I am just going through the notebook I kept over the 5 weeks I was away – random notes:
Feb 13-14th London to Verona
Flying over the Alps - so little snow on the mountains below.
I am flying to a 3-day conference on 'Global English' - the new phenomenon of a global language spoken by more non-natives than as a mother tongue. Is 'Global English' an identifiable variety, like Australian English, and if so what are its characteristics? Or does it vary from speaker to speaker, or speech community to speech community? What are the repercussions for teachers of the language (like me) in terms of what and how we teach? Given that most learners of English are presumably not bothered about becoming a native speaker (or recognise the unlikelihood of this) - so why are native speaker teachers rated so highly? Surely proficient non-native speakers are better models for learners? etc. etc.
I arrive at Verona airport - in the toilet is a sign "Keep attention, wet basement", which I understand as I have a little Italian - in native English it would be "Watch out, floor wet". Is 'Italian English' a better model than 'native English'?
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Italians are amazing when they talk - like street performance artists. Admirable, but sometimes a tad irritating – am reminded of Basil Fawlty and the spoon salesman - "Why can't you talk properly?". On the plus side, they are not trying to be anything other than Italian. (cf. some Japanese, some of whom strike me as trying to prove their 'international' credentials, by talking in a cool American sort of way - why can't you just be yourself?).
The history and beauty of Verona are overwhelming. I walked her streets with love in my heart. The Italians deserve to be proud. As it's Valentine's Week there is a sort of love festival going on – street concerts etc. the logo for which is 'If you love someone, bring them to Verona'.
In Japan I am often the sole gaijin (foreigner, outsider) on the train. Very often, usually, the Japanese will not even sit next to me, despite my frequent showering. Are they afraid of me? Is it because I am relatively big and need more space? I have been told this - some Japanese have apologised for the lack of space for my great long gaijin legs - in restaurants and cars, for example. I have a 31-inch inside leg – average surely?
Having just been in London for 24 hours, after several months in Japan, I can now see the benefits of not understanding Japanese - suddenly I find myself overhearing other English speakers' painfully boring conversations all the time, on trains and buses, in restaurants, walking down the street. In Japan it's all filtered out by my ignorance of the language, into a white noise. The worst is the mobile phones - what's happened to England? Why is it apparently acceptable now for people to carry on lengthy mind-numbingly boring one-sided conversations in confined public spaces, at high volume, so loud that they can't be blotted out? This is serious noise pollution, and bloody rude. In Japan such rudeness is almost unheard of - speaking on mobile phones on trains is quite rightly socially unacceptable, and if it is done then they put their hand over their mouths so it becomes a faint, tolerable mumble.
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Having said that, I loved being on a London bus the other day caught up in a real-life soap opera. Our bus pulled up behind another bus, the passengers of which all piled into our bus amid an on-going public performance which engulfed the lot of us. The loudest were Afro-Caribbean mamas a-shoutin' and a-cursin', but all sorts were involved - a range of native and non-native accents - African, Russian, Cockney. It seems a young man on the other bus had refused to get off when asked to do so by the driver, and the driver refused to move till the police arrived. The young man had had his bus pass stolen or confiscated the previous day but had a letter from the police explaining this, which the driver wouldn't accept. This was about 8.30 a.m. and kids were not getting to school, nor the mamas to their shoppin'.
"He wont no school kid! Did you see 'is traazers? Dey was 'alf-way down 'is legs! Could see 'is arse an' all!"
"'Course 'e was a school kid! 'E was wearin' a uniform! Why would 'e be wearin' a school uniform if 'e wont goin' to school? At 'alf past 8 in the mornin'?"
"You can't blame the driver - 'e was only doin' 'is job - fair is fair! Fair is fair - that's what I say."
"The driver was wrong! Why do we all 'ave to be late jus' 'cos of one kid? 'E should 'ave waited till the end and sorted it out then!"
"I had to pay twice! Why did we 'ave to pay twice!? Once for that bus, and now for this one! I'm gonna write to my MP about dis! 'tis daylight robbery, dats what it is!"
On and on it went at high volume - priceless.
In London I feel overwhelmed by reality, just on this bus - when I got on, the black bus driver made it very clear he does not pretend to like or respect white middle class twats like me, who subjugated his people for generations, and now don't even know how to use an Oyster card - he is certainly not going to help me find out, at least not in a hurry, till he's made his point. Compare that with the over-weeningly subservient bend-over-backwards service you get in Japanese shops and restaurants.
From a cynical gaijin point of view, I am often overwhelmed by imitation and pretence in Japan, at least in the cities. Here in London that Turkish greengrocers over there is not being run by an Englishman pretending to be stylishly Turkish - it's being run by a Turk, for other Turks, and if anybody else wants to use it, so much the better. Turkish greengrocers, next to Indian lawyers, next to Halal butchers... not trying to be anything other than themselves. I guess it's the same everywhere, it's just that in London there's a greater range – the down-to-earth Turkish greengrocer is not so far from the fashionably 'French' boutiques in Oxford Street.
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Back in Verona I end up on my first lonely night in an Indian restaurant. The Indian waiters talk to me in Italian, but I answer in Japanese. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, or rather change language mid-trick.
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Italian cities are fine examples of another thing often lacking in Japan - town planning. The Italians love their public spaces - the piazzas, parks and boulevards - the pedestrianised streets for strolling along looking at each other, and stopping to have a casual chat - the street cafes. They are the world's masters at this, having 2,000 or more years' practice. Very few public spaces in Japan, reflecting a private people - also reflected in the traditional Japanese bars - the izakaya - everyone screened off in private spaces within a public space. Having said that the Japanese are probably the most contradictory people in the world - in some ways extremely private - in other ways totally public - bathing for instance.
London is good for parks - and Trafalgar Square has been much improved by the pedestrianisation of the road in front of the National Gallery - more later. Been told London is 25% park.
Sensitivity - how do Indian waiters in Italy feel? An Afro-Caribbean London bus driver? A British English teacher in Japan? Fish out of water?
Me (an Anglo-American) in Japan teaching... what?
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Will this conference have any answers? Certainly I no longer teach 'Anglo-American'.
I am in a foreign land, in some ways have the upper hand.
Seen as an expert.
But despite undoubted superiority in my 'field', I am an outsider, passing through, not belonging to the basic community in which I live.
My colleagues (the virtual community to which I belong) are equally transient (often).
Where do I belong? Rooted to the familiar 'home' but drawn away to the exotic 'other'.
Teaching people who often are less than completely enthusiastic about learning English - and to be honest I often can't say I blame them - inasmuch as I might not have wanted to learn the language of cultural imperialists like Bush, Cheney and Blair if I'd had a choice.
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However, it is also the language of George Eliot, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Martin Luther King, Gandhi (one of his), John Lennon, and according to one Republican senator, Jesus Christ.
I am now in an Indian restaurant, in Verona, with Indian music playing, Indians around me talking - about what I do not know, other than it's no doubt about normal stuff, just as the music is about normal stuff - about being human. I find this environment more welcoming, a safe haven, or at least non-threatening, compared to an Italian restaurant - no-one judges me here, or if they do, it doesn't show. We are all outsiders here - we share this something. In an Italian restaurant/environment you are judged in comparison to the locals - born and bred here.
But there's more to it than that - Indian culture has a long personal and social history with me as an Englishman - for all the guilt and responsibility of colonialism, it has at least given us British a connection(s) with the rest of the world.
Not to say that we Brits have nothing to be ashamed of - far from it. And/but you can say the same of the Germans, Japanese, US, Spanish, French and every other society/nation that managed to get one up on its neighbours for a while.
15th Feb.
The conference is going well - nice positive vibe, along with a general sense of confusion - like too many cooks, a whole load of ingredients, and no clear idea of what the meal is going to look like.
Great concert - Ensemble Jamal Ouassini - Al Khafila. From Baghdad to Cordoba. Moroccan - Algerian group based in southern Spain. Top class - violin, ud, zither, jembe and a great singer. It's been put on as part of a separate conference on gypsies as a root of European culture (or some such) - I arrive early and sit at the front. Gradually the seats around me are filled up with gypsies till I end up the lone gaijin in a sea of communal gypsy loving. The outsider again on the inside.
The Independent 13/2/08 Ciar Byrne:
'Fitzgerald, according to one female jazz artist, was the person who made it possible for a woman to be a musician in jazz, not just the singer. She had her own band, and is in [Bonnie] Greer's estimation a true 'genius' [I agree!]. Monroe, on the other hand, was "a genius of human understanding - she didn't understand herself, which was a tragedy, but she understood human beings"'.
Friday night
200 or so of us are in a farmhouse converted into a restaurant, apparently by the shores of Lake Garda, but as it's dark we have no direct evidence of this. Inside all is well - great food, each course a different wine - one white prosecco, a punch, two reds, and a dessert wine, accompanying beef, pork, ravioli, and so on. Like Forrest Gump I find myself on the top table along with Prof. David Crystal (the (grand)father of linguistics) - who is hilarious - Profs. Barbara Seidlhofer and Jenkins - the leading lights in the 'English as Lingua Franca' movement/research, and my link - a Swedish professor of linguistics, who reminded me of the importance of not writing people off on first impression on account on their headgear - when I first saw him I thought he was some kind of village idiot, but after 3 seconds I realised he is a wonderfully warm and intelligent human being.
My immediate neighbours are two women my age who came to Italy 25 years ago, fell in love (with Italians) and stayed - one of whom was offered a job (25 years ago) in a school in our local village in Tuscany, which these days has a total population of 23, only 2 of whom are children - the school has long since gone.
Earlier on today I met a woman walking up the stairs - by the time we reached the top we were friends, like I'd known her for years. In the bus on the way back from the restaurant she tells me about her life, in a very strong southern Italian accent (mostly in English):
"My life it is so 'eavy. What can I do? I am a woman"
She is in her 50s while her ex-husband is in his 70s, losing his memory and can't look after himself, so every day she cooks for him, checks he's up in the morning and goes to bed at night. Her son doesn't allow her to have another relationship with another man - "If I did - he would kill me. What can I do? I am a woman - a woman 'as to learn to take a bad situation and turn it into something good. This is the life of a woman".
Saturday
Round table discussion in which the audience are invited to participate.
The first is an English woman incapable of completing even half a sentence - she babbles on interminably for about 5 minutes, jumping from one half-thought to the next, like a lobotomised butterfly - even I as a sympathetic native speaker couldn't understand the point, or points, she was trying to make - in the end they cut her off. God help her students. The one lesson she can teach them is 'Think before you speak'.
Next is a woman who starts reading out a 10-minute presentation, who is again cut off.
Next is a Nigerian - lovely guy - big and black - but with a very strong Nigerian accent complete with way over the top gestures, facial expressions and intonation - again I was sympathetic and native speaker but had no idea what he was talking about.
Finally is an English woman complaining that the catering staff don't speak English! Not only that but the waiters in the local restaurant don't speak English either - "My husband finally managed to get through to them with a bit of schoolboy French!". I mean really!! What is the world coming to?
Seems to me there is a fair bit of confusion about what 'Global English' is, but it's quite exciting to be somewhere around the beginning of serious research into it. I think the main point I can add is that we need to separate out the various issues, which seem to be conflated: from a sociolinguistic point of view it is a very interesting, indeed unique situation - a world language (at least a language spoken so widespreadly). There is also the question of a range of world Englishes, including non-native varieties, reflecting different communities' cultures and identities, versus the need for an intelligible international standard - an artificial construct spoken by few (if any) native speakers. Bilinguals are becoming the norm, if they aren't already, etc etc.
Friday night (slight reprise)
I sit in the hotel room watching snooker on the telly – a Chinese guy is doing a good job of beating the local Welsh favourite – 'Williams the Cue'
Saturday afternoon.
At the station in Arezzo I queue up at the train station ticket office to buy a train ticket to Bibbiena. The guy behind the glass tells me to go to the tobacconists' with an attitude like 'Why on earth are you asking me for a train ticket? - everybody knows that if you want a train ticket you go to the tobacconists'. Here at the train station ticket office we sell opera tickets and toilet brushes'.
Am reminded of the bus driver in London – the same 'Who the hell do you think you are' look of contempt and indifference.
On the train to Bibbiena there are no maps, no announcements and very few signs at the train stations we pass where we are. I ask the other passengers and in typical Italian style there is a general discussion about where we might be and where we might be going next. Italian culture seems to be so organised as to create as many opportunities to indulge in what Italians enjoy most - endless interactive combative speculation. Rather in the same way as Japanese culture seems to be so organised as to keep outsiders on the outside - not only is it often very difficult to find out where you are (unless you have a satellite navigation system) but it is not unheard of for Japanese to avoid telling you where even the most obvious things are - like the toilet (this has happened to me - I asked a guy where the toilet is and he shook his head, waved his hand in front of his face, grinned, and said no no no, when the toilet was 20 yards away, and he'd just come out of it. Was he embarrassed?).
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The next 20 days are spent with my boys up a mountain – nothing written as I was too busy living.
Later
Back in London – Her skies are grey but beneath them lies an unbeaten wealth and complexity of life.
I love being surrounded by such a linguistic and cultural hotch-potch of human existence.
Pop into the secondhand bookshop opposite the British Museum and pick up something by Prunella Scales:
“I don't think my work is important – I wish it were but I'm sure it isn't, although I think art is important. I think art is crucial. I think actors can be important these days because of the exposure they get on TV. For a short time after that exposure the public are going to take some notice of what you do, and therefore you have a chance to introduce them to things they might not otherwise meet...
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I find that exciting because we are now working in the most appallingly philistine atmosphere where no regard or value is placed on this priceless linguistic heritage we have. We have a huge responsibility and I mind terribly about being involved in it”.
'Sheer Bloody Magic”
1991
“One's own choices, with rare exceptions, tend not to work”
Prunella Scales on acting parts.
Linton Kwesi Johnson in TimeOut:
“Q. Is art political? ie. Can you, as artists, promote change?
A. Art can hold up a mirror; politics has to enable change. I know young people these days feel powerless but my generation organised for justice and rights and brought about change in this country. Young people need to acquaint themselves with what has gone before so they can take it forward”.
Am reminded of growing up in the 60s and 70s when you could see 'No Wogs' signs in B&B windows, and the crowd at football matches would throw bananas onto the pitch and make monkey noises when a black player came on.
Sitting at the breakfast table at my mother's house looking out at the view of the Chiltern escarpment and the Vale of Aylesbury stretching out to the west beyond, realising that finding change in one's life doesn't necessarily mean moving somewhere physically, but rather internally – like moving through to another dimension within oneself: a dimension of love, understanding and wisdom.
We watch a TV documentary on urban white working class in the north of England – their world has fallen apart over the last 50 years and rather than analyse the complex socio-economic realities they choose to scapegoat the immigrants:
“This country has gone to the dogs because of them” despite the fact that the local Pakistani-origin community have worked damn hard and are now often much better off than the indigenous whites.
“We're in the minority now” despite the fact that even in Bradford, which has one of the highest non-white immigrant communities in the country, they make up only 15% of the population.
“They are swamping us with their foreign culture” - what is the indigenous culture? Football and binge-drinking? You hate their mosques but how often do you go to church?
Am reminded of the role of the Jews in 1930s Germany.
Then watch the Three Tenors video – blending and transcending, acting through voice, painting in song, playing words, poetry in motion, etc. Transcendental art is instantly multidimensional – or the effect is on our minds.
London – The Imperial War Museum
Tucked in the foyer among mini-submarines and WWI field guns is (a copy of – I hope) 'Little Boy' the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Three young Americans chat about it over my shoulder as I read on the sign that it killed perhaps 70,000 immediately and another 70,000 in due course.
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“It's only a one megaton bomb” he says, “They make smaller ones now that are 40 megaton”, like he's talking about a new make of car and its handling performance.
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A Spitfire is dangling from the ceiling like a child's mobile, like a flying sportscar or a racing yacht.
Length: 29' 11”
Wingspan: 36' 10”
Crew: One terrified young man.
Peering into the cockpit of a Lancaster bomber – seven young men cooped together in a flying deathtrap – the bomb aimer gazing down through his goldfish bowl, the air gunner, pilot, navigator, flight engineer, wireless operator, the lonely disposable rear gunner – the bomb load 18,000 lbs of high explosives like a monstrous swollen queen bee, to be spewed down on European cities and their peoples below. Struck by the horror but also a fearful admiration of these young men's courage, at a time when their country was under attack by a much better equipped aggressor. How young Iraqis and Palestinian men must feel – the extremes to which the young are pushed by their 'betters' – the warmongering politicians and industrialists, and their careful manipulation through the media. The thin tin sheet through which bullets could and did so easily rip and tear into their delicate defenceless bodies at 20,000 feet – the simple escape hatch below the bomb aimer's body - “Parachute Exit” it says “To Open Pull String”. How many managed that? How many never had the chance?
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Upstairs there is an interesting exhibition of War Posters, from WWI recruitment – the Lord Kitchener that for some reason we had on our bedroom walls as ignorant teenagers in the 70s, while around us on the streets outside walked the few old men, the lucky ones, who followed his pointing finger to the front – to 2007 Stop the War pleas for sanity in an insane world. Showing how the governments employed advertising agents as propagandists, honing their posters to suit different markets.
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Thence to the Holocaust museum on the next floor up, which starts with a film of 'Life before the Nazis' with images of a happy people going about their business. I wonder whether there will ever be an Iraqi Museum or a Palestinian one that tries to deal with a situation equally horrific, but perhaps more complex. 'Life before the Yankees'. 'Life before the Zionists'.
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Scenes of the build up to the Holocaust – scenes of white young men chanting 'Germans defend yourselves' (from these filthy immigrants), and painting 'Don't buy from Jewish shops' across the same. Reminded of Bradford in 2008.
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Film of book burning and the quote:
'Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people'.
Heinrich Heine
German-Jewish poet (1797 – 1856)
Tate Britain: Blake
Plate 7, 1st book of Urizen 1794/6
“I sought Pleasure and found Pain unutterable”
Plate 11 (ditto)
“Everything is an Attempt to be human”
Kent: Gillingham
Sikh taxi driver - we swerve round a drunk white yob shouting in the middle of the road at 7 pm - "Welcome to Gillingham!" says my driver.
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He speaks Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi and English: “Many languages are not a problem as long as we communicate. All books look pretty much the same – it's only when we open the book and read it that we find out what it has to say – whether it is good or bad”.
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I am in a Kent pub watching a superb Zydeco band that 'play the most modern form of Creole music with controlled abandon'.
Jumbo Gumbo, with Professor Kevin Henty in shorts.
70 year olds on sticks, shaking hands with the band at the end – back in '68 they would have been 30.
Berkshire:
Just attended a gripping and emotional performance of West Side Story, as performed by among others, my 12 year old nephew. Find myself afterwards, again like Forrest Gump, standing alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber.
On the school notice-board:
'The only way to have a friend is to be one'.
(Emerson)
'No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted'
(Aesop)
Am reminded of the fact that Bernstein, who wrote West Side Story, was the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants and was originally going to call it East Side Story, with a Jewish girl for Maria (Bathsheba?) and a WASP Romeo, or whatever his name is.
Edgeware Road: Lebanese restaurant, with an close old female Iraqi friend (in the sense that we have known each other a long time).
I go to the loo – the Arab waiter asks K if we are ready to order. K replies in Arabic “I am waiting for my friend (sadiq)”. Sadiq means 'just good friend'; cf. Sahib which could mean intimate, possibly boy-friend.
Waiter responds with 'Sadiq?' meaning 'So he's not your husband then?'
Trafalgar Square: Stop the War rally to commemorate, if that's the right word, the 5th anniversary of the 'Allied' invasion and occupation of Iraq.
I hover around Tony Benn, like Forrest Gump, wondering whether I should go and shake him by the hand – in the end he walks past me, catching my eye, and says “Now, how do we get onto the platform? That's the next question”
So I almost met him – the story of my life. The guy who almost does things.
“There is no station called peace” he belts, this 82 year old, who physically reminds me of my father. We will have to continue this struggle, as will our grandchildren and their grandchildren. There will always be the rich and powerful who seek to use force to further their interests. The strength of the ant-war movement is its unity – old and young, black and white, etc.
We then walk down Whitehall across Westminster Bridge, along behind Lambeth Palace, over Lambeth Bridge and back into Parliament Square, as the tail end of the 40,000 strong march is still leaving. The march was led the whole way by a 102 year old woman.
I am interviewed by an Arabic TV station and say something similar to TB.
A protester tries and very nearly succeeds in getting onto the stage to attack Galloway. Noticeable that despite the large numbers of police everywhere there is no police protection for the speakers against such mindless violence - "useful idiots" as Galloway calls them. Mind you - he's far from perfect.
Wonder why the police are taking our photographs?
The Chilterns, post Royal Opera House, Covent Garden:
“In the beginning Dancing was a syncretic art of primitive peoples – that is what I declare and nothing more. In fact it would be wrong to deduce from this that I seek to uphold the theory that Dancing is the most beautiful of all the arts. Its antiquity is at once its strength and its weakness. I confine myself to recording that antiquity, and that is why I declare: 'In the beginning (of art) was Dancing'.
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'In the joys of living Music gives place to love alone, but love is a melody too' (Pushkin)
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In speaking thus, Pushkin wished above all to imply that love and art are born of the same breath. The soul, in its creative flight, has the same breath, the same voice, the same vibrations, the same emotions as love. The creative act, whatever it be, is always of an erotic nature.”
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Serge Lifar 'Ballet Traditional to Modern'
(1938).
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Discuss.
