I've recently become aware of a genuine reluctance, in me, to get involved with
projects outside Scotland. The only answer I can find is that ‘Scotland’ itself
has become the project that I am working on at the moment. When I commit myself
to a project this always involves a place and I find myself quickly falling
hopelessly and deeply in love with that place. It is important to say that this
is not an unquestioning love but rather a love that is committed to its object becoming
the best it can be – even if that means asking some uncomfortable questions
along the way.
As a public
artist, my stock and trade are questions of identity, belonging, aspiration,
foundation and momentum…….to live in a country that is embarked on a national
project about just these issues is an extraordinary feeling….why on earth would
I want to work elsewhere??
What follows
is my first blogpost about ‘the big project’ – as I try to play my part in this
huge conversation by applying my own experience of processes of change to the
idea of Scottish Independence.
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| 'we must be crap because we are a colony of a crap country' |
From the
top
Beginning any project I have am used to explaining ‘who’ I
am and how I came to be engaged in the work. I have an English father and a
Scottish mother – I was born and lived to the age of 18 in the SouthWest of
England……I have conducted pretty much my entire professional career as an
artist whilst living in Scotland. As a child I was very aware that my mother
was ‘different’ – when I first started living in Scotland I was quickly realised that this ‘difference’ was the fact that she was culturally Scottish. Settling in Scotland i found the first place in my travels that I felt fully ‘at
home’ and ‘understood’ by those around me. I have married a Scottish woman and
my daughter was born here and has lived her entire life in Scotland.
Nationalism?
Let me be
100% clear on this – I am someone who has been committed to socialist
principles of equality and comradeship across all peoples and nationalities.
All nationalist projects through history that aim to establish the superiority
of one group above another are abhorrent to me.
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| Still Game |
So – what
first?
I am
interested in is what is best for a place called Scotland. When I start on a
project I begin with a period of research – this takes the form of :
·
Reading historical information
·
Discussing with anyone I can find the current
’state of things’ and the things that folk (both within and without)
identify with the place
Together
with the above, I spend a lot of time walking and ‘being’ in a place and taking
some sort of personal barometric reading of the currents of momentum at work in
the place.
The next
stage is to take some risks and feedback some (often provocative) thoughts
about the place through some form of action or performance in the place.F
The ties
that bind
Referring
back to my comments on Nationalism? above, it is fundamental here to understand
that what I am going to talk about are not shared values that are unique to
‘born and bred Scots’ – I believe that any group, any place is founded on a
certain agreement on some core principles of how we behave towards to folk we
know and folk we don’t. This is where the discussion of Scottishness begins and
ends for me - I believe in a nation that is welcomes in all who are prepared to
embrace these shared values and live by them.
I am happy
to call these values ‘Scottish values’ and take part in discussions about how
these differ from other national values….but always with the premise that I
respect that right of others to live according to their own values (as long as
I do not find their values to be contrary to basic human rights and principles
of respecting the environment that we all share as human beings)
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| Rev I M Jolly |
So what’s
the problem?
Usually a
project starts because someone has identified a need….so what is the need in
Scotland?– why are we even having this discussion if we can all just live
according to our shared values and get on with things?
The problem
as I see it is that the distance (in
every sense of the word) between Scotland and the decision making power that
directs the future of Scotland has become unmanageably large.
Making it
personal
‘the
personal is political’ is well known as a slogan of the feminist movement – it
is a useful reference here in outlining my first statement (‘action’) in the
big project.
My
contention is that this ‘distance from power’ is skewing one of the core Scots
values into a cancer that is eating away at the nation and threatens to make it
terminally ill.
We are
familiar with modesty as a Scots
value – a value that means doing your thing quietly and certainly not making a big fuss. In ideal circumstances this modesty is held in balance with fierce pride/commitment in a universal right to exist and be heard….resulting in a potent mixture (that I understand to be) at the core of the
independent spirit and fairness that underpins this country.
To maintain
a healthy balance between these two key characteristics requires the ability to
exercise a significant degree of control over one’s own personal and group
existence.
The modesty that I have identified above
also manifests as self-depreciatory (brilliant!) humour. However, without the balance of pride also being present this
self-depreciation and modesty risks tipping over into a dangerous lack of
self-esteem and resulting lack of confidence. In cultural terms, I would identify one of these tipping points in
Irving Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’ where some of the laughter is genuinely painful to
anyone who cares about the people of Scotland.....are we in danger of crossing over
into a place where modesty has become self-harm and we have become unable to
see the difference.
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| Trainspotting |
So many
times have I been in meetings in Scotland when all of a sudden you are aware of
an unstoppable group dynamic – the ‘someone else is in charge moment’ is upon
you and the group will wallow for a good length of time in the comforting bath
of ‘there is nothing we can do about anyone this….it is beyond our control’.
For those who came to the meeting to try and make things happen – there is
nothing to do but wait for this moment of collective ritual to pass….it will
pass and you will move onto more positive ground – but at a deeper level, a little more
self-harm has been inflicted and the place we love has lost a little more
capacity to heal and grow anew.
This
situation exists at the level of personal health also – Chief Medical Officer
for Scotland – Sir Harry Burns talks about the ‘mortality issue’ with great
erudition and compassion. It has actually become part of the self-depreciatory
(harming) humour to take a grudging pride in the fact that parts of Scotland
have a life-expectancy that is the
lowest in Europe and on a par with parts of the ‘Third World’. Harry Burns punctures the myth that
physical factors are the dominant cause of early death – he explains that the
‘West Coast Diet’ of alcohol, fried food and cigarettes is actually practiced
elsewhere in Europe in even more extreme forms (he gives examples in some of
the Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union) and yet in these countries people live longer than in Scotland
despite a ‘worse lifestyle’…..so what is the difference?
Harry Burns
identifies that in Scotland people feel less
control over their own lives and the resulting mental and physical despair
(coupled with lifestyle….and most likely contributing to the self-harm of bad
diet) is the real cause of early death in Scotland.
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| Trainspotting |
This is
the reason…..
that I am
interested in the idea of Independence for a the Scottish Nation – because I
believe that at a fundamental level of health and wellbeing, as a group of
people, we need the opportunity to re-take the responsibility for our own
future. I want to see that balance between modesty and pride restored from the
looming spiral of self-loathing and paranoia.
Whats
next?
Time is
running out – there is a tipping point in the wellbeing of any organism beyond
which it loses the belief in its own ability to restore itself (eg one of
Irving Welsh’s junkies). Everyone who still believes in the potential in the
worth of the people of Scotland needs to become a positive part of this debate
–so that, whether we become an independent nation or remain part of the UK, then
we are doing so for the good of all our fellow citizens and the experience of
the next 2 years will be a platform from which we can all build together.
ONE THING IS CLEAR….
Doing nothing
is NOT an option….the Independence debate is NOT a distraction from the ‘real issues of the day’ it is
clearly and fundamentally proposed as the means of dealing with the very
biggest issues of the day….the future of our land and our children
F I have come to the
conclusion that all the projects I am currently involved in eg Govan, Dumfries
etc are all part of the ‘big project’ and the temporary actions I am making
there are all probing at the question of Scotland….hence my reluctance to work
elsewhere
