Oh, What a Lovely War (Not)...

Part I

This is my fifth war when I'm counting as an American. There was the Cold War; then Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Those are just the sites where my country of origin was deeply involved, where the war was visible. I'm not counting covert operations in places like Chile, Mozambique, Chad, Ethiopia (very partial list). I'm talking about when the carnage was right there, in your face, sometimes with the image of a young girl in Vietnam running naked through the streets, another time with scenes of bombed out Mosul and devastation in Afghanistan.

The Cold War remains embedded in my mind's eye. I picture nuclear bombs about to hit my schoolyard, launched by Russian Communists intent on destroying The American Way of Life.

And now, more wars. But this time, I'm an elder. It's harder. It's anguishing to watch the patterns repeat themselves, as if no enmities had ever been resolved. Now I see through the lens of a Londoner, a grandparent, a woman of a certain age who will not witness the next period of relative stability. The world is in freefall. The historic moment I inhabit reverberates with chaos and rage. Russia is once again a threatening monster, and nuclear nightmares disturb my already age-troubled sleep. America has abandoned Afghanistan to its ghastly fate. Armed clashes in Iraq's north kill more civilians. A divided Korea lives on, and North Korea's masses die of Covid under the pitiless gaze of their god-like ruler. The US just sent ground forces to Somalia. The UK blusters and blunders on the world stage, creating conditions for conflict in northern Ireland.

So what? Why should I care about matters about which I can do little? Because I'm your classic bleeding heart liberal, someone for whom the horrors of the world are real even when I'm not directly impacted. And the powerlessness I feel engenders my old defence, rage. I'm one of those people whose feelings of being vulnerable are so scary, I use rage to mask my frightened self.

Sometimes the defence works well, and my strongly expressed feelings cut through English reserve to deeper connections than I might otherwise have. Sometimes the rage is just noises I make, flailing about in well-honed outrage. I screech about how unjust it all is, how horrible things are, how stupid people are ruining the world. In reality, I'm wallowing in feelings of anguish at how unimportant and powerless I am, how the world will go on without me once I'm back to being stardust. The novelist Nabokov reminds us 'our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.'How I hate today's current darkness, and how I dread the darkness yet to come.

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Closer to Home

Part II

The ongoing conflict in Palestine/Israel feels up close and personal. That’s because I’m a Jew. It’s a baseline identity, a reality both good and bad. I see the world through the lens of a New York Jew, whether I want to or not. It’s not a matter of choice; it’s ingrained. My life partner is not Jewish nor are my grandchildren. I don’t affiliate with any formal Jewish organisations. Intellectually I call myself a rootless cosmopolite. But in my heart of hearts, I’m a working class Jew who filters perceptions through that gaze.

Five and a half years ago, I moved to London from California. I deliberately turned away from Palestine/Israel. Realities there were too painful, and being in a new country preoccupied me with other concerns. But I keep being drawn back to events in that small patch of land on the Mediterranean. My pain and outrage around what Israel as a nation-state is doing to Palestinians won’t be stilled. So I'm presenting a three part Zoom series addressing some of the core issues.

The series will examine the histories of both Palestinians and Jews going back to their beginnings. We’ll look at how Christian Zionism influenced the Balfour Declaration and continues to exert enormous influence today. We’ll consider the role of key figures like Yassir Arafat and Theodore Herzel. And most difficult of all, we’ll have a look at the entanglement of antisemitism and antizionism.

This will be the most challenging issue. Antisemitism--real Jew hatred--is on the rise. It’s not a figment of the Right’s imagination. Opposing Israeli policies and demanding accountability for what Israel is doing to Palestinians can very easily slide into portraying Jews as all-powerful, moneyed, hook nosed, greedy creeps. It’s easy to ignore the reality that antisemitism has its roots in early Christian doctrine which insisted Jews were Christ killers. It’s hard to remember that for 800 years, Jews were forbidden to enter English towns. And there are those who still deny the reality of six million dead in the Holocaust.

The series will make room to discuss these issues, with the aim of shedding light and diminishing heat. It won’t be easy. But that’s what the series will be going for. Join us.

A Mother is a Sometime Thing

I have outlived my mother. Our February birthdays were two days apart. She died twenty minutes before another year would have begun. Every February, as our birthdays – along with her deathday – approached, my anxiety intensified. My fear was even greater last year. Nearing the age she was when everything stopped, I felt mortality creeping up on me. While its footsteps have receded, now I am well and truly an old woman. And I am trying to figure out what that means, how being an elder can be restorative as well as a reminder that my earthly time is shorter than ever.

My mother’s name was Florence. Calling her only ‘my mother’ is to reduce her to the status of existing only in relation to me. In truth, I still view her that way, longing for our mother-daughter bond to have been happier than it was. Florence was not nurturing. Her way of dealing with the inquisitive, intense child who was her eldest of two (me) was to shut me down. ‘Don’t ask me that.’ ‘Do you want to be like your father and visit the mental hospital?’ ‘Why aren’t you doing your homework more quickly?’ etc. She had neither the temperament nor the opportunity to be maternal. Her energies went to more basic things like making sure her earnings as a bookkeeper were enough to augment my father’s miserly labourer’s wages. I still see the paper on which she kept small business accounts, little checked spaces where additions and subtractions were toted up.

In my mind’s eye, until relatively recently, my mother and our small house was ever present. It was a touchstone, the person and place against which I measured what I was doing and how I was living my life. Particularly my emotional life. I longed to be different from Florence, to be a loving person with an even-tempered, calm manner. I vowed never to yell, never to let my anxiety push me into raising my voice. I strove to be pretty, to be more physically attractive than Florence allowed herself to be. I traveled forth to see the world, making certain I did not inhabit a place so small as the house I grew up in on 160th Terrace. It was a house which Florence never left.

Needless to say, I’ve failed as much as I’ve succeeded. I look at my face in the mirror and see Florence’s outlines. I hear her tones when I’m upset with my partner and screaming in frustration. I retrace the trappings of our south Florida lower middle class house, remembering the time I cut myself on the jalousie window, and bled until Mrs. Bolt, our Hungarian neighbour, put sulfur powder in the wound. I recall the humid days when I had to water the grass, the Reader's Digest Book of the Month selections on the shelf, the frazzled meals of frozen peas and overcooked meat, my sister and I chastised when we made fun of the victuals. Most of all, I recall my mother’s weary anger as she tried to keep things from going under.

After two generations, all of us are forgotten. This truth torments me, one of those realities that cannot be transformed into a softer promise. I wonder who will remember me. And I recognize that when I am dead, Florence will be truly gone from this earth. I ask myself how I can honour her memory, a memory I don’t really cherish. I only fear that if I erase her, so will I vanish. I was not a loving daughter, and I did not ease my mother’s way. I longed only to get away – from her, from the unhappy house, from my impaired father. And get away I did. My life is rich. I have made of myself a worldly, educated, involved person. I have made a difference in the lives of a number of people. Though I have no biological children, I have mothered and I have sistered. I have a kind, loving, tolerant partner and share the joy of grandparenting his daughter’s children. And still, the shadow of my life as a daughter haunts me. So it is, so it must be. I live with the curse and the blessing of a mind full of memories.

Mother I never knew you...

Forgive me, my mother, for not being able to love you. As I must forgive you for being unable to soothe my childhood fears. After the death of my father, your husband, you had nine fulfilling years as a teacher’s assistant. This photo is you being honoured at the primary school two days before you died. I was there, though I did not recognize the woman being lauded and loved. Who was this person for whom many felt such fondness? Ah, it was Florence, not just my mother but a person all her own. Thank you – Florence, mother, individual – for giving me a shot at life.

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When the Autumn Leaves Fell: Future Machine Procession in Finsbury Park by Rachel Jacobs

Finsbury Park in North London had a difficult 2021, as did much of the world. As the pandemic continued, the park struggled with government cuts. The impact of a reduced team of rangers was immense. Crime and damage in the park increased. Climate change is manifesting as diseases in trees, flooding in low levels, intense rain swamping the football pitches in Autumn and late Summer. In contrast, Spring and early Summer brought long hot spells, drying out fields and turning sparse grass yellow in the cracked, dusty earth. On the positive side, Weeds and Seeds, the Drumming School and Edible Gardens continued to grow, making things thrive in these miraculous places situated at either end of the park.

Amongst all the park activity, I spent the year preparing for the appearance of the Future Machine. I got to know the committed head ranger, Ricard Zanoli, and built a collaboration with local artist Esi Eshun. I also further developed my alliance with musicians Alexandre Yemaoua Dayo and Dave Kemp, who created the sounds of the Future Machine.

Future Machine is a mysterious artwork that travels across England to the same five different places as the seasons change every year. The plan is to make this same journey every year for 30 years (until 2050). Future Machine appears in each place as a witness to changes that will be visible ‘when the future comes’. The Machine collects and plays back messages to be heard in years to come. It also captures present-day weather, using live weather sensors attached to the back of the artwork. Future Machine sings the sounds of the weather and prints out an invitation to think about the future.

In 2021, Future Machine started its first journey across England. Appearing in Christ Church Gardens in Nottingham, when the trees blossomed, to the River Leven in Cumbria when a small group met up the river as Summer turned to Autumn,

and in Finsbury Park in November as the autumn leaves fell. This journey will be expanded in 2022 to include appearances in Cannington, Somerset and Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire.

Over the course of these journeys, Future Machine has evolved. It’s changed physically as parts of it were rebuilt, improved and refined. But its character and presence have also grown. Future Machine is becoming a being of its own, beyond an artwork. People project their ideas onto it. Myths develop about what it is, where it has come from, and where it’s going. Its presence encourages and embodies people's visions, concerns and dreams of the future. Future Machine’s sounds have also evolved. They’ve become more complex, layered in ways that are different each time. The sounds respond to live data reflecting weather and place, making these elements even more present. Future Machine is creating experiences as it goes. Each appearance, in each place, informs the next.

The human artist/musicians – Rachel Jacobs, Esi Eshun, Alexandre Yemaoua Dayo and Dave Kemp – planned the route through Finsbury Park. Esi devised a route linking seven trees – a willow tree by the lake, a row of silver birches, a eucalyptus tree, an elder tree, a great hornbeam and a mulberry tree. The procession ended where it began, at the London plane tree next to Furtherfield Gallery. Future Machine led the procession, pulled by its companion Rachel Jacobs and others who helped navigate difficult terrain. The seven trees reference the story of the seven sisters star cluster and the seven sisters for whom the road along the park is named – seven elm trees planted in a circle around a walnut tree.

As the procession stopped at each tree, Esi talked about the tree and its history, adding her own reflections. Jo Roach, local poet and founder of Finsbury Park's Pedal Power, a cycling club for people with learning disabilities, read some of her tree-related poems. Ricard, head ranger, spoke of his work in the park. Future Machine also called at Weeds and Seeds to meet May DeGrace, who presented the gardening and drumming projects in her corner of the park.

Many people joined the procession, some coming and going throughout the day, others following all day, some joining in to help push the machine uphill. We stopped along the way for children and adults to turn the handle powering the machine, everyone invited to speak to the future by talking into the small copper trumpet on the side. As Future Machine led the procession, it sang the songs of the weather, changing throughout the day reflecting dry, windy and mild to cold.

The parade ended with a gathering around the London plane tree for a live performance with musicians Alexandre Yemaoua Dayo, David Kemp, Miles NCube, and Terese, along with Rachel and Future Machine. Parakeets sang, their voices echoing from the canopy of the plane tree as they joined the chorus.

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