Journey, journey

In my creative writing class, we did an exercise called a "garden poem", where we had to write about growing something that wouldn't traditionally grow in a garden. The poem had to answer a specific set of questions, which I'm not going to copy out here, so it was in some ways quite prescribed. This is what I wrote.


The Shark Poem

How to grow your own shark at home:

Take the minds of the oppressed youth
of a police state; give them space.
Let them begin to search and make a noise.

Plant, when angry and idealised,
in liberal soil. Keep cool.
Feed with Coca-Cola. Allow time.

You should expect, firstly, to see the teeth
snarling and snapping at the strangely open air.

The fruit will come at different times depending on your plant.
You will find it soft and black and cooling on the grass.
Eat 'til you feel all full up with thunder clouds.

Leave shark to grow.
Allow to move if needed.
Wait for flowers.


Hattie Samuel

Dear God forgive me,
I loved that boy.
He filled my insides delightedly every school holiday,
scampering up and down the steps of my spine,
bouncing a ball among the flowers in my lap, reading,
making me laugh with his youth, letting me
rock him to sleep in my bosom each night.

The love we had, he and I, was strong.
Grown older, he came back to me,
nested safe and quiet in the walls of my body.
In me he nursed his mother until her death.
In me he killed a man, cut his flesh apart
and ate him;
and when after some months they came for him,
they had to force him out of my gates like a newborn

and carry him away from me down the same drive
where I used to see him as a child
running trailing his clouds towards me
away from the oncoming dark.


Hattie Samuel


Note: I was going to explain what this one is about, but I wonder if it actually stands better on its own. It's based on a true story, though.

I'm the kind of person who thinks, rethinks and over thinks things, to the point that I sometimes can't get on with other activities cos I'm too caught up in an idea I got from something totally random. So I've decided to post these random little snippets of thoughts, things I'm thinking about, so I'll be able to write them down and then go on to other things. Plus, I'll then feel like I have done something productive with these ideas, rather than just letting them spin round and round like washing in a dryer.

--

I'd like to point out that I am a literature student and analysing and over-analysing is what I do. I don't think that any of this has occured consciously. I don't even know if I am correct in what I'm about to say; in fact, it's very likely that in a lot of places I'm not. I mean no offence to anybody who comes across this - if anybody does. These are simply notes, and thoughts.


Part 1: I consider myself a feminist. I have done since I was about 17. Feminism is a very important part of my life - in fact, I don't think I could stop it being one now, even if I wanted it to be. I will always notice things that don't sit well with my feminism, etc., even if I sometimes wish I could just forget for a while and enjoy the stupid music on the radio, the bad shows on the TV.

For me, feminism does not only mean women's rights, although of course that is a large part of it and, for me as a woman, probably one of the parts that affects me most personally. But for me, feminism also means equality for all genders, all sexualities; the noticing of inequalities or issues that come out of social attitudes towards gender, sexuality, etc.; the attempting to right these wrongs. The struggle of any person or group of people who have been trodden on by patriarchy - which I would define not as "men" per se, but of society's construct of ideal humankind, which is male, but also white, hetrosexual, wealthy, attractive, politically centre-to-right-wing, with a background of Christian morality and ideas - or, more generally, Western.


Part 2: I love music. It is very important to me. I love lots of different genres of music and all the different genres I like give me different things. One of the genres I have a liked for a long time is rock and metal music. This can create a difficulty. How do I, as a feminist, reconcile my beliefs with a musical tradition and world that is not only male dominated but also, often, at the best of times unintentionally reinforcing of negative attitudes towards women and at the worst of times, downright misogynist? 


Part 3 (linking part 1 and part 2): one band that I especially love very much is German. Their music is... difficult to describe; it has something of metal, something of classic rock, something of industrial, and other things too. But they are definitely considered to be, and accepted as, part of the music world I just described above - the one that, as a feminist, I fairly frequently find problematic.

I am fully prepared to say that there have been occasions where I have found this band's presentation of women, if not insulting, then definitely uncomfortable and/or potentially distasteful. However, there are also ways that I find them to be incredibly progressive, at least in my personal definition of feminism (which I put in part 1): the main example of this is their treatment of homosexuality. In a music scene that is frequently both macho and homophobic, this band has written, performed, and continues to perform, not only songs about homosexual sex (not treating this any differently to the ways they treat hetrosexual sex in their songs), but songs supportive of gay rights and critically of prejudice against gay people from society in general, and, even more interestingly, from straight men in particular. They have also repeatedly portrayed themselves in homoerotic, or even obviously homosexual, situations - on stage, with each other, and also in their music videos. This has never, in my opinion, been done in a pornographic way, or a way suggesting it is only done to arouse female fans, or any way that is degrading to gay people; it is always done respectfully, and because in the particular song, homosexuality was the subject, or at least a large part of it.

Publicly, at least, as far as I know, all of them are hetrosexual themselves. But in a way I find this makes it more interesting: hetrosexual men quite obviously making it clear that not only do they have no discomforts with other men in general being gay, but also that they have no discomfort with the idea of themselves, or their close friends and companions, being gay. I think it shows a very modern, progressive attitude towards sexuality that still isn't as normal as it should be. (And bear in mind, these men are all in their mid- to late-forties, so they were not raised in a generation where this stuff was automatically acceptable.) An acceptance, and also a suggestion of sexual fluidity that most people, men and women, aren't really comfortable with.

That is one point directly addressing this band themselves. (Love and respect to them.) Here is another thing that I thought today, which prompted this "thought" post, as I was walking to class. I mentioned that this band is German. This made me wonder something: is it acceptable to a member of the patriarchy - as I defined it in part 1 - if you are not from one of the traditionally "acceptable" countries? If the patriarchy is male, white, hetrosexual, wealthy, attractive, politically centre-to-right-wing, from a Christian perspective, and Western - would men from all over Europe fit into that? There's that old quote that history is written by the victorious; I think the patriarchy is a part of this. It is a part of history; it is the conquering part of society (those outside the partiarchy being those that get conquered, dominated, etc). There are a lot of countries, even European countries, that are historically "unacceptable", and I don't mean any offense to anyone who has stumbled on this by saying that. I base it purely on my own experiences. I have known many people, for example, say that they automatically associate German accents with "evil" - a purely historical association, but one that still exists today.

A further twist in this particular story - these musicians are men who grew up in what used to be East Germany. And surely, if any of what I just said is in any way correct, those from the old Communist parts of Germany (and of course, also other former Soviet countries, but I was thinking about Germany) are even more historically unacceptable than those who were in West Germany, because they are not "Western"; again they are not the victors, after the collapse of communism; they are not, historically, capitalist or historically wealthy. They are, in a sense, outside of the patriarchy.

And, in a sense, I, in spite of the fact that I am female, am more acceptable to the patriarchy than they, because I am "Western", born in a historically capitalist and wealthy country, a country that fits in with today's Americanised values - one of "the conquerors". And where does that leave any of us?


Hattie Samuel

(Based on true events)

You used to make jewellery out of nuts and bolts,
sell it off planks of wood in the sand, you
East Berlin boys;

you used to collect in the basements of abandoned buildings
and shake the foundations of the streets with all the noise you could,
making those broken brown bricks ring with the beat of

fleeing out of the city and collapsing in those empty places
legs over your head, in eye-closed bliss,
skin going dry and freckley in the summer air;

the sounds of hanging up banners over the pale beaches;
of huge bonfires with the sparks jumping up at the lazy stars;
of the kind of freedom that comes from thinking what you want.

You find yourself remembering at odd moments: driving,
seeing litter in the snow, when the sun hits your arm a certain way,
those bright plain wide open days when you were joyful and afraid.

These days your kids are drinking Coca-Cola
and they know those Disney animations better than your bedtime stories.
Sometimes, you find it difficult to breathe with so much
freedom in the air.
 

Hattie Samuel

Note: I'm a little bit unsure of this one, because the tone ended up being quite different to what I originally intended. The poem was inspired by reading stories about punk bands in East Berlin before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. I had no idea that anything like that existed over there, and I was really fascinated. The poem was originally supposed to be telling a mash-up of some of those stories, but it has ended up sounding quite political. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the other hand, simply as a piece of writing, I quite like it.