For
sure people are in need of a melody. Have you noticed the tunes of
nostalgia on the radio? Rousing eighties rock to energise the soul
and fortify the spirit with sounds of hope and vitality and thoughts
of better days and rosy futures… like Vera Lynn rallying the troops
during world war two, ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where don’t
know when but i’m sure we’ll meet again some sunny day…’. We
have blindly and greedily reaped the rewards of being shielded from
war, hunger and pestilence, while for other nations it is the daily
state of play. We are ahead with designer potato peelers, polishing
new electric cars and postulating the authenticity of a Banksy, but,
as the planet chokes making our bric a brac and goods across the
globe, we are way in deficit when it comes to handling pestilence and
death.
I
listen to a Spanish radio station called Rock FM. It plays non stop
English and American rock and has the household dancing like kid
demons in between three minute bouts of BBC doom and gloom news
updates digested with chocolate biscuits and a soap opera mentality.
We sing along, knowing all the words like sacred nonsense consigned
to memory, ’Alright now, baby it's alright now…’. But it isn’t
is it? It feels like a war out there and fear is your greatest enemy.
Stiff upper lip. Peanut butter, flour, nuts and chocolate are ordered
online and stashed in the spare room, which also acts as a
‘decompression’ chamber for incoming goods and packaging.
Overnight, the house operates with a different protocol, like having
a mad aunt locked in the attic. A bucket of bleach is placed next to
the pot of nasturtiums at the front door. I make nettle and
goosegrass soup. The knives are sharpened with thoughts other than
chopping veg. The car is recognised as the mobile carrier of the
invisible killer. Overnight we are stormtroopers on a mission to deal
with the tiniest, tiniest of movers, that can bring us down to size.
In
France, we were ‘locked’ down one week before these measures were
slowly implemented in Britain. Curfews and heavy fines were
introduced and the armed police guarded the borders into Spain. It
became obvious that government guidelines were spurious, information
random and contradictory, that there is no safe distance between
people and that all surfaces should be dealt with as if hiding ninja
assassins. If this pandemic is a dress rehearsal, it is a shambles.
Everything
coming into the house is isolated and bleached. Measures seem
extreme. Fortunately we live in a remote, liminal landscape among
favourable rocks and crannies, its’ radiating ‘rat-runs’ are
still embraced within a local, market community. We grow a lot of
food and to all intents and purposes life for me hasn’t really
changed. I am fortunate, it seems. Within two weeks of the lockdown
the smugglers’ paths are once again operating with the contraband
from Spain. Life goes on. Shekels change hands and watch your back.
It doesn’t take long for the bandits to re-emerge, put on the old
gear and grow larger moustaches.
My
friend John Appleby living in what is again Blighty, informs me of
the ‘lockdown agnostics’, and here in Catalunya, there appear
overnight the ‘mask deniers’…still trying to be cool in the
pool, untrusting of systems. President Macron calls the virus ‘not
a friend of the French culture’, where hugs and kisses sit with the
group mentality. Back in North Wales it doesn’t take much for the
nationalist bigots to denounce the ‘outsiders’ of their tongue
with ‘tourist’s out’ signs.
But
why should I feel so guilty at celebrating a virus? As ‘my
followers’ know I am very much at ease with climbing walls being
empty and all ‘sport’ coming to a virtual standstill. Yippee. The
skies and roads are empty. Local communities and markets have moved
back into the human psyche and folk ponder what they really, really
need. There is silence. And through silence you find things. We are
eating less junk. The planet takes a deep breath. Pause, be still,
rejoice. How can anyone not feel the favours bestowed by this tricky
little fella? Ah, if only eh. Easily said. Having self-isolation
enforced upon us brings out some interesting behaviour, and
adversity, the worst and best in us and the feeble struggling with
emotional management. It seems our biggest problem in dealing with
this is our childish need for distractions, ‘perfume and pose’,
entertainment, trinkets and illusions. Metaphorically, grown men
kicking balls around…I guess, which can be both clever and absurd.
This brings me to sport, the ‘notion’ of adventure, and of course
religion and a perspective!
For
me this is the interesting bit. Mankind has been re-wired to need a
release, for something bigger, for some faith, a hero, a jolly, a
holiday…a cuppa with a biscuit at least. The gladiators still roam
in our psyche. We sanitise cutting the throat of an enemy and it
becomes entertainment as we scoff a sausage roll. But the truth of
sport and the business of ‘fitness’ is the age-old propaganda
system of control, where the fears, stress and injustice of a
disordered society create and encourage the appetite for a belief
that we exist as beings in and of ourselves. it encourages narcissism
and the selfies are a creed of ghosts which you cannot see yourself
because you are kept in the ‘dark’, performing under bright
lights, against the clock, measured in heartbeats, calories and
millimetres. For this, we need the mirror held up close and not to
the indigenous folk saving the rainforest who are now dying of Covid
in unknown numbers.
And
so to climbing walls, the favourite ‘gob mouthy’ backstop for my
gleeful vitriol, to be ridiculed and torn apart by the climbing
press. What a great opportunity to challenge the habits of moving
robotically on pre-placed resin holds, working through grades,
colour-coded, and designed like a Disney fantasy advert. Climbing
came from rock, often wet and cold, often loose, with grass, lichen
and wriggly stuff, unpredictable and full of doubt. Moving on it is
an experience in harmony with the natural world, multifaceted and
holistic. It can be a reminder of when mankind conversed with other
animals on earth. Gyms are graveyards to any link we may have to the
biosphere. Saying that, I recall an ascent of Left Wall on Dinas
Cromlech, trying to avoid the blood stains, after someone had popped
a finger tip or two. In my mind these red-coded holds contained some
terrible disease, like Aids, the avoidance of which made the route
two grades harder - the Aids variation.
In
my thinking, sport, like religion, is a psychological virus far more
insidious than Covid. No wonder we are paying lip-service to ‘nature
deficit disorder’. The toxic thinking goes way back. And the more
you think about these issues the more you realise how much stuff
mankind needs to forget who they are. Football stadiums should be
growing food not profits for the few who breed addiction for their
own wealth. How many people can be fed from Wembley? But, it seems
that the clever, brave hero who side-steps the ball into the net and
averts revolution, or at least boredom and depression, is far more
important for social cohesion. All sport is corporate and talent is
bought. The banks are happy with this social orchestration. The
biggest problem now facing humankind is how to combat the virus of
these belief systems, not Covid. I would rather be a ‘green
dictator’ than an escapee from my innate human values. Fitness and
health are one thing, but what a divine time to rethink your training
from core strength to core values.
But
only three weeks into this world changer, Easyjet are already trying
to sell me summer flights to the Canary Islands, for hiking, for
sport and for leisure. Photos of cool, slick and trendy folk buying
adventure. Shame on them. As if there is going to be business as
usual. It is obvious it cannot be and should not be. Aid to airlines
puts everybody at risk. Ryanair’s mogal, O’Leary, if he were a
noble man would be setting up a fund to combat the damage low cost
airlines have caused to the world’s problems, to which Covid could
be linked. “Hands up, sorry world, I will make amends”… as if!
There can be no truth or integrity where business is involved. Mammon
is sticky, pollution its’ seed-bed and lifestyles and laws have to
move with the times. Buying ‘stuff’ must be thought about and
habits considered. This structural shift is not a simple task for
most. I have written all my life about humankind running away from
its’ own soul and it seems people will do anything to avoid contact
with the essence of their being.
‘Once
we have departed from the soil - once the fertility of the
imagination has departed from the fertility of the land, once we have
plundered beyond the pale the source of nourishment and well being -
once, in short, we have left what is sacred, our home, can there ever
be a return? How can the soul of man be sustained without the land?’
‘If
you mess with the landscape, the landscape will mess with you. If you
put holes in the earth, needles of junk will make holes in human
limbs’. soft
explosive hard embrace
Whether
we like it or not we are technological beings, from the moment we
cracked nuts with a stone, and that revealing of potential,
perversely, has become the utmost challenge to our survival. The’Holy
Grail’ of our poetic imagination has become the plastic ‘tippy’
mug we drive to work with. We have fallen into property and
carelessly and wantonly filled our lives with the earths fluids. Our
lives must not ‘go back to normal’. Let us embrace this fresh air
and bury our dead with affirmations of biodiversity and renewal, with
respect for all creatures of the planet, including Covid.
For
God’s sake, I fell four metres backwards over a terrace the other
day. Should I take tablets to stay indoors? The outcome was lucky,
hilarious and made it possible to write this. Assassins are
everywhere, and climbing informs and pushes that language, and there
is a time not to survive and to graduate.
awakenings (JR oil on canvas)
When
you understand that death is just a moment in life, (and I am not
side-lining the human cost and heartbreaking sacrifice of the carers)
Covid 19 is a reminder, perhaps at the tip of the iceberg, that we
are utterly and solely responsible for challenges to the earth.
Whether this clever little bug was manmade in a sterile laboratory in
the name of science or profit, or is like a grinning, mutant tadpole
that’s jumped from the muddy swamps of prehistory, or from neglect,
filth and harm, it is no matter, and time will tell; whatever its’
origins, they belong to the same disrespect and disregard for our
home. We are swimming in our own shit, above and below, and our
resources are finite. It is arrogant, and too late to presume we are
guardians of the planet. I would like to think that the planet is
pulling us back from error, and her remit is to take some of us
fukkers out.… but there are too many idiots out there with money
and power just doing what they want…operating as economic
predators.
As
regards other world changers like the so called terrorist attack of
Twin Towers in New York, it doesn’t take long for our imaginations
to kick in and flourish with conspiracy theories and alternative
rationales not discussed or aired by the mainstream. That we
disbelieve this mainstream reporting, disbelieve the payrolled, media
puppets, and commerce-dependant scientists, disbelieve the
professional, governmental and institutional agendas stating ‘facts’,
is our healthy paranoia and distrust of the system. ‘Democratically’
we vote these clowns in and all these agents have been proven to lie
for power and effect.
Administrations
were faulted at having no imagination to predict such circumstances.
How ironic then that the conspiracy theorists have all the
imagination after the ‘crime’. How odd then that sci-fi directors
and artists and designers have thought it all before…seen it, made
it and sold the popcorn.
And,
as a tangent from Rock FM, my conspiracy headlines today for Covid
19…
Extinction
Rebellion, as eco warriors, finally did something fierce in defence
of the planet? A virus man-made in a big-pharma laboratory where a
vaccine has already been made to sell to the world? A ‘boomer-buster’
genocide operation, isolating the snowflake youth, already
hallucinating with interfaces and tablet games, to progress into
becoming robots and slaves for world corporations? 5G (at least)
mobile coverage messing with the biosphere and our heads, in much the
same way as bees become diseased and disorientated, our juices
mutating at a cellular level? Would you put your head in a microwave?
Will we obey the Dark Lord and give him information? A radiation
connection? The planet is a sentient being and knows what to do? And
bats? Are we hallucinating from wheat, sugar and Mars Bars to make us
insulin resistant so some malevolent off-planet ruler can take over
our senses? The little blighters are hitching a lift on airborne
pollution to a post-code near you? You can believe any one of these
and they can all be used by that proverbial 1% of the population that
would profit from the harm. Cartoon sketches indeed? All blockbuster
hits for your entertainment. Your contagion, clothed in designer gear
from China, soaked in sweet perspiration with a hint of Chanel, will
be rattling and contaminating the gyms again soon.
World of Tat-Llanberis
Vaccines
are not the answer. We need an empathic approach. If we need drugs to
stay on this planet, we have no right to be here. Covid 20 is already
being incubated in the hearts of those who put themselves before the
planet.
There
is mystery here too, of course, because the reality is that we don’t
have a clue who we are…we only know the shit we produce. May the
force be with you. And be kind…and fierce.
John
Redhead. Lous Manes, Costoja, Catalunya Nord. April 2020
All images supplied by JR.
