Category: politics
At this time
I completed a new screenplay draft this week. When discussing it with friends, I found that the first character note was written on it in 2015. As I wrote the draft’s concluding scenes, during this pandemic and struggles for racial justice (and the UK government’s woeful response to both), I wondered about the relevance of this screenplay to the current times.
The past few weeks have left me at a loss at what to do. I have demonstrated and donated to related causes, but I wonder about what to do when time has passed, the black squares on social media have faded and another issue arises before the next death occurs. And the next. What am I to read, write, photograph, film, draw? In the meantime, I continue to write planned screenplays, edit photographs and videos I’ve shot, and practice drawing.
My social media input, both for photographs and drawings, had dwindled to nothing while I spent my spare time following news on Black Lives Matter demonstrations and events. All the while I wondered as I wrote my prospective thriller whether it was too superficial to be working on: shouldn’t my work be engaging explicitly with these current events?
Two artists’ quotations came to mind. Nina Simone: “An artist’s duty… is to reflect the times.” Spike Lee: “I think the role that artists take is the role they choose.” I was unsure where I stood.
However, on proof-reading this draft, I felt that it was connected to current events, purely because of its completion during these current events. The mood, visuals and language that surrounds us seeps into our work. Creative work is always consumed through the filter of what surrounds the audience.
A crime movie or costume drama can be seen as commenting on contemporary events as much as the narrative events they depict: consider the Watergate parallels of the first two Godfather movies, or the comments on recent royal scandal in The Duchess.
As my script gets rewritten, it will continue to be influenced by the world around around its creation whether I like it or not. In time, hopefully, it will contribute in turn to the world that surrounds it.
An optimistic year
Thanks to finding a cache of files, I’ve been editing some digital photos from years gone by. I am currently working through images from 2012.
This year holds a number of memories for me, but chief among them was my involvement on the periphery of the London Olympics. Working in road traffic control at Transport for London, I was part of a large team that kept traffic moving during the events. We’d prepared for it over the previous years across departments and with the police, the military and countless stakeholders. The delivery was an intense, enjoyable and comradely experience.
One day in the lull between the Olympics and Paralympics, a number of us were sent on a site visit across the various Olympic sites. We travelled to the Excel Centre, Queen Elizabeth Park and North Greenwich, returning to work on the Thames ferry, from where this photo was taken.
It’s strange looking back on this time, the Olympics events and especially its opening ceremony from today. The opening ceremony’s celebration of West Indian immigrants on the MV Empire Windrush, as well as the UK’s National Health Service stayed in the memory (along with a Conservative MP’s dismissal of it all as “multicultural crap“.) 2012 felt genuinely optimistic.
In the years that followed, we’ve had Nelson Mandela’s death, the Ebola epidemic, the rise of Daesh, earthquakes in Nepal and Italy, the Camp Speicher massacre in Iraq, the Paris attacks, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Syrian Civil War, the Windrush deportations, the Hong Kong protests and this current pandemic: events that have shaken whatever optimism I may have felt to the core. Looking back on that opening ceremony, I wonder how valued the NHS really was, or if my optimism back then was in a bubble, or just a foolish response to a manufactured event.
These and other intervening events have revealed how we have valued some people over others and how we’ve valued economic systems over people. For instance, the current rise in estimation of key workers has been significant: what happens after this pandemic will be telling. Will we give our venerated teachers, bin men, street cleaners, carers, deliverers, postal workers and retail staff decent pay, conditions and contracts, or return to the denigration of their work and workforce? I hope for the former option: such a change is something to be optimistic about.
From the end to a beginning
I bought the very first Independent on Sunday and continued to do so for many years. Its mixture of reportage and great photography was a great tonic and highly influential in the newspaper world.
Time went by and I moved from the IoS to the Observer and then to Saturday’s Guardian for my weekend news, but my affection for the IoS remained, which is why it was with some mixed feelings that I bought the last edition of the Independent on Sunday in March 2016.
Re-reading this last edition recently, with its mixture of news and reminiscence, was a bittersweet experience. Articles by writers, photographers and cartoonists on what they enjoyed most about the paper were a delight. News articles on the then forthcoming EU referendum, Earth Day and environmental concerns brought feelings of despair at where we are now.
One interview stands out: David Cameron sharing his fear that apathetic voters would hand victory to the Brexit camp. It’s over three years since then: Cameron and his successor have both left Downing Street and the current Prime Minister continues to work on squaring the circle of what the Brexit camp want. I’m not sure where this will end, or indeed if it is an end.
Depending on the current negotiations’ results, years of negotiations could follow as this country finds itself in an entirely new place in the world: a new beginning that no one may have wanted. Or things may only be slightly altered. But the fabric of this country will be changed nonetheless. We will find out by how much soon.
Burning Details 
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