Author: DC
Word count: 724
August 2011
A lot has been written and said about the causes of the riots that have occurred throughout England during the last few days. You can construe them as mindless violence or a mishandled response to oppression, or anything in between. But as someone living in London, the experience of this week boils down to this: for the first time in my lifetime, London has felt like a fucking scary place. Scary because of the violence, scary because of the hate, and scary because of the way it has made everyone look at each other.
The only thing I can compare it to is the period after September 11th in New York, or the July 7th bombings in London. That may be a crass comparison but it feels like the right one, because the manifestation of fear and distrust has been the same - people are looking upon each other with such a profound suspicion that it makes you want to shudder, or scream, or just give up. That feeling has been more acute even than normal if you're one of the tribe who self-identify as punk fans, and accordingly rock the black hoodie and jeans look. The rioters have appropriated our outfit, and as a result the rest of the people - absolutely fairly - are inevitably suspicious of us right now.
Saddest of all is that "community" seems to have become a dirty word. Those on the right are disparagingly using the term to describe the groups and areas who are failing to control or punish the rioters, and the left seem to feel that talking about community spirit and how we rebuild it isn't a suitably decisive and robust response to this awful turn of events. Togetherness and a sense of common purpose has been replaced by disconnection and mistrust. On a personal level, it has been crushing. My wife and I sat watching fires on TV on Monday night, not knowing whether to be distraught that it was happening and that people felt driven to such rage, or terrified that it was creeping closer to our front door.
It's going to take a lot even to get things back to the broken but stable state they seemed to be in a week ago, let alone to somewhere more positive and progressive. On a micro level it will need each individual to heal and to rebuild, and then on a macro level links and bonds have to be reconstructed, and firmer than before. And for me, my micro moment came sooner than I thought it could.
Tonight at the Underworld in Camden, an area that has been targeted - albeit lightly - by rioters, two astonishing young American bands played. Touche Amore from Los Angeles, a town which has seen its fair share of discontent, and La Dispute from Grand Rapids, Michigan. They are bands who write music that is inspiring even devoid of context: Touche Amore play powerful hardcore with a deft melodic touch and a deeply personal lyricism, and La Dispute play more spacey rhythmic rock and are fronted by an extraordinary singer who reels off stories that sound more like English epic poetry than traditional rock lyrics.
But tonight their music, and their honesty, and their ability to unite a crowd of disparate individuals into a keening, desperate, emotional mass, meant more than the sum of its parts. Or it did to me. Music, as it often has done, gave me exactly what I needed. It reminded me that positivity will ultimately always beat hate, that art and creation is so much greater than destruction, and that community can be real and positive and powerful. That it can be a home and a refuge rather than something to mistrust and ruin.
Actually, as is always the case, one line from one of the bands puts it better than five hundred from me can. At a time when the situation requires us all to do our bit to help piece things back together, to create something loud and beautiful to counter the gunfire and explosions, the crowd in the Underworld made a pact to do just that, screaming the following words: "if actions speak louder than words / I'm the most deafening noise you've heard". As loud as the riots have been, we need to be louder. We need to be deafening.
No comments:
Post a Comment