I am reminded of another poem by W.B.Yeats
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)
I certainly feel that things have fallen apart in our Fine Art Department. There is no enthusiasm for this Degree Show. People have disappeared from the course and gone home to paint or do their work, not even appearing on time to prepare their allocated spaces. Some we can’t even contact to find out if they are doing the show. Things seem pointless, there is no sense of cohesion, no sense of fun or excitement, only an underlying anger.
The photography department at UCS have been flooded out with torrential rain and in Glascow the Iconic Mackintosh Art School burnt down last week on the eve of submitting work for their Degree Show.
Elections have shown UKIP and far right parties getting in. There is an anger with the EU and the lack of autonomy in its member countries. The dangerous thing is that UKIP and the far right parties are extreme and fascist – and deeply misogynistic, naturally.
So, there is a general feeling of change, but uneasy change. Where is it all going? And for us, after our show is finished in a couple of weeks, we too go. Fractured, splintered, but perhaps with a greater sense of what a whole should and could be…in a better world.
In the papers, apart from fire, flooding and political change and unease, there has been yet another account of dispicable treatment towards a woman in Pakistan. A young woman of 25, Farzana Iqbal, married a man she loved, but her family wanted her to have an arranged marriage. She was about to meet her husband and go to court in Lahore to register that she hadn’t been kidnapped but had willingly married her man, when her father, brothers and a mob stoned her to death outside the courts. She was three months pregnant. The father has been arrested and says it was an honour killing. He will probably get off. 1000 women a year get killed in the name of honour in Pakistan. That is almost three a day.
We should all be ashamed.
The UK gives Pakistan over £400 million in aid a year.
After this degree, I am going to set up petitions to question aid being sent to countries reverting to medieval ways. What is this aid being used for? These countries are becoming even more barbaric and flaunting it. I don’t want my taxes going to countries where women are treated like mere objects owned by men and murdered infront of courts in broad daylight. And no one gets prosecuted. Petitions work. I have signed enough on Facebook to see that they really do hold power and force Politicians to consider what is being voiced.
Aid should be given in the form of Education – and especially Education for women to empower them and raise their status.
In the UK we need to urge women to both think about and change references to them being owned by their fathers and husbands. We need to really challenge a system where white, middle-aged, middle class men are still in charge.
Apathy is no excuse. Equality in not a natural human characteristic. Fight.
