The Final Solution

"Arbeit macht frei" - Work makes you free.

            Recently I spent an evening reading ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, by Irish novelist John Boyne.  I can honestly admit that I don’t think I have ever cried so much in my life.  You may have read it yourself, or perhaps it might be more likely that you have seen the film adaptation.  Maybe you cried too.  It’s a short read, I would recommend it to anyone who falls under the category of ‘reader’ as it goes above and beyond any literary genre that I have come across (don’t let my crying put you off!).  Even if you have seen the film, go out and find the book! 

The remaining barracks.

Boyne writes in such a simplistic way, yet he grasps your attention on every single page.  His language captures the tragedy that was the Holocaust through the innocent eyes of a nine-year-old boy, replacing the expected horrendous descriptions with subtle images from an unknowing perspective, making more powerful the sheer horror of the cruel situation.  There are moments of laughter, of confrontation, of hopes and disappointments, as Boyne beckons readers to chase the development of an unbreakable friendship before hitting us with an ending that would penetrate even the hardest of hearts.

The guards walkway between two parts of the camp.
The barbed wire fences had an electric current running
through to keep the prison from attempting escape.

As well as being such a fantastic read, this fable addresses one of the most important events in history; a moment in history that people still deny today.  As far as I know this is a topic rarely discussed, and one that is not often taught in schools in great detail.  However, during the year before I came to university, I became involved in an incredible organisation called the Holocaust Education Trust.  Travelling to Aston University, I attended lectures and seminars on various topics and ethical issues, where I met a Jewish woman called Kitty Hart-Moxon who spoke on how she survived the concentration camp.  This was followed by a day trip to Auschwitz in Poland (the concentration camp mentioned in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ and where Kitty and her mother were imprisoned).

Family photographs found in the suitcases of those who
were killed. A memorial room contained walls covered
from top to bottom with the only memories left of
these families.

Throughout my day in Auschwitz I did not cry, not once, not like I did at the writings of John Boyne.  My pre-visit expectations were that I would feel an overwhelming sense of anger and despair; but I felt neither.  I wanted to feel such things; but I just felt numb.  It was incredibly difficult to take it all in; how could I comprehend the fact that almost 3 million people had been brutally massacred in such a small, eerie and now desolate space?  As dusk fell, I remember walking through the black dead trees, as a kind of half-light hovered still in the air and the rain fell lightly on a world in greyscale.  The birds sang melodically, almost as a mockery of the place, impounding a strange sense of guilt upon my heart.  Birdsong and footsteps of the free were not welcome within the confines of this death camp.

The entrance gate and the train track which was built
for the special purpose of bringing people from the cities
straight into the camp, either to the famous crossroads for a
selection process or right up to the gas chambers for
immediate execution.

As the hovering dusk dropped into a thick darkness, the group gathered together alongside the remains of a gas chamber, and a remembrance service was held by the Rabbi that accompanied us on our daytrip.  From underneath the canopy of umbrellas we sang hymns and the Rabbi recited Jewish prayers.  We each lit a candle and as we made our leave, we laid them along the train track on which cattle-carts full of people were shipped in to be killed.  At the end of the day, I walked through the gates from which 3 million people came in and never went out again.  To this day I remain fascinated, my heart lacerated, completely devastated, at the brutality that was conducted as Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’.  Such human capability perhaps shall never be understood.

- All photographs by Annie Davies -

Sound Check

- As published in the Spring 2011 issue of Artemis, the Women's Network magazine. -

Photograph: http://www.testmeat.co.uk/photos/index.php?id=698

Doesn’t it just sound awful when you’re at a gig and the bass is ridiculously loud and the lyrics are incomprehensible?  Or when the guitar riff is so distorted that the melody is completely lost?  Or maybe I’ve just been to too many bad gigs…  The same problem rings true in our day-to-day lives and the music we make.  How loud are we projecting our voices as women?  And in comparison, how do we fit this together with the other instruments in our lives?  It’s time we had our own sound check.

Myself, and others I have spoken to, have found that slapping the ‘feminist’ sticker onto yourself isn’t an easy task to undertake.  It comes with baggage.  Our lives, and identities for that matter, are made up of various different things, and it can often be difficult to fit our feminism into this overall picture.  Our race, our class, our sexuality, our politics, our faith and even our minute personal interests, can conflict with our gender issues.  So which do we prioritise?

When we use our voices for change, we tend to concentrate too much or too little on the fact that we are women.  It is a distinguishing factor of life that needs to be addressed, but our gender isn’t our ‘everything’.  Take this into account: there is more than one type of woman.  As postmodern feminist Bell Hooks puts it; ‘since men are not equal in white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal class structure, which men do women want to be equal to?’  What about black women, working class women, lesbian women, liberal women, women of faith?  We all face different kinds of discrimination and we need to accommodate for each aspect of our identities. 

I myself am a Christian.  I often face criticisms from both sides.  Some feminists accuse that ‘surely religion is a patriarchal tool of oppression’, and some Christians accuse that ‘feminism is a radical turn away from biblical teaching’.  Both are wrong.  As difficult as it may be to create a balance, it is certainly possible to integrate my faith and my feminism, fighting for gender equality whilst sharing my faith with others.

So how loud do I sing of my faith? How loud do I sing as a woman looking for change? And how exactly do we balance these voices without breaking the sound barrier?  Sing too loudly about one and the other easily fades into the background.  Break this sound barrier and your identity is broken, consumed entirely by this single aspect.  For me my faith is central to my life, the very essence of my truth and being, but born from this faith comes the search for liberation, and that includes the liberation of women.  I have a biblical base upon which I can build my case for equality.  But from this base I also build my politics, my philosophy, my identity, my relationships, and my lifestyle.  The echoing voice of feminism may be an important aspect to life, but we need the rest of the band to bring body to the music that is our being.  A perfect balance is impossible, but it’s time we stepped back and evaluated the value we slap on with our ‘feminist stickers’.  So keep one hand on the sound desk, but let the show go on…

The liberation of loneliness

I am selfish, I am stubborn and subsequently single.  I am so set in my own ways and obsessed with my independence that I tend to push people away.  Unsurprisingly I am not the only person I know for whom this is the case.  At least three close friends of mine seem to be poetically painted within this same frame of mind, but why?  Is it simply that we’ve grown thick skins after wounds of the past?  Or is there something else, a deeper satisfaction in being alone?

There is something liberating about loneliness.  I myself seem to feel accomplished for experiencing something alone, deeply content that I am able to contain things within the privacy of myself; thoughts and feelings that are mine and mine alone, things that no-one will ever know.  I am in love with the ability to reflect, to take in the external and squeeze it between the hands of contemplation so that every last drop of opportunity has been used up.

I like to look at my body.  Not in a creepy bout of vanity but as a point of observation.  I like to feel that I am a being, to recognise that I am myself.  As much as interaction and emotions can overlap between one person and another, it is comforting to me to know that the body is a set form, a frame that distinguishes the self from the external.  However, this shape is almost like a sieve.  We may have a little control over what we do and do not let in from the external, but inevitably there are holes and the external will get in.  We are not free from the influence of emotion.  I often wish I could block these holes, as what seeps through them is what makes or breaks us.

Made in His image...

Recently I found a huge scratch running along the top face of my Macbook, just next to the nice shiny white apple.  I was absolutely devastated.  I even cried in a rage that my once perfect piece of top-notch equipment was now defaced and in my eyes ruined, caused by a fault that wasn’t my own.  In my life I’ve had my fair share of injuries.  I’ve never broken a bone (touch wood), but I’ve dislocated my little finger, got a pool tile stuck in the heel of my foot, and had various other cuts and bruises on my arms and legs.  I attended a dance school (as well as a normal academic school) for 14 years of my life, where I tortured my body day after day.  If you’ve seen Natalie Portman’s feet bleed in ‘The Black Swan’ you’ll know what I mean.  If I combined all of my injuries together, the emotional trauma would not compare with that I felt when I scratched my beloved laptop.

If you’re thinking ‘what a shallow materialistic fool!’ then you are exactly right.  I wasn’t spoilt as a child, my grandparents always taught me that you have to work if you want to get anything in this world and it’s not just given to you.  So, as a poor student, I scrimped and saved for two years to buy my Mac, it being barely two months old when it was damaged earlier this week.  I felt I’d worked so hard for it, that I placed upon it more value than my own body.  I am completely foolish.  For far too long I’ve taken for granted this body I walk around in.  I’ve never really taken a second to step back, take a look at myself, and recognise that a God so lovingly, so mercifully, put more effort than I’ll ever know into carefully crafting my existence. 

The disrespect we have for our bodies is the root of many negative issues in modern life, varying hugely across the spectrum.  Starting at the extreme end of the scale, close friends of mine, and even I myself, have been both villain and victim in the act of self-harm due to depression.  Then consider that there are increasingly more and more women each day that are selling their bodies on the streets as a source of income.  Following this are the acts of substance abuse; drug addicts, alcoholics, and then there are those who fail to maintain a healthy diet and exercise regularly.  At the end of the day we are all guilty of disrespecting, or even abusing our bodies in some way or another, even the most trying of us.  We can never achieve perfect health (that’s what makes us human!).  But how many things can you count that you take pride in over your own body?  I’d bet more things than you have phalanges!

In my opinion, living healthily out of respect for your body isn’t preached enough in Church.  It is an issue seen as of little importance or even perhaps thought of as a prying issue to address to a congregation of over-polite English culture.  Why should we be afraid to nudge a friend and tell them they should stop eating so much cake and get the ‘5-a-day’ on their menus?  Why shouldn’t we drag one another outside for a run round the park or off for an hour at the swimming pool?  I know that I would appreciate it.  We need to be blunt in love, pushing one another, be that mirror that our best friends cannot run away from.  If it’s smoking, taking drugs, self harm, eating rubbish food, don’t let our over-politeness get in the way of glorifying what God so beautifully created.  Consequent of the development of technology and consumerism, as a culture we place far too much value upon the things in life that have no real value at all.  Slowly but surely, Americanisation is infecting us with the pleasure factor and we are offending more than ever.  But it’s not too late to change our outlooks; it’s no too late to be reminded that the body is sacred.

‘Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.’

                                                - 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

¿A qué te dedicas?

This week I am staying with the Grandparents at their house on the south coast of Spain.  They’ve lived here for almost seven years now, they love it but they miss the grandchildren, so I try to visit them at least once a year.  My Grandfather is a smart man, a retired businessman with a strong mind.  We usually engage in debates about something or other as we sit under the stars on the porch, his traditional conservatism contrasting with my postmodern liberalism.  It’s a great bonding tool.  A topic that seems to have dominated our conversation this week is the topic of careers.  ‘What do you want to do with your life when you leave university?’

The truth is I have absolutely no idea what I want to do…  Here in Spain the recession has hit harder than most places, surprisingly even worse than in the UK.  People are running around looking for any kind of work they can lay their hands on, men even walking the main roads clutching hand written signs, offering to clean your car inside and out for a mere €3.  The desperation is shocking.  A person’s job is often central to their life.  In most cases people would argue that their job is their life, financial income being their source of food, housing and health care.  As well as bringing such security, our jobs seem to play a huge part in our identity and our social life.  When we introduce ourselves to people we often say our name, age, and what we do for a living.  When we make friends, we are more inclined toward those who have interesting careers, keeping useful contacts to boost our social framework.  It is so easy to judge a persons entire personality based on what they do for a living.

So those of us who are holding that pin, where do we want to place ourselves upon the map of socioeconomic institutes that make up the working world?  At the moment I don’t want to do anything.  But simultaneously I don’t want to do nothing.  So where do I go?  I’ve been discussing various careers with my Grandfather and he has been suggesting areas of work that pay well, careers that haven’t been threatened by the recession.  I feel I suit none of his suggestions.  I find myself considering these jobs merely out of necessity rather than real interest.  But then I think: why should I do something that has no real worth?  After all, what is money gained when precious time is spent?  I’m with Morrissey on this one: ‘I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now… in my life, why do I give valuable time, to people who don’t care if I live or I die?’

So does having a job mean sacrificing your spirit?  Too many people today are doing jobs because they ‘have’ to, the stress and competitiveness of the work place driving people insane.  People have forgotten about the things they really love.  How many people have you heard uttering phrases such as ‘I always wanted to do this but…’ and ‘I wish I’d have tried this when I was younger’?  The pressure of finding a career smothers any real flame of passion that might have burned within us, many of us going for life roles that bring us the greatest financial gain or the strongest sense of security.  Following this comes the death of spontaneity.

I’m not saying that this is the case for everyone.  I’m sure that there are many people that love their job and are quite happy to work hard in a career for the majority of their lives.  I’m simply saying that perhaps we should question the system: how do we know it’s right?  I’m no economist, but it seems to work economically (most of the time), but how does it work for the soul of the individual?  We are not inclined to ask such questions because we are all born into this system, and we are taught from a young age to live and work for our future.  We go to school to learn the basics to then move up to secondary school, then we work hard to attain enough GCSE’s to get into a good college or sixth form, work even more to get sufficient A Levels to get into a good university, and then get lost somewhere between 1^st class degrees, masters degrees and PhD’s.  Then you compete to get into a career, work your ass off, retire and die.  The idea is that you can’t have fun until you retire, but then only during the time between hip replacement operations and queuing for your pension to pay for your TV license before (heaven forbid) you can no longer watch Corrie and Strictly Come Dancing!

It’s depressing to even think about let alone to live it out!  To me it seems clear that the system is all wrong.  Working nine till five in one job doing one thing, day after day after day, is the most torturous idea I can imagine.  Where is the freedom, the passion, the spontaneity.  Where is the living in ‘making a living’?  I know what you’re thinking, ‘what a ridiculous sensationalist idea!’ but why does it have to be so? 

‘…and if you must go to work tomorrow, well if I were you I really wouldn’t bother, for there are brighter sides to life and I should know because I’ve seen them…’

                                                                                   - Steven Patrick Morrissey

A night at the zoo?

After a recent visit to Hanley in Stoke, I feel compelled to write on what I found there…

On a Saturday night I tagged along to a nightclub with an old friend from school, it was called ‘Manhattan’.  After an entry fee of £2, kindly paid for by my friend, I walked in to find a dark room, poorly decorated, with a small dance floor and a long bar.  Not really worth the £2 at all, but I remained hopeful all the same.  My friend and I always used to go to this place in Wolverhampton that looked ten times worse, walls covered in black peeling paint, sticky floor, and absolutely vile toilets! ‘The Planet’ was definitely far from ‘home’.  But we enjoyed it nevertheless.  We loved the music, the people, the bar staff, the tacky freebies, we even learned to love the sticky floor! 

So let me explain what I saw in Stoke and how this made me feel…  The music was pretty awful.  I don’t think it even deserved to be called music.  It wasn’t like that stuff in the charts that is tolerable in a sense that you can at least sing along to it and forget how lame it really is.  But it was just awkward sounds that repeated again and again, each track jumping into the next so that they became indistinguishable.  The room was filled to a high capacity, a much higher ratio of males to females.  The males mostly wore jeans and a shirt or t-shirt.  The females wore hardly anything.  They danced on a platform that ran along one of the walls, while the guys in the club stood below on the floor ogling at them.  From below, I saw some disgusting sights, as the girls put their legs up on the railings and their short skirts raised to reveal an item of ‘clothing’ that I never thought I’d see: crotchless underwear. 

The whole scenario reminded me of one of those fancy restaurants, with a tank of lobsters from which you can choose which creature you want to kill and eat.  But this was at the complete opposite end of the class spectrum.  The guys in the club had the whole night to decide which half naked girl on the podium they wanted to take home and kill her soul.  And unlike the lobsters, the girls were eager to be chosen.  It made me feel physically sick.  I don’t think I’m naïve, I’ve always known that this kind of thing happens, after all I grew up in Wolverhampton! But this was like nothing I’d ever seen before.  Literally every other person in the room was in it for the prize sex at the end.  It seemed to be pointless to even go to the nightclub in the first place, they didn’t want to dance or enjoy themselves with friends, they only had one thing on their agenda, but I suppose they needed somewhere to congregate to find like-minded people…

I felt like I was experiencing a part of hell.  Everywhere I looked I was deeply disturbed.  I wanted to close my eyes and disappear, but I wanted the whole room to disappear with me.  I didn’t want it to be real.  I didn’t want to accept that such things were so ‘normal’ to these people.  I didn’t want to accept that this was happening not only here and now, but recurring over and over in many places… 

            After an hour or so of straining to enjoy myself, I soon lost the strength and it became apparent to my friend that I was miserable.  She asked what was wrong, accusing Nottingham of turning me into a boring stuck up twit.  It made me question myself…  If I could enjoy The Planet, why couldn’t I enjoy this?  Had I really become a snob or was this really the epitome of hell that I’d stepped into? 

I’m not a complete Marxist but I am all for liberation of the oppressed, so this is not an attack of class.  I gave up drinking alcohol just before I came to University in September 2009, but I have more fun when I go out now than I ever used to.  I spend less money, I no longer hit that point of tiredness at 2am, I never get hangovers, I hardly embarrass myself, and the day after I can remember everything that everyone else forgets! It brings a whole new light to going out!  So it’s not that I’m boring at all, or so I believe, but it really was that grotesque a place in reality.  There was absolutely nothing there that I could enjoy, no matter how hard I tried.

So what should I do?  Should I even do anything?  Society is becoming more and more accepting of this kind of behaviour as time goes by.  Even my friend, who was always so like myself, now engaged in this activity and saw it as completely normal.  Is there any stopping it?  I could say the whole ‘I don’t want my children to have to grow up in this world’, but haven’t things gone too far out of control for anyone to change it now?  It made me thankful that I have been saved from that.  I wouldn’t say I’m a ‘good person’, but I am comforted in that I’ve found meaning in my life.  I suppose all I can do now is to pray that others will find meaning too, and do my best to question everyone I can about it.  Too many people choose ignorance over thought.  Human beings were made to question, so that is what we must do, yet so many fail to do so when wrapped up in a world absent of reason.  People have become animals, and thought and reflection have been discarded into the trash of unnecessary life tools.

“Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? … God is dead … And we have killed him.”

- Nietzsche

 Needless to say, I won’t be returning to that place anytime soon…

(This piece is not a personal attack on Stoke, and is based purely on a single experience in one nightclub)

little something/big nothing

A little something I wrote in September 2009:

Well-being seems to crumble when a lost cause begins to rumble in the thunder of your nightmares of the bitter taste and petty cares that hold the heart in a thorny cradle you just don't seem to be able to eat or drink or sleep or breathe you realise that underneath the poison never settles in one place but spreads amongst a web of lace that catches words that look like gold but break the net so this unfolds...