"Before it can ever be the repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock." Simon Schama Landscape and Memory.
I have been roaming. Je suis flâneur. I am one of the "chattering classes".
It is nothing to boast about. I am historically privileged.
That's how it is. It's in my genes. I have been programmed to act like this. My parents had nannies.
I may not be able to do much useful manual work but I am brilliantly adapted to doing nothing.
I roam apparently freely, artfully even, beyond the lines of what others might suggest I should.
I am what some may label an 'activist'...
"If you do, like I do, blog and tweet messily, you are probably an activist."
says Naomi Barnes bravely in Hybrid Pedagogy.
Goodness, I do feel like a kindred spirit. I am an "Activist"!!
No, Naomi, I am a privileged flâneur.
I walk without luggage but goodness am I weighed down with "enlightening" cultural baggage.
I virtually never wander alone even if I am alone.
I am steeped in Empire stories of "discovery."
There are the pictures of an ancestor in the 18th century Americas.
There is the ancestor's book on the shelf from 19th century Sarawak.
There is the regimental sword from the Highland regiment.
There are the sepia printed photos from a Nagasaki mission post.
I am just doing what is normal for my types...nothing terribly useful to great portent.
(He poses the unfamiliar word there with an fairly ignorant flourish - an amateur [in its privileged sense] needs as many letters as he can get to fill the scroll.)
That's right, I am writing to great portent.
(pretentious git).
I go out with friends, family dead or alive, the dog, and their words, acts, perspectives, music, memories, places.
This page may be in landscape format but to tell you the truth it is really exemplary of my peoplescape.
That's right, it's a clever pun: Landscape is People - People is Escape sic: Peoplescape.
This is a paltry escape, I warrant you.
I don't believe that the way to vanquish alienation is "work" Mr Marx, it's play...amateur play.
I am, as you know, (he places that importantly) set on a odyssey of exploration.
It goes by the name of "lesmauxdesmots".
(God I do enjoy my French - It adds a certain Je ne sais quoi).
I have set sail with a crew of people who are quite, or more or less unaware of this venture whose destination is quite uncharted.
It's a line of navigation that one might call rhizomatic.
I and multiple assemblages are writing myths at this moment.
Those others are both fellow (if unwilling, or unknowing) shipmates and myth-makers.
I do like a bit of myth particularly in May.
Years back when I was working in the parcel depot, we would deal with our alienation with beer, darts, the Mirror and Saturday football.
Now its rhizomatic learning with Deleuze and Guattari and the aforementioned crew.
It is pretty similar really, larking around, these are jolly japes.
We pass the time until it's time to clock orf (chortle).
Roaring, roaming autodidact.
I am an ideal: an idle (amateur), ideal (amateur) self-motivated learner (activist), up to not much good, to borrow Audrey's borrowing of Tressie McMillan Cottom:
“ideal, self-motivated learner," "embedded in the future but dis-embedded from place.” Dis-embedded from place, disembodied – an erasure that just as easily serves as a re-inscription of a “universality” of the white, middle class male." (me)
I do feel Much less ignorant on reading Audrey Watters blog all morning (I don't know about you?)
There were a number of chapters er posts.. that I lapped up.
Indie, as in tomb raider...
I am Indie aren't you? I do love my label...
We are all Indie...(well those who understand their Indies from their Indies)
It says "edupunk" on my Twitter profile but frankly writing it on Blogger is just as well.
I do love Joe Strummer that fellow public school boy "revolutionary".
Yes, I'm with Joe, I'm edupunk, I'm Indie...
"Indie means we don’t need millions of dollars, but it does mean we need community. We need a space to be unpredictable, for knowledge to be emergent not algorithmically fed to us. We need intellectual curiosity and serendipity –"
Oh yes, I have all the time in the afternoon for intellectual curiosity and that gorgeous word 'serendipity' - only a pity that the guys in the parcel depot wouldn't get to know that word.
Being blind drunk allows for serendipity too...if only they knew.
When I roam, I don't see desolation of bombed cities around me.
I see a caring peoplescape with hope.
I suppose that's a freedom..of sorts.
We need all the freedom we can get.
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