Tuesday 1 March 2011

Heroic Myths, False Dawns and a New Fairy Tale.

When I started writing this blog back in the autumn I had in mind the idea that I was on a quest with all that that implies. It was a noble undertaking-  to seek out truth, to highlight injustice, to hold people to account and other such self-aggrandising notions. I quickly found that my quest was little more than a major source of frustration and aggrivation. It made me angry and I have no real desire to be angry all the time.  My quest seemed to be taking me down a path to self-distruction. Glimmers of light, a thoughtfully worded email (indeed after a while any response at all including an electronic 'out of office notice') began to take on a wholly disproportionate significance. False dawns there were many. And I discovered that in my  self-appointed role as blogger, and seeker of the truth I had to make decisions about how I presented myself to people from whom I was seeking information, and whether or not to use people's names or include things that they had told me in communications. It seemed dishonest to write to somebody, or engage in an email exchange as a 'concerned citizen' and then to use that communication to some other purpose. Ultimately it became very petty, very pointless, very tedious- heroic it was not. It took about six weeks for me to be so utterly disallusioned with local politics that I decided to draw a line under the whole enterprise.

But as the months have rolled on my desire to try and better understand the  myriad connections that I,  as a citizen,  have with the state has not gone away. My mistake was in trying to construct a coherent narrative, a linear account to explain and elucidate, where none exists. There are no grand narratives any more. Our heroes all have feet of clay and there are as many ways to tell a story as there are people who wish to tell it.
So, rather than returning to earlier posts, to tie up loose ends, I will leave them hanging. There may be a point when the mood takes me and then I pick up these threads. Meanwhile I have a much  more fluid idea of what I want to write about. I want to tell a story, of and for myself, to help me plot a course through our rapidly changing world- 'the new dark ages' this 'neo-medievalism' into which we are plunging. In this fairy tale I can be both narrator and heroine, I will describe the world as I see it, and as I wish it to be- let the neo-liberals, the free-market economists, the purveyors of the Big Society slap a price on everything, let them tell their story and I will tell mine.

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