Myanmar Girl – The Musical

In order to explain the current Burmese situation I propose a musical called ‘Myanmar Girl’ (see what I did there?)

Along the lines of ‘Springtime for  Hitler’  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springtime_for_Hitler  it would tell the story of the rise of Aung San Suu Kyi  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi  from girlhood to the present day.

The musical would open on a gloomy house where Aung San Suu Kyi is being held under arrest; but after a sad beginning the young woman would rise and sing the song ‘Democracy’, outlining her hopes for Burma.  Behind her is a stone tablet engraved with the principle ‘freedom and democracy for all’.  The song would include some principles of Gandhi (cue Bollywood-style dancers in loin cloths) and the musical would continue with numbers such as ‘No, Mr Junta, I won’t Stand’ and ‘Let Me Out’.  The most affecting scene would be her acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize and the high point is where she is made political leader of Burma.  But after that it all goes downhill and in the second half a chorus of Rohingya Muslims appear to sing the song ‘Let My People Stay’.  The Muslim leader even goes personally to ask ASSK to intervene but she has become selectively deaf: behind her he notices that the stone tablet has been altered and now reads ‘freedom and democracy for all (except the Rohingya Muslims)’.  Disgusted, he sings the song ‘1984’ and leaves.  The musical ends with ASSK alone, deserted by all her followers, sitting in the same house where she began.

A farce, you say?  Inappropriate, you say?

Hmm…

Kirk out

The Prince of Paradox

There’s going to be a lot of Cohen on this blog in the coming days, so hang onto your hats just as he is in this photo:

The thing I want to write about today is his gift for presenting paradox.  As first of all a Jew and later a Zen Buddhist, Cohen was very drawn to what he saw as the paradoxes inherent in human life; and today’s song illustrates this beautifully – as well as being utterly timely.  In fact it’s tempting to wonder whether the election of the man whom I shall refer to only as Mr T, is what convinced him to go.  My tribute to this side of his work is very short: as I have said, Leonard was a guru of sorts for me; someone who seemed to show the way – or a way – to be an artist in this world, to handle fame graciously whilst never compromising in following his own voice.  That above all is what I respected in him.  Anyway, Leonard was the perfect guru for me because he would never had wanted to be anyone’s guru.  So that makes him perfect for someone like me, because like the Groucho Marx of discipleship, I would never choose for a guru, someone who actually wanted to be one.  So here’s my little wild bouquet for today:

Guru

Leonard

you taught me to embrace paradox

with both hands tied

behind my back.

He also taught self-deprecation.  This was a hallmark of his public style right from the sixties – when it was fashionable – through the nineties and after, when it most certainly wasn’t.  When every other performer was relentlessly engaged in self-promotion he undercut himself with jokes.  He was famous for being gloomy, but this was most unfair.  A lot of his songs are full of jokes, and when interviewed he had the journalists in stitches with his wry, self-deprecating humour.

So here’s today’s song.  I hope you find it as funny and as timely as I do:

And it may well be from the very concert we were at!

Kirk out

Once again I have not an idea in my head as I start this post.  The theme for today is supposed to be political and social thought; however I do not have a political or social thought, not even of any kind.  Well, that’s not true: I have plenty of thoughts but they’re all of the utterly weary ‘everyone’s saying this and we’ve been saying it for years but no-one’s listening’ kind.  Oh, there is one thing though: on Saturday I shall be going to the National Left Unity meeting in London.  This is the last national meeting before November when the founding conference will decide exactly what the party is and what it is to be called.  I know, I thought it was just going to be called ‘Left Unity’ as well, but some people want it to be called ‘the Left Party’.  It’s just the sort of question that generates a lot of pointless hot air, in my opinion.  But there you are…

I’m hoping that the national meeting will be as positive as our last local one was: not that everyone was in agreement, but that things got sorted fairly amicably and decisions that needed to be made, were made.  I simply cannot stand pointless argument.  I would rather – in many ways – end up with the wrong decision than have hours of wearying debate which don’t get anywhere.  The trouble with organisations which try to be totally democratic (as they should) is that there is debate about everything: for example, on Saturday the agenda contains some rather bureaucratic-looking items at the beginning, and someone in the local group expressed the opinion that these items should not be on the agenda.  Therefore what could happen is that time is spent in discussing whether or not these items should be on the agenda – a debate which wastes more time and energy than the original items would have.  It’s the kind of thing that drives me to despair.

But!  Let us hope for better things.  I’ll let you know next week how it goes.  Meanwhile here’s the national site if you want to know more:

http://leftunity.org/

Oo look – I did have some ideas after all!

Kirk out

Is there any Left Left?

Well, is there?  Let’s hope so, otherwise things will just carry on the way they’re going for the foreseeable future until the entire welfare state is dismantled and everyone either lives in a gated mansion or on the breadline.  So in order to gather together what is left of the Left, since Milliband has proved so inept, a new movement called Left Unity is organising with a possible view to setting up a new political party.  You can sign up to register your interest here:

http://leftunity.org/

and there are groups on facebook.  For Leicester people you can find information here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156235704541969/

There is a meeting on May 11th in London to discuss further developments so we shall see what comes out of that: the one thing I am interested in seeing is a credible, left-of-centre opposition to the current regime which does not fall into the old traps of splintering along Trotskyist-Stalinist-whatever-else-ist fault-lines.  In the interests of democracy we need a proper opposition; and even, for the sake of argument, if the situation were reversed – and all the power was on the Left (hard though that is to imagine) I would still support the need for a viable opposition.  Of such oppositions are our democracy formed, and we forget it at our peril.  Let us hope that the one accurate prophecy Thatcher made (since she was so bad at prediction) will NOT turn out to be this one: ‘the Labour Party will never die.’

So if the Left is where your heart is, sign up and support, particularly if you are an ‘ordinary’ voter with no particular axe to grind.

Bong!  In other news, I sent off some more stories and poems yesterday, though I fear I may not have researched one of them as thoroughly as I might – it seems to be a rather right-wing, libertarian US magazine:

www.fee.org

Oops!  let that be a lesson to me.  Still, if they publish my work maybe I’ll change my mind and become a right-wing libertarian myself.  I sent them three poems, one about the London 7/7 bombings – so we shall see.

The trouble is, every place you submit to suggests that you ‘study the magazine’ – and whilst this is good advice, there are only so many hours in the day and brain-cells in the old bean, with which to do this.  Nearly every week emails plonk into my in-box with lists of more outlets for my writing and if I researched them all as I should, not only would there be no time left in which to write anything, but my poor old brain would be exhausted.  Still, I should have looked further in this case…

And finally, here is a space for your thoughts about the Boston explosions.  Let us all hope and pray it does not start another ‘war on terror’…

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Kirk out