Influences
Tuesday, January 4th, 2005 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerMany writers have expounded on the figures that influenced them, often bearing out the rule that a dull life can be made more interesting by contact with those who are less dull. However, after musing that we encounter people not only as individuals but as representatives of some group, I was prompted to think about the groups of people that have influenced me. Here are some of them, in approximate chronological order.
School Bullies
A school isn't a school without a school bully, whether it be the suave, sadistic Flashman type or the usual lump of lard who picks on smaller children because the ones with longer legs call him "fatso" and run away quickly. Bullies are educational in a number of ways, chief of which is introducing children to the idea that adults tell them lies. One of the most stupid is that if you ignore bullies, they will go away. If you ignore bullies, they torture you until you sit up and pay attention. Another piece of advice you are given is that if you hit a bully (or even call him "fatso" and run like Hell), you are sinking to his level. This is like saying that the French Resistance sank to the level of the Gestapo because they shot German soldiers. Just about the only true thing grown-ups tell children about bullies is that bullies are cowards; however, they don't usually follow up that information with useful advice on how to scare a bully. (To my mother's credit, she never inflicted such homilies on me; in fact the only advice I remember on this subject was that if you punch someone in the nose, it will really hurt.)
The bully who contributed most to my education was Clive Waddops, who was not only fat, but tall and (under the fat) rather well-muscled. After taking several beatings from this eight-year-old Stalin, I came across an illustrated article on boxing techniques in my brother's Eagle Annual (which in those days was like a Bible for me). After some practice in the mirror, I accosted Waddops in the playground and waddopped him with a right upper cut. He was nearly knocked out, and after I repeated the experiment a few times during the following week, he was my loyal servant. This taught me that, yes, many bullies really are cowards, and the best way to exploit their cowardice is physical violence. It also taught me that technique beats strength, and may have been the beginning of my interest in martial arts.
Hippies
The main social influence on my teenage years came from Shrewsbury's small hippie community. Since this was the late seventies, most of the hippies still around were in their thirties and had calmed down a little. Most of them had found ways of supporting themselves through crafts, wholefood co-ops and the like, and even those who were living off social security were doing something vaguely useful, so they were a far cry from the wild rovers of the sixties. They introduced me to a lot of good music, wholefoods, sex and funny cigarettes.
One group in particular, who lived in a commune outside town, inspired my youthful enthusiasm for the culture of the previous generation. I was agog at the prospect of rural bliss and what is these days called polyamory. Several long visits convinced me that organic farming is enjoyable but back-breaking and "free love" is as impractical an ideal as life-long monogamy. Both are good for a lively sixteen-year-old, though.
Radical Feminists
Overlapping with Shrewsbury's hippie community was its small but determined radical feminist community, with its even smaller subset of radical lesbians (three, if I remember rightly). I got to know the latter group since Friends of the Earth met in one of their houses for a while. This taught me my first lesson about feminism: a woman who in theory thinks your entire sex should be eliminated, or at least kept chained in the kitchen and forced to make banana bread to atone for patriarchy, will be perfectly nice to you if you happen to be her babysitter. Finding a good babysitter is hard for a radical lesbian feminist mother, since men are worried that she will castrate them, and women are worried that she will either attempt to seduce them or sneer at them for not being radical or lesbian enough. (Things might have changed now, remember this is the 1970s we're talking about.)
The arrangement was that I didn't get paid (which would have been capitulating to the patriarchy or something) but I could eat, drink, read, listen to, or smoke anything I found (so long as I didn't get the verbs mixed up). The result was that I was frequently smashed out my head while listening to Patti Smith and reading feminist tracts. I don't know if this was good for me, but at least it meant that when radical feminism struck terror into men's hearts in the 1980s, turning some of them into banana-bread-making New Men and others into reactionary misogynists, I was all "been there, done that."
Anarchists, and other Revolutionaries
The French president Georges Clemenceau once said "I feel sorry for anyone who wasn't an anarchist when he was twenty." My conversion to anarchism was at the age of fourteen: I read Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, missed a lot of the irony and thought "This is the life for me!" Thirty years later, I don't think of myself as an anarchist in all but the most vague philosophical terms, but I'm still a libertarian and still firmly on the left.
We had a tiny anarchist group in Shrewsbury, which like most revolutionary groups didn't do much more than sell papers and drink beer, and when I went to university I played an active role in Black and Red, an oddball collection of syndicalists, punks and Discordians. They were a great bunch of people, and in addition to selling papers and drinking beer, were fond of political surrealism; their paper, Thoughtcrime, was my introduction to writing political satire. They were also, despite their utopian beliefs, more in touch with reality than most left-wing student groups, particularly the Trotskyists, who seemed to be living in a parallel universe that had branched off from ours some time in the 1920s.
Martial Artists
I started training in the martial arts in 1979 and have been doing so on and off ever since. (I've never mastered any of the martial arts I've dabbled in, though my t'ai chi is passable.) There's not a lot to say here. With a few exceptions, martial artists are fine people. On the whole, they're not just the kind of people you'd want around in a sticky situation, they're the kind of people you wouldn't mind being trapped in a lift with. I suppose the lift might get damaged once you got round to swapping kicking techniques, but at least martial artists usually have enough self-discipline and muscular control not to fart before the rescue team arrives.
The Therapy Crowd
Overlapping with the hippies, feminists and lefties come the disciples of alternative and humanistic psychotherapies. In the early 1980s I was exposed to everything from Rogerian counselling to Reichian massage, and can assure you that Rogers is a lot less painful than Reich. Helped by the fact that my lover in those days was a clinical psychologist, this gave me a fairly good nose for what works and what doesn't in terms of making people happier. A good rule of thumb is that if it involves screaming, it doesn't work.
Occultists
In my last year at university, my housemate and I decided to start "dabbling in the occult", as they say. This later put me in touch with a weird collection of witches, pagans, Thelemites, chaos magicians, techno-shamans and what have you. Contrary to what you might expect, I found the hard-core occultists (Thelemites, chaos magicians etc.) the easiest to get along with and the most possessed of critical intelligence, while the New Age, fluffy bunny pagan, goddess-worshipping, heal-the-Earth types were generally well-meaning but irritating airheads. A guest who talks airily about summoning demons can provide amusing after-dinner conversation, but if anyone tells you that your aura needs healing, scream and run out of the room.
School Bullies
A school isn't a school without a school bully, whether it be the suave, sadistic Flashman type or the usual lump of lard who picks on smaller children because the ones with longer legs call him "fatso" and run away quickly. Bullies are educational in a number of ways, chief of which is introducing children to the idea that adults tell them lies. One of the most stupid is that if you ignore bullies, they will go away. If you ignore bullies, they torture you until you sit up and pay attention. Another piece of advice you are given is that if you hit a bully (or even call him "fatso" and run like Hell), you are sinking to his level. This is like saying that the French Resistance sank to the level of the Gestapo because they shot German soldiers. Just about the only true thing grown-ups tell children about bullies is that bullies are cowards; however, they don't usually follow up that information with useful advice on how to scare a bully. (To my mother's credit, she never inflicted such homilies on me; in fact the only advice I remember on this subject was that if you punch someone in the nose, it will really hurt.)
The bully who contributed most to my education was Clive Waddops, who was not only fat, but tall and (under the fat) rather well-muscled. After taking several beatings from this eight-year-old Stalin, I came across an illustrated article on boxing techniques in my brother's Eagle Annual (which in those days was like a Bible for me). After some practice in the mirror, I accosted Waddops in the playground and waddopped him with a right upper cut. He was nearly knocked out, and after I repeated the experiment a few times during the following week, he was my loyal servant. This taught me that, yes, many bullies really are cowards, and the best way to exploit their cowardice is physical violence. It also taught me that technique beats strength, and may have been the beginning of my interest in martial arts.
Hippies
The main social influence on my teenage years came from Shrewsbury's small hippie community. Since this was the late seventies, most of the hippies still around were in their thirties and had calmed down a little. Most of them had found ways of supporting themselves through crafts, wholefood co-ops and the like, and even those who were living off social security were doing something vaguely useful, so they were a far cry from the wild rovers of the sixties. They introduced me to a lot of good music, wholefoods, sex and funny cigarettes.
One group in particular, who lived in a commune outside town, inspired my youthful enthusiasm for the culture of the previous generation. I was agog at the prospect of rural bliss and what is these days called polyamory. Several long visits convinced me that organic farming is enjoyable but back-breaking and "free love" is as impractical an ideal as life-long monogamy. Both are good for a lively sixteen-year-old, though.
Radical Feminists
Overlapping with Shrewsbury's hippie community was its small but determined radical feminist community, with its even smaller subset of radical lesbians (three, if I remember rightly). I got to know the latter group since Friends of the Earth met in one of their houses for a while. This taught me my first lesson about feminism: a woman who in theory thinks your entire sex should be eliminated, or at least kept chained in the kitchen and forced to make banana bread to atone for patriarchy, will be perfectly nice to you if you happen to be her babysitter. Finding a good babysitter is hard for a radical lesbian feminist mother, since men are worried that she will castrate them, and women are worried that she will either attempt to seduce them or sneer at them for not being radical or lesbian enough. (Things might have changed now, remember this is the 1970s we're talking about.)
The arrangement was that I didn't get paid (which would have been capitulating to the patriarchy or something) but I could eat, drink, read, listen to, or smoke anything I found (so long as I didn't get the verbs mixed up). The result was that I was frequently smashed out my head while listening to Patti Smith and reading feminist tracts. I don't know if this was good for me, but at least it meant that when radical feminism struck terror into men's hearts in the 1980s, turning some of them into banana-bread-making New Men and others into reactionary misogynists, I was all "been there, done that."
Anarchists, and other Revolutionaries
The French president Georges Clemenceau once said "I feel sorry for anyone who wasn't an anarchist when he was twenty." My conversion to anarchism was at the age of fourteen: I read Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, missed a lot of the irony and thought "This is the life for me!" Thirty years later, I don't think of myself as an anarchist in all but the most vague philosophical terms, but I'm still a libertarian and still firmly on the left.
We had a tiny anarchist group in Shrewsbury, which like most revolutionary groups didn't do much more than sell papers and drink beer, and when I went to university I played an active role in Black and Red, an oddball collection of syndicalists, punks and Discordians. They were a great bunch of people, and in addition to selling papers and drinking beer, were fond of political surrealism; their paper, Thoughtcrime, was my introduction to writing political satire. They were also, despite their utopian beliefs, more in touch with reality than most left-wing student groups, particularly the Trotskyists, who seemed to be living in a parallel universe that had branched off from ours some time in the 1920s.
Martial Artists
I started training in the martial arts in 1979 and have been doing so on and off ever since. (I've never mastered any of the martial arts I've dabbled in, though my t'ai chi is passable.) There's not a lot to say here. With a few exceptions, martial artists are fine people. On the whole, they're not just the kind of people you'd want around in a sticky situation, they're the kind of people you wouldn't mind being trapped in a lift with. I suppose the lift might get damaged once you got round to swapping kicking techniques, but at least martial artists usually have enough self-discipline and muscular control not to fart before the rescue team arrives.
The Therapy Crowd
Overlapping with the hippies, feminists and lefties come the disciples of alternative and humanistic psychotherapies. In the early 1980s I was exposed to everything from Rogerian counselling to Reichian massage, and can assure you that Rogers is a lot less painful than Reich. Helped by the fact that my lover in those days was a clinical psychologist, this gave me a fairly good nose for what works and what doesn't in terms of making people happier. A good rule of thumb is that if it involves screaming, it doesn't work.
Occultists
In my last year at university, my housemate and I decided to start "dabbling in the occult", as they say. This later put me in touch with a weird collection of witches, pagans, Thelemites, chaos magicians, techno-shamans and what have you. Contrary to what you might expect, I found the hard-core occultists (Thelemites, chaos magicians etc.) the easiest to get along with and the most possessed of critical intelligence, while the New Age, fluffy bunny pagan, goddess-worshipping, heal-the-Earth types were generally well-meaning but irritating airheads. A guest who talks airily about summoning demons can provide amusing after-dinner conversation, but if anyone tells you that your aura needs healing, scream and run out of the room.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 10:41 pm (UTC)Speaking of Black and Red, I can't remember whether you knew Lawrie Bennett (owned Lawrie's Lorries, a removal firm who got us to a few gigs). Anyway, he has been a traveller for some years, and while chatting with him recently I discovered that he is occasionally in touch with Taff, who is still a traveller and eco-activist.
And speaking of martial artists, Andy called me at the weekend. They are all well and he apologises for not getting back to you, but he was moving and everything was hectic and etc. He is intending to get in touch.
For a year around 1980 I lived next door to some people who ran screaming rebirthing sessions in the cellar. They seemed nice enough. Quite calm, really.
Oh, and as for Thelemites and Chaos Magicians, they are really really scary, but there aren't any on LiveJournal, so that's all right then.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 11:17 pm (UTC)As for Thelemites on LJ, I assume you know that
no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 11:20 pm (UTC)I remember sitting in a taxi in Istanbul with my eyes closed. My friend asked me what I was doing, and I replied: "I'm doing a don't-kill-the-taxi-driver meditation."
no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 11:27 pm (UTC)Having read some evolutionary psychology, I can now understand this behaviour. Pretty sneaky way to become the alpha male, huh?
no subject
Date: 2005-01-05 12:35 am (UTC)nostagia
Date: 2005-01-06 11:35 pm (UTC)I was also influenced by John Heron. I worked with him on several co-co W.E.s The Bristol group was great and the first Shrewsbury community, but I watched the opportunities for Games (TA variety) develop as communities grew larger. Is this inevitable? Size and popularity leads to power Games and debased practice.
Re: nostagia
Date: 2005-01-07 12:29 am (UTC)1. it remained small by not advertising itself much and making it hard for people to get initiation (I had to wait about six months, and I met people who'd been wating over a year);
2. group meetings were rare and voluntary - the only official big meeting was once a year, which was attended by everyone who could be bothered to turn up;
3. while there was an elaborate hierarchy on paper with funny names and symbols for different grades of initiation, this was deliberately designed to prevent people taking it seriously;
4. the guru (now deceased) was a crazy old coot on the other side of the world whose only involvement with the running of the order was to set up rival orders when he thought it was getting too self-important.
Gita's massages were the most painful thing I'd experienced until I was treated to Philip's Korean massage, which is a kind of mixture of shiatsu and chiropracty. As his wife said "It opens up whole new dimensions of pain." I always felt great afterwards, but I'm not sure how much of that was just because the pain had stopped.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-09 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-09 10:21 pm (UTC)Any suggestions?
no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 12:14 am (UTC)I was planning on posting something, trolling for "your favorite small press".
I re-discovered Boston Review today, which tickled me enormously; their New Democracy Forum is sterling. But that's not what I'd suggest.
Then there's "The Little Magazine", which really impressed me ... it's out of India.
I've come across a lot of small e-journals but, to tell the truth, they have not stayed on the surface of my oceanic bookmarks list!
Hope this primes the pump; maybe something will arise from my post.
*Yuhr aweful cute when you blush ... you got any sisters?*
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