Poetry

NB. This post was prepared before the essay was published. It was even more fun than I expected, with lots of people joining in the discussion — this archive is totally unrepresentative of the event. But I’m out of time and energy to edit this, so I’ll be updating a fuller archive of the conversation, with more reflections, tomorrow.

State of the Arts is an annual conference that “brings together a wide range of creative voices to debate issues around resilience, audience and the value of arts and culture.” #SOTAflash is a distributed response/participation in SOTA, organised by artist-curators, asking anyone to contribute in a simple, direct and free way.

The following essay was published for #SOTAflash on Twitter between 11.30 and 13.30 on Thursday 10th February 2011. It was intended for that form — a live, tweeted essay — and so this is an archive of a live event (with “live” being a deliciously problematic condition in this Age) rather than a reproduction of that essay. A version of this piece intended for print publication is forthcoming in Silent City’s “Arts & Activism”; a third version will be published online soon after.

I insist on the pieces being different events/essays because in each case the form so utterly changes the content: this is by now an old saw, but it’s still cutting. Rewriting the essay for Twitter was fascinating: ultra-concision was required (due to hastags, I only had 120 characters to play with), and this led to using an active, first person present voice, where the original essay was passive and reflective, using a third person conditional. That’s simply because first person present is the tense which uses the fewest characters, but it’s interesting to note that that grammatical fact has hugely influenced how Twitter feels in general. It is a first person present medium. Another aspect of rewriting for Twitter was that I knew that not everyone would be following the essay from start to finish: a reader had to be able to arrive and leave at any moment. Each aphorism had to stand alone, and be a suitable introduction or conclusion to what it followed or was followed by. The thoughts are therefore more generalised and elliptical than in the essay for print publication: to me, they’re somehow more artistically satisfying, but less journalistically and politically useful.

I’m interested in how the essay will be received by my followers, by folk participating in #SOTAflash, and by folk at SOTA itself. I’m writing the introduction to this archive two days prior to publication, so I have no idea what will happen. It may be entirely ignored except by those regular followers it annoys, or it may (some hope!) be a surprise hit. Either way, it will be part of the geographically and intellectually distributed uprising of thought that #SOTAflash, I am sure, will be — I’m excited to find out how it fits into that ecology, what responses it will receive, and what else folk are planning to produce.

Enough of the intro: here’s the essay.

* * *

I’m answering the State of the Arts flashcon callout for crowdsourced contributions with a Twitter essay.

The following 40 tweets are a Twitter essay called #GiveUpArt – condensed from a piece in Silent City’s coming ‘Art & Activism’

In 99, in J18’s aftermath, ‘Give Up Activism’ was published, generating much discussion & debate http://bit.ly/ebm85j

What follows is ‘Give Up Activism’ hacked into tweet aphorisms in which ‘activism’ becomes ‘art’; activist, artist; &c.

A problem in art now: the artist mentality: folk see themselves as artists, part of a wider community of artists.

The artist mentality problem is particularly obvious precisely when folk involved try to push beyond its limitations.

I mean not to criticise folk who try to push limits, but to provoke thought on problems if we are serious about it.

Artists identify with art: it’s a role in life, a job, not a thing they just do but a vital part of self-image.

To see self as artist: to feel advanced in seeing the need for & how to achieve art, to lead struggles to create it.

Art, like all expert roles, has its basis in the division of labour: it is a specialised separate task.

Experts jealously guard & mystify the skills they have, keeping people separated and disempowered.

Artists assume other people don’t do anything to make their lives creative, & so feel a duty to do it on their behalf.

Artists define their works as those that count as art, disregarding the creative struggle of thousands of non-artists.

The harder we cling to the role of artist, the more we actually impede the creativity we desire.

Real creative revolution means breaking out of preconceived roles & destroying all specialism, reclaiming our lives.

The passivity of the spectators lies in their ability to assimilate roles & play them according to official norms.

The repetition of images offers models from which all must choose: thus the ultimate conservatism of the ‘artist’.

The supposed creative activity of artists is a sterile routine – a repetition of actions with no potential for change.

Artists would resist revolution: it would disrupt the easy certainties of their role & the niche they’ve carved out.

Like union bosses, artists are eternal representatives and mediators.

Easy to be the ‘artist’: art doesn’t challenge society, is an accepted form of dissent just as it’s not revolutionary.

Even if we do things that are not accepted, the way art is like a job means that it fits in with our upbringing.

The artist role is a self-imposed isolation from all the people we should be connecting to.

The artist role separates you from the rest of the human race as someone special and different.

Artists tend to think of their own ‘we’ as referring to some community of artists, rather than a social class.

Some folk have the strange idea that all must be persuaded into being artists & then we’ll have creative revolution.

Specialists recruit to their own tiny area to increase their power & dispel the realisation of her own powerlessness.

The political party substitutes itself for the proletariat: its own survival & reproduction become paramount.

In political parties revolutionary activity becomes synonymous with ‘building the party’ and recruiting members.

Art is like a Party: people’s primary loyalty becomes to the community of artists and not to the struggle as such.

Art is an illusory community, distracting us from creating a wider community of creativity.

In Marxist groups the possession of ‘theory’ is the all-important thing determining power.

In Art, power is the possession of the relevant ‘artistic capital’ – knowledge, experience, contacts, equipment, &c.

Art reproduces capitalist life: the basis of alienation is that we live in service of a thing that we have created.

If we reproduce capitalism in the name of art that declares itself revolutionary, we’ve lost before we’ve begun.

We should develop means that are adequate to our radicalism. I have no clearer insight into how than anyone else.

Arts-activism: a valiant attempt to get beyond our limits that has made clear the ties that bind us to the past.

Art is a form partly forced upon us by weakness: radical art is often the product of mutual weakness and isolation.

It may not even be within our power to break out of the role of artists.

Maybe when struggle is weak, those working for creative revolution become marginalised, seen as that special group.

To escalate creative struggle we must break the role of artist, try to push at the boundaries of our constraints.

The artist role in itself must be problematic for those who desire creative revolution.

This concludes the #GiveUpArt Twitter essay for #SOTAflash. It can be read in the archive now live at http://wp.me/pgMJK-5w

Thanks for reading #GiveUpArt for the #SOTAflash conference, whether live or archived. Apologies to all who’ve been feedspammed!

I talk about Joe Hill a lot. He’s a huge inspiration, politically and artistically, for people across the world over the last century, and I’m glad to be one of them. He was killed 95 years ago today, murdered by government firing squad for a crime he didn’t commit. But he never died. I wanted to write a post for Joe Hill, to remember him, to explain for those who don’t know the story why he’s so important, and to keep him alive. The story should be told again and again, so while you can find it in many places online, I don’t mind telling it again here. I’ve recorded a song — not by him but for him — and a simple poem came to me too.

Joe Hill was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Sweden, October 7, 1879. He emigrated to America in 1902, working as a migrant laborer all across the country. Like many immigrants and migrant laborers in the 1900s, he became involved in radical labor organisation, joining the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, in 1910. At the time workers across the country were being betrayed wholesale by the American Federation of Labor, a so-called union that collaborated to suppress the struggle for vital workers’ rights. While the AFL would exclude immigrants, non-whites, women and poorer laborers, the IWW was open to all, struggling for all together. In the early years of the 20th Century, the IWW was crucial in winning many of the rights Americans take for granted today — and spread across the world, too.

Well, Joe Hill wasn’t just an organiser but a poet and songwriter, and that’s what he’s remembered for most now. Between 1910 and 1915 Joe Hill wrote dozens of radical songs which grew immensely popular throughout labor struggles. They were often based on hymn tunes — simple, memorable, and often bitingly funny. You might know The Preacher and the Slave (where the phrase “pie in the sky” comes from), Rebel Girl, or There is Power in the Union. Hill’s songs, because they were so easy to learn, so fun to sing, and condensed vital messages so skillfully, spread across the country, sung by crowds of workers regularly at strikes and protests. They became important for the movement: a way of keeping spirits high, of reminding everybody where they stood and with whom, and of spreading the word.

But Joe Hill made some enemies this way too. Chief among them was Amalgamated Copper ( later known as Anaconda Copper) who were involved in several of the toughest struggles, and of course the state authorities wherever he happened to be. So in January 1914, when in Salt Lake City former police officer John Morrison and his son were killed, he was shadily framed by the authorities for the murder. The evidence was as slim as slim could be: Joe Hill, in the city at the time, had suffered a gunshot wound the same night (as had four other people in the city), and had a red bandana (unsurprisingly for a labor organiser) as did, reportedly, the murderer. But, while strongly denying his involvement, throughout the case Joe Hill resolutely refused to reveal his alibi, even though it might mean his death. The story goes something like the folk ballad Long Black Veil: that Joe Hill had been with a married woman that night, was shot by her husband, and refused to testify in order not to disgrace them. Whether or not that’s true, who knows, but that’s how the story goes.

Joe Hill stayed in jail for well over a year, and people across the world — including Helen Keller and president Woodrow Wilson, of all people — demanded his release. There were vigils everywhere, and often the people gathered would sing Joe Hill songs — songs which he kept writing all the while. But the Utah authorities wouldn’t relent, and he was sentenced to death. Shortly before facing the firing squad, Joe Hill wrote his last will and testament in the style he’d always written:

My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan;
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”

My body? Oh, if I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.

Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my Last and final Will.
Good Luck to All of you,
Joe Hill

Joe Hill was taken out into the yard, blindfolded, with a paper heart pinned to his chest. His last spoken word on this world was “Fire!”

But the story doesn’t end there, and Joe Hill never died. His body was sent to Chicago for cremation: he’d said to his friends that he “didn’t want to be seen dead in Utah”. There was a public funeral, and thousands gathered in the street, where they sang his songs together well into the night. Packets of his ashes were sent to every IWW local (except those in Utah) and to supporters across the world. And his songs continued to be sung, and the struggles he took part in continued, and the victories he helped win continued to inspire people. His life and work continued to be an inspiration to political songwriters from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs to Billy Bragg and Utah Phillips. And that’s why we say he never died. That, and the song, in a very humble rendition by me, which was written in his memory around 1930 by Alfred Hayes and set to music by Earl Robinson:

And the story doesn’t even end there. Here’s my favourite postscript (and long may the postscripts continue). In 1988 it was discovered that an envelope had been seized by the United States Postal Service in 1917 because of its “subversive potential”. The envelope, with a photo affixed, was captioned, “Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915”. The Chicago IWW laid claim to the envelope, scattered some at sites of struggle, but also followed up a suggestion by Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman: portions were given modern day Joe Hills Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked to be eaten. Billy Bragg did indeed eat his, and still carries Michelle Shocked’s packet wherever he plays. So Joe Hill is there, too.

I care about Joe Hill because of his significance, and because it’s a good story, and because remembering him helps us to remember all the many labour martyrs whose names and stories we don’t know, but also because of what his approach to music means. Joe Hill wrote songs for people to sing and for a political purpose: he wrote simply, directly and vitally. He wasn’t afraid of sincerity or of satire: he just sung what he thought, and what needed to be sung. Would that I, or any of the artists of all media around now who claim to be political, had the courage and skill to be so honest and direct. So I make no apologies for the corniness of the following poem, which I’ll leave you with (though I do apologise for its other weaknesses). It’s not a very artful poem, and it’s not for print but for performance, and not for performing anywhere but just where it’ll help us in our struggles. I’ve performed poems on blockades and on top of a siege tower; I like the way they can keep our spirits high. This poem is for the moments when a protest or strike has just been broken, when we’re feeling exhausted and dispirited and desperate, when it seems we will never win. It’s just for me, really, because Joe Hill helps me stand up again.

Joe

A singer I never knew
shakes my shaking hand,
reminds me where I stand
with whom.

They shot his paper heart
and crumple mine with news
of broken fights. We lose,
we start

again, we make a plan
to strike once more the spark,
to howl into the dark
demands.

A singer I never knew
shakes my shaking hand,
reminds me where I stand:
with you.

Solidarity forever!

Harry Josephine Giles

#GiveUpArt : A Twitter Essay for SOTA flashcon

Dreaming of Joe Hill: A Story, A Song, A Poem