-- Belonging --
The main inspiration comes from listening to the Arcade Fire album The Suburbs. A friend from work lent it to me over a year ago and right from the first listen I thought it was brilliant. It's an amazing album, full of great songs, but the kicker for me is the reflection on suburban life. It has an almost melancholic, sad perspective on the whole idea of what the suburbs are and how being brought up in that environment affects people. It certainly resonated with me.
I think what I love most about it is that it's so easy to remember and identify with how children understand their world. I grew up in a couple of suburban towns and I remember very well the interactions with other children on the streets. Gangs were formed and battles, retreats and stand-offs were regularities. Being called in from the street for tea was a daily occurrence. Tears and emotions were always in the air, but kids are tough (and cruel) and this resonates with me deeply.
The first song (The Suburbs) sets the scene - warring gangs of kids ("your part of town against mine") against the backdrop of settling for second-best ("and all the houses they built in the seventies finally fall"). There was something more though. The song that really brought on this recent interest is Sprawl 1 Flatlands. This goes to a much deeper level. It hints at and draws on the expectation and belonging that young people have. This feeling has recently returned to me in a very nostalgic, redolent way. I can be very moved by the idea of young peoples' expectations and considering how life pans out and the frequent disappointment that occurs across the entire planet, not just in suburban first world homes. The song says "it's the first time I've felt like something is mine.. like I have something to give". It ties in with my own life of course. As I get older I have more to look back on than I do going forward. I look at my own children and think about their lives and how mine has turned out. I am not unhappy with things in general. I am lucky in that I think I had a sense my whole life that disappointment would be a very easy thing to find. I knew that I had to stay focussed on the things that matter most to me - my desire to answer the big questions for example. I have actually lost focus quite a few times, but I have always done it in full knowledge that I am doing so and I accept that. I traded my focus on precious goals for living in the now and that can't be bad when I consider all the memories I have and the fun things I have done. I think that my character is quite dualist. I do have a life purpose, and yet I easily shift that to one side because I have another part of me which is quite hedonistic and lacks that same kind of focus. Basically there are just too many ways to live and view the world and yet I want all of them. That's not possible for anyone, obviously.
I get a feeling from the song that the singer is sad about looking back on their life in the suburbs. Not necessarily because it was an unhappy time, but just because it's gone ("Took a drive into the sprawl... to find the places we used to play... it was the loneliest day of my life"). I feel the same. I want to live everything again and I can't. It's a very common feeling in humans and the subject of so much art and drama. It gets to me sometimes and this song, and album capture it brilliantly.
The ideas of belonging and what makes something Home have started to play into my thinking in relation to my latest project - MMOUKI, the Man-Made Ontology of Universal Knowledge and Intelligence. This project seeks to encode as much of the detail about the concepts and relationships that underpin what intelligence or cognition is or entails. It's an almost ridiculously bold ambition to take this on, but I am phasing the approach and seeing how it goes so I have a realistic expectation - at least at the moment. Belonging and the idea of "home" are crucial factors in the way that we conceive of, and behave in, the world. Only today, I took my boys and some of their friends to see the movie Finding Dory. In this film the idea of "home" plays a big part - a fish is separated from its parents while young and strives to return home. It's a common theme in drama and literature and derives, I'm sure, from myth and early human concepts. It's connected to our upbringing and sense of safety, but with a sort of inevitable finality that I think we all shy away from to a large extent. It's something I will have to think much more deeply on...
-- Backbone --
Something that I think Arcade Fire also bring out is a sense that suburbanism is an experiment that didn't quite work. I don't necessarily agree that it didn't work, but it does feel like a phase from the 1970s (just post-war enough for baby-boomers to have had their own children) where the socio-economic situation in the US and UK was tied together with this extension into new-build urbanisation. The 1960s vibe was fading and societies were struggling. The governments were doing the bare minimum (as they always do) to keep things moving without total collapse and it's no wonder at all that there is resentment and a sense that things weren't quite right.
Having said that, I wouldn't want it any other way. I am so pleased to say that I was born in the seventies and to have experienced some deprivation - extremely minor in my case, I recognise, although there was social upheaval and misery on a scale that I think outstrips subsequent decades if only because the shiny distractions of the 1980s (MTV etc) and 1990s (Internet etc) were not present. It feels to me that living in the suburbs in the 1970s could be quite grim. There is a side to the songs that make me happy though - the sense that children will always try to play games and have fun and push the boundaries.
I used the word backbone here (mostly for the alliteration - it's not really the right word to describe what I'm on about), but really you could also say that stoicism or grit are good alternatives. To have been brought up in an environment where one had to struggle is preferable to one in which privilege and easy supply were to hand. I didn't have much struggle to be fair, although I worked part-time from the age of 16. My parents worked hard and are smart and we always had enough. There were times when things weren't great though - I went to state school (and fairly rough too) - and we were normal and down to earth. Psychologically I would probably say that the act of striving and struggle makes one stronger - it's just a form of learning and habituation. It's probably hard to argue with that and it makes sense.
For me it's more than that though. There's also a sense that privilege is always at the expense of someone else. Rich people don't create their own wealth (and thereby tell themselves that they can feel good even though others have much less). They actually obtain wealth at the expense of other people. Their wealth and privilege is propped up by the less well off. It's economics. It's the main reason that I wouldn't want my children to attend private school even if I had the money. If I did have the money, I would have to say that I should give it away. I don't think I could live with myself if I was wealthy because I must at the same time understand that it comes at the cost of other people's livelihoods. If I ever won lots of money I should have to give large sums away.
It's about fairness. How can it be fair for someone to be preferred on the basis of things which are not of their making, such as the school they attended? In our society, it seems that those who come from humble backgrounds to success are respected more. Their abilities must be greater than those who reached their pinnacles through preference and extra help. In a way, and conversely, this undermines the success of the rich and the privileged enough to ensure that I want nothing to do with them or their circles.
This is a bit simplistic, of course, but it does play on my mind. Those that have versus those that do not is a meme as old as the hills and it hasn't altered. It's still being pushed on the unrepresented - see the Tory government's plans for new grammar schools in the UK, which is ultimately a covert attempt to separate society even further into the rich on one side and the poor on the other. I always want to be with the underprivileged. I feel safer there. It's not about belonging, but about sticking up for what's right. It's Backbone and something I will always support.
-- Brexit --
I don't really know where to start about Brexit. I, and many others I know well, have been tremendously moved and upset by the recent vote by the British to leave the European Union. No matter how you look at it it's a crazy result. The funny thing is that all of my elder relations voted to leave the EU. My parents and my in-laws all saw it as a good thing to leave. They don't all think that way after they saw the outcome, however. I see myself as a Europoean. For as long as I can remember I have looked over La Manche to the rest of Europe and considered it to be a continuation of my home. Obviously I haven't lived there for any significant length of time, but it has felt accessible to me as a British/Irish citizen.
I feel different since the referendum vote. I now don't associate myself as British. I don't associate myself with the 52% of those people who bothered to vote, and voted to leave. They are either misinformed, bigotedly inclined against immigration or, of course, genuinely racist. Either way I can't understand the thinking and it has made me determined to leave the country. It's probably no bad thing to think bigger than the small isles off the coast of Europe and I feel good to be considering all the incredible options around the world, both for me and for my boys. There are some years yet before I ought to consider this, but a university place in a foreign country would be a great idea for me as an academic and for my boys as undergraduates. I will be aspiring to this in any event and the adventure that could ensue might be a life-changing, re-vitalising excursion to change everything.
-- Bob --
I took a trip to Canada in August to present some ideas at an academic workshop. The weekend I spent in Waterloo was wonderful. Lovely, welcoming people and lots of fun and interesting events really made it a truly memorable time and I am hoping to maintain a collaboration with the great people I met there.
While staying in the Waterloo Hotel, which was a fine renovated place with great rooms and fantastic location in the centre of Waterloo, I happened to be taking a walk on the Friday, during a bit of a heatwave. I don't remember what it was that drew me to the poster, but I happened to see that Bob Log III was playing a concert on the Saturday just a few doors down from the hotel. I only really knew Bob Log by name and therefore I didn't think too much of it except that it would be fun to go to something like that while doing some academic work.
The next day I delivered my talk, for which I had been quite anxious. I was hugely relieved to complete my work. In the evening we had a nice evening meal as a group and, one super Old Fashioned and a couple of beers later, I took it to try to get into the Bob Log gig. Daniel (who didn't know Bob Log at all) and I took a walk up the street and paid $20 each to get into the Jane Bond bar. This was a bit of a risk seeing as neither of us knew the guy well enough, but I was determined to take a risk and I had a good feeling (perhaps from the beer).
Well I was not disappointed. Bob Log was sensational! More beer was downed and I just couldn't believe that the small bar (packed with locals out for fun) was the venue where he could get away with seriously groovy and clever music. Best of all though were the hilarity and shenanigans. I just loved the attitude and the vibe and it was, in the end, such a great night that I put it into second place in my best gig ever list.
I am, of course, seeking to see him play live again, but I know it won't be the same as that relieved, hot, sticky, boozy, hilarious night in Ontario.
