Phocus Insights - thoughts from Rodney Collins

Happy New Year

Before you resolve to change everything there is about yourself,  how about taking a moment to reflect on those things you wouldn't change for all the riches in the world?

The problem with resolutions is that people narrowly view them as a means to make the worst aspects of themselves better.  Ok, it's true.  There's nothing wrong with self-improvement, but to improve oneself one has to know oneself. This means that the good has to be considered along with the bad.

The perennial promise to lose weight in the year to come means little unless juxtaposed with the reality that a life full of work, family, and friends is often demanding and leaves little room for healthy meals that take three hours to prepare. The second we realise, however, that time spent with those close to us can be spent on the shared goal of a healthier lifestyle through better eating habits and more physical exercise our resolution becomes more achievable with a better chance of being sustained.  The good of close relationships becomes a reinforcing factor in our resolve to become healthier.

A desire that 2011 be the year that we find 'the one' - the person that we are to pair off with to find true happiness should be kept in check by the reality that we should also work on improving relationships with those we already know. Think of it as a dry run for Mr./Ms. Right that pays the added dividend of helping us to be happier, better-balanced people that don't come off as desperate, angry, or devoid of hope that we'll ever find a partner who is a good match. Life is rarely all or nothing.  And, there's a big difference between relating to others in a way that respects them and using others to make ourselves feel better. Potential partners with happy, balanced lives are likely to spot the users a mile away.  It's best that we begin our search from a centred, balanced place as well which means making the most of existing relationships by giving to them as much as we receive so that we're working from a solid foundation.  

It's not easy to change our lives completely overnight. For most of us, it's not even necessary.  The good is there along with the bad. Find it. Respect it.  Build on it.

All in a Name

London is a pretty special place for me.  It's similar enough to New York for me to feel secure here. But, at the same time I'm reminded from time to time that I am definitely a foreigner in a foreign land as the familiar gives way to a different cultural norm that smacks me in the face with the need to test my 'progressive' credentials and offer an opinion.

Last Sunday was a day like any other.  I was sitting at a desk with a friend who was opening the mail from the prior day.  I, myself, was making a brave if unsuccessful attempt to complete a few letters that should have been posted a week prior.  While I was writing, my friend took a break from the post and checked his email.  I saw this glint of happiness in his eye as he hurriedly looked up at me and said, "Katherine K (name changed to protect the innocent) had a boy. The family is thrilled because it means that there's another male to inherit the estate."

My emotional responses were anything but clear.  My first reaction was joy that someone I knew was having a child that they looked forward to raising.  My second reaction was one of being perplexed since I wasn't sure who Katherine K was. He quickly explained that Katherine was the daughter-in-law of a good friend of his, Margaret, whom I had met on several occasions.  My lack of recognition was due to Katherine not using the same family name as Margaret.  You see, Katherine's husband holds an inherited title and, hence, Katherine uses the name that corresponds with that title. On hearing this news, my puzzlement turned into a certain smug laughter of which I'm not proud.  I was also aware of feeling a bit angry.

Why smug laughter?  The custom amongst a certain set within English culture to change their names when they assume titles has always seemed strange to me. I mean really.  The family names of those in discussion are amongst some of the best documented in western history.  Isn't one well-established name good enough?  This question gives rise to the root of my recessive anger.  Patrilineal inheritance seems to me to be an anachronism that shouldn't be tolerated.  Of more direct consequence to me, why do some get two direct ties to their history when I don't even get one?

I'm African-American.  My surname is Collins.  Yet, I don't know if Collins (Irish in origin I believe, possibly Scottish) is the name of a European ancestor long forgotten or if it is, as a more likely explanation, the name of the plantation owner who owned the land on which my forbearers worked as slaves centuries ago. It could also be the name of an admired European whose name was chosen upon my ancestor's emancipation as a nod of approval.  However, the chances are slim that Collins is the name that I would have attached to me had my African ancestors passed on their family name without hindrance.  I was angry because there are those who change their names and identities with great ease while I have always had to fight to create an identity for myself that's true while being hampered by a name that I love, because it's attached to others that I love, yet hate because it's probably not mine.

Allow me to be clear. I'm happy that Katherine is having a son; her family has always treated me with respect and we've enjoyed one another's company.  I'm also aware that the tradition I'm discussing doesn't impact the vast majority of people within England directly.  I don't wish to make light of the traditions of others.   Really, I don't.  But, I have to confess it's sometimes hard to respect traditions and cultures that haven't respected my own, whatever they were.  Multi-cultural life is not easy - be it amongst us or within us.

 

 

Clybourne Park: a review

Think of it as a variation on a theme.  In Bruce Norris's play, Clybourne Park, the dramatic plot begins with a stock portrayal of oft-glorified 1950's suburban America.  A white middle class family is packing to move house.  The family is cheerful to the point of nausea. Their black maid and her husband are going above and beyond to help.  All is well in the Park to begin with but then things begin to unravel. We learn that the family is moving to escape a recent trauma.  Neighbours and the local pastor arrive to express their concern for the family and their discomfort with the fact that their house is being purchased by a black family - the neighbourhood's second showing the beginning of a trend.  The black maid and her husband express their discomfort with being dragged into the middle of an ensuing argument. Clybourne Park hurriedly becomes the prelude to 1960's Watts in Los Angeles or 1980's Brixton in London.  The strife is both intra- and interracial.

What makes Clybourne Park different is that it follows the racial life cycle of the house from white to black to white again.  The second act begins with a housing association meeting being run by middle class black leaders who are interviewing a white middle class couple wanting to purchase the very same house decades later.  Clever, but is it too clever to sustain an audience for 2 hours?

I think Norris is onto something here but not because of his recognisable portrayal of inner city transformations.  The true genius is in how he deftly demonstrates the overlapping nature of social 'isms'.  In the second act, initial charges of racism lead quickly to accusations of sexism, homophobia, and expressions of religious intolerance belying the truth that goes unspoken in the play but that manages to come through loudly and clearly. 

Racism, sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance are merely symptoms of unsuccessful attempts to bury the anxiety produced by the vulnerability that we all share in being human.  It's the 1950's family's failure to process their trauma that forces them to sell the house and results in neighbour being pitted against neighbour.  It's the white-on-black, black-on-white fear of losing one's way of life that causes each to lash out against one another.  It's a white character's discomfort with interacting with his future black neighbour that leads to his poorly-timed racially-tinged joke.  It's the decades of repressed anger that causes a black woman character to unabashedly and callously forgo an offer to unite over gender and instead attack her white female neighbour-to-be.  The message is clear. Because we don't express our anxieties and process them on a day-to-day basis, we're doomed to find others on whom to project them.

If I were to criticise the play at all, it would be in its failure to attack the veracity of categories we use to divide ourselves.  Nowadays, it seems a bit dated for white and black to attack one another with such little appreciation for shared ground.  Also, Norris, a white-American playwright, could have been a bit more balanced in his portrayal of bigotry.  Blacks came across largely as victimised beings with reactive anger.  I think there's much about black anger that isn't reactive but instead an expression of individual existential crisis.  Blacks are people too that struggle and make mistakes like anyone would. However, overall this was an enjoyable and edifying night at the theatre.

Kudos to Dominic Cooke, director of the play and Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre.  Cooke created a highly synchronised and well-cast piece to be remembered.  

Certified Copy: a review

Life really is what we make it.  Literally.  The mind edits – speech, smell, images and memory – with lightning speed and with little trace of the spliced edge.  Life is edited to perfection to enact a world which represents how we feel at a particular moment in time.  Who hasn’t had the experience of encountering an object that is a lot smaller as an adult than we remembered as a child or of the stunningly beautiful or handsome first date who disappointingly begins to look incredibly ordinary the second time around?

In ‘Certified Copy’ Juliet Binoche pairs up with renowned baritone-turned-actor William Shimmel on a day’s excursion through a small Tuscan village.  Shimmel plays somewhat successful English author, James Miller, who is in Tuscany shopping his latest book on the underappreciated value of copies of great works of art.  Reasonably, he argues that reproductions are pieces of art unto themselves and that their status as ‘copies’ is no different from the manner in which ‘the original’ copies the image of its subject – be it a pretty woman or a bowl of fruit. 

Binoche’s character is a fan of his. Well, actually she’s an enamoured fan who arranges to meet up with and to spend the day with Miller following his book talk.  He signs several books for her to keep and to give to friends and family.  The two go off on a drive to nowhere in particular.  In fact, their journey serves as a metaphor for the aimless journey that the film seems to be taking.  But patience, as they say, is a virtue.  Iranian director,  Abbas Kiarostami, has little tolerance for the cinemagoer who is unable to take a few breaths and to ease into things. 

Binoche is a woman in conflict.  She begins the film in conflict with her son and through a clever juxtaposition of harmless pretense and mild psychosis is soon in raw and spirited conflict with the author, Miller, a man she barely knows.  He agrees to go along with Binoche in bringing to life a seemingly harmless mistake a café owner makes in assuming that the couple is man and wife.  Binoche makes the most of it by taking us on a journey showing what it would be like if Miller were really her husband.  Or is it that Binoche shows us what would happen if her character’s actual husband were there?  I’m not quite sure.  Kiarostami leaves the cinemagoer marvellously questioning what’s fantasy and what’s real.  Has Binoche’s character made a certified copy of her husband through psychological projection?

In leaving us guessing, the director does us a favour.  Kiarostami allows us to see that we can inhabit the same space as others and not see them at all.  We use them. We shape them. We love them.   But in the process, we lose the dividing line between reality and fantasy.  In fact, Kiarostami questions whether there is such a dividing line.  As I write this, I’ve reached the conclusion that I don’t even think Binoche’s character had a name.  The character is someone specific yet everyone at the same time.  As another example of borderline psychosis, the film dialogue moves seamlessly between Italian, English, and French in fantasied but paradoxically real expression of the ability of individuals to communicate efficiently with others who don’t share important aspects of the their world, like language. 

I know this is all very confusing, but I think it’s supposed to be.  ‘Certified Copy’ is boring yet engaging, concise yet full-length, full of meaning yet about nothing at all.  In short, the film is life itself.  Go see it.

I did it

Taking responsibility is an absolute.  It's an act that can't really be apportioned.  It can't really be shared. More than one person may be responsible, but each must accept his or her role without limitation in order to make it through whole. Attempts to limit responsibility's reach work against the spirit of this noble act and tend to doom the accused. 

The half-repentant dooms himself by squandering an opportunity to redress current wrongs; he's also doomed by the likelihood that the avoided emotional consequences of the mistake will resurface without full emotional processing of its effects. The emotional guilt, sorrow, and shame attached to the act are likely to resurface in any number of ways.  The Freudian slip, the misplaced burst of anger, the sleepless night all tell the accused that his work is not done; he becomes a walking time bomb, seemingly in control, but held captive by the dormant and unresolved internal conflict waiting to break through.

Sure, blaming the other guy helps to get through the pain of the day.  If the pain is great enough, scapegoating is understandable.  If the immediate pain is minimal, we often deride the scapegoater - immature, laughable, disappointing come to mind. But, maybe we should be a bit more understanding of the casual scapegoater, as well. Sure, the instant case may be minimal in its offence and consequences, but the casual scapegoater carries with him the pain of numerous other acts of scapegoating that can make for an emotionally crippling load.  Let's not forget, as well, that the serial scapegoating started for a reason.  Somehwere along the line the perpetrator was damaged seriously enough to invoke this, one of the most basic forms of psychological defence, with debilitating frequency. Sympathy might be appropriate. Supportive counsel about the problematic behaviour certainly is in order to break the cycle  - because taking responsibility is an absolute.

Most are capable. Some are not, yet.  But, if it's to be done, It has to be done all the way.  It's best for the scapegoater's would-be target.  It's best for all involved.

New Year's Day

I won't be duped like the rest of you. No matter how many years pass, for me, the real New Year continues to begin the first week in September instead of the customary January 1st.  My 20+ years of schooling have embedded an unconscious, temporal cycle deep within my psyche. September, not January, is the time when I think about what I'd like to accomplish in the year ahead. The autumn isn't about the falling leaves but instead the budding ideas, relationships, and projects that will determine the successes and failures of the 12 months to come.

Those who have children are probably in touch with my unofficial New Year to some degree.  Lives which revolve around clothes, school supplies and extracurriculars never really got a chance to be swayed by the folly of the Julian calendar.  No, you know the score. January 1st is but another day.

Those who don't have children haven't escaped either - being careful to take holidays  outside of school breaks, welcoming the August slowdown as a chance to catch a professional breath without necessarily taking time off.

Calendars (genders/sexualities/races) are but arbitrary entities based on popular notions.  There's nothing sacred about January 1st.  It's a week or so after the shortest day of the year and a week shy of 6 months to the longest.  (Of course, few of us live at the equator so even this is inaccurate for the vast majority yet swallowed whole without much conscious thought by all.)

As with the calendar, many of our assumptions about life are arbitrary and unconscious.  

It makes me wonder.  If years of schooling can reprogram my temporal perspective so unwittingly and successfully, what else has slipped through the cracks into my psyche, shaping my view of the world?

I can't hear you

  

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

~ Plato

Silence may be golden, but gold makes for an awfully heavy load to carry.  

The decision to get involved is rarely easy.  Some analyse the relative costs and benefits of involvement.  Do I get more out of it than I risk by getting involved?  If I get involved, will the world be sufficiently better to compensate for the risk?

The more conservative invoke general principles in a one-size fits all manner.  You know the maxims -  'Mind your own business,' or its opposite,  'A friend in need is in a friend indeed.' Simple yes, but simple means both easy and dim doesn't it? 

When another in your company is treated poorly, you are as well.  You're either made complicit in the act or placed at some measure of risk for interceding.  When your neighbour starves, you starve too.  Conscience takes its toll.  The fear that your time for hunger will come erodes your happiness.  The comfort of community is replaced by the illusion and isolation of self-sufficiency.

Yes. Silence may be golden, but it's certainly not passive.  To remain quiet when someone doesn't accord you you the respect you deserve is to actively invite the same to happen again. To speak up is not a call to arms. Discussion is not war. In fact it's quite the opposite.  Speaking up is a way of respecting your aggressor enough to clear the air and to make your true self known so that a real relationship, if only for a moment, can exist between you. 

But, sometimes the problems of others are part of  a repetitive pattern that will continue whether you get involved or not.  Equally, speaking up may hardly be appreciated by those involved. Remember.  Speaking up is a choice.  It carries responsibilities that may not be worth it.  I'm just trying to point out that staying silent has its downside, as well.

You can't control the behaviour of others, but you can make sure that you're not left carrying their load.

Summer Time

It always seems to creep up on me.  Sometimes, I don’t discover its existence for a full day.  It makes me aware of the advance of time, of the vulnerability of the universe to human manipulation, and of the truth that the darkest days of life are finite in number.

This year I became aware of British Summer Time when someone warned me not to be late for a Sunday appointment as the clocks were to be moved forward.  Last year, I had been ill in bed on the day of the time change, so the following Monday was comprised of one challenge after another as I struggled to figure out why I was out of sync with the rest of the world.   Television programmes weren’t on when expected. There seemed to be more activity on the streets than usual when I started my early morning sojourn, and people I would see everyday looked at me with puzzlement as I dared to vary my routine without offering an explanation.

The moment of revelation brings about mixed emotions.  There’s the embarrassment of being so out of touch with what everyone else on the continent seemed to take in stride. There’s the joy of realising that bright summer evenings are just around the corner.  There’s also the hope that the winter chill will soon leave the air.  But to be honest, there’s a frustration over the decision of ‘the powers that be’ to meddle with the universe and, in the process, place my equilibrium at risk.

Yes, yes.  I’m aware that the time change saves energy by requiring less artificial light and has economic benefits for some industries able to capitalise on the increased evening sun.  But, it also seems to me that whatever is gained in the spring and summer is taken back in the autumn and winter when we return to British Standard Time. And deep down, there seems to be this gnawing feeling in me that we’re tinkering with something so basic that it’s probably not a very good idea.  Ok, the sky won’t fall, but it might just cloud up more often just to spite us. 

But as I think about it, I’m probably overreacting.  Thinking of the year as this inevitable and static pattern of light and dark fails to honour the ability that human beings have to impact the world around them in a mutually beneficial way.  Global warming may be our eventual undoing, but the bright ideas our ancestors had to turn wooden branches into clarinets, to irrigate dry land with diverted streams for subsistence agriculture, and to create national parks to limit the damage of uncontrolled human sprawl seem to be worth the meddling.

One has to choose when to go it alone and when to follow the herd – staying on Standard time when everyone else is on Summer time makes no sense.  One has to decide when the natural should be tinkered with and when it should be left alone – the benefits of Summer Time seem to outweigh the inconvenience of physically moving the clocks twice per year.  One must be sufficiently in touch with the world to know when change is necessary and be forgiving enough of self when one lags behind.  After all, getting in sync with the world again sometimes takes only a moment's revelation.

 

The Mirror that is Facebook

Here’s one to place in the better late than never category. I joined Facebook this month, and life will never be the same. Don’t get the wrong idea.  This big event hasn’t been an unmitigated success.  I’ve spent much too much time playing on the website.  I’ve had to painfully condense about 25 years of life into predetermined categories that don’t do the trick, and I’ve also had to ponder which of the many faces of Rodney were to be shown in the photo section.  My only solace has been that others have had to play by the same annoyingly reductive rules. 

There’s also the complexity of re-engaging with those to whom you haven’t spoken in decades.  One sometimes wonders if old friends cringe when your new request to become ‘electronic friends’ is received.  And,  I imagine one cringes, as well, as the person  one did one’s best to avoid decades ago sends a message with an offer to reconnect.  But, without a doubt, a missing piece to the puzzle of my identity has been located.  In the process, I’ve both rediscovered and rewritten my childhood.  It seems that the good in individuals lingers in memory and whatever difficulties existed previously have become trivial.  Prior relationship infidelities, betrayals of trust, and the pain of hardbound cliques give way to a realisation that perspectives have changed, more important priorities exist, and good friendships, like those of youth, are hard to come by as an adult and should be respected.  But, hanging on to past links is sometimes easier said than done.

Those living far away from where they grew up might be aware of the ambivalent feelings attached to the periodic return ‘home’ – be it in person or via the web.  The joy of re-connecting with friends is real, but so is the realisation that you’ve slipped back into your old place in the youth social structure despite years ‘abroad’ doing everything possible to move away from it.  There’s also the realisation that recreating the past doesn’t work.  Longing for the closeness that once made early friendships great, you also dismay at the emotional and intellectual realization that the lives of your friends and you have developed along irreconcilable paths.   Children, money, educational attainment, geography have become wedges that pry apart those who were once almost social clones.

Let’s not forget the apprehension of the unknown:

How are your parents? (Ooops, are they still alive?)  How’s your partner that I met at the reunion? (Hmm. I hope they’re still married.)  You were such a great writer. What are you doing now? (What have I said? Didn’t someone tell me she became an engineer?)

The apprehension felt in delivering an inappropriate question belies our unease with the slate of innocent queries that could dismantle our own house of glass cards.  Divorces, career difficulties, financial difficulties, all become fair game for those that are unknowing about who we have become. 

Facebook has given me back my youth, but it has also exposed me to the vulnerabilities of my present.  My present is largely mine to shape…as long as it fits into the Facebook template.  Our lives are never solely how we view them.  There’s always a filter through which others view who we have become. 

How do we become at ease with the multiple valid perspectives on our identity that exist? Or, actually, should we even care?

'Up in the Air'

What can I say? If George Clooney is in the film, I make sure to give it a go.  And after his performance in 'Up in the Air', I'll be certain to continue going to see him.  In the film, Clooney plays a character so isolated and rife with contradiction that he encapsulates well the dilemmas of the life of the present day travelling professional, and by extension, many of us in the 21st century.

Clooney's character, Bingham, is a hatchet man for hire who's responsible for making personnel redundant at any one of his various corporate clients.  He's an outsider who sweeps in, delivers a questionably sincere 'goodbye and thank you for your services' message and flies off to his next assignment with little time for reflection.  The film is powerful, not so much because of the view we get of corporate firings, but because of the insight we get into the price Bingham pays for severing his ties to other people so that he may do his work with so little discomfort.  But, to be honest, when we see Bingham within the context of his sibling relationships, it is clear that his isolated approach to life pre-dated his job.  Bingham chooses a career that allows him to rely on few, have 'romantic' relationships by diary in cities across the country, and spend as little time as possible in the office with others because it suits who he is.

It's a funny thing though.  It all begins to unravel when Bingham chooses to re-engage with his siblings for his sister's wedding.  In the process, he ironically saves the day with his professionally-honed counsel when the groom gets the obligatory cold feet.  Bingham also gets a glimpse into what he has been missing in life as he witnesses their heart-rending reconciliation.

We can run, but we can't avoid connections with other human beings.  The randomness of life - weddings, deaths, accidents, job losses - ensures that our perfectly constructed defences against intimacy and the risks it imposes will crack at some point.  And the pain that follows when the defences fail is a boon, as well as an uncomfortable consequence.  Pain's upside is the alert we receive that change on some level is necessary.  A job loss means immediate financial worries, but it also invites an opportunity to change career paths or upgrade to a better position.  The marriage of someone close reminds us of our solitude, but the event also affirms that our presence has meaning to others and should not be taken for granted.

Bingham's life falls apart in just about every way from the moment he takes a step back into the world of the emotionally alive. But, the beauty is that as the artificial structures he built over the years begin to fall away, he is left with a base that is badly battered but real and able to serve as a platform for a new life with relationships that are uncertain and unpredictable, yet meaningful and rewarding.  

Again, it all started with risking the pain of emotion.  For if we want the joy of life, we have to be willing to risk the pain.