Revenant

These waves of grief and resentment that keep rolling over me aren't mine. They come from a sulky little boy who hasn't appeared in the mirror for over 40 years.

Acknowledge him, smile at him and remind him he grew up into a person who is loved.

The Winter Stars

It's a clear night. I walk out onto the lawn and look at the sky. That patch of hazy shimmer must be the Pleiades. And the bright star beneath them is Aldebaran. And, yes, below Aldebaran I can see Orion- flat on his back among the trees- like a man struggling out of bed.

Winter's here.

Cultural Appropriation

This is prompted by something wyrmwwd wrote. She and I are in broad agreement.

Appropriation: ugly word. It has overtones of the bailiffs kicking the door down and marching off with the family's meagre possessions. Oh no, at least leave Tiny Tim his crutch!

In fact when a culture takes something from another culture it only does so virtually. The thing is still there for the original culture to use. No theft has occurred. The original culture hasn't lost anything.

Cultures trade their creations all the time. It happens whenever a book is translated, whenever an English film director goes to work in Hollywood. It's generally accepted that great works of art are transnational. Nobody suggests that only Greeks should act Sophocles or only Germans play Beethoven. We'd laugh if they did. Or call them fascists.

Cultures refresh themselves by exchange.  Over the past century and a half there was been intense traffic between Japan and the West- two very different cultures falling over one another to help themselves to one another's bits and pieces.  No-one thinks it awful that Kurosawa stole from the Western to make his Samurai pictures or that Hollywood repaid the compliment by turning Seven Samurai into the Magnificent Seven. Van Gogh learned much of what he knew from the Japanese print makers. The Japanese think he's wonderful.

Contemporary popular music is a stew of influences- African, African American, European, Latin American, Jewish. The Beatles accessed black American music through Elvis and Buddy Holly, added a bit of music hall, a bit of Northern English working class attitude, a touch of Lewis Carroll and the Goons- and sold it back to America. Try unpicking these things and you'll give yourself a headache.

There's no such thing in our globalized world as a culture that's pure, untouched and wholly indigenous. Well, maybe in the Amazon rain forest, but nowhere else- and even those guys mostly have radios and laptops now. The person who annoyed wyrmwwd was objecting to the appropriation by the West of the Mexican Day of the Dead. Really?That's a culturally pure product that no-one outside Mexico should touch? I don't think so. It's a mix up of Aztec and Spanish traditions- with a bit of Africa mixed in- and very closely related to the Dance Macabre which is a pan-European phenomenon.