Blood Money; Eliot's 'Wasteland'; On the 30th anniversary.

Thirty years, and what has been learnt? Little, other than how to try and stay one step in front of the other side, or become more entrenched with one’s own stubbornness, as if everyone has forgotten how it is a failure to arrive at conflict. Rather, we (must?)commemorate the act as if hardly regrettable.

And this against the more silent headlines of oil exploration- or the more cynical practise of oil speculation bringing an ugly side again to the argument without the slightest worry – by those who have initiated such business, that they may be causing real animosity, or increasing tensions, with the war of words and further ill feeling, which the media prompt the ordinary person into feeling, thus satisfying the rhetoric of politicians as they protect their own interests, the people as if only too happy and stupid to wave flags and feel ‘threatened.’ ‘We all must be on guard,’ says the politician. Yes, on guard from economies falling into ruin, the safeguard as such of peoples based wholly on ‘protecting one’s own interests,’ leading to more of the same, not peace and understanding. That seems like too much of a price to pay, sitting down and talking.

Yes I do remember the conflict, and of course I remember the defeat of a military government who were desperate to stay in power. I also remember the faces of many conscripts whose friendship I share today. And I remember the faces of my father’s colleagues. They all live still and yet we allow others to carry on leading us with the same stupid rhetoric as if learning nothing. The smell of oil is no compensation for young lives lost and we are all responsible were it not that those making the decisions seem out of reach.  

I had no intention of using Eliot's 'Wasteland' for the work in the Borges. Yet, I noticed the first word is April, and the last word is peace. I don't think it works with the world today in such a cynical state. But it would be nice that the islands become something more than just a wasteland to conflict in the years to come, and the good things are celebrated rather than the bad.  It is also sad to be chased by journalists, saying 'Oh my opinion is so valued', when once into the interview they are trying to lead me into some sort of political dead end so I am forced to say something they can then use to illustrate their point of view or their editor's, and not mine...

'One could almost say that sheer conscientiousness compelled them to act the way they should, rather than what they really believed...' (from Robert Musil's 'Man without Qualities'...)

'Waiting for the Boats'    oil on board                   2003