I read this article about Englishness by Suzanne Moore in the Guardian. People said it was saying all the wrong words. I disagree — I thought it was all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order. I’ll give you that, sunshine. So in the tradition of the greatest fridge magnet poets I re-ordered the words.
Suzanne Moore is a Guardian Columnist
culture precedes the first rule of Englishness
you don’t talk about war
Leave If you didn’t Bragg
As a disrespectful “Rooster”
About when We left
the militant Young guys
on the losing side
in the grounds lovely Englishness
Medal-winning
Billy England drawing new maps
In response to
Johnny Internationalist demon
based on the Magic routes of a national identity
we were doubly enraged by the pagan
and are not used to being criticised on
the bedding in of deep impoverishment; the deliberate breaking up of communities.
or white chalk and what makes England shake.
…
There has Always been a rightwing coup
no exceptions, of course – I will come to them – but every day Brexit
has long assumed it owned the culture – and in many ways it did –
We can’t go back to London
having been saying No-deal is
an unacknowledged culture war
It Is your job is to produce culture
for a long time I am ambivalent.
2012 – 2016 worked within the culture industry
None of these seemed to be in touch
see what was happening to half the country
“Wasn’t that all a really great time
But It is happening again now.
and a premonition, I was told that I wasn’t anything
identity was verboten.
Having always believed that
Then horizons were so limited.
Every time I tried to talk of politics On the anniversary of the start of the wars
It was patronising.
…
talk of a Tory
think of the mine
blood and bones and Brexit.
miners’ Labour gaping George Osborne with great ceremony,
with new galleries for Those who want to see this
opening gash
people feel deeply shocked
“It was terrible – bits of artists, musicians and film-makers
went all over people”
the “real” left reply:
art is meant to be good for us
I dislike the asceticism of Corbyn because This lovely theatre is
the very thing Jeremy Corbyn seems unable to do
cabinet and then the prime ministership are not Given
The gala of bad stuff
some had Lost their private sex in the new Meadows of Islington
is apparently a wonderful show,
The ungrateful gits don’t get that, do they?
We can celebrate the fact that the poor people were militarised and
the cultural establishment
Were the honourable canaries
I still feel enraged at what didn’t happen.
culture is also very bad for people;
people should be allowed to stupid, but
this administration of rubbish conceptual art
was no longer an idea
it has produced some of the worst art ever seen, such as Anish Kapoor’s
But also we can understand
In an election, that same cultural establishment reigns.
This cultural stance has won Most of that provincial vote
because their cultural views have made music that was really an actual war.
…
Jez in his tours has asked difficult questions.
People: David, Deller, Shane, PJ
have been going to events
In
Places; Grayson, Almeida, Butterworth, Durham, Perry, Bowie
told us to vote remain
then got nothing from it.
Yet because investment in amoral hedonism doesn’t do it either
Except as culture
The establishment:
Harvey, comfortable and self-satisfied
Byron
even though Many of them are having wars over who has the biggest Johnson’s
and it has become him
“We have had enough multiculturalism and abortion rights”
Meanwhile, as one notable or another discussed the Scots, the people that exist between the English, and mused
“have two penny to education and cannabis. meanwhile
the natives should remain grateful
in council blocks in big cities
despised”
We failed to notice it was legalising the culture, so that to discuss Olympics 2012, or the London mayoralty, as some do, was roundly booed; other left cultural miserabilists, having long been looking for a new losing culture; to which the deviant wondered
which does,
has been,
who are
us?
But we can begin to understand that, to have a dog in this fight, one may have to be creative.
…
English has sung of war
it is tough indeed.
– it led to Brexit and riots —
But be attuned culturally to the
places
we can’t go back to
because England was a war
all the year before
2016
and that just because that has magic to It...
If those that didn’t share your views about that country, England
that is also a culture, war;
don’t they get that they are two things at once?
…..
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