London Pride Inspired Art (by sarah)

I have been working on a concept of a picture for a long time - since I was a teenager but could never get it right. Then yesturday I saw a friend's quotes as to why London Pride mattered and it sparked the desire to try and capture this picture again.

So I started painting - its not a picture about being gay or anything really that's linked to London Pride but it is about Intolerance.

Its called The Strange Fruit of Intolerance:

There is a bigger picture over on Salaric Craft along with how it was painted. The colours are a bit washed out due to me having taking the photo with flash - I'll attempt to get a better pic later.

Here are the twitter quotes that sparked it:

owenblacker: Gay Pride is important because we still don't have equality. And schoolkids (& Chris Moyles) still think "gay" is worthy as a term of abuse

scottbert: Gay Pride is important because of rising homophobia and violent attacks in East London #PrideLondon

serialseb: Gay Pride is important because lgbt people still get killed, arrested or sent to "reassignment" therapies and commit suicide

DavidWaldock: Gay Pride is also important as a way to take a stand against extremist, fascist political parties like the BNP and Tories

DavidWaldock: Gay Pride is important because there are still health inequalities faced by LGBT-types, and we deserve better. #PrideLONDON

I saw most of them as retweets but still!

As I said the picture is not about Gay Pride but it is about intolerance - and as those quotes show this is an area of great intolerance and as I have been watching this country enter a slipper slope of hate against those not percieved as main stream I felt it was time I started saying what I think and feel before we end up in a regime where this is not allowed. People do not realise how quickly a society can slip into a Nazi-esk situation do to apathy - people do not notice or bother with the little things like play ground name calling and posters up in the local boys school and then when it gets bad it is no longer safe to say anything and you end up with social scapgoats and mass murder.

So before this country slips into something like V for Ventetter I shall say what needs to be said because I am a chicken and once things are 'dangerous' I'll be as quiet as a mouse.

I am no great crusader.

The picture is full of symbolism, and is a symbol - this is going to be a long post I'm afraid!

It is called The Strange Fruit of Intolerance - during my GCSE's I had a set text called To Kill a Mocking Bird and I was so touched by this story that I kept the book and have re-read it many time. The entire book is pretty much about intolerance - most people know or see the racism in it straight away but it is full of other examples too - there is sexism, class-ism and with Boo a social recluse mental health and being just plain different is covered. The scorn of the old towards the young is also heavily featured.

I was disturbed by the out come of the American legal system in the book and so endlessly chatted about to anyone who would listen and started work on a fantasy story that was directly seeded from this noval by Mary Lee Haper.

As a result I ended up part of a team raising money for the homeless the efforts of which appeared in local newspapers and even got mentioned higher up the media chain - I also ended reading out bits I'd written about countries that still existed under totalatrian regimes earning me an evening at local church where we presented out, poetry and the like to try and raise awearness of the intolerances and inequalities around the world.

Obviously I also went to Kenya in 2000 and where I was horrified that the other young people with me discovered that street children even existed - I myself had been watching documentrys on Brizilian street children who at the time were being hunted down like animals and lived in the cities sewer systems.

When I say young I was 19.

Anyway I digress - in all of this at some point someone played me a song that wrapped itself around my heart I've only heard it once and it was from an old scratchy record - I remembered it wrongly it turns out but I will say what I remembered first:

What strange Fruit is this - blood at the roots and blood at the tips?

The actual words are:

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

It is by Billie Holiday and obviously about the racism that was (I use the past tense in hope there) preverlent in the American South at the time.

There is a video of her singing it here

The lyrics themselves were based on a poem written by a Jewish school teacher after a lynching.

My picture shows a tress with strange fruit i.e. drops of blood that fall to make a tide of blood which well up into hearts and that are chained by barbed wire - the hearts get smaller as you go up until they fall as drops of blood on the tree which is also wrapped in the same loop of barbed wire.

The tree is white - it is bones of society laid bare, when the fruit become to heavy they distort the frame work of the tree pulling the branches down to the sea of blood. Some of the branch tips are not imprisioned by the barbed wire and are untouched by the strange fruits - these are the areas where hope lays.

The 'ground' is the past dark and murky reaching to a future clouded but as yet untainted by the violence. The sea also becomes deeper and more turbulent as you move away from the tree - this is to represent how on tiny drop - some insignificant unthinking piece of cruelty can lead to war.

The picture shows how intolerance chains our hearts leading to a cyclic cascade of volience and pain. Crippling society.

I am pleased with this picture - it has only taken a decade or so to get to this junksure, I have painted many of these white trees and some have the strange fruit upon them but this is the symbolism I sought.

The colours are more vibrant than the photo shows and the barbed wire which is a continual length with out end twisted around both the hearts and society is done in enamel and so shines matalic which can never come across in a photo.

Hopscotch (by sarah)

I found some chunky chalks for a pound in Stoud and bought them to draw hopscotch for Jean along the drive.

This was a resounding success - she loves it though she doesn't entirely get the games you can play. Of course this was before The Rains that visited upon us the last week or so but is is now drawn back on in pink this time.

I got Jean to pick which colours to draw the outline in and then we did different colours for odd and even numbers - interestingly she pointed out that I was colouring the 1 of 10 the wrong colour as its an odd number - this took some explaining and I don't think so go it but I was impressed that she recognised a one to be quiet honest.

We took some of my nice ornimental pebbles from off of the rainbow/space garden I made last year and used them as our markers - mainly Jean just threw stones onto (or at least attempted too) the hopscotch.

When Ted the Taxi Man and Mary came to visit they were impressed with the hopscotch and said that your not allowed to play it on the streets anymore - that it counts as criminal damage and two kids have recently been fined! That is quiet frankly rediculous - please I thought tell me its a joke or scare mongering...

So did a google search:

This one was in 2007 and involves the perants being told off for allowing the children to play in the streets - even though they were obviously keeping an eye on what was happening other wise they wouldn't have noticed the police :/

Now its not so much the police over reacting as they were doing there job - and they say once they realised what it was they knew it wasn't criminal damage as it was chalk and therefore not perminant - but why did the neighbour report it in the first place?

Can't they kids playing from thugs? This lot weren't even teenagers just littlys 🙁

This one on the other hang is quiet scary - did they really arrest a 12 yr old and put her in a cell for hopscotch?

People complain that kids are playing innocent games and are vandalising the street like they are not citizens of this country too and don't deserve to be allowed use of the facilities - a pavement is a facility provided by the council for goodness sake. Something is very very broken when hope scotch is band! Griffiti - really?

Both these reports are from a few years ago and I couldn't find any mention of the local incident where the kids were reputedly fined like £80 i think Ted said it was in Cotwold Life Magizine or something like that - if anybody could shed more light on this I would appreciate it.

If I had lived in a street I probably would have been sitting outside with Jean chalking the hopscotch onto the pavement - would I have then been made to scrub it off as Jean is under 10?

Chalk washes away for goodness sakes - when we played in the street there wasn't chalk in ready supply and the kids including me used to scrape the hopscotches onto the pavement with stones - no-one ever complained and I remember the police man who did live down our street giving us chalk so we wouldn't damage things.

People moan about teenagers and even kids doing actual criminal things but if we wont let them do the kid things then what do people actually expect to happen.

Plus we are breeding discontent in the youngster and how are they suppose to respect the police when the police are telling them off for playing hopscotch?

I try not to go on about politacal things too much but I'm mean really - how can we live in a society like this? A society that bans children from being children - they are kids not minni adults - they know more than previous generations it is true but they are still kids and they need to explore the world through play.

They need to be part of a society not seperate from it and if they are not allowed to at least interact with each other and learn how to be part of a social group then we are heading for trouble. I see this building on many sides with age ghettotization springing up - single mothers on the council estate and rich olds in retirement villages many of whom have never had proper social interaction with children.

We are human we are disigned to live in communitees with all ages mixed in together - seperating people into groups always leads to trouble or is this another case of use not learning from the past?

Sarah takes a deep breath and walks away from the computer muttering

Voting (by sarah)

Barbara gave me a lift up to vote - now I'd read the stuff that had been sent through but realised I had decided who I wasn't going to vote for ie all those nasty fascist parties that seem to be creeping out of the wood work but hadn't actually gotten around to deciding who I was going to vote for.

So I had to recall on the spot who has promised what and hope I got it round the right way and feel sad that no one actually represents what I want - there is no one I agree with entirely so have to go for close as without being scary - this does not strike as a partically good way of running things but never mind - at least I got to vote and used the right people died to give me.

I would also like to point out that going up in Mag (the sunshine yellow MG convertable) with Barbara felt I was risking life and limb as she doesn't wait for you to strap in ectera!

Sorting things out (by sarah)

I'm currently sorting things out for a fun weekend of family wedding and meeting up with people - there have been a few hicups already ie getting the wronge weekend for the wedding in Al's diary and concequently issues with his dad's visit!

A friends just had a baby so I'm bring some things down for her as well and have made the wedding presant and card.

I have also been sorting out paper work and my craft supplies and through talking to the local arts and craft people have been instilled with the idea of selling the cards I've been making.

Generally I've had people saying I really should be displaying my art work and things but I just don't know how to do this and have no money to join anything or hire galleries etc...

As Alaric said in hind sight giving up the art classes and writing group to go back to my course right at the point lots of things fell to pieces for me (Alex dying, mum's last lot of cancer and the realisation that we had miss understood/miscalculated money issues plus the situation with being stuffed by my main client) was a bad trade off.

I'm not even sure if I blogged back in the autum that one of my pictures was on display locally thanks to the art teacher.

This is leading me to thinking though - I love science and geology and feel it is part of me but it is easier with pain flare ups and tummy stuff to be at home writing, making websites and doing arty things - but what will make me happy?

I have never react well to having to choose between the two Art and Science. They are not even distinct in my mind but then I have a slightly odd take on things and veiw it all as creative.

I want to try and finish at least the first year of my course but it means more money we don't have but on the other hand if I don't we loose that money already invested in it.

And then the art world is so uncertain - publishing is going through the mill at the moment - big changes the industry are failing to cope with and so traditional avenues are closed but I have noticed new ones opening up - but I am beginner at this game and have no idea how to muscel my way in.

I interact with an extended communitee of writers on twitter but mainly we discuess our kids and the like. I also have science friends on there and a healthy dose of computer people and a few arty crafties but this is only making my dissusions harder.

I am all of these things but modern society doesn't really allow for Jack of all trades especially one who has intermitent health. And so by not choosing I risk achieving nothing.

But I don't think I can choose - my life feels unbalance when I do not have a mix of things.

And at the same time I feel that the house and Jean are priority - I get sick even for a few days and the house descends into chaos and I can not really allow this and so I feel an instinct to nest build until it is all easy to maintain with out me looking over everyones shoulders all the time.

I started this post thinking I was going somewhere and that I had sorted part of my life out but realised as I was writing it that it is all still open questions and discuissions to be made.

The Dr pointed out that I was one person and one person only - I am trying to take this into account with what I plan to do next.

And Dead People! (by sarah)

A conversation we had with Jean concerning eating meat:

Jean "look cows daddy - I like cows!'

Alaric "I like cows too Jean, but you like them in a slightly different way to me."

Jean enquiring look

Alaric "You eat them as well"

Jean "No I don't"

Alaric "Yes you do Jean"

Jean "I don't! Do I mummy?"

Sarah "Yes you do Jeany, thats what burgers are - remember its like the cats? When those cows die they are made into burgers"

Jean "No their not silly mummy!"

Alaric "Yes they are"

Sarah "Its like the vegitables in the garden Jean - we water and feed them and then when they are big enough we dig them up and chop them into cassaroles and stuff. Well thats what happens with the animals and thats what burgers and suasages are."

Jean "I eat cows!"

Us "Yes Jean"

Jean "And Piggies?!"

US "Yes Jean"

Jean "And sheeps?!"

Us "Yes Jean"

Jean "And chick chicks?!"

Us "Yes Jean"

Jean "And dead people?!"

Us "No Jean!" LAUGHTER

Sarah "Not in our society anyway"

Jean "Why?"

Alaric "Well for several reasons - firstly there is disease - what ever the person dies of might be passed onto you if you eat them, secondly all the freinds and relatives of the person might get a bit upset as they wouldn't like the idea of their friend being eaten."

Sarah "Thirdly it would be against some peoples beliefs"

Jean "Oh ok"

Alaric "Well thats the sort of comment they are bound to come out with whilst talking to a teatcher or social working and perants go - argggKKK!"

All I can say is Soylent Green anybody?