Manly Beach, the Blue Mountains. 

As I thought it would, Sydney shot up the list of favourite cities in the world to somewhere right near the top. I also got to set foot on Continent  # 6 for the first time - just Antarctica to go!

The job's been super busy ever since then and I also started my MA when I got back, so there's been all sorts of stuff that I've not had much time to catch up on. This summer's turning out to be a good chance to do some of the catching up that has been on hold for so many months. Last month, I finally managed to get a selection of the Australia photos online. Take a look at the slideshow above (link) and drop a comment below if ya dig 'em. As with most of my Flickr photos, these are free to use as long as I receive an attribution in return.

Disputing YouTube on copyright

I have republished a number of videos of TED Talks on my YouTube channel over the past few years, as I have wanted to share them, TED allows me to, and more eyeballs for my channel means the possibility of more eyeballs for some of my other videos. Whilst doing this, I have always been careful not to violate the terms of the licence that they are issued under.

Recently though, I've been starting to get notices from YouTube/Google of a possible copyright violation. I have therefore taken the first tentative steps towards disputing this - partly to try and stop these notices, but also to stand up for my right to reuse a work I have clear permission to do so.

The text I used to dispute the claim is below:

I am disputing this claim because the original video was issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, which explicitly permits me to republish the video on the condition on compliance with the terms of the license.

In this republication, I have clearly referenced TED as the original source of the materials, I have not used the video for any commercial purposes (and consider that the serving of advertising against this video with contravene the license terms), and have republished the video in full including the advertising/sponsorship in the original file, and have thus not made a derivative work from it.

I believe that the republication of this video was made in good faith and in full accordance with TED's terms of use, as laid out in their usage policy page:

http://www.ted.com/pages/talk_usage_policy

Interested to see what response (if any) I get from YouTube on this. If it seems worth doing so, I'll share the responses here.

Punk in China and Africa

On a visit to China back in 2004, as Beijing was demolishing its past in preparation for the then-pending Olympics, I was invited out one night to a punk gig. Ever open to things I've never done before, I jumped at the chance.

The gig was held in a small, sweaty club near the foreboding walls of the Forbidden City, not far from Tiananmen Square. Musically, it could have been the Kings Road, London, 1976 (not that I was actually there, mind you). What was more interesting, however, was the lyrical content. My host leant in and informed me that the vocalist was singing about the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Raised on my Westernised perceptions of China as I was, this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Whether this was a genuine act of punk-style rebellion or evidence of a loosening up of constraints on artistic expression I'll probably never know. Nevertheless, I was intrigued to note that this form of musical expression, with its rebellious shtick and politicised undertones, had spread this far. 

I knew that the likes of The Beatles had spread in influence way beyond just the West (banned in the Soviet Union, I believe), that Wham! had been the first Western band to play China in 1985, and that these days, all sorts of musical borders no longer stand tall as they once would have done. Still, Chinese punk rock, played in China, by Chinese musicians - this was a bit of a new one on me. Broadband certainly wasn't ubiquitous in 2004 (particularly in China) and although I'd started noticing more Chinese travelling abroad, I didn't think that the country had opened up to so many outside influences that much.

Wrong, obviously.

I was reminded of this moment when I recently came across the new film 'Punk in Africa'. In a very readable review, Okayafrica.com describes the film thus:

Punk in Africa examines the punk scene in Southern Africa from the 70s onward, an era in which apartheid was being challenged in South Africa with violent repercussions, civil war burned across Mozambique and Robert Mugabe began his massacres in Zimbabwe. At this time, a combination of musical catholicity, the urge to break out of the stifling patterns of the past, and an influx of (white) U.K. citizens lit the slow fuse that transformed Southern African music. It wasn’t an explosion, it was an uninhibited musical miscegenation, in which punk and native musical traditions met – and screwed in the bathroom at the youth club.

I've been very interested in African music for years and started getting into African psychedelia a few years ago. That young Nigerians would hear Jimi Hendrix and James Brown and be inspired to pick up electric guitars could only have led to some seriously cool tunes. That young Zimbaweans would do the same ten years later based on three chords and pogoing...well, music is music and a strong idea will spread to all sorts of unexpected places once it is out of the box. It can take on more intriguing turns though when fused with other local sounds, rhythms and musical customs.

Where the young punks of Southern Africa would have stood out from their British peers is probably the greater sense of urgency in their expressions. British and American punks might have been putting two fingers up to the old guard, but the Mozambicans were rocking out in the middle of a civil war.

Check out the official trailer below:

Once you've done that, here's 75 minutes of African punk, garage rock and ska tunes to keep you busy.

From the film's SoundCloud page:

This mix includes exclusive mashups and re-edits, and goes from Punk to heavily Africanized Rebel Rock to Post-Punk, Dance-Punk, Political Dub, Punk Step, 60s Afro-Garage Techno, Bass Music and beyond, features remixes of Congotronics and a couple of tunes not from the motherland, but surely in keeping with the Afro-Punk spirit.

If that wasn't enough for you, here's a mix of some of the roots of Southern African punk, with a little more vintage underground rock and township funk (also from SoundCloud):

Enjoy!