Rereading Hope

Robin tries to find solace and hope in some books in the days before a convicted criminal and sexual predator becomes the President of the US. Again.

“Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away. Inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters. The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.” Rebecaa Solnit

As the day approaches where an active criminal and sexual predator is crowned approaches, what we read to help us understand the world and the human behaviour which leads to the worst of us becoming the leader of us all may offer some succour. The next few weeks will see me rereading Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit and Eddie Glaude’s Begin Again. (You can listen to Eddie chatting to Robin on the Book Shambles podcast - ed note). Glaude, when facing the toxic shock of Trump’s first time, immersed himself in the writing of James Baldwin, one of the greatest writers on the tragedies of human oppression.

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” James Baldwin

No week passes without me contemplating this summary of the challenge of confounding our bigotry. When I spoke to Eddie when his book first came out, he taught me a valuable lesson. He explained that when he went on news shows to debate subjects such as critical race theory, he always had to pretend this opposition was arguing in good faith. Our public sphere is flooded with people devoid of ethics and morality, but who disguise their hatred by declaring “they are just asking questions” or voicing their “legitimate concerns”. They are eagerly disguising their loathing of people due to sex, race, culture or gender.

The recent inflammatory conversations about rape gangs is telling. The likes of Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage have an eager eye for sexual brutality by their enemies, but they soon lose all sight and hearing when it is anyone else who does not fit into their framework of required bigotry that they use to motivate their popularity and con money from their subscribers.

If Musk and Farage cared about sexual abuse, they might also have piped up about some of those a little closer to their power base.

One further book I will return to this year, mere months after reading it for the first time, is Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ biography of Audre Lorde, Survival is a Promise. (You can also listen to Robin chatting with Alexis about this very book on Book Shambles - ed note)

“And when we speak We are afraid

Our words will not be heard

Nor welcomed

But when we are silent

We are still afraid”

Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Robin

Somewhere I spend a lot of time already, and a place where I will be spending even more time this year, is my imagination.

I might be considered a day dreamer, but I think my daydreams are too active and with too much inspiration for action for me to define them as thin as dreams.

Adam Zeman’s The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination is a beautifully written work questioning our understanding of imagination and how was can use it.

Zeman was at the forefront of investigating aphantasia just ten years ago. Aphantasia is the condition where you have no internal picture book. If I write BANANA or HORSE, many of you will probably be able to picture them, but for those with aphantasia, there is visual recall. Oddly, this does not seem to affect an aphantasic from dreaming.

Zeman looks at the voices of artists and scientists, their creativity, and how they find their stories or inspirations.

When we ask “where do your ideas come from?” It is easy to dismiss the question, but why do some seem to experience and imagine so much more than others.

He stresses the importance of being open to experience.

It can seem tiring. Personally, I don’t switch off until I fall asleep at 2am (nearly always 2am, sometimes later). I can switch off background noise, colours, or the activity of birds. When I was a victim of anxiety, this could be unbearable and make me very short tempered. Now that I am not, it is the most fabulous food.

Imagination is also a threat. Talking to the actor Colin Jeavons a few months ago, he told me a very sad story.

As a schoolchild, he wrote a story. It was a story so wonderful that the teacher called him to the front of class and furiously scolded him, declaring that he must have copied it out from a book. From the point onwards, Colin knew to hide his imagination as it got you into trouble.

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in distress, the shining light of your own being” - Graffiti seen by Adam Zeman while out jogging.

I delighted in this book and you will find it is the keys to finding far more delight beyond the pages.

“A singular moth flutters in through the wind baffles to the naked bulb above the kettle, cuspid, a drifting piece of loose ash on the white filament, paper burnt up, caught in the rising current from some fire unseen, unfelt.”

Perhaps that paragraph is all you need to know to know if Cynan Jones’s The Dig is for you. It was for me.

It hits hard, both the scenes involving brutality to animals and the way it portrays the emotional brutality of being human, the unexpected suddenness of change. It is still with me, the internal and external landscape, the jab of the viciousness of events. I hope you’ll choose to read it.

“His eyes were full of apology and kindness. ‘I’m a mess, Ali, a mess and a car crash. And a bin on fire. And you and I. There are feelings, aren’t there’”

So speaks the self-pitying, psychologically abusive, emotionally manipulative Ed, the central cause, but not the central character, in Julia Raeside’s Don’t Make Me Laugh.

Set in the stand up comedy world, it is a powerful portrayal of how the projection of who you might be on stage can lead to manipulating those who might fall for who you seem to, how this potency can be used to manipulate and, through self interest and ego, destroy others. Having spent much of my working life in the stand up world, it was often an uncomfortable read. It is also a good education in the techniques and tricks that surround our worlds and so often poison them. This is a disconcerting and wise book.

As usual, there are books begun this week too, but still with bookmarks in.

“In all her years, the midwife had seen plenty of babies who, either moments before, or right after their births, were so intimidated by the force of life pressing in from all sides, that they lost heart and quietly departed this world.”

It is probably no news to you that Elif Shafik is a remarkable writer who instantly enchants you into her stories. I am not infuriated by 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, just infuriated that it has taken me six years to get here because the world is so full of magnificent storytellers.

“She regularly wore tie dye ponchos and reindeer headbands at Christmas time, plus her parents owned three harpsichords”

I first discovered Rachel Bloom via her song “Fuck me, Ray Bradbury”, her memoir, I Want to be Where the Normal People Are, is funny and silly and pertinent.

Hua Hsu’s Stay True beautifully captures student friendship, that time where everything is waiting and so much can be an adventure before banality is imposed upon it.

There’s a few more to write about, but I’ll do that when I get further into them.

Read yourself to place of love and activism if you can.

The waters are usually troubled, these times are not rare, but there are always voices to help carry us and encourage our hands to reach out to those in the water.

I will be at Shoreham Ropetackle on 23/1/25 for a War Child Benefit, then in Llanelli on 24th and Narberth on 25th.

You can pre-order signed and dedicated copies of my next book - Normally Weird…Weirdly Normal from the Shambles shop here.