Nationalism

I am minded to write about Nationalism. What actually is it?

The free online dictionary - the most widely accessed online dictionary on google - states;

1. Devotion to the interests or culture of one's nation.
2. The belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals.
3. Aspirations for national independence in a country under foreign domination.

which begs the immediate question 'what is a nation?'

Again, the same resource says;

a. A relatively large group of people organized under a single, usually independent government; a country.
b. The territory occupied by such a group of people: All across the nation, people are voting their representatives out.
2. The government of a sovereign state.
3. A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language; a nationality: "Historically the Ukrainians are an ancient nation which has persisted and survived through terrible calamity" (Robert Conquest).
4.
a. A federation or tribe, especially one composed of Native Americans.
b. The territory occupied by such a federation or tribe.

Nationalism is a construct. A relatively recent phenomenon which has become widely accepted as a method of defining boundaries and creating a collective sense of belonging and purpose to large - sometimes vast - groups of human beings.

I am not a Nationalist. I do not believe in Nationalism, but I am affected by it. At a simple level I shoiw support to my national football team. I have followed them to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, and seen some curiously outlandish examples of it in the behaviour of people who believe themselves both nationalistic and patriotic. (One who loves, supports, and defends one's country.)

The ever helpful (if not always entirely accurate) wikipedia on the topic of nationalism writes;

'Nationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation.[1] It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

Collectivism, so what makes a collective? Is it similarities, or differences? Does it have a specific physical root, or is it composed from and out of shared beliefs. And are such shared beliefs still valid for the present time in which we live?

The British National Party believe specifically in difference and their only similarity is in ethnic creed, both in physical and psychologically constructed beliefs. But they lack one very important factor. A common ancestry, other than significantly the very fact they we are all descended from the same African tribe, the Kalahari Bushmen.

Nations cannot be determined by race, colour, creed, or spiritual beliefs. Only by the consent of those people who live there, and their collective suffrage.

The British Nationalist Party are a party that would divide the people of the nation of the United Kingdom on the most specious of grounds. Hatred. Don't vote for them please.

The Last Bleeding Heart-Liberal Pinko-Communist
They pretend that they're after the Nationalist vote

Waving Union flags for the next great white hope.

With a brick through the window bearing your racist note

If you vote for the new BNP!

They'll explain how we're facing an 'immigrant flood'

And about Enoch Powell and his 'rivers of blood'

But you'll be lighting a torch for a white pointed hood

If you vote for the new BNP!

They'll say how they're proud of their white ancestry

How the holocaust was lies a 'kike conspiracy'

How the blacks want your jobs and the Jews your money

If you vote for the new BNP!

They'll 'send 'em all back' to where 'they all belong'

Though they don't even know where their own genes come from

Beware the far right before you go far wrong

If you vote for the new BNP!

But don't touch their posters or you'll need first-aid

When their hidden agenda will soon be betrayed

And slice off your fingertips with an old razor blade

If you vote for the new BNP!

Now I've penned this song I'll be on their hit-list

For a smack in the mouth from a hate-tattooed fist

The last bleeding-heart-liberal pinko-communist

If you vote for the new BNP!

Please don't vote for the new BNP!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx-x8GoGtI&feature=channel

Technology

In order to facilitate travelling, writing (of both literature and music) and recording of video and my own compositions and music I encounter incidentally I have been busy acquiring a reduced and miniature cyber world of technology. Thank goodness I have lived long enough to take advantage of some of the utterly incredible equipment that is now readily available at entirely affordable prices.

My equipment consists of the following (for the geeks among you)

An Asus Eee PC1005HA (I originally bought a 1008HA but it seemed insubstantial and after a hard disk head crash was promptly returned to Amazon) The 1005A is slightly heavier but benefits from a removable battery (with a slightly longer life than its counterpart of up to 10.5 hours) and is more readily upgradeable with respect of RAM (having a single screw removable cover) so that my system now has 2Gbytes, the better for video and music processing. It's also about £40 cheaper but slightly heavier though very compact and most attractive in white. Sadly the CD/DVD ROM drive I originally bought is dark blue (to match the now deceased 1008A) but it's also neat and functional, but requires the use of two USB ports in order to operate, so another good reason for the 1005A which has three.
The program I have chosen for music composition is Acoustica's Mixcraft 4, which has some excellent features and imitates Apple's Garage Band (we shall see how well!)

To enable the programming of its virtual instruments I purchased a Korg Nano Key, 25 key velocity sensitive music keyboard, which isn't great, but it is small and very lightweight and which links, via one of the three USB ports, without any fuss whatsoever!

I selected the Zoom H2 Handy recorder, on the recommendation of my friend Lex Luthier who pointed out its advantages over the more expensive H4. More of this later, but suffice to say that it will enable field recordings and will act as a quality vocal mic for recording as well as producing quality MP3 files and having a massive storage capability.

For video I bought the Kodak ZX-1 which will allow recording of HD60 quality video, when required and has a pretty good jpeg facility, though it is less effective in poorly-lit situations, but it's very good in every other way and can store up to 16Gbytes of data and has its own editing software and will upload directly to youtube and facebook with easy-to-use software.

I have a Kubik digital MP3 player which also features a digital camera for both jpegs and dv and will record sound and display text files. It also has 16Gbytes of storage. I have some Koss lightweight headphones which are wicked!

Last, but certainly not least, I will be taking my trusty old ukulele Jeni-Frank as it is both extremely light and has the best sound and tone of any of my ukes. It's not the same era of technology coming as it does from 1940's Burbank, California, but it is the best instrument for portability and performance that I can manage on my journey.

I'll need some time and experience to get the best out of them, but at least I can carry them with me on my journey, and they should allow me to engage in a multi-media creative experience and stay in touch via Skype and other internet connection portals.

Hanging Around

The worst part of travelling, and one which I am all too familiar with is hanging around. I absolutely detest stations - bus and train -and airports. However modern they always offer the minimum amount of comfort for the weary traveller.


Having finished my business and social commitments in record time today I decided to test the flexibility of my travel arrangements by trying to change to an earlier train home. I was by no means suprised to learn that in order to bring forward my journey - on a ticket for which I had paid £36 - would cost another £30. Now I understand to some extent that the government's sale of British Rail resulted in many new private owners, but I am not really so interested that I am prepared to invest an enormous amount of time in researching who owns what. I just wanted to forestall the necessity for hanging around for six hours in Kings Cross station, surely one of the world's least hospitable places.


Luckily for me the world of cyber space is now readily available by the relatively simple expedient of Starbuck's where, for a fiver I am now connected to the internet with its myriad possibilities. For a couple of quid I can have a coffee and insinuate myself into relative comfort and watch the hours disappear as I pursue my obsession with hyper-reality.


I've been fascinated with it since discovering Jean Baudrillard's theory of the simulacrum.

The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that there is
none. The simulacrum is true.
-Ecclesiastes

http://files.meetup.com/1392983/Baudrillard,%20Jean%20-%20Simulacra%20And%20Simulation.pdf

I recommend anyone who spends 10% of their waking hours, as I am sure that I do, to investigate this particular theory in order to better understand this remarkable phenomenon.

Here's an example of what I understand it to mean. Please click the link to experience hyperreality:-

http://www.tate.org.uk/pharmacy/

If only we could experience travel-related experiences fully in a hyperreal sense. I'd never have to sit in Starbuck's ever again, nor experience the dirt-tinged reality of grubby stations' concourses and the claustrophobia of being crammed into carriages and queues, or the interminable waiting for reality to coincide with one's expectations. And perhaps that is what those of you who choose to follow this are actually doing; vicariously experiencing that which time, opportunity and the distaste for the uncomfortable aspects of travel deter one from experiencing in reality. Small wonder that Playstations and PS3 now hold sway across the planet!

Here's another perspective of my cyberreality.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&rlz=1I7ADFA_en&q=starbucks%20kings%20cross%20google%20map&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

I look forward to the train home and the relative comfort of the home fire that will await at the other end of the Einsteinian teleport of the intercity 125. Bring it on home, wherever that may be.

Postscript.
Inevitably my train was delayed. To pass the time I settled down by a brick pillar with my uke and began learning how to play Life on Mars by Bowie. Happy in my little world I failed to notice the train, which was undergoing repairs, had left, thus occasioning yet more waiting in the station! Music can be very absorbing!

The Journey Begins

'It's an ill wind that blows no good', or so says the idiomatic adage. Although it is my intention to avoid the convenient linguistic device of the cliche, I left a very windy Lincolnshire yesterday afternoon with the simple intention of travelling to London to obtain a visa to allow me to travel to India. I arrived in the early evening at London's King's Cross station and headed across the city to Vauxhall to stay in Bonnington Square, where I spent several miserable months about seven years ago.
Some things have changed since then. I no longer feel quite as nervous as I then did about being in the metropolis. My anxieties have given way to a new fascination with the past, present and future. Rather like watching through a lens, almost a mediated image of reality, where observing oneself takes precedence over being oneself.
I have a plan. Quite an elaborate set of plans, which may or may not serve to propel me into a new existence; a new place at least, whereby I can return to a moment in my previous existence which, due to a somewhat cataclysmic set of circumstances, changed my life dramatically from the course upon which I was then headed. Similarly, I now choose to take another route and to complete an intention that has lain dormant for over twenty years.
My friends in the square are absent, away on various trips of their own, so initially it seemed a lonely, if not quite desolate place. A trip to the newly refurbished and now soulless pub didn't help dispel the illusion and the excellent chinese takeaway was closed, so dinner was eaten, alone, in the Coriander, a highly recommended and entirely satisfactory Indian restaurant around the corner from my accommodation.
The original intention of a dinner with my children fell inevitable victim to their weekend overindulgences and subsequent hangovers. Cyber space proved its usually helpful alternative to alleviate both isolation and potential boredom. I'd had a very nice weekend already, shared with my housemates and thoroughly enlivened by a spontaneous visit from the Princess of Poznan who proved, in her inimitable way, the perfect diversion from the melancholy feelings engendered by the onset of winter darkness and the anxiety of future uncertainty, God bless her.
And so the light breeze and early morning sun was a pleasant suprise and seemed to warm the souls of the masses who shone and radiated as they thronged the streets along which I travelled, rather hurriedly, to the Visa application office. It was a little difficult to find, but I guessed its general area and, after asking a young woman in an office, it proved to be mercifully close to where I had become confused. There were many many people there, but it was highly organised and very efficient as the numbers for the tickets, obtained on arrival, were called-out relentlessly like some kind of bizarre Bingo game. I sat next to an Asian gentleman (not really too suprisingly) who wore motorcycle leathers and whom I engaged in conversation by the simple expedient of requesting the seat on which he'd spread a copy of the Daily Star. He was very well-spoken and affable and after we'd both criticised his choice of reading material (he preferred the Daily Telegraph) he told me he was intending a holiday, with friends, in Goa from where he intended to visit his remaining family in Poona.
I asked him about his occupation and he revealed that he worked for the government agency responsible for identifying the sources of narcotic distribution and, consequently, contending with its social effects and users. He told me he wouldn't usually discuss it but, as he expected he'd never see me again, felt confident enough to unburden himself. Such is the nature of the traveller who will reveal themselves or create a legend to inhabit on their journey.
Soon his number came up and he was replaced by a much older Indian couple whose story would remain untold due to my own number rapidly appearing on the screen and demanding that I go to 'window number eleven'.
The transaction was swift and trouble-free and after paying an additional £7.40 I was assured my visa would be ready and delivered by courier within the week! My plans, to be in India by my birthday on the 15th of November, are beginning to look realistic, and unavoidable. I am both excited and apprehensive about the journey ahead, but I am beginning to feel prepared. Buoyed by a sense of purpose and optimism, and reassured by the encouragement of friends and acquaintances, I face the days and weeks ahead with the knowledge that there are many who envy the freedom with which I am approaching this part of my life, and the creative enthusiasm I have for the projects I have identified as my intentions, and the underlying reasons behind this potentially life-changing experience.