Back to Jail, this time with a book not a paintbrush… 

angela findlay8 Comments

There was something deeply familiar about the process of entering HMP Wandsworth last week. The first time I was there was in 2003 in my role as Arts Coordinator for the London-based Koestler Arts. I had founded the Learning to Learn through the Arts scheme a year earlier and was co-facilitating a 4-week dance and art project called Beyond Words.

HMP Wandsworth, London

The aim was to bring dance and painting together to create a non-verbal language through which prisoners could express themselves. Each day was a mixture of individual and group exercises that saw the men clambering over tables and chairs to dissolve the formalities of a traditional classroom or splattering paint on paper with Expressionist vigour. Both approaches eventually led to solo multi-media performances and the development of communication skills, camaraderie, trust and sensitivity within the group.

Now, twenty years later, I was re-entering HMP Wandsworth, but this time in the wholly verbal capacity as author of In My Grandfather’s Shadow.

For people who haven’t experienced it, entering a prison can seem synonymous with entering hell. And for many, it probably is. This blog therefore feels unintentionally apposite to Good Friday, the day in the Christian calendar that signifies the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his descension into hell. We have grounds for this picture of infernal misery from exposure to BBC programmes such as Prisoner,   Time,  Disclosure: Prisons on the brink.  Or five series of Prison Break. But my visit couldn’t have felt further from those dark scenes. 

The beautifully organised event was the result of a brilliant collaboration between the Wandsworth Prison Library team and the charities Give a Book and Prison Reading Group (PRG). Generous book donations came from Penguin Transworld and Radio Wano, the prison’s in-house radio station, took care of publicity. I knew from experience how difficult arranging such events can be. Months of dialogue and organisation can be kiboshed by any number of unforeseen occurrences, or simply by time-poor officers’ inability to deliver the prisoners to the room.  

Not on this occasion though. Thirty-five men, mostly already seated, some with copies of my book on their laps, awaited us as we took our seats in front of a display of hardback copies that rivalled any book festival’s. Unlike my regular illustrated talks in which a series of images ties me to a certain chronology of thought, I was able to speak freely, engaging the antennae grown over years working ‘inside’ to gauge the interests and sensitivities of my audience. As I spoke into the men’s intense attention, I sensed cogs turning in brains as they connected my words to their personal situations. So many of my book’s themes speak to their experiences of trauma, addiction, conflict, violence, guilt, shame, depression, intergenerational family legacies… 

Like a muscle memory, my heart opened as they began to engage verbally, asking questions and contributing informed opinions and philosophies of their own to mine. One of the librarians said to me afterwards, ‘They are so deep.’ And yes, their questions dived in at the deep end, not dissimilar to audiences in Germany. Intelligent. Philosophical. They know darkness. And they recognise how you get there. What I, as always, hoped to show was a way out.

At one point, as I related how I had felt ‘at home’ in prison as a young woman, a prisoner suggested that it may have been because they are at the bottom. ‘We are the bottom of society.’ He was right. That is the perception of many. Shame is the ultimate bottom dweller of emotions. And in feeling shamed as a teenager for being half-German, I would have related well to those who resided at ‘the bottom’.

Comment from a prisoner at HMP Wandsworth

I cannot, however, see these men – and I say men as a generalisation because 95% of the prison population is made up of men – as genuinely being at the bottom of the human pile. It is wrong of society to simply clump them together into one unnuanced band of criminal brothers. There are of course some horrendous crimes. But each person is both individual and potentially so much more. Each has a story, a journey of how they got here. And dreams for something different.

One man revealed he had thought about writing his story but felt nobody would be interested. ‘What makes you think that?’ I enquired. ‘Because it would be too dark,’ he replied only to be refuted and encouraged by others with claims that the crime thriller is one of the most popular genres. 

Listening to and briefly meeting the prisoners at this library event didn’t appear to correspond to the prison statistics I regularly quote in my Art behind Bars talks.

A 2022 government review of reading reported: “The most recent data published by the Ministry of Justice shows that 57% of adult prisoners taking initial assessments had literacy levels below those expected of an 11-year-old.” There is nothing new here, but they remain shocking statistics. And yet my experiences tell me that in spite of high rates of ADHD, illiteracy, dyslexia, prisoners are far from ‘thick’ or even uneducated. They may have failed in or been excluded from mainstream education, but all too often that is because they have not received an education appropriate to their learning styles or needs. It’s an education that doesn’t recognise or value what their experiences have taught them about life.

Once the discussions were over, a long queue lined up for signed copies dedicated to names that revealed the audience’s colourful cultural mix. Many imparted tantalising snippets that hinted at reasons for their interest in my subjects… they were from Poland; they were fascinated by alternative perspectives on WW2; they now recognised how their actions might impact their children; they longed for intellectual stimulus. 

L-R: Standing: Sarah Turvey (Founder of PRG) and Mima Edye-Lindner (Director of Projects, PRG) Seated: Me, Paul Eden (Volunteer for an HMP Wandsworth Reading Group), Susanna Wadeson (Penguin Transworld)

The importance of the work of HMP Wandsworth’s Library – headed by Beverley Davies and her Senior Assistant, Hannah Pickering (who was taking the photographs) – and the work of Give a Book, PRG and their reading group volunteers plus all the Arts Projects taking place in prisons around the country cannot be underestimated. I am so grateful for and heartened by it. Traditional classroom settings are not always the way to educate people. There are other ways to inspire minds. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in Citadelle:

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, don’t divide the work and give orders.

Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Last week’s Library Event seemed to do just that as both the below comments from the Library and Prisoner Nr. XXX reveal:

“The guys were really buzzing afterwards, and it was great that other people noticed what was going on and wanted to get involved. All the books were taken which is a real positive.”

Prison Reading Group was founded in 1999 by Jenny Hartley and Sarah Turvey. Together with the team from Give a Book and Director of Projects Mima Edye-Lindner, they delivered 5000+ books to 84 groups in 64 prisons.

If you would like to support them, please go to their websites: https://prisonreadinggroups.org.uk

In Search of Nothing… Part 3. ‘Listen… ‘

angela findlay3 Comments

One of the things that struck me most on my recent trip to Australia was how far the country has come in the 37 years since my first visit. Above all, in acknowledging the darkest aspects of its colonial past: the dispossession, dispersal, and inhumane treatment of First Nations peoples.

It is far from a given that a country admits, let alone apologises and atones for past wrongdoings. One could also question if it is even possible or right for a subsequent generation to apologise for the errors of a previous one. But that is what I found in today’s Australia where few locations or tourist sites, art galleries or museums, brochures or signage do not have a written acknowledgement of a specific Aboriginal people as the rightful custodians of the land. In addition, there are frequently pledges committing to respect these Traditional Owners going forward. 

This is a welcome overturning of the 1835 legal principle of terra nullius – land belonging to no-one – that was implemented throughout Australia as the basis for British settlement and the negation of Aboriginal people as being civilised enough to be capable of land ownership. Even personal email signatures are now used to underline an individual’s support and respect.

I acknowledge the Whadjuk People of the Noongar Nation as the custodians of the land I live and work on.

I respect their enduring culture, their contribution to this city’s life, and their Elders, past and present.

Back in 1986 when I lived in Sydney, I encountered small groups of activists who fought for Aboriginal rights. But attitudes outside the cities, despite the successful 1967 referendum, remained far from close to recognising Australia’s indigenous people as equal citizens in their own land. Even decades after the extreme discriminations of Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic laws and actions had horrified the world, Aboriginal people were regarded as ‘wards of the state’. They were unable to own property or control their own money; they were not allowed to marry or travel without permission. If they lived in or around white communities they were segregated and prevented from using community swimming pools or sitting where they chose in a cinema.

Photo from the 1966 May Day march in Brisbane. Source: Victorian Aboriginal Health Service

I have clear memories of my naive but adventurous, just-turned 22-year-old self bouncing across the north-eastern outback in chunky 4WDs driven by wild ockers. I remember a shoot-out at a nightclub… apparently some Aboriginals were shot at… and us fleeing the scene with extinguished headlights. The police showed up the next morning at our temporary camp on the banks of a (crocodile-infested?) river. They were not interested in the array of guns propped up against the trees, even though these could have been (but thankfully weren’t) the weapons turned against the Aboriginals. Nor did they question the men who would have used them. With apparent nods of approval to the young men’s armoury, the officers demanded to see my passport instead and carted off my terrified, less-ockery dope-head boyfriend for owning a pair of hash scales so tiny they couldn’t possibly have belonged to a dealer warranting incarceration.

This was ‘normal’, I was told back then in response to my instinctive horror at the lack of concern for the welfare of Aboriginal people. Apart from the obvious abhorrence of such a ‘normality’, my natural tendency to root for the underdog was just one reason it all felt so wrong. Another was an inexplicable appreciation of Aboriginal culture with its ephemeral, ceremonial nature and absence of material evidence in the usual forms of temples and artefacts. I loved the simple power of their ancient handprints. The completeness of reality captured in the collections of dot paintings that began to emerge from the deserts in the seventies. I painted with earth pigments in the colours of their art. White, simply put, is the colour of spirit, black is the night, red is the land or blood, and yellow is the sun and the sacred.

by Lance Peck, b. 1975 in Carnarvon WA

I also attended what must have been one of the first Laura Dance Festivals, a 3-day gathering of dance troupes from across Cape York and the Torres Straits held on a sacred site about 4 hours’ drive north of Cairns.

Sunrise at Laura, 1986

My photo album recalls how the Chairman of the festival arrived 2 hours late and, clad in a grass skirt and white and ochre stripes that adorned a generous belly, promptly forgot the name of the woman he was tasked with thanking. Unamused she took over and sternly instructed the dancers not to get drunk but to follow the example of their ancestors and drink wild honey.

I think Fanta was the happy compromise. 

Disappointingly for many Australians, the Voice referendum last October saw 60% of votes pitched against further constitutional recognition of First Nations people. The slogan ‘If you don’t know, vote No’ was eerily reminiscent of some of the Brexit referendum tactics (ahem…lies) that particularly appealed to ignorance or those who felt left behind. 

Nonetheless, in certain places in WA and no doubt all over the continent, I found sincere apologies for Australia’s past treatment of its first people. An Island off the coast of Fremantle, just south of Perth in WA, is one such place. 

Between 1838 and 1931 the beautiful island of Wadjemup, also known as Rottnest Island, served as a prison for approximately 4000 Aboriginal men and boys from Western Australia. At least 373 of these prisoners died in custody and were buried in an area currently referred to as the Wadjemup Aboriginal Burial Ground. Many of them were leaders, law men and warriors, the guardians and carriers of a nation’s knowledge and stories. Their absence created turmoil in their communities and a sense of loss still felt today. 

For decades, insensitivity towards the plight of those prisoners and their families manifested in the decision to transform the Island from an Aboriginal penal settlement to a recreation and holiday destination. As part of this transformation, the area where the burial ground is located was repurposed as a camping ground known as Tentland, and the Quod (main prison building) was converted into a hostel. As in so many countries the world over, the painful history of the Island as a place of incarceration was concealed.

Tentland was only closed in 2007. The Quod hostel now lies behind locked padlocks.

On November 6th, 2021, the Rottnest Island Authority (RIA) Board delivered an official apology to the Aboriginal people of Western Australia for their role in ‘the obfuscation’ of the prison history and the disrespect of past practices:

“We recognise that this has caused great pain and anguish within Aboriginal communities. For this we apologise…. We will continue to work in collaboration with the Whadjuk Noongar people and the wider Aboriginal communities of Western Australia to promote reconciliation and acknowledge the past.”

I can imagine this has been welcomed by most, though it was distressing to visit the excellent little museum only to find the banging music and loud voices of a surfing film drowning out the important and deeply moving – when you could hear them – testimonies of descendants of the those imprisoned here. And while the little port hummed with ice-cream-licking tourists on bicycles, I found myself completely alone walking the periphery of the nearby burial ground, following the instructions of intermittent signs reminding you that the spirits of those who died remain here among the trees, part of the island. 

Listen for a moment.

See and understand.

The spirits of the land

are speaking. Listen…

Kwidja baalap yey – The past is still present. 

Our world is full of conflicts based on collective blame, attributions of guilt and/or a need to redress a national humiliation or wrongdoing. Such a binary dynamic is eternal, cyclical and as old as the world. Admissions of guilt accompanied by apologies are rare and largely avoided for multiple reasons, from not wanting to lose face or moral high ground to fearing being landed with restitution and reparation costs. Retrospective apologies are frequently considered hollow or politically motivated. So what options does that leave?

Australia’s example will be considered by many as flawed and insufficient; too little too late. But the country’s efforts to recognise the pain inflicted is surely better than ignoring its lasting impact. The visionary Ngarinyin lawman David Banggal Mowaljarlai offers us a way forward. Born in 1925 on the Kimberley coast, he lived a traditional life but became adept in both cultures becoming, among other things, a Presbyterian lay minister, a painter, a social justice advocate and a land rights activist who then travelled the world as storyteller, thinker and educator. “We are really sorry for you people,” he said in one of his many broadcasts to ‘whitefellas.’ “We cry for you because you haven’t got meaning of culture in this country. We have a gift we want to give you… it’s the gift of pattern thinking.”

Gallery of Wandjinas (1994) © David Banggal Mowaljarlai or assignee

When I read this is Tim Winton’s ‘Island Home,’ (p.231-3) it clarified to me what I have always loved about Aboriginal art: the innate interconnectivity between human beings, nature and the universe that run far deeper than any divisions of nationality, colour, language, religion etc. Mowaljarlai’s ‘Two Way Thinking’ is a philosophy of mutual respect, mutual curiosity and cultural reciprocity. The uniting principle of ‘mutual obligation’ that became a catchphrase loved by politicians, of course extends to the natural world. To me it offers a genuine way forward that transcends any hopelessness and helplessness we might feel towards the huge problems we all, as a human race, are, or will be facing.

In search of ‘nothing’… Part 2 

angela findlay4 Comments

(You can find Part 1 here)

Roughly 220 miles east of Perth, beyond the salt lakes of the Western Australian Wheatbelt and within the remoteness of Hyden’s various outcrops of mineral-striped granite, the mouth of Mulka’s Cave opened just enough to allow us to clamber inside. With the brash sun denied entry, it took time to adjust to the dimness of leaked light… and silence. That’s when we saw them. 

A few miles away, Hyden Rock, more famously known as Wave Rock, buzzed with flies and visitors posing for selfies and family snaps. It is better served than the cave with a visitor’s centre and trail signs tasked with the nigh on impossible endeavour of condensing 4,500 million years of evolution into digestible snapshots. Like the constellations of night skies, how do you explain the making of some of the oldest exposed rocks anywhere on earth? 

Well, with a little appropriation, I am going to give it a go. For to travel in Australia is not only to experience the elements as art forms of uncompromising intensity and beauty. It is also to engage with Australian history. And that involves confronting another story of darkness that relates to the pitch dark episode of more recent times that many people will be remembering this Saturday 27th January… Holocaust Memorial Day.

Approximately 2,500 million years ago, a mass of granite rock known as the Yilgarn Block was intruded into the earth’s crust right across the southern half of Western Australia. It remained below the surface as the first plants and trees emerged, as the first amphibians, reptiles and insects moved, as the dinosaurs came and went between 230 and 130 million years ago. Meanwhile, hidden out of sight, a process of sub-surface weathering was occurring in three massive phases of erosion. 

Water that ran off Hyden Rock seeped into cracks and nibbled away at the structure of the granite. While winds and heat would dry the upper layers of soil, deep down it remained wet and salty, rotting the rock face and breaking it down. When natural erosion finally lowered the surface level of the surroundings, the crumbled rock also washed away leaving a 25-meter-high and 110-meter-long crest rising from the darkness of geological history. To put humans into perspective, if the whole evolution of the earth was reduced to a single calendar year, modern man would make his entrance onto the world stage in the final half-second of December 31st!

The palette of coloured stripes is created by water’s impact on the tiny lichens (the first plant form to colonise granite), mosses and blue-green algae that stain and streak the stone with shades of black, orange and silver.

Similar processes occurred at the nearby domed granite ‘Humps,’ one of which houses Mulka’s Cave. Crafted over millions of years by salt, water and wind and painted in strokes of ochres, greys and pale cobalt dotted with small green shrubs, they were home to the vital gnamma holes. These were Aboriginal people’s natural water holes capable of storing rainwater run-off and replenished from underground stores. From the 1890s, the influx of thirsty new arrivals made these already vital sources of water even more precious than the gold they came to mine. The sacred gnamma holes became scenes of conflict. Many were drained, destroyed or polluted, others were lined and claimed as the gold diggers’ own. 

The pattern from there on is all too depressingly familiar. Domination, subjugation, exploitation, cruelty, destruction, suffering, death. A particular human / inhumane trait prevails the world over when man is consumed by greed and a sense of superiority and entitlement. But is that our true nature or an aberration of what we are designed to be?

One could say that since 1633 when Galileo was convicted of heresy for upending almost 2000 years of western scientific thinking by claiming the sun – rather than the earth – was the centre of the universe, there has been strong resistance, especially by the Catholic Church, to the ensuing demotion of man’s position in the world. 

Behind this refusal lies the still-existing widespread conviction of alpha male’s rightful position at the pinnacle of nature. In the mid 19th century, a complete misinterpretation of ‘survival of the fittest’, the catchphrase that became shorthand for Darwin’s ground-breaking theories on evolution, conveniently advanced his apparent confirmation that physical dominance triumphs. 

Such misunderstandings and claims of man’s importance and right to dominate have had devastating consequences, most recently seen in the ideologies and doctrines such as Nazism, eugenics, racial and gender discrimination and society’s policies on and treatment of the ‘weaker’ more vulnerable in society – the elderly, sick, poor, lesser-abled, foreign… and, in Australia, the indigenous Aboriginals and their descendants. (Hmmm… I can feel a Part 3 to this blog might be needed.)

Fortunately, countless scientists of different disciplines are finding that it is not physical dominance that assures survival but the human traits of friendliness, kindness, generosity, sacrifice, empathy, cooperation.

Compassion, for example, stems from a really old part of the brain. It activates the vagus nerve – the longest bundle of nerves in the human parasympathetic nervous system. Research shows how feelings of caring for someone in need activate the vagus nerve. Have a listen to this. It’s not my area of expertise, but it feels all too relevant to some of the problems in the world today. 

When I left England at the beginning of December, I realised I felt saturated and helpless in the face of the wrongness and tragic outcomes of human actions, both past and present. (For background you can read my November Blog.)

Travelling through the landscape of the Western Australian outback washed, warmed and blew the density away creating endless space… a blank inner canvas. It was a form of recalibration and alignment with nature. A state of empty ‘nothing’ full of potential and hope. And that’s what I saw in Mulka’s Cave when I saw ‘them’.

As my eyes acclimatised to the dipped light, I found myself surrounded by the traces of 3-4000-year-old, possibly much older, hands waving gently from the walls.

Some printed, others stencilled, they revealed the inextricable interplay of positive and negative space, of simultaneous absence and presence, the creative dance of inner and outer. The entirety of the world quite literally in the palm of a hand. 

These early displays of human creativity seem to bridge the synthetic divisions of secular modernity and the differences that lead to wars. They close the false divides between past, present and future to depict human beings’ true position in the scheme of things. As part of a greater whole.

To me, those ancient hands that refused to spoil or damage what their ancestral deities had made in the Dreamtime prove that we are both the created and creators. That we are both all and nothing. 

With this blog and in a very different way to usual, I acknowledge Holocaust Memorial Day on Saturday 27th January and remember the millions of people who were brutally murdered by those who could not see that ultimately, we are one.

In search of ‘nothing’… part 1

angela findlay3 Comments

My yearning for ‘nothing’ has been growing incrementally over the past few years. I have alluded to variations of apparent nothingness in my book and previous blogs when I discuss ‘negative space’, ‘the feminine principle,’ the vital pause at the start of Beethoven’s 5th, all expressions of that immaterial level of life that evade measurement or proof by current instruments of science. It is space, in every sense of the word.

Ever since my first and only trip there in the mid-eighties, Australia’s unique form of emptiness has tempted me back. Its vast cobalt-domed red plains sealed by 360˚ of horizon and uncluttered by physical landmarks of human endeavour older than 235 years. Here the world could well be flat. For the mind expands unhindered in all directions, stretching until the last strands of taut linear thought surrender their elasticity to slip like well-worn pyjama bottoms into a useless pile around the ankles.

The island continent is a landmass that cannot be understood with the brain. It must be embodied, felt. Having travelled there between the wars, a confounded D.H. Lawrence wrote in Kangaroo (1923): “You feel you can’t see, as if your eyes hadn’t the vision in them to correspond with the outside landscape.” 

The Western Australian novelist, Tim Winton, expands on this inability to process what is around you in his book Island Home. It requires time. Duration and experience. Submission and waiting. ‘Space was my primary inheritance,’ he writes of his upbringing. ‘I was formed by gaps nurtured in the long pauses between people.’

I recognise the impossibility of putting the sensory vocabulary from the 18 months spent here in my early twenties into words. And yet, a residual, visceral resonance with the land, aboriginal culture and those ‘gaps’ remained through the decades despite my disproportional terror of almost every native creature that swims, slithers or hops. 

One of the aims of this trip to the inland and coastal terrain of Western Australia was to visit old housemates who shared that vibrant formative period in Sydney. Other motivations came from a need to escape the increasing compactness of a busy work schedule and a head filled to the brim with daily horror stories of escalating conflicts, the non-sense of current politics and power struggles, the dreaded false Gods of ‘economic growth’ and technological ‘progress’ and the cold soggy winter shades of grey. I wanted to blow my mind wide open in order to (re)connect with a more primal relationship to space and time. And life itself.

Departing from Perth on 15th December, a friend from Melbourne and I loaded fuel, water and food into a 4WD Toyota Landcruiser ‘troupy’ converted into a camper van clearly designed for a contortionist. Heading north-east we followed the Sat Nav’s increasingly sparse instructions until a lazy voice told us to just ‘drive straight for 280km.’ And then another 250. And then another.

Barely turning the steering wheel except to overtake 60-meter-long road trains bearing heavy loads of ready-made houses or industrial monsters destined for the mines, we watched as the golden fields of the wheat belt dried and darkened into the deep ochres of the outback. The green foliage and white trunks of swaying gum trees gradually gave way to more sclerotic scrubland as earth and sky baked in the unrelenting rage of 44˚ sunrays. With rivers and gorges evaporated and all sensible holidaymakers having headed south, meet-and-greet parties of thirsty flies eagerly awaited us at each stop to feast on our eyelids, nostrils and lips. 

“One seems to ride forever and come to nothing and to relinquish at last the very idea of an object.” Anthony Trollope in the 19th Century

While indicators of bush fire risks threatened, the surreal warnings of floods made us salivate. It was only when we reached the white sand shores of Cape Range that we were introduced to the element of liquid. Turquoise waters busy with turtles and unfazed multi-coloured fish that populate the coral of the fringing Ningaloo Reef.

Water, water may have been everywhere, but there was not a drop to drink. No taps, no showers, no quenching glass to fill. Here the elements don’t provide a mere backdrop to human dramas. They are the drama. And they rarely disappoint. The very molecules that make up earth, sea, air and heat seem packed more tightly to consolidate into physical entities that vie to destroy each other in fierce games of rock – paper – scissors. 

As we travelled southwards down the coast we passed orange monuments of termite mounds, the jagged teeth and rounded limestone phalli of the Pinnacles Desert. We looked down from heady heights onto a mottled green lagoon in which spooky shapes of sharks and stingrays silently moved about their day isolated from the inky depths. We shuffled along eerie beaches made from deep swathes of white shells emptied of their inhabitants and lined by water too salty to enter. We climbed ragged gorges shaped by cyclonic rains and wind and home to black-flanked rock wallabies, paddled in silver-pink salt lakes and swam through mazes of coral. Each scene could have been a movie set… and a sci-fi one at that.  

It’s not surprising that three weeks on I am still feeling the ever-changing landscape whisper its secrets into the spaces within my mind and body. With both deliberately denied all news, social media and the familiarities of home, it is easier to hear.

For many visitors and natives, the landscape is daunting, monotonous, melancholic, ugly. But for some it is an acute experience. I find myself inspired by the clean-cut lines of the horizon that stretches in all directions as far as the eye can see dividing opaque blocks of cobalt and red ochre or bleached cerulean, salted turquoise and pristine white into the containers of empty space. 

Much of Western Australia is made up of a landscape where the marks of two centuries of colonial successors appear to merely scratch the surface with straight asphalt lines and low-lying bungalows ducked under corrugated roofs in an attempt to escape oppressive heat and excess cost. To the trained eye, however, non-indiginous man’s marks are much deeper and more destructive… in places devastating. But there is no getting away from it, we are a mere blink in the long timeline of this ancient geology. 

There were moments I too longed for the containment of four solid walls, a chance to withdraw from the wild and hibernate, as I am accustomed to doing at this time of year. And it was indeed within the cool damp walls of a dimly lit sacred cave that I found stunning evidence of the nothing I have been seeking…

To be continued… Part 2 will follow soon!

Can one be utterly awe-struck and ethical when it comes to the United Arab Emirates?

angela findlay5 Comments

As Cop28 UAE drew to its unsatisfactory conclusion, it felt ironic to find myself standing in the Rub’ al Khali desert south of Abu Dhabi, home to the largest oilfield in the world, learning from a little tour into the dunes how fossil fuels were created from, well, fossils. I know, duh, so obvious. But they are the fossils of the living creatures that died out when the earth heated and killed them all. It was one of those kind of cosmic full circle / cycle moments. 

I was never naturally drawn to the Middle East, but when an opportunity arose to visit the United Arab Emirates, I embarked on the trip with the same determination with which I approached the research behind my book on WW2: to suspend judgement of perceived villains in order to try to understand, in this case those who are producing the black sticky substance that is now threatening to kill us all. 

Within the context of the environmental disaster story, it is all too easy to dismiss places such as Dubai as mere playgrounds for foreign fat cats, one Big Dick competition between oil-rich nations with just-because-we-can attitudes. Yet within minutes of my arrival, my jaw was hanging open and it rarely closed over the following week.

My astonishment came not so much from the giddying heights of shiny vertical monoliths thrusting into an intense cobalt sky scribbled with diagonal crane arms, but from the fact that less than eighty years ago when much of Europe lay in ruins, this whole area was desert inhabited by nomadic Bedouin living in tents. After so many years focused on the destruction of war, I found it staggering, humbling, inspiring even to witness construction on such a scale: 360° infinity pools suspended 200 meters in the air, restaurants, offices, malls, endless apartments (all serviced by smiley Indians, Pakistanis and Africans keen to make money as most Emiratis don’t work or even live here.) Not to mention the Burj Khalifa, the worlds tallest building at 830 meters…

Further down the coast in Abu Dhabi, a brand-new Louvre, a Guggenheim in the making, the breath-takingly beautiful Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and vast Qasr Al Watan Presidential Palace… (in order below)

Terrible inequalities within this gleaming urban landscape are inevitable and as old as the world. But for once I allowed myself to temporarily look beyond the blatant, at times nauseating bling and consumerism and enjoy areas where sheer skill and innovation meet deeply considered, exceptionally designed aesthetics and architecture.

A few days of cycling through the different districts that transform into twinkling wonderlands as the red ball of the sun plummets behind the horizon, left me questioning the ethics of my unstoppable sense of awe… admiration even. Was it misplaced within the context of all that is wrong with Dubai, excessive wealth, power, oil? Or did it arise from the sense that I was witnessing the creation of modern-day equivalents to the buildings of antiquity? Cathedrals, pyramids, temples… also built using underpaid workforces or slaves and designed to reflect the beliefs of the times and honour the God(s) of a particular culture. From the widespread secular perspective of the 21stcentury, those Gods were clearly false. And yet we still appreciate with wonder what was created in their name. 

What particularly struck me were the gaps between the buildings so integral to the overall impact of this brand new, place. The negative spaces of empty sky between the materiality of the physical manifestations. 

Materialism, in the philosophical sense of the word, started with a shift in the perception of reality from a focus on the invisible, creative force of life, often located far above, to the physical world below. It was the transition Giotto made in art in the 14th century from the gold or deep blue heavens of Byzantine art to the cerulean sky of the natural world. 

I initially decided these glitzy skyscrapers were obvious ‘Temples to Oil’ designed to boast and out-do competitors in height and status. But a week with my brother, who has lived and worked in the Middle East for over a decade, made me see it is not as simple as that. That they are less odes to oil and more a demonstration of what can be done with money. 

Ultimately I could not live in such a place. Far more appealing were the small coastal town of Khasab in the Musandam region of North Oman where brightly clothed children waved at us from dusty building plots and pristine fjords surrounded by soft golden cliffs were home to dolphins, tropical fish and small isolated villages of fishermen.

I wonder whether one can compare the money made from oil with the money made from drug dealers. Are the dealers to blame or is it the need for any destructive substance that lies at the root of the problem or dependency that inevitably develops? I have much more to learn, digest and think about and I am aware my ponderings are based on the superficial experience of an uninformed tourist. But the trip has undoubtedly broadened my mind and changed some of my perceptions of the world. For starters, it made me want to throw all my carefully segregated recyclables straight into the bin… what is the point after all?! But the idea of blaming some generic environmental ‘baddy’ also reminds me of the Dire Straits lyrics: “When you point your finger cos your plan fell through, you got three more fingers pointing back at you.” After all, don’t I belong to the nations who discovered oil, grew their industries, wealth and world influence from it, enjoyed the comforts and conveniences it brought and subsequently became utterly dependent on it?

If I don’t get another chance, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for reading my Blogs and to wish you very happy, peaceful festivities ahead, warm homes and hearts and a wonderful start to 2024.

Rage or Disengage…? A slightly expanded take on ‘Never Again’

angela findlay5 Comments

This Remembrance weekend has been receiving more publicity than most years. As I write, at 11am on 11.11. hundreds of thousands of people are gathering in London, not to observe the traditional one-minute silence, though many I am sure will, but to march in support of Palestine. Not far from the Cenotaph, police are clashing with far-right protestors chanting “England ‘til I die”. 

I don’t want to get into the heated debates that have criticised or defended the timing and legitimacy of these marches. But, being a blogger about (among other things) the importance of remembering the past, I would like to take a step back from the specifics to soft-focus on the significance of Remembrance Day and in particular on the often heartfelt, sometimes platitudinous mantra of ‘Never Again.’

What do we mean when we say ‘Never Again’? The original ‘Nie Wieder’ slogan appeared in post-war Germany and the words are usually used in association with the Holocaust and other genocides. In Berlin on 9th November, to mark the 85th anniversary of the 1938 November pogroms widely known as Kristallnacht, the words ‘Nie Wieder ist jetzt’ – ‘Never again is now’ – were beamed onto Berlin’s Brandenburg Gates. An all too timely reminder as since the Hamas attacks on Israelis on 7th October, antisemitism has been on the rise. Not just in Germany, but globally. 

‘Never again’ is of course a passionate, urgent and vital reminder to never allow anything like the Holocaust to happen again. I end all my talks on Germany’s culture of apology and atonement with exactly that call. And for younger generations, I add Michael Rosen’s warning about fascism:

“I sometimes fear that people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress worn by grotesques and monsters as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis. Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you…” 

Both are a call to each one of us to be awake and to take responsibility. But what meaning can Never Again have for those of us who like to think we are not particularly susceptible to or guilty of antisemitism or discrimination anyway? (A huge debate in itself, but not for right now)

Last month, after talking with a Jewish friend about the dilemma of not knowing what to think, feel or do in the wake of the desperate situation, she sent me a draft of an essay she was working on. In it she broadened out the Never Again message to include all humanity: “The ‘task’ of the Holocaust has come out of the shadows and into the foreground with blistering clarity in recent weeks – and if the foundation of this task is to honour the pledge ‘never again’, this pledge must apply to all humanity. It is not exclusive to the Jewish people; to transfer the trauma of one population on to another is no victory.” (The full version Beyond Binaries by Miranda Gold will be available soon.)

Much has been written about this. Indeed, I discuss it in In My Grandfather’s Shadow at the end of Chapter 22, ‘Lest we forget’. But recently I have discovered another level of instruction in those two words. It asks us not to other ‘others’ on any level. Because that is when the seeds of barbarity and atrocity are sown.

Most of my work is dedicated to trying to see and understand the ‘other side’ of a story. It is one of the things for which I am grateful to my dual-nationality. Scorsese’s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon, however, highlighted where I was failing. Starring Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, all brilliant in their roles, it depicts the deception and murderous treatment of the Osage Native Americans in the 1920s by white settlers after their oil rights.

Four Osage sisters (played by (L-R): JaNae Collins, Lily Gladstone, Cara Jade Myers and Jillian Dion

I hated the film. So much so that I fell asleep! I now see that I literally couldn’t take any more of what I would afterwards clumsily call ‘white man’ violence and cruelty. I basically dissociated – a common trauma response. Of course it is not only white men who are violent and cruel. Nor is it all men. But in that moment, on the back of an intense schedule of talks about prisoners (96% of which are men), Nazis, WW2, Britain’s colonial past etc. etc. and against the backdrop of Hamas’s heinous attacks, Israel’s deadly retaliation and the disturbing revelations of the Covid enquiry to name a few – I had identified with the victims of these historical male-dominated actions. The attitudes within the film scratched my own childhood wounds of being shamed and othered as ‘German’ (at the time completely synonymous with Nazi) and tipped me into complete overwhelm and overload. The dense darkness of psychic saturation had nowhere to go other than through what felt like a primeval roar. 

I have no doubt that many people, maybe you too, have at times felt something similar. 

A couple of uncomfortable encounters over the next few days in which one person raged and another decidedly disengaged made me realise that my response to some highly generalised image of ‘man’ was no way to proceed. I could feel myself slipping into a form of oppositional camp, taking a side, seeking the solidarity of a “team”, as Biden unhelpfully phrased it recently. For in that moment, I was doing exactly what I personally feel the call for ‘Never again’ is asking us not to do. I was creating a binary division between myself and those I saw as doing or being responsible for ‘wrong.’ I blamed ‘them’, while licking the wounds of a collective (female) ‘us’. Statistically and historically some of this ‘male’/’female’ categorisation has a degree of reality and validity, but it is not the way forward. 

Adam and Eve – Lucas Cranach (around 1537)

It is in othering that we can justify discrimination and violence.

It is in othering that we can harm and be harmed.

It is in othering that we all become capable of failing to uphold humanity’s plea for ‘Never again’.

So, for me, this Remembrance Sunday is not only a day to honour the memories of our own fallen who served, defended and died, and to renew an annual pledge to peace in the world that clearly isn’t working. It is an occasion to also extend our thoughts way beyond our own shores to all people who have died and are dying in conflicts and wars. And to reach deep into our hearts to help heal the divisions that are leading to discrimination and violence in every land. By searching hard for the fellow human being in all perceived enemies and all those we vehemently disagree with, no matter how hard that is; by finding the place that lies somewhere between the external roar of internal rage and the deadening desire to turn away and disengage, we can remain in our hearts. We can keep sight of our innate oneness. That, to me, at least makes some sense in a world that increasingly doesn’t make any.

Further Reading

Never again is now’: 1938 Nazi pogrom anniversary marked in Germany by Kate Connolly

Hollywood doesn’t change overnight: Indigenous viewers on Killers of the Flower Moon