It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything publicly and a lot has changed, or it should’ve. I’ll wrap up my life in the past three months in a nutshell, it’s probably good for me to do anyway. January I started back at university, online and from my mums house. I’ve done a lot of skateboarding and hanging out with old pals which has been a real blessing. My mate Haden built a hefty halfpipe, 5’5 vert ramp, mental. Uni is going well, I’m actually excelling in the circumstances it seems, I have learned that I need to simplify all the worldly bullshit in my life in order to produce work consistently.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my situation with Ainhoa, we’ve been apart now for 3 and a half months and there’s still no sign of things getting better. Travel restrictions and Brexit are threatening us at every turn but we live in a world of time-travelling and instant messaging so despite it all we’ve managed to hold it all together. But it’s tough, the basic elements of life are being taken from us. We shouldn’t give up our liberties so easily because we need human contact, social interaction and empathy towards strangers right now.
I’ve gained comfort in my surroundings but lost a lot of the experience and uncertainty which was driving me when I was abroad. I plan to get through to Germany if I can again this summer, a few good friends have suggested we get a flat together in Berlin and I’m so down. I love it back home in Hopeman and I appreciate all its given me in form and flare but I’ve gotta move on soon. This island seems to be going under as the tides rise higher at times. If I had a boat I’d be off it already. I’ve never felt a huge loyalty to here, never really did fit in but that’s the same for everyone I think. Lacan touches on this when he talks about the Real and reality, how we are sold the idea to be ourselves and that our objective surroundings are perpetually subjective to our own image of ourselves. We tend to create fictional identities for ourselves, and this is okay, as long as it doesn’t end in people being discriminated against or bullied out of their homes. I have been thinking a lot of about these imaginary lines which separate our grass from theirs, it comes down to identity I think. How we position ourselves in social situations and wish others to treat us. I’m Scottish by blood, just a tad of Irish in there for good measure but I don’t see any issues with people sharing our land and home. Historical thinking can be messy and rightly so, seeing as we are all rewriting the history books every day, one step at a time. It really helps to look back I feel though, the media wants us to be directly focused on the problems they present to us. Agree or disagree? Tourist or terrorist? Things are just so much more complex than this and there are too many people suffering from the effects of multiple drone strikes and unimaginable emotional pain that they are forced to move, to learn new languages, integrate into the belly of the shark. When they first get through the rows and rows of razor sharp teeth at every international border, they travel down the gullet of the beast spectating and soaking in the juices of all the other poor fish who’ve been made mince of, the intestines chew them up dissolving their cultures with venomous precision until they emerge from the stomach, reborn and ready for work… Whether or not Dominic Cummings fed the masses Brexit fuelled weetabix or not is irrelevant here, what matters it’s what’s tangible and what we can change. People complain about not having jobs because of the immigrants? Here’s one, get off your lazy arse and help people, we don’t know enough pain in the west anymore, we‘ve been on top so long that we‘ve forgotten how to see up instead of down. Boots are made for walking not stomping contrary to popular belief, and a walk in another’s shoes can give us a lot more than Piers Morgan’s ever will. I think it’s about time folk stopped strutting about like show ponies and became the stallions they’ve been pretending to be and carry people along with them in the journey. What are we trying to build here? T.h.e.r.e. A.r.e B.i.g.g.e.r. P.r.o.b.l.e.m.s. A.t. H.a.n.d…
Campbell Barclay 