Notes for later by Joe Pollitt

Notes for later...

I am trying to make quirky observations. Write about the obvious and dismantle the importance of race. Some among me would see me fail, as all they have is the skin on their backs to hold onto. Creating division, segregation and screaming of equality. How hypocritical and illogical it all seems to be to me? 

Anthropology is such a rich subject but it lends itself to thoughts of superiority and inflammatory language of the elite. There is an ugly distance created by the viewer and what is being viewed. No interaction just observation and so it becomes one of the ugliest subjects imaginable. 

The beauty of African Tradition and their Rituals is that they are flexible. You can expand them, tweak them, bend them and change them at a moments notice in order to accommodate those present at any time. It is like Voodou itself, it is kind and generous to everybody. The West Africans belong to an oral culture so nobody is tied up to some strict doctrine. (There are no Voodou Fanatics or Voodou Extremists). The West Africans who were taken as slaves, took with them these practices of honouring the world around them and their expert knowledge of nature. They adapted these practices to suit their new environments. This it is power of the Africa. This is her beauty and her strength. the flexibility to change and evolve perfectly at a drop of a hat. The ability to survive and evolve. Perhaps and I'm going out on a limb here but just maybe this is what true freedom looks like.

The Great British weakness is their inability to be flexible, which makes the society effectively static. This obstinacy cripples their ability to evolve. I have been thinking about Remembrance Day, 11th November at 11.00 O'Clock the public are called to prayer. They observe a 2 minute silence and hang their heads in quiet meditation, thinking about their military actions across the globe. This is their Traditional British Ritual. They remember their War Dead and at 3 minutes past 11 they continue their killings abroad. Here there is no flexibility. It is not a chance to change or apologize for their brutality across the known world. It is cold and calculated as they wallow in the blood or their dead and remember their murderous acts of War. The British inability to be flexible means that they are incapable of taking responsibilities for their actions. Decidedly, this makes Britain an immature and irresponsible Kingdom. What I am trying to achieve by pointing this out, is that Great Britain is inferior to an African Society, because of it's uncompromising ability to change. So we they stuck inside an archaic bubble that is not of their making and seen as unpatriotic if they don't observe these bizarre practices or fail to adhered to the letter of the Law. In reality they pay little if any respect to their dead by allowing others to follow in single file. This murder factory must stop and a sense of global responsibility observed and the perpetrators, at the highest level, should be held to account.

Rethinking all that I have been taught and want to write something out that will try to explain why African Art will shape tomorrow's world. African Art is not a performance by some Celebrity Artist, but more about Traditions and Rituals. It is so difficult for African Artists to work within the parameters of a Western notion of Art when the word "ART" simply doesn't exist on the Continent. It is so difficult for Westerners to understand the complexities of Tradition and Rituals that are practices on the Continent of Africa because they don't conform to any dateline of time frame. The West is dictated to by their rigid Traditions. We must kiss a girl or boy on Valentines Day and send gifts and cards to support a greedy economy; most buy into this nonsense. We are forced to take time off when Jesus was born at Christmas and again send cards and gifts to support a greedy economy; most buy into this nonsense. Everything in the West is structured and ordered, the populations is required to be compliant, this is polar opposite to those in Africa. Africa is far freer than the West as it's Celebrates life in a more personal fashion, this is not only Liberating for the peoples of Africa but is the glue that holds a healthy community together. The West has so much to learn from African Art and this is the vacuum the West has created since the beginning of the last Century.

Holding onto power via education. Censored by the idea of being qualified to write or not, what a load of nonsense. Although clearly the minority the world is shaped by the few and the majority are excluded. This idea that the minority are the majority is becoming outdated and soon the penny will drop and things will be shaped very differently in the future.