On navigating with no maps

My great-great grandfather from Galway, Ireland boarded a ship setting off for the colony of New Zealand in the late 1860s. A Catholic who had survived the potato famine, he took a chance a safe harbour and a better future could be found in a new country far away.

Arriving in Otago during the gold rush, he made his fortune in the goldfields before travelling to the deep south where he would meet his Catholic Irish-immigrant wife Mary, build a successful thriving business and raise a family.

They had big families back then –although before vaccines many less children survived. My grandad (Pop) was one of thirteen children. Mum told me Pop used to regularly go and tend the vegetable garden for another family member who had a 'heap of children', as well as their own family garden, because the woman relative had a 'useless husband'. It was post war and many families were poor and relied on gardens for food. There were shortages of everything.

When I stayed with Pop a couple of times as a kid, in the morning he would go and dig up potatoes from the garden, sit me on the stool by the coal range while he cleaned and cut them up, then cook me up fresh hot chips for breakfast.

"That one looks like a pig,' he would laugh, pointing out the shape of a particular potato as he effortlessly sliced it up and flicked the chunks into the heavy pan of bubbling lard...

Remembering Pop, the descendant of Irish diaspora, I wondered if digging potatoes for breakfast might make a comeback as I concurrently contemplated Aotearoa's food security in light of the deepening oil crisis.

Threats to global food security from climate and geo-political disruption on top of our self-created slow moving economic disaster continue to grow. The Government have given us no evidence they have a clue, least of all the catastrophically bad Finance Minister Nicola Willis.

Meanwhile Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been going rogue on national policy with no repercussions, humiliating us on the global stage by snubbing our normal diplomatic alliances to dogwhistle outliers taking extremist positions.

Mining companies eyeing another gold rush, are desperately pushing New Zealand's corporate-aligned coalition Government to grant consents previously refused.

Reflecting on the huge money pouring into the current NZ election it seems in the public interest to look into which specific interests might have decided they want to get their hands on big chunks of NZ and 'make it their own', what they think their plans are and how they are operating to advance their agendas.

In light of the term nearing completion it is deeply questionable whether the current governance is a. fit or capable of meeting the moment b. they have prepared to protect our interests, or c. if they even care about New Zealand's interests.

After reading about more biblical-level climate disasters and watching the ugly democratic collapse of our biggest defence treaty partner, hearing a bit of rain on the roof a couple of days this week has been refreshing.

I love the percussive rhythms of rain squalls.

And there's nothing like the deafening roar of a good hailstorm on a thin tin roof.

This week it was manageable rain, needed rain, not ‘too much too fast’- in my little part of Aotearoa anyway. It’s been a very dry winter preceding a predicted hot, dry summer and it seems the parched whenua needs it. It’s good to see water in the creek.

Rain often makes me feel quite creative. Sometimes I like to have a little sing - just because I can. I'm still a bit obsessed by delighted memories of childhood black and white Saturday afternoon matinee TV and all the big studio Hollywood musicals. I'm a still a sucker for musicals and their bogan cousins the rock operas.

While penned in the 1920’s and widely recorded, the song ’Singing in the Rain’ was made most famous by Gene Kelly with an entrancing, meticulously staged, beautifully choreographed, iconic umbrella dance street scene in the golden-era Hollywood musical of the same name.

A bit later on, but still many years ago, in the era of box TVs, bunny ear antennae and Blockbuster video, I also saw the movie ‘Clockwork Orange’.

The Stanley Kubrick movie, starring Malcolm McDowell, focused on a gang of thugs who terrorise their neighbourhood, committing acts of ‘ultra violence’ and looting for their amusement. McDowell played the mercurial and sadistic leader Alex DeLarge.

The most famous and controversial scene occurs in a lounge room during a particularly chilling home invasion and rape, where the gang is shown gleefully subjecting the resident couple to acts of physical and sexual violence while dancing around them to the soundtrack of Singing In the Rain.

The casual rendition of the wholesome tune creates a chilling juxtaposition to the routine business of torture to the sociopathic Alex.

Use of that song hadn’t been planned, it was not in the original novel or script, but McDowell had randomly improvised it after a Kubrick prompt to try dancing while his character,  Alex, was beating the male victim during a rehearsal. The story goes it was the only show-tune song McDowell knew how to sing well enough for some music to dance to. He knew it because he loved it too.

I read somewhere that after Clockwork Orange was released Kelly apparently was less than impressed by how his musical performance of the song had been reinterpreted, and when he later saw McDowell at a film industry event Kelly turned his back.

In more recent years a more modern hat tip to Kelly’s magical performance went viral.  Actor Tom Holland did a stunning homage introduction as part of a mashup with Rhianna’s song Umbrella on a popular celebrity show lip Synch Battle, widely considered to be a next level effort to court his competitor Zendaya. Seems it worked as it was just confirmed they secretly got married. Holland goes all in and delivers such a joyful, compelling performance -basically it's hot as fuck - it is an internet rule to reshare the video when encountered in the wild.

Whether a timelessly elegant routine like Kelly's or a dystopia like Kubrick's, or anything through any other medium that takes the viewer somewhere else, whether it opens a door or give a memorable moment a soundtrack, the arts offer absolutely anyone and everyone pathways to enjoy the 'riches' of their imaginations widely and without discrimination.

Something for everyone or not your cup of tea - the arts make us more as humans, give us punctuation, soundtracks, and themes for our memories, powerfully create moments of shared understanding and cultural reference.

Oppressive politics undermines and targets the arts and artists to erase or defile the shared culture those moments create that we all recognise, that give us a sense of shared belonging to a time or a group. Shared references can be comforting and fortifying in times of trouble. It can give us an anchor or a signpost to rally around that feels safe. That's why protest songs and anthems endure.

The arts can imagine something better than boring old 'starve, criminalise, incarcerate, kill shit' agendas. In reality politics desperately needs more arts and fresh ideas.

Sometimes I think about how certain captured elements have been recruiting and training people like Alex while they surround themselves with people whose shared lack of moral clarity encourages them to increasingly assert their interests through enforcers and barely veiled threats of retribution. 

It feels as if the desecration, looting and defilement of decency and democratic norms becomes another type of sport to these type of people.

The so-called 'man-o-sphere', or peddling the politics of unquestioned male entitlement -is another mechanism to turn online users into products. It aims to recruit angry misguided, reactive followers who can be weaponised through grievance to intimidate large sectors of society. They are emboldened by political misogyny and racism, perceiving their antisocial behaviour is more likely to face encouragement than consequences from political leadership.

Global information warfare strategies being deployed are deliberately crafted to foster violence; to help aligned local operatives identify and cultivate the ‘Alex’ personality types in communities and use them to create instability and fear. 

When we get reports of coordinated public intimidation of political candidates at locally organised non-partisan events it starts to get chilling. We saw examples of violence, extreme rhetoric, relentless propagation of disinformation and deliberate reputational 'hit jobs' attempting to discredit experts during Covid, culminating in the infamous Parliamentary occupation.

It’s hard not to extrapolate that storyline out - or watch that right now elsewhere- and see how that undermines democracy and normalises a type of self enforced censorship, an analogy is the intrinsic threat of sexual assault means women carry keys or don't walk in some places... that's our normal, not enforcement of the law to the degree of any sort of credible deterrence.

The ability to attract a wide range of candidates, or perhaps speak your mind as a journalist, commentator or academic becomes more complex if it’s not 'safe' to hold or promote views certain entrenched interests find threatening to their agenda.

We are getting limited discourse, limited talent willing to offer ideas; but it is largely invisible who is being silenced, and not possible to fully measure what we collectively and creatively lose from that.

Meanwhile our world needs creativity and solutions more than ever.

In rebellious defiance of pervasive mediocrity I’ve promised myself to nurture my wild, creative, feisty self; be loud, make more art, play more raucous ukulele, pat more dogs and write rambling blogs.

For myself when things get complicated taking time to understand and identify what is really going on is important.

Recognising which things (and people) I personally can and can't change and being clear about where to put my energy, what to accept and what to let go has been necessary for my ongoing wellbeing.

Joy is not made to be a crumb. - Mary Oliver

Finding fun and collaborative ways to 'do my bit' and help collectively navigate our precious 'Spaceship Earth' through the rough waters of these times seems a sensible way to look at it.

In times of exhaustion and cruelty acts of compassion, kindness and solidarity are radical.

So I plan to do lots of them, I'm all in.

And remember - always share the video ;)

If you are subscribed to or reading of my rambling blogs thanks for your interest I deeply appreciate you.