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Firstly, a big thank you to you all for reading what has
been quite a bewildering year’s worth of subjects. When I began “Dancing with
the Gatekeepers,” on 30th May 2016, my intention has always been to
understand each subject that came to mind each week, and to learn something
from it, confirming why the most popular articles so far range wildly from
David Bowie to Donald Trump, from Quorn to the Futurist Cookbook, from big data
to “legal names,” from George Orwell to word puzzles, and from the art of
telling a joke to the history of the word “ain’t.”
If anyone has sought to find out more, or ask a question
about something, or someone, having read my work here, then that is the best
possible outcome – I only write because I am happy to admit I don’t have all
the answers.
However, the first subject I featured, on how John Lennon’s
flippant remark to a journalist’s question became, at the insistence of Yoko
Ono, the inspired dream of a man on a flaming pie, telling Lennon to name his
band, “The Beatles, with an ‘a.’” Once you know something is untrue, the
persistent insistence that “ceci n’est pas une pipe” becomes a deranged
fantasy. When it comes to cold facts, those that mean the world works on a base
level, you should not the use joke in René Magritte’s painting “The
Treachery of Images” as a way to live your life or, even worse, assert your
point of view over those of others.
The two words of the last year have been “Brexit” and
“Trump.” Even if I look back on this article in twenty, thirty, fifty years, I
will not need any further explanation than that, and I don’t expect you may not
either. I have tried not to advance a particular view about either of these – politically,
I am in the centre, so if the world is substantively better for everyone after
Brexit and Trump, then that is fine by me – but the one thing I should not have
to be, if I did say anything about either subject, is afraid to say anything at
all.
Freedom of speech is paramount in this world – all opinions
should be able to be heard, then we can decide on their merit. I am not the
type of person who tells people that the truth is being kept from them, or that
they are blind to it, because I would need to have concrete evidence to prove
that, unless I wanted to engage in conspiracy theory. When certain voices think
they have been silenced, because one outlet decides they don’t want them there
anymore, they should think whether that place has its own voices to protect, or
whether they might have been in the wrong place to begin with. Every voice has
its own place and, if requires, what it says can be tested, in a court of law.
I wrote a great number of notes for what I wanted to write
about here, and quite a few of them could become their own discussion here in
future weeks. It is a febrile time for thought about our own places in the
world, having felt that everything has been turned upside down. However, I feel
safe that things will work out better for everyone in the end, even if I don’t
know why - that might just be me.
The dream that gave me the name “Dancing with the
Gatekeepers” was my having recorded an album, rock and/or electronic in nature,
in which one song led to my shouting “all you have are words” over and over
again. Despite what others may choose to do with their words, they are all I
have too.
Good luck, everyone.
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