I sit here and play Eva Cassidy records and idle my time away by desultory flicking through various American political blogs and finding little there that either suits my mood or feeds my mind.
Many complain that it is the in-fighting and the rancour of the present Primaries that make them turn away. For me it is not the venomous dislike of other candidates that I find ugly. It is the idolatry of their own preference that I find offensive.
I don’t know where this comes from, this belief that somehow a sudden and genetically impossible evolution will occur by the initiation of a single person to usher in a New World where most of our problems will be solved. It is as sad to see the extent of the investment of hopes and aspirations placed in particular candidates by the left as it is to see the religious right look towards the coming of their divine Messiah to change the human condition.
I was much enamoured by a diary written by Kid Oakland the other day, as I am always enamoured by his work, that talked about change coming from incremental steps. Born at the start of the war with Hitler, all my life I have seen those who would wear the crown of being the saviour of their people. I distrust such populists and I distrust the rhetoric that surrounds their attempts to assume their fictional throne.
I see politicians quote the wise words taken from the leaders of other generations and whose time in office history has deemed successful. Many of those words, however, were written by these heroes about past experience, at the end of their time in facilitating change. They are words qritten not to be shouted as banners that will make revolutionary change but as reflective thoughts for quiet consideration, to humbly inform rather than to act as slogans with which to noisily proselytise.
It is the stealing of the mantel of others with which to clothe their own inadequately formed perceptions by unproven politicians. It draws to a candidate a respect and admiration that becomes a sycophancy that ends up in an overwhelming adulation.
It has the same effect of placing fame on the inadequately prepared shoulders of young pop stars and then deriding them for their inability to handle it. Our celebrity culture has not only permeated the entertainment business but now affects every part of our lives, from the Chief Executive Officer hired to save an ailing company to the politician who will resolves all societies problems. It is reflected right now in the hyperbole that we see in the advocacy of our candidate.
So, I turn away and listen some more to Eva Cassidy singing on the CD player.
I have had the pleasure of revising my Will recently, conscious that its implementation is inevitably ever closer. It’s a pleasure because, without children of my own, I can think through the people I know and to whom I can make a difference. I am glad I am not rich enough, because I am not trustworthy enough, to change people’s lives but have accumulated just enough to make some such small difference.
In the course of doing so, I needed the address of two friends who married some three years or so back. I went to their wedding in Ohio and have seen them once since then when they brought their first baby with them on a visit back to Wales.
I knew that, as soon as they had both completed their medical qualifications in the States, they wanted to spend some time working amongst the disadvantaged "Aboriginal" people in Western Australia. This was to be a preliminary to their intention to return to work in the equally medically deprived inner city and prison environment in the States.
Had they been able to follow through with this ambition, saddled as they were with huge educational debts and a bureaucracy that cruelly and unnecessarily deported Dele back here to the UK at the airport when he returned from his honeymoon with Yolanda to the States? A bureaucracy that made Dele wait a compulsory one year and have to work in fast food outlets before being allowed to begin his US accreditation of his UK medical qualifications.
I could have written to the States, but I was in a hurry to write that Will so, rather optimistically, I Googled their name instead.
They came up on the Western Australia Mediventure site. I was able to read on there of their work, their clinic and their hopes. "We’re making our own little strides. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen." they are quoted as saying. This is the type of incremental change that Kid Oakland talks about.
I know a little about Yolanda’s experiences in the States. I know a little and saw just a tiny snapshot of the discrimination that she faces at home, as Dele had done as a Nigerian kid arriving in the UK from Nigeria at the age of eight. They loved Wales because they found little of it here.
I know only a little, because they do not talk much about politics. Sometimes, I think it is because they have learnt not to do so too openly but mainly I think it is because they are so focussed on their lives and what they want to do with their time. Google did lead me to a genealogical site that gave me some background about her family and traced it through its own slavery to its participation in the Ohio Underground Railroad that enabled so many slaves in their flight to freedom. It was over a hundred and fifty years ago and yet, from a beautiful family, Yolanda’s time in medical school is also the first in her direct family to get a university education. Small, small incremental steps, yet incremental, none-the-less, if a long time in coming. It is coming, though. Dele tells us that from his clinic in Western Australia.
So I put on my third and final Eva Cassidy record.
It is not that in criticising the way that people put their hopes and desires for an improved world into a trust of their preferred politician that causes me concern. Borne of a frustration of these last few years, it is understandable. Rather it is that their hopes should not lie in one person but in what we collectively can do and are doing. In small strides. Let us invest our hopes more in ourselves than in the less certain belief that one man or woman can deliver the changes that we are seeking.
Eva, sing of the hope and wonder that we can, within ourselves, find:
"...and isn't it a miracle that crocuses bloom?
And you can banish cat hair with the sweep of the broom?
And that daffodils and children have the same kind of smile?
And you can take off your shoes and splash in water for a while?
That you can hear angels singing in the cooing of a dove,
Or give a person something, simply out of love,
And that God will paint colors on the clouds for us to see
And that we can watch together, you standing next to me."
(Excerpt from 'Springtime" by Eva Cassidy March 1991)
Cross-posted from ePluribus Media