As Buddhists of long standing both Hubby and I are used to periods of solitude and time away from the usual stresses and distractions of daily life - we usually call it being on retreat. I've been approaching the lock down as though it was a retreat, which generally has worked, but has one flaw - retreats usually come to an end. At a week or two in length, by the last few days of a retreat your mind can naturally drift into dwelling on what you'd like to do once full liberty is restored. By day eleven of the lock down I was finding myself physically restless. On some level I knew this wasn't really a retreat, its a lock down, currently without any definite end point. I became bedevilled with resistances and a fed up tone came up and sulked with me whilst I sat on my meditation stool.
As the first 'phantom fortnight retreat' came not to an end and I was still 'at home' I had three or four sleep spattered nights. This unsettled feeling settled down again. On my four month ordination retreat your mood would slip through similar peaks and troughs then cycle back through them again, if you were lucky diminished in intensity. This is how you respond when circumstances restrain your liberty to make choices, one chafes and baulks at the boundaries. I suspect this is what the lock down will be like. Some days OK, some days with a bit of a struggle going on.
Our usual walking route
However you're view of the current situation, staying at home and going out for a half hour daily walk, plus a food shop in town on Friday, will never provide enough human contact for even an introvert to feel overwhelmed by. The ambience in town you can cut with a knife, everyone guarded and on a mission to get the hell out again as soon as possible, preferably with their magic protective bubble intact. It's understandable, but it feels and is weird. It is hard not to get a bit freaked when you are out amongst it all.
The media is just a wildly speculating machine at the moment, of all sort of impacts the pandemic might have upon the fabric of society long after Covid 19 becomes a curable disease. These all appear to be jumping the gun a bit as we are not at the peak of infection yet. so this looks and is wishful thinking or doom mongering being re- presented as if from a sage like oracle. No one can know, everything is a shot in the dark, too many factors are at play. We all wish for it to be over and everything to return to normal, if indeed that is at all feasible. But if it doesn't, then who knows what may ensue? Please press the reset button and retire to a safe distance. This might take some time
May the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas bless the winged messenger of Zoom. I've been through my learning curve with it, and I'm beginning to take for granted there will always be someone who's broadband turns human speech into that of a gobbling chicken. At the Norwich Zen Priory, once any teething problems were ironed out, they're pretty much running the usual programme of evening classes, plus morning meditations and devotional rituals. My usual circumstances mean I cannot physically attend more than one evening class a week. Now, with Zoom, I can be at all of them should I wish. I'm also getting to see and know more of the Sangha than I did previously. So this aspect of the lock down is proving a real win win situation for me and for anyone else who lives outside the Norwich boundary.
We've started watching the National Theatre Live. The first one. One Man, Two Governors, even though it had James Cordon performing in it, was actually an enjoyable and thoroughly excellent production. It did begin to slightly outstay its welcome halfway through the second half, and the final scenes was a bit clumsy and felt perfunctory. But it still got a big thumbs up from us.
The second play was a transferred Bristol Old Vic Production of Jane Eyre. I respect them for choosing not to take their adaption down the easier route of a more traditionally staged production. Initially I thought 'well this is unusual staging' that quickly progressed to irritation with the constant climbing up and down ladders and walking meaninglessly up and down ramps and all the way round the houses. To be honest it resembled an up-scaled version of a hamster's play frame.
It was an overly fussy and fidgety production with the stage often resembling Kings Cross in the rush hour. Narrative was constantly being sacrificed to the theatrical staging and novelty tricks, hurtling the small cast about from scene to scene, and making it feel bitty and episodic as a result. In all this motiveless kerfuffle any emotional connection you may have had with characters became clinically neutered. But this was not Brecht it was Bronte. At 4 hours the original production was the length of a Greek epic tragedy, though it was shortened by an hour for the NT production, this still made serious demands upon ones bum. We lost patience with it by the interval. Oh, yes, some of the Yorkshire accents were really very dodgy with a capital D.
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The wisest and most human piece of writing I've read recently was a short article written by Rev Master Daishin Morgan. He is the former abbot of Throssel Hole Zen Priory and is I've found quite an inspirational figure. It was written in response to the national lock down, its theme is loneliness and the opportunities as well as the difficulties feeling a sense of loneliness presents us with. Here is the link to the full talk to download. https://throssel.org.uk/author/rev-master-daishin-morgan/article-by-rev-master-daishin/
I'll end with a short poem he includes in the article.
Space is a poor analogy for emptiness, It is the lightness of things being free. Being in a room is the same If the door opens easily or I am locked in But so completely different remorseless positivity is only pretending; The cries must be heard, you must enter the room. The lightness is not the condition of the door.
'the time for thoughtless design, for thoughtless consumption is over'
I came across this quote from Dieter Rams recently. I'd been looking through Netflix for any film not already seen or wasn't a piss poor duplicate of a more famous film, finding nothing. The genre lists appeared to hold the same roster of films but in different order. I became quite frustrated at the empty-headed distractions offered. I wanted something that could offer a more thoughtful level of engagement.
It's clear the film industry loves thoughtless movies, they produce a good return. Lots of fast moving action, dramas and high tech Science-Fiction films which, enjoyable though they are, are basically hollow entertainments. Easily half watched on the sofa whilst eating food, making out, checking what else that actor has been in or film gossip about its production, all from the comfort of your I Pad.
These films put minds and emotions on pause, to be mildly entertained by experiences that leave no trace upon us afterwards. They leave little in the form of substantive meaning, depth of emotional response or mark upon our human imagination. Once the consumption is over we are still left hungry for a richer form of sustenance.
Three years on, its 1976, its the Leeds Polytechnic Graphic Design Department's Christmas Party. A few weeks before, on the 6th December the Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK Tour had finally found a city that would allow them to play, and the venue was Leeds Polytechnic. This photo shows my appearance as already morphing from heavy progressive music fan to punk. The trousers are the same pink flared jeans worn in the last photo, now paired with a red rugby shirt, a Rupert Bear style waistcoat picked up from a Jumble Sale, updated with a flourish of safety pins, chains and badges. This hesitant, carefully modulated affinity with punk's rebellious creative freedom, looks today like the faux dressing up that it was.
Because of childhood bullying I tended to shy away from any overt displays of aggression, whether in cloths or behaviour. Risk averse, I lacked self- defense skills, unsure how to assert myself. I didn't want to turn myself into a fist magnet. Still discovering who I was, there wasn't much yet to assert? I'd left the parental home for the first time the year before for an Arts Foundation Course in Hull. In my memory the defining characteristic of that period were emerging internal conflicts, the boy/man in late teenage getting to grips with managing himself and adult life in general. Frustrated to discover I was an introvert. Why couldn't I be effortlessly extrovert and turn it on like a tap? I mistook success as residing in an outgoing ebullient personality. I started doing research, absorbing Nietzsche, reading about psychology in books and magazines. R D Laing got very close attention, scouring The Divided Self and Self & Other, looking for clues to why I was like I was. I seemed to believe something was either missing or innately wrong with me.
In Leeds a new lifestyle, more representative of me and my interests, was forming. For the first time I was surrounded by more like minded 'Arty' friends. Adopting, however mildly, a few street punk tropes placed a tentative toe into another way of being me. Underneath I remained the rather mild mannered chap I was before, but with punkish trimmings thrilling around the edges. I wanted to be a firmer, stronger individual. Punk offered a way to outwardly display that. Perhaps this would keep the thugs at bay.
Look into the soft moons of my eyes, there is no attitude problem to be read there, just the open iris of vulnerability. I'm 19, with a young man's body, slim, a wee bit of tummy fat, not particularly fit, you'd be hard put to find anything resembling bulk or muscle mass. But then this is the seventies, and my type of male body was common place, almost the default for the majority of wiry young lads. Developing vein bulging muscles and a firm ribbed washboard of abs was then thought to be weird, baffling behaviour. Only vain self obsessed people would do such a thing to themselves. Muscle men were novelty acts on TV variety shows twitching their biceps in time to 'Wheels Cha Cha' whilst sprayed in silver metallic paint. It was all a bit gross. Well ripped men inhabited super hero comics or if you knew of them, the gay drawings of Tom of Finland. But most men in my Lincolnshire village drank far too much beer to be anything other than chubby hunks, with flabby love handles.
The well sculpted body form, is not a new thing, but in recent years its started to produce an unhealthy preoccupation in younger men. Teenage boys, much younger than I was in this photo, are now obtaining and using body enhancing steroids. The pressures on them to look a particular way are immense. Visual provocations and reminders bombard them. Every male film star looks like they were carved out of stone by the divine hands of gods. These days we understand the link between the way women are portrayed in the media, expectations of who and what they're meant to be like. This body fascism has broadened to incorporate men, with the rise of this pumped up hyper male. That it is raising no huge concern, is that its happening to men. Men are supposed to not be weak, to be physically strong and overtly express their power through their physique, so this is just business as usual, isn't it? But improved physical health is not being matched by improved mental health. So 25% of people with body dysmorphia are male, hospital admissions for men with eating disorders have doubled in the last eight years, not to mention the escalating mental heath and suicide crisis in men?
Dwayne Johnson
You are a young lad living in a country backwater, average looking, average in the intelligence and charm department. How will you succeed in relationships, in the world, in a career, with life? Perhaps emulating Dwayne Johnson or any other Hollywood chunk of tanned muscle, might mean you feel better, more confident about yourself. Not everyone inherits the looks of a suave dashing man. Yet even an ugly looking brute with a broken nose can obtain a hot body. Go on, get fit, be healthy, take back control of your destiny, forget the face or personality let your body be the babe magnet. Its not hard to spot guys who are addicted to the gym. They are built like leather sofas with a pea sized head, shaved smooth perched on top.
So men tend to massively overcompensate, using their external bodily appearance, their flesh and muscle as mental armour. The same sad masculine story, build a body impregnable to break ins, so no one discovers that beneath the Rambo lies Bambi, characterised by a lack of confidence, weak self knowledge and arrested emotional development. There are many many ways to live a healthy fulfilled life, being built like Hercules is not necessarily at the top of the list.
Heracles
Fetishistic obsession with the perfect male body in the West has its origins in the Ancient Greek world of Gods, sculpture and Homer. The archetypal image we have of the warrior hero has a direct lineage traceable from Hector and Achilles through to modern day 'ninja' street fighters. The supremely fit man, toned into a perfect form representing the outward manifestation of a superior mind with the strength of purpose held within. Well, at least that's the myth and presumption. It is also the root of 20th century Aryan notions of the Nazi's and Soviet images of revolutionary workers in Russia.
Armour once taken off, is a clanking, cold, hard shell, a void echoing from within. Men appear to feel safer when soldered up in a restrictive metallic casing, whether literally or as a metaphor for physique. Tattoos are a decorative addition to contemporary body armour, displaying the allegiances and insignia of urban tribes. Its a war paint permanently drawn on the skin, shielding you from evil, protecting in the midst of clashes over territory in our towns and cities.
Poster image of Hitler wearing armour
Masculine armour, though usually physically manifested, does have its mental and spiritual correlates. The words we chose to use can be armour. The beliefs we hold can be armour. The politics we espouse can be armour. Our public persona can be armour. The things we own, our possessions can be armour. Some people use their spouses as armour. Anything can be used as a means of protection, of displaying strength. Projecting an unyielding hardness is a masculine addiction. We demand it of our politicians, whether male or female. Our leaders, like our country, must be strong, stable and well defended. Pull up the drawbridge, prevent invasive foreigners from getting in. Men are like nations, islands unto themselves. You wear armour if you're feeling vulnerable. Armour protects, but does so by cutting you off from the outside world. Armour isolates. When wearing armour you're always alone.
Soviet Poster
By 1976 I know I'm gay, but have not yet come out. Still faking being straight, I think I'm hiding in plain sight, that no one sees this side of me, which was doubtful actually. An art college is probably 'the' place to find yourself regularly in the company of a galaxy of oddballs and queens of all shapes, sizes and outrage. There was Big Joe, well over six and a half foot tall, a massive hulk built like a concrete wall, wearing day glo hot pants, makeup, necklaces, earrings, a shoulder bag akimbo, a voice loud and proudly effeminate. Simultaneously both provocative and a warning. I found people like him inspiring. they gave me confidence that being out as gay would not be just OK, but fun too. That it was possible to be honest and open about who I was, started here. Though I was still a few years away from coming out to friends, and over a decade from telling my family. So the momentum was slow in building.
Though 1976 was nine years after being actively gay had been decriminalised, it was still far from straightforward being an out gay man. Big Joe was attacked by a gang, he gave them what for, being mentally brave and unbowed, but he was nevertheless physically bruised. In Quentin Crisp's book The Naked Civil Servant published in 1968 and made into a TV film in 1975, he describes his life as an out gay man many decades before gay relations were legalised. Defiantly himself, despite the oppression of his time, Crisp was to become a major hero for me. Though, strangely, he could never quite bring himself to consider his homosexuality as being normal. Nevertheless he became something brilliantly arch. Defiantly individualistic, he declared everyone could do as he had done, to be true to yourself but larger than life. Crisp was critical of 'camp' because it had become a series of behavioural cliches, an affectation adopted in order to identify yourself as part of 'the oppressed group'.
" I would not wish to be shunted into a siding. The trouble with gay reservations is they breed a terrible conformity. They claim to be a place where people can be themselves but very often that involves the most boring form of camp which has nothing to do with individual style and everything to do with a fear of 'breaking ranks". *
Quentin Crisp in his youth
For Crisp developing individuality in your way of being, was to find 'your style'. This 'style' blossomed out of self-understanding and required courage to live out who you really are. Regardless of whether you are gay or straight, being who you really are builds an inner strength more resilient than any outwardly constructed form of defensive armour. However, on the journey to self-knowledge, for a gay man, affecting camp has its role to play because it makes the invisible visible. There were times in the 1980's when I cranked up a camp appearance simply because it made it easier if people knew what I was without needing to be told.
I don't have any photos of myself during this 1980's phase of wearing jewellery. Acquaintances who knew me at that time, referred to me as 'Flamboyant Steve' The single pierced earlobe was becoming quite common place among men, but I decided to have both ears done. Overtime I progressed from wearing pairs of colourful studs, pink triangles, zigzag snakes, silver lizards, jade drops, to earrings closer to candelabras or tubular bells, dangling and swinging like wind chimes from my lobes. Along with a hand full of rings, this was jewellery as public power statement. My clothes didn't particularly partake in this flamboyance, they remained straightforwardly generic. Unconsciously what I seemed to be trying to communicate was that I was an ordinary guy, who also happened to be gay. Let's not sweat over the details.
There were moments of panic, when I did feel far too exposed. I worked in an art shop, in a multi-cultural district of North London, where no one was detrimental about how anyone dressed. I did tone it down when I visited my family. A few years later I become uncomfortable with anything that felt like an affectation. Did this baroque appearance really represent anything that was true about me? The earrings gradually reverted back to just studs, A decade later I wasn't wearing earrings at all. For a while jewellery had been this outward expression, a way of advertising my sexuality, my chosen form of theatrical peacock display. Gay armour, like any armour, performs this dual function as visual statement and voodoo protection.
I came out to my parents, and though they always remained appreciative and loving, they didn't talk any further with me about my life as a gay man for ten years, until I brought the matter up. They just found the whole subject too disconcerting, and may be I did too, because I hadn't talked about it either. Most gay men hold some bitterness, hidden in their being. Its the hiding, the pretending, the fear of not feeling accepted for who you naturally feel yourself to be, this is inherently difficult existentially. It can't help but dent your self view, your joie de vivre in some way. Gay banter, the bitchy cattiness towards others, though a cliche, becomes a resource that gay men call upon to fight back. It can be cruel, unkind, saying what ought to be unsayable, exposing human flaws and fallibility, to hurt, despise and ridicule. Though its frequently funny and pointed, it emerges from essentially a soured place in the heart. But you do have to laugh through the hurt, don't you?
When I became a Buddhist the negativity embedded in my speech, became an area I had to really work on. I was too prone to letting rip with the witty spur of the moment put down. By then my life had had a few stalled, a few aborted, attempts at taking a different career path and then the closing of a failing business. For ten to fifteen years following 1976 I'd wandered down a more self exploratory but often quite punishing path, of which a degree of bitterness and spite were consequences. Words became a defensive armour, to stop people coming too close and perhaps perceiving how internally fractured, at that time, I could sometimes feel myself to be.
Its a glorious Winter's sunny day, we are at Castle Howard. The air is crisp, its bright, the colours and shadows are sharp. After a ramble around the landscaped estate grounds with its follies and bridges going absolutely nowhere in particular, we queued for much a needed lunch. The logistics and layout of The Courtyard Cafe leaves much to be desired, it is not a joy for anyone. It is as if whoever designed it wilfully ignored the most outstanding flaws in their own floor plan.
No matter how busy the cafe is you will have to queue to be seated. Those who are incoming queue inside the entrance way where the outgoing are also trying to do their best to exit. Because the cafe's toilets are outside in the courtyard, people are understandably forever quickly nipping out for a pee or a poo, then back in again. All this accompanied by politely embarrassed side shuffling and 'sorry, can I just get by'. Folk, all very like us, who after a grand morning pretending to promenade, end up behaving like standing figures in an automaton mechanical clock, moving stiffly in - then out - then in, the same door. In the Summer, when the waiting staff also have to come in and out to serve tables outside, the situation must be totally exasperating. The staff cope kindly and stoically with a situation not of their making.
Our lunch was a fine but simple fair, but also unremarkable, so I can't put my finger now on quite what it was. Something vaguely in the region of Jacket Potato Beans & Cheese, perhaps. It seemed to be all over rather quickly, as my gaze quickly wandered covetously over to the lovelies on the baroque cake stands. I spotted what looked suspiciously like a carrot cake, so I sent Hubby out on an advance recky for confirmation. Yes it was. As you can see from the photo I uncharacteristically started eating the cake before I'd taken the traditional pristine 'cake on arrival' photo. Which I guess must say something, if only that I was overcome by the volition of a gluttonous impulse.
The outstanding flaws of this cake were mostly in its visual appearance. Whoever divided this cake horizontally made a complete mess of it. I mean just look at it, have you ever seen a cake with such an uneven horizontal division? The bottom looks like its a recently installed damp course.
However,if one was to put that to one side, the texture was good. Its colour did perhaps veer a little too near to pale ginger, rather than a rusty sienna. Just saying! You got a strong whiff of spice infused carrot when it was placed before you. So, Oh, my hopes were then somewhat perked, if not arisen. This was looking really very promising, with a handsome suggestion of fruit and nuts scattered across its rough cut flanks.
A moderately sized piece of cake, the texture held together well once it slid onto your palate. You had time to savour this before it broke down through mastication into stomach ready cake slurry. The balance of its ingredients was well measured. The proportions of its ingredients were nobly considered, but not over-imposing. Though it wasn't stunningly carroty in its flavour, it was certainly not an absent whim. This cake had some characteristic weighty heft to it, whilst remaining quietly airy. The frosting was aiming to affect a rugged and rustic look, unfortunately it had the demeanour of a bit of badly mixed plaster, but it did taste fine, not too sweet nor artificial.
It was, all things considered, a very pleasant cake to eat. Straddling a broad flavour spectrum with ease whilst settling nowhere strongly. Not as spectacularly palladian-baroque as Castle Howard itself, but I'll say again, a nicely balanced cake.
The muted low key BoJo lasted all of four days. The mood of the daily government briefings changed once you had a pantomime horse gallivanting in the middle of the two stooges. It was as if someone flicked a switch and Boris was back on full Kerfuffle & Bluster setting. What has become painfully obvious, and I do mean toe curlingly painful, is what an abysmally poor communicator he is. The lack of clarity and concision in his every utterance is outstanding. If parts of the general public remain confused about what 'social distancing' and 'voluntary isolation' actually mean, then look no further than our babbling brook of a PM.
He is incapable of constructing a simple straightforward sentence presenting the necessary bare facts, without prefacing them with a gabbled recounting of every single government initiative so far. There should be a public health warning - 'Please be aware, you are about to have several kilos of candy floss rammed down your oesophagus, resisting your gag reflex could prove difficult'. He is not what you want at a time of national crisis, but he is what we've been given.
A few weeks ago during the floods everyone was asking 'Where's Boris?.. is he in hiding?'. Now we see him everyday we know why they kept him away from the spot light...because he hogs it. There were times when I've found myself praying for a big hook to come in from one side and drag him away from the microphones. I end up shouting at the TV , starting with- 'Just tell us what we need to know' quickly progressing to Oh 'Shut UP! Shut UP!! Shut UP!!!
Whitty & Vallance continue to be the unruffled deliverers of disquieting information, with patience, kindness and precision. They have now been joined in my small pantheon of 'Thank God They Are Here' heroes by Rishi Sunak, our newly esteemed Chancellor, His presence is reassuring because he's a very clearheaded steady communicator and he sounds like he genuinely cares what happens to everyone. Plus he is trying to get to grips with organising help, surrounded by the chaos that is BoJo and a steadily worsening situation. Setting up a whole new way to administer support for the entire countries economy in a matter of days. Yes, it is all a bit of a mess timing wise, but then what do we expect, the lead in times have been non existent. This virus did not exist on many peoples radar three months ago.
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Meanwhile, in the land of Cottonwood Home, we have decided, with regret, to mothball the shop whilst the pandemic rages. Deep cleaning the shop and stocktaking on Sunday before we close. Each day has been quiet, getting quieter and our daily take has correspondingly nose dived. We also started to question being open for business, not just because financially its become pants, but because it invites people to come into a shop with us that's not advisable health wise, leaving all of us open to infection. A part of me is heartbroken to have to do this. It feels like we are abandoning a fledgling bird that may not survive our being away.
It looks like we will get a grant from the government to partially support us, which eases the financial uncertainty a little. Had the year progressed as we'd hoped, by the end of Summer we assumed it would be obvious whether the business had grown sufficiently to make continuing for another year worth a try. This is not going to happen then, even in our wildest dreams. Our landlord has halved our rent for the next three months, this and the grant pushes that moment of decision to some indefinite time ahead. Leaving the future of our business longer term with a question mark hovering over it. Whatever the circumstances are when that particular presenting moment does arrives I'm sure will almost take the decision for us. So I'm not going to put on my worry head about that now. Lets survive the pandemic first.
Running the shop and making for the shop takes up all our energy and time, so keeping our website up to date and marketing it has fallen by the wayside. One benefit of being forced to stay home will be to get on with photographing new stock etc. Having a bricks and mortar shop has refocused the nature of the things that we make, and the website needs to reflect that change. At the moment we're continuing to make new things but at some point that will cease, if only because we can't buy the materials we need as everywhere will have shut down.
Looking at the empty ransacked shelves in our supermarkets, of a country not yet in lock down, and comparing them with the full shelves in Italian supermarkets, a country that is in lock down, is dispiriting. It really reflects on how in the UK the sense of community and consideration for the needs of others has just crumbled in this crisis to be replaced by a knee jerk self-serving greedy grabby individualism. Seeing what's happened is horrifying. It is truly shameful.
I'm still reading through the book of commentaries on three chapters from Dogen's Shobogenzo. I have got stuck on the middle one, Shoaku Makusa or Refraining from Evil. Densely allusive in the way its written, it is an exploration of the concepts of good and evil and what we are really to refrain from. I'm currently on my third re-reading through of the commentary, and though I've become much clearer about the general thrust, I'm still getting the feeling that something important in what he's trying to communicate is still eluding me, as though its merely a whisker away from my grasp. But its a big whisker!
For light reading, and I say that with all the irony I can muster, as the book is over 800 pages long and a heft tome, I've just begun to read Hilary Mantel's The Mirror & the Light, the third part of her historical trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. Though I'm barely 80 pages in. it is already a joy to read, so fluidly composed, perceptively written and revealing. Even though you know how history says it ends, you're still willing to take the long journey despite the inevitability of its conclusion
" To rely on the other is to be always unsettled"
The Suttanipata
Pretty much your standard Dharma alert. Not to emotionally over invest in people, things, environments and events in being reliable. These things may appear to be stable or present the illusion that they will always be there, but that can be unsettled in an instant, like by the emergence of an invisible virus. Be wise and stay safe.
First it was the hand sanitizer, then the loo rolls, then the pasta, then the bread, then the cans of soup, I think the picture is now clear what most reassures a nation in crisis, and what its going to be doing for the next few months. Sanitize - Eat Slop - Shit - Wipe Bum - Sanitize
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The gobby guy in the pub who after a few beers would regal you with 'you know what I think is wrong with this country......' and serve up in slurred broken sentences a potpourri of half masticated ideas and paranoid conspiracy, has now found the perfect vehicle for 'the truth that no one wants to hear' - social media. In the pub you'd just move away to the snug, on social media its harder to avoid them. For even the nutters have become media savvy, packaging their 'truth' in seemingly orthodox presentations. They've found once you have photo shop its not that hard to project an image of expertise. If you could actually hear them struggling through self intoxication to remain coherent you wouldn't give them the time of day.
Thank goodness for the real life experts who appear to know what they're talking about. The well informed blow away myths and misunderstandings with clearly expressed facts, also explaining the underlying basis for their judgements. This is not just refreshing, its reassuring. The briefings from that curiously Dickensian triumvirate of Whitty, Boris & Vallance are now becoming something of a daily joy. There is always Boris being Boris, trying not to make a joke about the graph looking like a sombrero, but it just slipped out anyway blowing his bid for statesmanlike leadership with one quip. For we all know never to trust a word that comes from his lips, even when he's trying his best to stick to the frank truth of the matter.
Whiity is not a natty dresser. The hair looks like an unruly wisp of fluff, the tie always slightly askew thin and malformed, the white shirt has seen one too many spin washes to sparkle anymore and the suit attended funerals on its own in the 1980's. All of which makes Sir Patrick Vallance seem like the suave level headed posh prefect who people instantly fell in love with and swooned over, simply because his handsome dress sense is matched by his intellect, and he doesn't make your toes curl. However, facts don't need to be well dressed, but just well presented. These are boffins after all.
Andy Burnham, health minister during the swine flu outbreak, said recently that he soon realised that in a crisis a politician up front regurgitating facts and figures to the general public would not be believed and their motives maligned, that it was best to hand the mike over to experts who everyone would be prepared to really listen to and act upon what they say. I think Boris should just get his unsightly bulk out of the way pronto, so the Whitty & Vallance double act can truly flourish.
Whilst Whitty & Vallance have been the quintessential calm measured and unruffled English experts, there is a whole other world of armchair experts in the wings shouting abuse at them. Everyone who as a child had once held a stethoscope shouting - wrong, pathetic, misjudged, they need to be more decisive, they're completely missing the point etc etc. The general public find themselves also standing confused in the middle of an unedifying holy war between the experts themselves for who will be proved right in the end, for they shall inherit praise and be worshipped in all future crises. For when the epidemiological war is over who will be left as the one truly catholic and supreme epidemiological leader ?
Experts have egos just like the rest of us, ones that needs pampering, and epidemiologists are no exception to this. It must be rare for an epidemiologist to find themselves having a media moment, where everyone's knocking on their door. Now, at last, they can finally be heard. There has certainly been a lot of them 'getting things off their chests'. What in essence is the epidemiological war ? - its not a dispute over what should be done, but when it should be done. Its a disagreement over timing.
But then, as we now know, the country is in a bit of a fear-filled panic at the moment, and that impulse needs calming and that energy diverted into more altruistic directions. We all have our anxious concerns, mine is for the future of our business Cottonwood Home. But its never good to act from a position of panic, when we're running around like a headless chicken we rarely do the best, correct or most sensible thing. In a time of uncertainty we crave security, even when their is none to be had. Whilst the whole world gradually closes itself down, we don't know for how long we will have to endure this - will it be weeks, months or more? What will be left of our previous way of life once its all over? This too cannot be known - right now.
Remember, the present abides in the place of the present... it has a past and it has a future. Although it has a past and a future, the past and the future are cut off from it.
Eihei Dogen - from the Genjo Koan
I'm on my way to bed. Just a brief stop over in the bathroom to do my teeth. Spread the toothpaste on the brush. Begin that distinctive circular shuttering movement. As I vigorously brush the foam across my teeth there's a slight background flavour to the toothpaste What is that? Its a bit medical, is it TCP? Its reminds me of germolene. Perhaps the tops off the germolene in my wash bag, I'll check afterwards. I carry on brushing right to completion. Then my gaze settles on the toothpaste tube resting on the windowsill before me it looked very like and indeed was.... a tube of germolene. It was slightly greasy but still, not a bad clean.
North Norfolk got off comparatively lightly with the 'stormzy'. Our petite back patio, bore the brunt of flailing in a continuous gale. Bits blew off, a fence departed from its frame, a decorative garden mirror flew into raised bedding and broke. When Storm Ciara was predicted I moved our bins from their raised area to prevent them cascading off it. They stayed off for an entire month. When I put them back it still felt a bit presumptive. Still when the children ask me what I did during the dreadful storms of 2020 I can say proudly, I brought the bins down.
If people visit Sheringham at this time of year, its at weekends. When the forecast is so bad, understandably no one comes. They say there was a 7.8% drop in retail footfall in February, well that means most of North Norfolk had donned gilets and were cowering in their bungalows. With every storm wrecking gale of rain passing through each weekend, our most profitable days vanished. We've almost forgotten what a good days takings can feel like.
It was hard staying confident, our Buddhist practice has been put through its paces. Nevertheless, it can slowly wear you down. Finding yourself emotionally zonked at the end of the day, simply from the effort of staying present and positive. We've focused on product making to distract us from the lack of human interaction. These items are starting to be fed into the shop now we're entering March. Easter is still a month away, the official beginning of the tourist season. We've increased our opening days from three to five. Trade doesn't really justify it yet, though we're ready for it whenever it does.
Just when the imminent arrival of Spring offered up hope of more fruitful times, along comes the 'demon sword' of a virus pandemic. This could either have a deleterious affect on summer trade, or bring a boost from people not taking holidays abroad. We have a larger percentage of elderly people here. Imagine if half your local population self isolate and never venture out for weeks. Apparently what people seem concerned most about is not running out of food, but toilet paper to wipe their butts.
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No cases in Norfolk as yet
TV bombards us with updates about the relative lethal consequences of the 'demon sword'. This tends to 'alarm the elderly' with oracles of their looming demise - Its now come a lot closer than you think, my dear'. I tend to view this quizzically. Should I apply this to myself? What makes one elderly anyway? Of course this doesn't apply to me yet, I am a few years shy of 65, thank you. I can, however, read the early portents whilst I amble blithely toward the neatly cut grassy lawns of being 'elderly'.
I almost daily encounter fresh locations for a bodily ache, the arthritis in my hands is gradually turning them into claws with feeble grip, plus my recall of words, information or names are travelling a little further away from being at the tip of my tongue than before. When I find myself feeling less than charitable towards a pensioner fumbling for change in a shop, or whilst weaving in and out of the phalanxes of zimmer frames on the narrow pavements of Sheringham High Street, I warn myself,- 'one day you'll be doing that, you'll be struggling simply to get about, you'll be getting flustered and out of breath just opening your wallet'.
Perhaps marrying a husband whose younger than yourself, will help knock a few years imaginatively off the age tally. I don't feel in my being that I'm getting older, I guess no-one does, yet the body says no, nonetheless. I notice myself gazing vaguely in the general direction of my face and body in the mirror. I look, but not really look, if you know what I mean. The external experience of my body changes regardless of however youthful I might feel the person living inside of it is. My skin develops increasing spatters of liver spots; the flesh around my neck moves inexorably towards resembling a wrinkled, sagging testicle, my body mass has settled for being squarely chunky over trim and slim.
All this is meant to be edifying for a Buddhist to fully acknowledge their impermanence. To calmly observe the sea of ones mortality advancing ever higher up the beach til inevitably it hits the sea wall and dissipates. This doesn't prevent it from also feeling sad, in a manky sort of way.
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So, just when we all need a little bit of cheering up. the Sheringham Scira Viking Festival arrives, huzzah!. Its only eight years old, but grows more popular with every year, already the second largest such event in the country. However, if there are only two, then, as a statistic this is less impressive. The programmed events over half-term mainly focus on 'the children', with sword, helmet and shield making workshops. Teaching them the social benefits of a well executed decapitation with a sword, this is educationally good, no doubt. The axe throwing, mock fights and stalls selling period authentic cow horns and other things to vaguely Norse accessorise your home, keep 'the adult children' fulfilled in their desire to keep shopping. It culminates, as any charade must, with a torchlit procession dragging a fake viking long boat through town to be incinerated on the beach.
We went along to the boat burning, just to say we'd been.. once. This is Sheringham, so the first thing that hits you is - the ridiculously over amplified music. This time it was a continuous portentous drone with horns and drums interjecting over the top. Loud enough to make your brain vibrate or explode in a fit of hand tremors. Someone put 'Viking music' into the Spotify search engine and this was the longest piece they could find. It just went on and on and on, constantly sounding like it might just be about to reach a dramatic crescendo...... but never did. Apparently this drone could, and did, go on all day.
It was high tide, so the 'fake boat' was squeezed well up beach by the sea wall. Viewed from the Esplanade where we were, it was hard to see much more than an odd bit of flailing rigging and a wisp of black smoke. In a stiff cold gale I was surprised they could get it lit at all. But after piling loads of pallets into it, throwing in some petrol, then flaming torches, whoosh, up it went. Was it impressive? Not particularly. Was it moving? Nope. Did it make you long for the simpler times of your Scandinavian ancestors? It made me long for a bag of chips.
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This 'boat burning' prompted reflections on the emptying out of communal rituals, the general trivialising of significance. Things become just a little night amusement like this one, devoid of local cultural meaning or resonance. Sheringham has a Viking Festival simply because a local artist convinced The Sheringham Festival Committee it was a good idea, based on the town's name being originally Scandivanian for Scira's hamlet. These two slim facts justifying it's entire existence. No profound connection, local lineage, long held folklore or background tradition. Everything has been literally stolen piece by piece from somewhere else....from someone else's culture.
Its like spending a week in a Viking theme park. Yes, I guess it could be fun, but it can't escape from also being spectacle for spectacles sake. With no overarching purpose, ritual associations or mythic depths to touch, it has, spiritually speaking, zilch to offer. Perhaps building a giant standing man out of crab and lobster crates and burning them with last years Carnival Queen buried inside it, might have a bit more punch. Lets have a Wicker Man Weekend, with a Christopher |Lee lookalike competition and transform Sheringham into an isolated insular Scottish Island community. It wont be that hard.
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I'm killing time in Norwich before my Zen group, walking in the general direction of The Forum Library across the market. A young woman approaches, she is perky and personable in a scarf and winter coat, her head leaning slightly to one side in that mixture of beseeching coyness and fake friendly eyed enquiry.
'Are you from round here?' 'I live in North Norfolk' 'How long have you lived there?' 'Two Years or so'
This is already getting too chatty and familiar for my liking. I'm nervous. What's this about ? Where am I being led by this conversation? I'm envisaging a public poll, questionnaire or request to support climate change or a homeless charity. I wish she'd just get to whatever the point of sale of this street intervention is, so I can respond 'Not - today -interested - now - never - clear off' and move on.
'Have you got a few minutes to spare?'
Oh here we go 'Well I do have to be somewhere soon'
(which is the polite English way of saying clearly and loudly - No I Do Not!!! )
Not picking up on the subliminal passive / aggressive undertow of my reluctance, she shouts very brightly 'Just follow me'
and facing away from me she runs like the clappers across the road away and towards the Victoria Arcade. I seize my opportunity, walking briskly in the opposite direction.
In my mind I'm thinking - 'Was that some sort of Situationist performance art project or bizarre behavioural psychology test.........that I've now failed'
.
As we returned from our North Yorkshire holiday we diverted our route home to take a B L F break ( bum, leg & food ) in Stamford. We also wanted to investigate a local fabric shop to see if they had anything to suitable for Cottonwood Home (there was).
Stamford as a market town, is a place with it's own distinct charm, full of beautiful honey coloured stone fronted buildings, most of them significantly of a certain age and maturity. Though it looks as though Stamford ought to be a county town, it isn't, it is, however, slap bang next to Burleigh House and its estate. It is clear that this and its position by a main north south axis road have always left both hands deeply plunged into the lucre. But like any small town with a shopping centre across this island, in this era, it has significant missing teeth in its high street's dentures. There is also an uneasy 'ghetto zoning' of high and low end shops that betrays an unevenly spread wealth divide.
On a previous visit we'd had quite a lovely lunch in this cafe, so we had no qualms about returning. This particular bright winter's afternoon its windows were steamed up very badly. This is never a good thing for a cafe, not to be able to see inside until you enter. It is, however, despite the condensation, definitely a popular destination even in January.
After giving the cake range a greedy scan, I spotted a carrot cake, ordered it with my preferred afternoon thirst quencher, an Earl Grey tea. Sat down at a somewhat wobbly table, trying not to rest my arms heavily on upon it whilst perched on an modern style clear perspex chair. Thus I awaited my tea and cake expectantly.
When it came, my goodness it was a massive wedge. Whilst its ingredients appeared evenly sized and distributed it looked far far far too near beige for my liking. Had a carrot been anywhere near this cake? Had a framed picture of a carrot just been left on a shelf nearby? Had a carrot been used instead of a wooden spoon? This was too pale a tint to be anything like a true representation of the sacred edible carrot cake classique.
Nevertheless I opened my gob and shovelled a fork full in. What happened next was the most actively unpleasant taste sensation I've experienced in quite a while. The moment this morsel of cake landed upon my tongue it immediately sucked up all the saliva from it, becoming this doughy clag sticking to the roof and basement of my palate. God, I've been deceived, affronted by a gluten free carrot cake.... again! No amount of telling myself to be calm, just keep your cool, don't get too worked up, it really isn't worth it, was working. Just think of all the people for whom a gluten free carrot cake is a lifesaver. Yes, I was thinking of them, in very sharp definition.
Hubby assures me, the claggyness indicates it was rice flour that performed this abomination of a carrot cake. There were plenty of nuts, the texture, before it congealed into a playdo-de-goo, felt strandy, but tasted not of the venerable carrot, nor, suspiciously, of any spice mix. Well, at least it wasn't a spice cake I offered myself as consolation, to a sotto voche response of a sneering grunt. Though definitely lifted by the cream cheese topping, this sat looking a little flushed and sweaty on the top as if all the responsibility placed upon it to save the day, was giving it a nervous breakdown. An excess of sugar never saves a cake, no matter how beseechingly it behaves
But the question as my teeth, tongue and mouth struggled to disentangle, work around and through their burden, was - what exactly was this cake? Its wasn't by any stretch of the baking almanac a carrot cake, self-evidently. Was it a walnut cake? What on earth did this cake taste of? Its as though an alien from outer space made a carrot cake based solely upon a fuzzy photo. So, basically, this was of no distinct flavour previously known to humankind.
There was no sign, no forewarning, no excuse - so its a 2 for you.... Pah!
Four years have passed, its 1973 and more than my height has changed. The side parting forsaken for centre parted longer hair that never grew quite long enough. My fine hair when grown long became greasy and lanky rather than the full bodied wildly romantic wind blown curls version of my dreams. Deep Purple and Hawkwind were current musical heroes, so the hair, coloured flairs, necklace bling and a denim bomber jacket with badges (not in picture) were de rigueur for any self-identifying fans. Though the pink flip flips, perhaps not.
I'd had a 60's childhood where Cilla Black ruled, by the early seventies Marc Bolan pouting in a pink satin suit was the new queen. By 1973 with much more seemingly at stake masculinity wise, 'macho 'progressive' music ruled my turntable. Full of dramatic, flamboyant musical flourishes and wildly inventive over indulgences. My enthusiasm hovered between envious voyeurism and vicariously basking in the fame and glory of these revered giants. I so wanted to be that hairy.
Five men flaunting frizz, fur and their feminine side
Such musical heroes offered solace. I felt that my abilities and interests largely fell outside the traditionally held areas for boyhood pursuits and prowess. Pop culture presented to my teenage yearning, meaning and purpose, a place crowned with a transient specialness. A wailing air guitar in hand liberates you fron the circumstances of education, class, race, gender orientation and even talent. The classic seventies teenager, I imaginatively performed along with my favourite pop stars, alone in my bedroom, whilst broadcasting my choice of music through a wide open window. For the world will know me through this music and hear it loud and clear.
I was a sixteen year old holding out for a hero, looking for a distinct affinity, someone embodying a myth that I could emulate. The men I hero worshipped, appeared to model aspects of the dreamed of self. Whilst 'what you are' is still barely mapped as a territory, you can safely imagine yourself as a rock star. Whether you'll have sufficient talent, confidence, ambition, pluck or luck to make that a reality, remains covered in a mist of juvenile hope. Significant individuals who might help you fulfil your potential, are yet to be found. Encountering the trustworthy male hero is always the tricky bit.
Its hard to keep hold of male heroes, they easily slip off their somewhat wonky pedestals. One of my 1980's heroes, Morrissey, once seemed the charismatic opinionated challenging poetic outsider, has aged into a curmudgeon, spouting nationalistic garbage unbecoming of a supposedly intelligent person. Let alone someone who loves his country so much he lives abroad. Yet I can also see how that youthful waif could become the stodgy middle aged man, things fossilise as you get older. I adore the music of The Smiths, but that affection has been put under retrospective strain now their former front man has 'gone rogue.' The past and the present now at loggerheads.
An obstacle to admiring the achievements of anyone, can be their less palatable ideas, morals, opinions and actions. In the aftermath of retrospective scandals and revisionism, both judicial, historical and feminist, what a good decent male role model could be is even harder to imagine, let alone maintain. We know far far too much. Everything, though done to establish a much needed corrective, to create a more balanced view, can still be one sided. Our default position may just be switching from loyal unquestioning defence to slavishly pandering to puritanical dismissal. In our search for 'the truth' fault finding becomes a compulsion, an addiction to believing that only their worst side embodies the truth about a person.
In traditional folk tales heroes are often initially portrayed as flawed individuals,. The classic 'puer aeternus' - the naive unformed boy/man. This idealistic hero is the impudent possesser of foolhardiness, recklessness and flawed with imperfect behaviour. Paradoxically these help identify with his journey, and reassure us that the human potential for good, though often in a titanic struggle, will re-emerge and assert itself. The difficulties a hero encounters whilst on this quest forge transformative changes in them, as the twilight of childhood moves into adulthood. Sketching the first outline of the mature adult male. This is one male heroic archetype.
Today celebrity can rise up really quickly. We then observe their subsequent sins and often ignominious tumble from grace. For Jung, there is always a darker shadowy side to any human psyche. The principled often sitting uncomfortably perched upon the knees of the unprincipled. As the shadow side of a hero passes by, it bristles the hairs of our own shadowy side. What we consider heroic is an archetype being projected onto the face of fallible human beings. If they are to remain a hero they'd have no impure thoughts in word or deed, which is well nigh impossible for even the best of us.
Generally we find it hard holding uncomfortable moral contradictions, of the wholesome and the unwholesome when they are present in ourselves. so god help anyone else. The active presence of both pleasure and aversion towards someone, demands a resolution we cannot always find. Its easier to go into denial or dump our heroes as being altogether worthless. Is it feasible to fully face the complex messy mix of a person's qualities without writing them off completely because they failed the perfect hero test? Heroes, once fallen, are rarely forgiven or allowed redemption from past stains upon their character. As we are currently finding out, many talented men, brilliant in one particular sphere can be serial abusive sex pests in another. Talent, power and hubris leading them to believe they live 'divinely gifted lives' outside the application of normal moral standards. Yet on a collective level there is also social catharsis going on, as we put the archetypal 'bad man' into the stocks to give them a well deserved public kicking.
To maintain any human being as a hero requires selectivity in what we focus on and value. To admire the best in someone, without endorsing any of the dodgy stuff. This is morally tricky ground to traverse. But generally, if we already admire someone, we will, at least for a while, turn a blind eye towards anything that stains or contradicts our favourable constructed viewpoint. It's been common practice for a man's talent or genius to be used as a get out of jail free card, skipping over violent abusive behaviour as insignificant or even excused as eminently reasonable, for a man.
The painter Caravagio was an aggressive, tempestuous person, known to have murdered at least one man. Yet his artistic reputation and career survived this, for his paintings remain striking and significant pieces of art despite his recklessness in a sword fight. So many artistic heroes of the Renaissance were talented but violent street thugs. Genius, talent and, one has to say, historical distance, diminish how their frankly shitty behaviour is now seen. Too quickly overlooked or excused. Perhaps it is easier when you've never known someone personally and only admired their artistic output, to gloss over what a pain in the ass they were towards friends and lovers. Male reputations have undoubtedly benefited most from this. Yet this selectivity in what we focus on when turning people into heroes, is a process that goes on regardless of our gender. The heroic image always requires careful curating in order that it stays 'on message'.
No one who is truly human gets their lives morally correct in every respect. Male or female, we are all erratic beings, exhibiting a wide range of moral contradictions. However, in the anti-hero, human fallibility, eccentricity, of not conforming or fitting in, become the very stuff of greatness. We cheer as they cry 'fuck off' to the world even if they exhibit tendencies of being an cruel gangster. The anti-hero is an impure archetype, the shadow side of the pure hero. Living outside conventions, unwilling to conform to other people's social codes of behaviour, by nature self-indulgent, aberrant individuals with lives teetering, often drunkenly, on the edge of the gutter. You gotta sat yes to another excess, turns their lives into a squalid magnificence, It can be just a pose these days with self appointed anti-heroes everywhere. For the real authentic thing just examine the life, times and writings of the poet and author Charles Buckowski. a deeply rough cut man with more than a few irredeemable features.
Charles Buckowski on the loo
Tribal communities would ritualise the bringing of men and women into adulthood. This entailed removing young men and women from their parents and putting them into the hands of female or male elders. And its probably true that for the guiding mentor role your Mum and Dad are often not the best people. Parents stand too close, hampered by their love and the flaws in their own sense of themselves, they tend to see what you need to do through their own needs of you. So it usually falls to someone one step removed such as a grandparent, uncle, teacher, or an older more experienced friend, who might share a similar enthusiasm, spirituality or talent as yourself. And if this starts to raise safe guarding issues in your mind, this reveals another element bedevilling a masculine mentoring role - the default mistrust of masculine motives. Not without its own history and justification. But it has a consequence that further muddies the waters of how to recognise 'a good man's' face.
So most men continue to hold on to the traditional narrowly defined version of what it is to be a man. Even though this appears more and more like a doomed captain going down with his sinking ship. Its possible this may be concealing a more troubled level of conflicted impulses over quite what is best to do. What from the old style of manhood can stay, what must really go, and how will this all hang together? Alternative guidance for what any new type of man might be like, lacks clarity. There are so few reliable mentors and no manuals. Insecurity then may be making men stay put, holding on grimly, even aggressively, to that which is familiar. Modern masculinity would then seem stuck in this bardo of indecision, a between place, that is neither here nor there.
Robert Bly once commented that young men lacking adult guidance and a defined route into adulthood, will try to create one for themselves. They'll form gangs, cults, allegiances to niche groups of one sort of another that come together to share a task, a lifestyle, a political ideology, an enthusiasm, or ownership of a space, and forge a collective sense of personal identity from it. Bly also said that this attempt at collectively growing up would inevitably fail, as it is the blind leading the blind
I certainly used my taste in music to define me. I constructed an image of myself as the sort of guy who liked weird arty music, the more outlandish and challenging the better. The downside was that there was no obvious gang for this, very few people to share my enthusiasms with. But a singular isolated individuality, alienated from the general mainstream, can also serve a dysfunctional function, creating a vision for oneself as this distinct individual with an 'extra special perception.' Obscurity creating a delusive aura of uniqueness. The hidden, unacknowledged man, self defining, the isolated loner, living in a fantasy world of their own creation, this is an all too common occurance.
To have not encountered beneficial role models, nor found a vocation, nor feel yourself purposeful is sad. Yet to over identify with the trash you own, the team you idolise, the computer games you play, the music you revere, the lifestyle you possess, as compensation for this shortfall in fulfilment can be even sadder. Underneath all of their frontal bluster, all men understand what a shallow unexamined life looks like, because its seen in the dim lifelessness of their eyes that faces them every morning in the mirror.
What makes any hero a hero appears to be a willingness to go beyond a narrowly defined sense of themselves, to push out into less familiar territory. To feel themselves moving forward towards something, as yet undefined, that could be better. This does not sit easily with the sense of stability and creature comforts that comes through staying put. Yet just keeping going requires stoical heroism. Humanity stagnates whenever it stands still for too long. Refusing to adventure or move on prevents the evolution of who we are. This is when masculinity turns toxic.
I've been writing here about heroes mostly in a knowingly mono gendered way. When I look at my own list of heroes there are a some fabulous women present there too. Women whom I admire, and exemplify qualities or talents I'd love to see more of in myself. Whilst I believe it is important for men and women to find heroes and role models within their own gender, because it helps us understand that gender, what it is and what we can become, it's also clear that this doesn't have to be exclusively the case. Heroes can transcend gender designation. Heroes in the broadest sense imaginable can help form ourselves into a more rounded human being.
What is heroic in a man can extend way beyond the narrowness of the macho male cliche. Yet what is it to be heroic now? Is there a heroism that goes beyond the stereotypes? Heroism manifests across humankind, regardless of culture, time period, gender, race or class, rich or poor. What a shame it would be, should we fail to discover the life changing inspiration of another human beings life, because we were wearing racial or gendered blinkers at the time, or were expecting them to be perfect in every aspect of their lives.
'Where have all the good men gone And where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds? Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed? Late at night I toss and I turn And I dream of what I need
I need a hero I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night He's gotta be strong And he's gotta be fast And he's gotta be fresh from the fight I need a hero I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light He's gotta be sure And it's gotta be soon And he's gotta be larger than life! Larger than life'
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Except from the lyrics to Holding Out For A Hero
written by Dean Stanford & Jim Steinman. PS.
Cliche ridden lyrics written by men, sung by a woman with a voice rubbed in coarse grade sandpaper. Yet they do highlight other pressures to conform outside of men's expectations of themselves and from other men, such as women's expectations of men. However, women appear to be lumbered with the role of having to keep pushing rather reluctant men to change their views, not just of women, but also of themselves and how they operate in the world. Yet in the desire to liberate themselves from their own gender's stereotyping, men in general are still barely half awake and lagging way way behind.
