She was summoned back from the dead, a spirit with form to keep me company, sword, sister for me, brother- man. I missed her, was lonely so she came. Her voice tore down buildings as she flew around me, and though it comforted me, the price was too high, people were going to get hurt, the earth was sinking in, the ground cracked and sunk. My sister brought me to a canyon, vast desert open plains and still they crumbled from my dead wife’s voice. This place was suitable, but was no way to live. I would have my love by my side but no one could come near. And she was a floating thing, I could never really touch her, flying pixie with dark air, dark hair. ‘This is the only safe place’ my sister said, but even then the mountain tops were crumbling on the horizon. Blue sky yellow ground and yellow tumbling mountain tips breaking away and falling down. ‘Send her back’
‘So many bad things happened here. So many good things can still happen here.’ Photo by Luisa Felicia Clauss Taino symbol of Protection of the Earth Mother taken during the solar eclipse 2024 in a basement where a mother and child were murdered by the father.
Girls have fathers. Conjuring the man but keeping him in the bag. I can have all the dinner I want at this kind of resort. And everything’s ok with this girl now right? I think she came out of the bag enjoying a raven’s crow. Beehive around my arm at night. Thrown against walls and not held warm. In a pit of hate, pleasant petals falling over the dainty hunt and slaughter.
I Loved the Gauntlet and There Was No Other Way. Album Released October 29th 2024. Photo and images by Uhuruheru Costume, headpiece & makeup by Uhurumatahari with help from their daughter Laxmi.
Such a relief to breathe a dream, loving the solid ground and also the spirit of breath coming on like a volcano. Dreams that were written on parts of my body were part of something else you were interested in. A point of light was written something about you on my side, showing you were also written inside me. There were so many words, so many words that you were interested in.
On the cusp of welcome, on the cusp on invasion. Do you feel you are a soul-less cog in a wheel? Do you regret every time you push people away? What is it that people meet if they donât meet your heart? I’m dying to meet you in a space that’s strong enough to really see you and to be fully seen. I think I’m ready, I want to try. I want to sing your song that’s my song too and get well paid. Steer me away for terror and into kindness. The edge hell so near suddenly and I only on a sofa reclined. I stomached the casual racism too, alerted to make an intelligent difference. There is no reason to be circling around the carcass. Letâs eat and be strong, clean up and to move along with the true meaning of the scavenger and the vulture. The child, the man and the woman do not need to walk down such a dark path alone, do not need to walk down such a dark path at all. A little company on the ledge let’s say, a little company on the ledge. My secret space is small and round and along the edges are some rectangular friends (they are not all bad you know)
Still from ‘Very Fond’ video.
These days are simple for me now. When it’s time I withdraw to greet my grief and menstruation while watching the evening sky turn dark. Writing living Taino song. Do I write a song how I’ve been fucking spirits? Any spirit, any and all? And when I stopped, when it was time to shut the factory down, how they came at me first in dreams of iphones of porn but they couldnt tempt me, I had got so clean. Later was next level. I thought I was in heaven until I couldnt move my arm. Then I knew I was dreaming. In my fake dream of heaven I knew I was asleep in my bed. I knew it was coming for me and that I must wake up fully. It’s true that when good healing is happening it also attracts the bad spirits.
‘The Free Hand’ Italy 2025
They held me down when they couldn’t tempt me to use, and be used. They held my left hand to the corner of the bed. When I fully woke up my arm was being pulled slowly. They rubbed my breast just as I got myself free. Lol. That was weird I said. And you know the difference between dreaming and not. Cheeky bastards. I slept with the light on, ok, but still spooked and scared. Next night my wardrobe door popped open. Is that what’s been following me around this whole time? Is that the demon I was feeding? Now we’re going to get to know each other real well. We can become true and caring friends because all the cards are on the table now. Surely there’s better things we can be doing than rolling around the sack with all those blue and pink probing tendrils from outer space pumping into us. I had been pushing this gunk into me for years. And years with the way I was forcing my body to feel a certain way. So after thirty days and thirty nights she showed me how it was done. She’d be the boss of the hand, not the other way around and nothing would be forced. And yes, I had strict rules on simple things and in the end it was the inside and the opening of a flower that could actually seduce me and nothing less.
Most people whose Irish childhood was spent between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s wistfully remember the comics then available. They were mostly published by the DC Thomson company based in Aberdeen, Scotland. The Beano and The Dandy were read by boys and girls, and girlsâ comics like Bunty and the School Friend (this for older girls) had wide appeal. For older Boys there were masculine comics like Hotspur, Tiger and Eagle, choc-a-bloc with soccer and World War II action stories. Brothers and sisters took an occasional peek at each otherâs favourites out of curiosity.
Nowadays I sometimes buy The Beano weekly or the Dandy Annual and give them to a woman I know who passes them on to her nieces and nephews. I notice that Lord Snooty and his Pals are still around; Desperate Dan still enjoys monster cow pies with an oxtail protruding through the side; the Bash Street Kids are up to their madcap antics, but they donât get whacked nowadays by angry teacher because caning has been outlawed. Minny the Minx, tomboy forever, still enjoys smashing things with her home-made catapult, but is not smacked with her parentâs slipper. Multicultural Britain is deftly integrated into The Beano with Asian girls from Hindu and Muslim homes. Afro-Caribbean ethnicity is also given a place. There is no discussion as such about religious beliefs, but festive events like Christmas and Diwali are featured.
Cultural Self-Confidence and Irish Comics
Some efforts were made from the 1950s onwards to produce Irish comics that promoted the cultural norms and references of a state that broke from the values of the British Empire after 1922. These entrepreneurial efforts had limited success. Economies of scale was one limiting factor. The Irish population was either stagnant or only slowly increasing. The Irish comics had no income from advertising.
In the 1950s there was a monthly Irish comic called The Leprechaun. In the 1960s and 1970s a comic titled Our Boys appeared, and one called An Gael Ćg which was for young readers learning Irish. These latter titles were produced by the Christian Brothers. Since the 1970s the educational Folens company has published Christmas annuals with titles like SĂșgra, Siamsa and Spraoi for parents to place beneath Christmas trees. Some Celtic themes, some aspects of contemporary life and some Irish language fun are included in the titles. These only appear once a year. Irish children still go to shops and newsagents to buy The Beano, Spiderman and a few American publications.
Perhaps thereâs a market for an Irish-produced monthly childrensâ comic? We have many illustrators of stimulating childrenâs books in Irish and English who could surely be attracted to such an enterprise. The movie animation industry in Ireland has contributed to films that were nominated for Bafta and Oscar awards. I hope some of this artistic talent can be garnered for the launch of a comic or two that Irish children and their parents would gladly read.
Incidentally, comics with lots of bubble dialogue are published by language teaching companies for people learning French and other foreign languages. The TEFL teaching English as a foreign language industry in Ireland could follow suit.
A Zambian Comic
While living in Zambia I occasionally read a comic called Orbit â the magazine for young Zambians, which was subsidised by the Ministry of Education. The magazine could be read by children from aged twelve upwards and promoted science, technology, nature study and fun within an African context. See this link for sample pages: Discovering âOrbitâ â Zambiaâs unique science and comic magazine â downthetubes.net.
I recall posting copies of the comic to youthful Irish relatives and hope they absorbed positive impressions of African life.
Indeed, at the Carnsore anti-nuclear rally in 1980 I sold specially imported copies of Orbit along with modern African novels and collections of proverbs.
Perhaps, if kids today were to read more comics they might be less attracted to the dark world of the internet, and their imaginations might roam more freely. Finally, a comprehensive history of Irish comics might assist our understanding of the cultural formation of the children of yesteryear.
We are regularly presented with press releases from government departments that express empathy for those struggling to make ends meet while facing exorbitant day-to-day living costsânot least among them the price of petrol, diesel, and home heating fuel. Yet, in the next breath, government bureaucracies issue statements justifying the ‘need’ to raise Carbon Taxes so that we can ‘do our bit’ for the environment and society. These contradictory messages serve only to exacerbate the hardship felt by those who, day in and day out, live under the weight of economic and political pressure.
We regularly hear about problems and disasters attributed to climate change. There are, we are told, endless challenges stemming from this phenomenonâand as responsible citizens, we must be willing to pay the price for its effects.
As of May 2025, nearly 50% of the price of petrol and diesel at the pump is made up of various taxes, with the Carbon Tax accounting for almost 10%. It is worth remembering that motorists are paying VAT not only on the fuel but also on the tax applied to the fuel. Those using natural gas to heat their homes are paying close to âŹ130 a year in Carbon Tax, while those using home-heating oil are paying âŹ63.50 per tonne of COâ emitted in the same tax. With all these sources of Carbon Tax, the State’s revenue from this ‘green initiative’ reached âŹ1 billion for the first time in 2024.
Unravelling the Hysteria
The seemingly endless chorus of climate change consequences can leave one feeling helpless, subservient to an invisible, unquestionable force beyond comprehension.
But just as the old saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, perhaps understanding the burden of the consequences of this unchallengeable doctrine begins with asking the most basic questions.
Are the repeated justifications for never-ending increases in Carbon Tax truly the result of the general populationâs failure to make sufficient sacrifices to combat climate change, or could they stem from other factorsâpolitically inconvenient onesâthat are more easily scapegoated as climate issues? Climate change has become a topic so shielded from scrutiny that questioning anything presented as its direct result is rare, for fear of being labeled a climate change denier.
Just as Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwellâs novel 1984, began to question the scapegoating ritual of the âTwo Minutes Hateâ, a daily exercise designed to convince citizens that societyâs problems stemmed from disloyal citizens rather than a deeply flawed system, we, too, might benefit from stepping back. Perhaps some of our societal and economic struggles are rooted in deeper, overlooked issues that are being ignored or glossed over due to the incessant rhetoric of climate change effects, paradigm blindness and groupthink.
Take, for example, the recent introduction of water usage restrictions in areas of Ireland that experience some of the wettest spring months in Europe. Just recently, a hosepipe ban was announced for Mullingar in Co. Westmeath, Milford in Co. Donegal, and Kells-Oldcastle in Co. Meath, set to last for six weeks due to yet another climate change-attributable factor. The official stated reason?
âClimate change is leading to more frequent and intense weather events, such as flooding and dry spells. This impacts our water resources, which can mean we need to put restrictions in place.â
And who must pay the price for this catastrophe? Why, each and every one of us, of courseâas good comrade citizens, all for the common good!
But is the need for the hosepipe banâand the accompanying Carbon Taxes supposedly meant to remedy the âharms done by carbonâ, truly the result of the general populationâs âcarbon greedâ? Or is it, at least in part, a form of scapegoating used to avoid answering some rather politically awkward questions?
Letâs, without venturing down the well-worn road of climate change denial, consider an alternative to the familiar mantra that supposedly justifies yet another increase in Carbon Tax to solve yet another âclimate problemâ.
Since its foundation in 2013 as a state-owned water utility company, Uisce Ăireann has promised to revitalise Irelandâs water infrastructure. Despite having a multi-billion euro budget, the utility has faced significant criticism for massive overspending and making unrealistic claims about fixing leaking pipes and upgrading infrastructureâlargely due to its lack of transparency, particularly regarding how funds are allocated for operational costs and repairs.
Considering the lavish funding allocated to this companyââŹ16.9 billion from 2025 to 2029, including âŹ10.3 billion for infrastructure and âŹ6.6 billion for operating costs, one might reasonably expect that leaking pipes and inefficiencies would no longer be an issue. Yet, even in the month of May, water shortages persist even in some of the wettest areas of Europe raising serious questions about where this investment is going.
Multi-million euro contracts are regularly awarded by Uisce Ăireann as part of a massive overhaul of Irelandâs long-neglected water infrastructure. However, there is little to no scrutiny or transparency when it comes to assessing value for money or the efficiency of the work carried out. When water shortages do occur, it becomes all too easy to deflect the hard questions by reinforcing the idea in the publicâs mind that the fault lies not with the state, but with the ever-looming spectre of climate change.
At the implementation of the Governmentâs Climate Action Plan in 2019, the people of Ireland were told:
“Climate disruption is already having diverse and wide ranging impacts on Irelandâs environment, society, economic and natural resources. The Climate Action Plan sets out an ambitious course of action over the coming years to address this issue”.
This same plan told the burden carriers
“For most areas of environmental damage, a key problem is that those inflicting the damage do not pay the cost of the damage they inflict. This is the rationale for charging a carbon price for carbon emissions which reflects the growing damage that they are inflicting. This serves to discourage emissions and to make carbon abatement more profitable.“
The Flaccid Fourth Estate
Irelandâs media, one would assume, should challenge the government on its climate policies should there ever be any possibility of it dodging responsibility. But alas, as history has proven time and time againâespecially with the specific example of the Irish Banking Inquiry of 2011 into the causes and impact of the collapse of the Celtic Tiger economy and the housing market crash of 2008. it has been clearly shown that Ireland’s established media has repeatedly failed to question the sustainability of government policy, lacked investigative reporting, and played a role in normalizing risk to the general populace. The established media in Ireland, therefore, simply does not criticise government policy in any meaningful way.
Letâs take a step back and analyse the broader picture. If, by chance, the water shortages in Ireland are at least partly due to operational inefficiencies of a multi-billion-euro state company responsible for ensuring there are no shortages, perhaps many other problems regularly used to justify a crippling carbon tax are also, at least in part, the result of systemic issues within government operations and not solely the fault of climate change.
If this is the case, wouldnât it make a lot more economic and political sense to reform the system rather than continue to tax the burdened?
Of course, one can argue that taxes are essential for the government to fund the functioning of the country, and that point is not being disputed here. However, when additional taxes are introduced in the name of improving society, while transparency, accountability, and efficiency in government spending and state operations continue to decline, and the number of exposed instances of public fund wastage continues to rise, this does little to benefit either society or the economy.
Is it not time to press the pause button on the ever-increasing rates of ‘green’ taxes on the people of Ireland and to begin a thorough investigation into how public money is spent on projectsâfrom the Irish Water scandal, with millions wasted on the setup of this monolith, to the National Childrenâs Hospital cost overruns, making it the most expensive hospital in the world, to the bicycle shed in DĂĄil Ăireann, and so on and so on?
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. â George Orwell, 1984
The Covid pandemic brought a public health emergency, political and legal challenges, intense media coverage, social divisions, and intense debates among scientists. Yet, in public commentaries, attention fell almost exclusively on a single cause of suffering: the virus itself.
This framing of the crisis contributed to an atmosphere of extreme danger, a sense that disease and death lurked around every street corner. Public messaging, media reports and daily statistics reinforced the idea of omnipresent risk. News cycles focused relentlessly on case numbers, hospitalizations and fatalities, making the threat feel immediate and inescapable.
Five years on, we can collate how the pandemic sparked a surge of research across many fields: medicine, public health, economics, education, and sociology all responded. This burst of academic activity was not, however, spread evenly. Bibliometric studies show that, at first, research focused mainly on clinical medicine, immunology, biology, genetics, and pharmacology; the social sciences, psychiatry, and economics received less attention (Funada et al., 2023). Within the social sciences, early research looked at wellbeing, the plight of healthcare workers, vaccines, and inequalities. Emotions were also studied, but far less often, ranking only as the twenty-fourth most common keyword in published papers (Hamdan & Alsuqaih, 2024).
Nevertheless, a closer look at emotion-related research reveals a problematic focus. Most of these studies examine mental health issues and depression, fatigue, sleep, fear, anxiety, coping strategies, resilience, and attitudes toward vaccines. They treat emotions as individual reactions to a threatening situation, mainly, the risk of illness or death. From this almost exclusive perspective, emotions are considered as disruptions to psychological balance, responses to a biological danger separate from society or culture. They are private experiences, signs of mental strain when facing mortality. Fear, grief, and anxiety are viewed as symptoms of danger and of risk, highlighting the personal impact of living through a threatening time.
Moving Beyond Reaction: Constructing the Emotional Field
This framing of emotions overlooks a crucial point: emotions are not simply automatic, hard-wired biological responses to external situations or threats. Rather, they are often actively produced and shaped within particular moral, cultural, and political frameworks. How people come to fear, endure, or worry is continually influenced by the signals and expectations set by public discourse, media narratives, institutional practices and prevailing social norms.
The news media do obviously more than report mere facts; they select, emphasize, and dramatize certain aspects of events, contributing and even constructing the emotional climate of crisis according to preconceived judgments. Hence, the emotional atmosphere of the pandemic, marked by vigilance, anxiety, and collective tension, was not just a consequence of the virus, but the result of ongoing processes that shaped how people understood and responded to the unfolding situation.
Several notable examples illustrate how governments and media employed rhetorical and psychological techniques to shape public emotions.
In the UK, the slogan âStay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Livesâ became one of the most widely disseminated and emotionally charged messages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Designed to evoke both communal duty and existential fear, it mobilised public sentiment around the act of staying at home, not simply as a health measure, but as a moral obligation to shield others, particularly frontline healthcare workers. Ubiquitous across television, newspapers, and social media, the slogan fostered an emotional climate of collective responsibility and latent anxiety about overwhelming the national health system.
Rhetorically, the slogan is striking: its simplicity, repetition, and rhythmic cadence render it both memorable and persuasive. It appeals simultaneously to national solidarity, civic duty, and the highest ethical imperative, saving lives, thus activating a complex affective mix of fear, guilt, and altruism.
This emotional construct was neither accidental nor incidental. A report by the UKâs Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, dated 22 March 2020 and titled âOptions for Increasing Adherence to Social Distancing Measuresâ (SPI-B, 2020), explicitly recommended the use of emotionally charged messaging. It advised that âthe perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging,â and further emphasized the need to frame compliance as a duty to protect others. Public messaging was a deliberate instrument of affective governance.
The affective environment in France was thus shaped around sacrifice and mobilisation. Staying at home became not merely a health directive, but an act of national resistance, evoking allusive memories of the World War II. This rhetorical strategy, deeply embedded in French republican traditions of unity and state authority, reactivated symbolic repertoires associated with past national emergencies.
Perhaps the most disquieting illustration of planned disciplinary and emotional control during the Covid-19 crisis in Europe was to be found in a leaked strategy document from Germanyâs Federal Ministry of the Interior. Widely referred to (ironically yet revealingly) as the âpanic paperâ, this internal memorandum, drafted in March 2020, exposes the deliberate mobilisation of fear and terror as legitimate political tools. The paper explicitly recommends heightening the populationâs sense of threat to ensure compliance with lockdown measures, even proposing emotionally manipulative narratives targeted at children.
The documentâs authors do not hesitate to make emotionally manipulative claims, unanchored to any scientific or empirical evidence. One of the more disturbing passages reads: âChildren will easily become infected, even with restrictions on leaving the house […] If they then infect their parents, and one of them dies in agony at home, they will feel guilty because, for example, they forgot to wash their hands after playing. It is the most terrible thing a child can ever experience.â (Bundespapier, 2020)
Under the guise of public health strategy, the experts thus suggest that the state should conjure worst-case scenarios to shock citizens into obedience. This weaponisation of fear, particularly the psychological targeting of children, marks a disconcerting threshold where public communication slips into psychological coercion. It represents a calculated use of terror to engineer behaviour.
Surprisingly enough, this narrative was not limited to governments or the media. Even prominent intellectuals such as JĂŒrgen Habermas, one of the leading voices in the theory of deliberative democracy, perceived democracy as having ground to a halt. Under the threat to âthe life and health of members of the species Homo sapiens across the globe,â Habermas declared in 2021, in strikingly dramatic terms, that humanity found itself in a truly existing Hobbesian state of nature, engaged in a metaphysical and biological war for the survival of the species. In such a situation, Habermas thought, the âlegally mandated acts of solidarityâ required by the authority of the state must override individual rights and liberties without exception (Habermas, 2021). In other words, the recourse to a temporary dictatorship is defended as a legitimate means of safeguarding democracy itself.
Such tactics reflect a biopolitical logic in which emotions are instrumentalised, manipulated, and weaponised in the name of security. As the American historian William Reddyâs notion of âemotional regimesâ reminds us, the state not only regulates action but prescribes feeling. What the âpanic paperâ reveals is an attempt to institutionalise anxiety and guilt as tools of governance, undermining democratic trust and ethical responsibility in the process.
Insights from the history and anthropology of emotions, particularly the work of Barbara Rosenwein and William Reddy, invite us to rethink this framing of emotions. Rosenweinâs concept of âemotional communitiesâ (2006) highlights how emotions are shaped, valued, and regulated within particular social groups, each with their own norms and expressive codes. From this standpoint, emotions during the pandemic cannot be reduced to individual reactions but must be understood as patterned and normative, reflecting the affective economies of distinct communities: communities of fear, of denial, of moral indignation, or of solidarity.
Similarly, Reddyâs theory of âemotivesâ (2001) emphasises the performative and world-shaping nature of emotional expression. Emotions are not merely responses to a given reality; they participate in shaping that reality by enacting or challenging dominant scripts.
Shaping the emotional landscape of the pandemic through these theoretical lenses allows us to move beyond the medical paradigm and to interrogate the normative, political, and cultural scripts that governed which emotions were considered legitimate, intelligible, or deviant. It also opens the way to analyse how emotions were mobilised to sustain or contest public policies, shape collective identities, and articulate forms of belonging or exclusion.
Although traditional theories of public relations and propaganda from Bernays and Adorno to Ellul have long emphasized the central role of emotions in shaping public opinion, the American historian William Reddy offers a strikingly original lens through which to examine how speech, when instrumentalised, not only conveys but actively produces emotional states. The framework he developed in his book The Navigation of Feeling (2001) allows us to reconsider emotional expression not as a by-product of persuasion, but as a form of action in its own right.
The expressions and formulae he calls âemotivesâ work at the same time as expressions and speech-acts that do not merely reflect a feeling but also act upon the feelings expressed.
Let us consider one of the slogans widely used in the UK during Covid: âCan you look them in the eyes and tell them youâre helping by staying at home?â The formula obviously expresses sentiments of moral urgency, it purveys a sense of guilt, and it evokes a feeling of shared suffering. By mobilising emotional responses in its audience, the message not only seeks compliance but also helps produce an imagined community of responsibility, what Benedict Anderson might describe as a politically constructed sense of belonging forged through shared affect and narrative. âNot staying at homeâ not only becomes a morally shameful act, but it also transforms those who do not abide by the rules into antisocial or even dangerous outsiders.
As such, the formula is not simply descriptive (âyou are harming peopleâ), nor purely persuasive (âplease help usâ), but it performs a moral-emotional judgment that invites internalisation: âYou are failing us, your community, unless you feel what we want you to feel.â In this sense, that emotives express and reshape emotional experience by realigning the narrative sense of oneself and the expected moral position of the community.
The same analysis applies to Macrons âwarâ. The expression declares a collective crisis state, it evokes gravity, calls out a clear and present danger and warns about an existential threat. Thus, it installs an emotional climate of wartime unity, emergency discipline, and patriotic mobilisation. Unlike the English moral community, French citizens are summoned in the guise of soldiers and patriots, enlisted in the defence of the state.
The German example seems politically the most unsettling. The consultants emphasise horrific imagery (death by suffocation) in order to induce âprimal fearsâ and uncontrollable panic. They instrumentalise guilt in children to heighten family responsibility by evoking a nightmarish parricide that results from disobeying.
-Germanyâs response corresponds in function (if not in scale) to Jacobin emotional regimes analysed by Reddy in the period of French Terror (September 1793âJuly 1794). Emotional authenticity is measured by conformity to the collective fear. In the context of post-Revolutionary France, not fearing enough becomes a sign of counter-revolutionary disloyalty. Similarly, in 2020 Germany, not appearing afraid (or questioning the panic narrative) could make one suspected of being reckless, not acting in solidarity, or worse, of being a right-wing-extremist-enemy of the state.
To push things even further, Germanyâs federal domestic intelligence service â the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution â established, in 2021, a new âphenomenon areaâ for verbal âdelegitimisation of the stateâ as part of a broader affective disciplining.  Much like the East German stateâs attention to emotional attitudes and moral tone (Brauer, 2011), pandemic-era Germany began to police not only what people did or said, but how they felt, or more precisely, which emotions they were publicly permitted to express. The result, in Reddyâs terms, was the emergence of a strict emotional regime, wherein fear, trust, and compliance became not just encouraged but expected, while scepticism, defiance, and even calm detachment were marked as dangerous deviations from normative feeling.
As Reddy shows, emotives do not exist in isolation but operate within broader emotional styles that can transform into hegemonic âemotional regimesâ. These regimes then constitute the officially sanctioned or dominant norms governing which emotions are deemed appropriate or required. An emotional regime may be conceptualised as the emotional dimension of a culture’s ideological structure.
This perspective helps explain how distinct emotional regimes were deliberately constructed within varying national and cultural settings. The aim was to cultivate specific emotional landscapes which, according to political figures, scientific experts and media outlets were perceived as the most effective means to encourage, persuade, or even compel populations towards the desired attitudes and behaviours. This was to be achieved, in large part, by aligning public sentiment with state goals and framing non-compliance as morally reprehensible.
By dictating appropriate feelings such as patriotism, calm obedience, compliance, solidarity, anxiety or even panic, while discouraging dissent, critique, lack of fear or apathy, the Covid responses installed what Reddy calls a âstrictâ emotional regime. In strict regimes â as was the case in most Western democracies â authorities heavily dictate emotional responses (e.g. demanding constant displays of patriotic fear or fervour), whereas a âlooserâ regimes (like Sweden) allowed more individual emotional freedom.
The construction of a strict emotional regime evidently leaves little room for individual âemotional navigationâ. Emotional navigation, in Reddy’s theory, is the process through which individuals explore and reorient their feelings, often by attempting to name or express them using available emotional descriptions. Hence, within strict regimes, the mandated emotions and suppression of others are always at risk of creating a conflict with individuals’ authentic feelings. Pressure to conform reduces our autonomy to explore and articulate genuine emotional experiences.
Reddy’s work suggests that strict regimes inevitably inflict âpsychological painsâ. This psychological pain arises from the discrepancy between one’s internal emotional state and the external expectation of how one should feel or express emotions. The deliberate heightening of threat and weaponisation of fear, as seen in the aforementioned pandemic policies, lead to significant emotional suffering.
This approach mirrors what the German memo proposed (making individuals, even children, feel accountable for tragic outcomes) and what SPI-B had called âshameâ by conflating compliance with virtue and non-compliance with deviance (All-Party Parliamentary Groups, 2022).
Indeed, psychologists reported a rise in what they dubbed âCOVID-19 Anxiety Syndrome,â where individuals became obsessively fearful (avoiding public spaces, constant symptom-checking, etc.), effectively locked into a state of chronic anxiety (All-Party Parliamentary Groups, 2022). Professor of psychology Marcantonio Spada, who studied this phenomenon, warned that by âdeliberately inflat[ing] the threat and perceived fear of Covid-19 (in combination with lockdowns)â, the government made it likely âthat a significant proportion of the population would develop psychopathological responses and end up locked into their fear or develop related forms of anxiety such as health anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behavioursâ (All-Party Parliamentary Groups, 2022).
In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, social media platforms played a crucial role as digital emotional refuges, allowing individuals to articulate forms of scepticism, frustration, irony, or grief that were often unwelcome or delegitimised in mainstream public discourse. Whether through Telegram groups, Facebook forums, YouTube comments, or encrypted chat channels, these online spaces became vital arenas not only for a delegitimized critique, but also for affective expression, especially for those who rejected the emotional scripts of fear, compliance, or trust in government authority.
Here, alternative emotional narratives could circulate: defiance against confinement, sarcasm toward official slogans, or empathy with marginalised voices such as vaccine sceptics, small business owners, or distressed adolescents. It was these spaces that functioned as emotional counter-publics: informal communities where dissonant emotions could be shared, validated, and amplified outside the normative emotional regime that attempted to monopolise the emotional field.
Yet even these emotional counter-publics did not remain untouched. As expressions of dissent or ambivalence became increasingly vilified and pathologised, many of these refuges were themselves subjected to forms of surveillance, content moderation, public denunciation and censorship. Social media platforms intensified their control of discourse through algorithmic filtering and deplatforming, while governments and media denounced certain emotional expressions, especially those critical of official policy, as irrational, dangerous, or politically subversive. In this way, the emotional regime extended its reach, constraining the very spaces where alternative affective orientations could emerge, intensifying emotional suffering and narrowing the horizon of legitimate emotional life.
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Dawn sun, distant mountains, red cliffs near, white clouds scattered, still world, until a breeze caresses the desert floor, and a scorpion awakes, resting on a piece of earth where no human ever stood. In this wilderness stands a horse, and sitting on the horse a rider. Tail swishing, standing still, a motionless man watching, intently, an eagle high above, hunting, alive, living to fly. The warrior wears the painted face and the feathered headwear of his long fathers. He looks up at its broad wings, he smiles, the way eagles canât.
The dream maker is hiding. Morning departs, lifest part of the day, sleep distant, last nightâs dreams evaporate. The man and his horse make the wilderness less lonely. Every day he starts at dawn. The man is thinking, no words, words know, within their boundaries. He wonders whether his friend, the horse, thinks thoughts. It is his destiny to be chieftain. Kick the stirrup, the horse moves on slowly, distant mountain west, snowy summits beckon, through sand, clip clop, the scorpion lifts her tail, otherwise still, the horse and man wander away, red cliffs of hues, scorpion watching, like she always does.
Horse walking in the desert, solitary in the wilderness, desert sands have no mind, just beauty, the thirsty horse knows. The thirsty man sees the distant river. The world was made for him. He thinks. He doubts. The dream maker dances in the flames of the fire the man has made, to keep him warm in the night and to ward off evil spirits. He is safe near the fire, under the stars. His tribe is at home, sleeping in the teepee, but he must search, with his horse, for his spirit guide. Then he will discover his name, and finally reach manhood. Now they are far away, beyond horizons, past the setting sun. Four months he has been gone, alone, searching, travelling where the stars are strange, waiting for the spirit guide to reveal itself, now just wilderness, loneliness, risk becoming destiny. Look to the clouds, a formless shape, no sitting bull, no crazy horse, who found their spirits in the shapes of clouds. His spirit is hiding, somewhere in the world. Like the dream maker does.
The horse drinks from the river, the man stoops beside it, water in a cup of hands, he drinks, life itself returning, fear turns to laughter, there was never a first time, there was never a last. The sun sets, night falls, the universe emerges from the sky, the horse sleeps, the man is awake, seeing other worlds, not understanding, only understanding here, this world that created him, from nothing. He watches the stars at night, he is life, as much as the horse, as much as the river and the forest, the bear, the antelope, the eagle riding high in the morning, and the stars become memory, in his learning mind. At night, by the fire, he searches for his spirit guide in the galaxy rain.
He raises his head, they see mountains, the horse knows and they walk, through the day, upwards, high near the summit, stone cliff juts, they stand on the precipice together, horse and man, looking out, over the great valley below, and above, the grey wanderers, summoning thunder, electric flashes in the distance, their hair blows, they are unwavering, a galloping storm approaches, they alone are conscious, they remain still in the oncoming storm, the man looks up, the skies open, the spirit guide arrives, he looks to the universe hiding, down comes the water, beating like drums, front hooves rise high, and the man speaks for the first time in months, âRain in the Faceâ. It is done.
The cultural commentator Konstantin Kisin said recently in a podcast that the left had destroyed language. For instance, the lazy use of the words ânaziâ and âfascistâ to condemn someone who holds differing views has only succeeded in draining those words of meaning. If everyone is a fascist then no one is; and what then do we call an actual fascist?
But the distortion of language by the left goes far deeper than this and is, paradoxically, far simpler. Its roots appear to be in simple name-calling, a favourite weapon of both young girls and perhaps not surprisingly, radical feminists who gave us terms like male chauvinist âpigsâ, casually de-humanising men while charging them with a âcrimeâ of sorts. When I was a young man a favourite feminist darling of the left in Ireland was Nell McCafferty, a whiskey swigging ladette who made jokes about house-training men and so on, cheered on by her lesbian and misandrist supporters.
By the way, the word âmisandristâ is one that gets downplayed a lot in the culture. I once had a windows spell-checker that didnât recognize the word. For those unfamiliar with the term, a misandrist is a woman who despises men, the dark sister of misogynist. A prime example was that loon Valerie Solanas who shot Andy Warhol, she a CEO for the Society for Cutting Up Men or SCUM. We donât hear a whole lot about her in the culture, and yet, there she is, as large as life, living proof that even feminists can be toxic.
Andy Warhol and his dachshund Archie Warhol, 1973.
SCUM
It was Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and recipient of oodles of leftist insult and yet still standing, though admittedly prone to bursting into tears every now and then, who explained the difference between male and female aggression and how it is expressed. Feminist propagandists have gone a long way in persuading the culture that the female is devoid of aggression, that violence is strictly a male preserve, except for the occasional regrettable anomaly like the CEO of SCUM, who, feminists would argue, was so hurt by men that she was kind of infected by their innate violence, and so, the shooting of Andy Warhol and all violence of women against men is actually menâs fault, the women in question being âvictimsâ of male violence responding in like for like form, the only language men understand.
Jordan Peterson explained that while male aggression is generally expressed overtly, female aggression is more indirect, expressing itself in the form of relational aggression: speaking badly of someone, destroying their social links, setting out to inflict reputational damage and destruction, achieved for the most part through simple name-calling.
âIf you donât vote me on to the board Iâll tell everyone youâre a nazi.â
âOkay, Iâll vote for you, but just this once. And please, tell everyone Iâm âniceâ.â
âI might. If you pretend really hard to be nice. You being an aggressive man anâ all.â
King’s College London graduands with VivienneWestwood-designed academic dress.
Homo Placidus
There tends to be a more placid kind of man occupying the faculties of universities and they were a pushover for the aggressive feminists seeking power in the academy, the very workshop of language and thought. We all know what happened next, they took lots of seats of power in the academy and in publishing and in the media and, with postmodernism, succeeding in drenching reality in endless question marks: did it even exist, or is it just something some selfish man made to please himself? Which brings us more or less to today⊠except, that is, for one important factor which is often overlooked. Because in faraway places, people with an interest in taking power in the west noted that name-calling worked as a weapon for seizing power. It was a peculiar, almost comical Achilles heel of the western male. He could be toppled by calling him a pejorative name. How very interestingâŠ
The late Christoper Hitchens was probably the first to notice the danger. In 2011 he warned of a term that had been deliberately created to take advantage of this western weakness. A term that would have the effect of silencing dissent while delivering power to gleeful enemies of the west. The term was âIslamophobiaâ, a brilliant construction with in-built gaslighting. âThereâs nothing wrong with Islam, you simply have a phobia.â
Hitchens said at the time ââŠthis is very urgent business ladies and gentlemen. I beseech you, resist it while you still can, before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing. You will be told you can’t complain because you’re Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture as if it was an accusation of race hatred or bigotry, whereas it’s only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion âŠâ
Hitchens went on to show how the use of the term will open the way to power by silencing objections. And it works like a charm. But even so, it still needs help, and this help comes from those already holding cultural power and influence. Hitchens, finishing with a plea, describes how the power of the west will be taken:
ââŠthe barbarians never take a city till someone holds the gates open for them and it’s your own preachers who will do it for you and your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you. Resist. Resist it while you can.â
Itâs difficult not to believe sometimes now, especially when some girl is raped or some man gets his head lopped off, that our own elites and the liberal left, as well-intentioned as they may be, have inadvertently fallen into the role of gate-openers for the barbarian hordes, to put our current civilisational situation in a Romanesque context.
What an ironic historical twist this could turn out to be. That the men of the west, helpfully agreeable in the feminist cause, inadvertently created the conditions for the takeover of the west by men whose main power gesture is the subjugation of women.
“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world.
Who would be born must first destroy a world.” â Hermann Hesse, Demian
1. The first time I ever touched a piano must have been when I was 10 or 12 years old. It was the piano at my school, set in the library. One day, I was there alone, opened it up, and pressed down some of its old ivory keys. Though out of tune, the sound had such an impact on me that, unknowingly, it would alter the course of my life forever.
2. One day, still a child, I saw one of the many versions of The Phantom of the Opera on television. I didnât know it at the time, but one of the pieces featured in that film was Bachâs Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I think that experience and the 1985 earthquake in Santiago de Chile are among the most powerful memories I have from those early years.
3. I cannot live without making music. I donât want to live without making music. I donât want to, I canât, I wouldnât, I couldnât.
4. My relationship with music is constant, deep, intense, passionate, radical, playful, violent, cubist, serious, abstract, warm, tender, emotional, multifaceted, energetic, imaginative, luminous, dark, dense, fragile, mechanical, sweet, loving, experimental, eternal, fast-paced, arid, quick, vertiginous, surrealist, poetic. And so on.
A brief journey through my work across formats, exploring contemporary composition, electronics, and music theatre.
5. My mother encouraged my approach to classical music. She always suggested that I listen to it, saying it would be good for me. One day, with all her love, she handed me a cassette. Everything changed after that. I must have been around 12. I owe her so much.
6. One day, my father bought me a piano. It was a significant financial effort at the time, but he did it with love, so I could dedicate myself to music, to learn and to play. Iâm still making music. I owe him so much.
7. Although classical music has been the core of my life, Iâve ventured in many directions. Classical, experimental, âneoclassical,â free improvisation, contemporary, graphic scores, improvisation guides, music theatre, electronics, hybrids of all kinds, music for dance, for film, ambient music, strange experiments for interactive installations, and on and on. Thereâs nothing better than navigating through different sonic worlds, getting to know them, playing with them, combining them, rejecting them, incorporating them.
8. Sometimes I ask myself: whatâs my tribe? And I respond: choose only one kind of music and youâll have a tribe. So, I prefer to remain without a tribe and stop asking myself such useless questions.
9. Iâd say Iâm a musical explorer, perhaps an adventurer, close to Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also ventured in countless directions, or to Bryce Dessner, or Laurie Anderson. But undoubtedly, I am much closer to Sakamoto than to anyone else. Thank you, Sakamoto-san.
âMemoriaâ, for piano and electronics, from my latest Ep Invisible (live version):
11. I compose in different ways depending on the project Iâm working on. Sometimes I do it by improvising at the piano and recording. Other times in Ableton, playing with sounds and ideas or provoking situations I canât control to find things I didnât know I could achieve. Mistakes are a fundamental part of my creative process.
12. I read a lotâwhatever I can, whatever interests me. Essays. Novels. Poetry. Philosophy. Astronomy. Science. Reading is a fundamental pillar of my creative practice.
13. I listen to a huge amount of music. Sometimes, I even listen to music while Iâm already listening to music. Sometimes, I listen to music while Iâm composing. It might sound chaotic, but in my internal order, everything has its place. Itâs like listening to myself and the world at the same time, making the right (or wrong) connections.
14. Sometimes I read about music and different creative processes. I like developing new ways to approach creation. I copy everything that interests me, or rather, everything that resonates with me. Sometimes itâs just to learn an approach, but sometimes itâs to incorporate a new method. Sometimes I realize it doesnât serve me, but the pleasure of knowing it and learning it outweighs everything. Iâm full of useless knowledge.
15. I use many notebooks to jot down ideas, thoughts, projects, lists, and whatever comes to mind. I try not to discard anything, no matter how exotic it may seem. I try to do the same with my musical ideas; I jot them all down when I come across something I like. My musical notation notebooks are full of ideas, scribbles, bits and pieces, unfinished works, moments, fragments, microfragments, sounds, chords, situations. Sometimes I feel like a collector of ideas.
16. A good part of my music is basically literature. Iâll say no more, but first CortĂĄzar, Bolaño, Tomeo. Then Aira, Auster, Perec, Manguso, and many more.
17. My music, especially for piano, doesnât usually begin with any specific emotion. I can create deeply sad music without feeling even the slightest sadness, or the other way aroundâI can create tremendously intense or joyful music without internally being in that state. I donât believe one should always make catharsis and transfer their feelings to music. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What fascinates me are the colors, the physical sensations of sound, the rhythm, the superimpositions, the harmonies, the modulations, the dissonances. Let emotions arise from the music for the listenerâI am just an intermediary.
18. Sometimes my music is based on concrete ideas, concepts, situations, constraints. In smaller pieces, sometimes I just want to explore solutions based on a rhythm or the exclusive use of certain notes that come to mind in the moment. But in my larger works, especially in music theatre, there are always concepts that carry significant research behind them. I never start composing until Iâve clarified everything that underpins the work. And most of the time, I write all the texts first (Insomnia, Microteatro, etc.).
19. I borrow a lot from cinema: rhythm of the image, camera movements, time jumps, counterpoint, editing, transitions, lighting. Pure gold for making music. And yes, my music is often quite cinematic. Kubrick, Nolan, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, Villeneuve, Wenders. Scorsese, Herzog, Eggers. Buñuel, Lanthimos, Garland, Joon-ho, Lang. More time, I need more timeâŠ
20. Iâve had more failures than successes. I believe I have very few of the latter, or perhaps none at all. But failuresâyes, plenty. And the big, resounding kind. Itâs quite a long list.
YouTube: âArtificialâ, Part II, excerpt (violin, viola, percussion, electronics)
21. My tempos are slow. Though Iâve been making music for many years, itâs only since the pandemic that my own voice, my sound, my true artistic self has begun to emerge. Itâs not something staticâfar from it. It mutates, shifts, moves, transforms. But whatever makes it mine (something ineffable, perhaps) is always there. It wasnât easy to find, nor did it happen overnight. It was a conscious, almost desperate search to uncover it. Some readings helped spiritually: La mĂșsica os harĂĄ libres (R. Sakamoto), Words Without Music (P. Glass), Vertical Thoughts (M. Feldman). Others helped psychologically: Art and Fear (Orland, Bayles), The Artistâs Way (J. Cameron), La vĂa del creativo (G. Lamarre). But without a doubt, reading between the lines, listening, listening to myself, stripping away everything, and leapingâthat was the most important thing. I went back to the basics (Sakamoto), and then everything else came.
22. Although I always wanted to dedicate myself fully to music, for reasons I still havenât entirely clarified (though I certainly understand them well), I spent 22 years in academia. Donât get me wrong, I enjoy teaching, but I am not a teacher. I am an artist.
23. One of the most important moments of my life happened at the end of 2022. The Ensemble Vertixe Sonora premiered my piece Artificial in Spain. That was the year I decided to leave everything behind and devote myself 100% to music. I left my position as director and professor of a university programâwith an excellent salaryâto dedicate my whole mind and energy to making music, launching myself into total uncertainty. It was the best decision of my life, and luckily, I made it before turning 50.
24. Once, my piano teacher told me I wasnât cut out for pianoâthat I should dedicate myself to anything else. âIâll study composition,â I said. He let out a loud, brief laugh while I crumbled inside. But a thousand years later, here I am, standing, happy, making music.
25. My first trip outside of Chile was at 26, and it was to Japan. It was the most incredible and exotic experience of my life. It happened because I was selected to participate in a Contemporary Music Festival in Yokohama. They covered everything, and they performed my only string quartet. Thereâs definitely a before and after that trip.
26. I stopped studying piano formally because of that teacher. Even so, I was never entirely distant from the instrument and managed to resume my studies seventeen years later. Since then, I not only play and record my own music, but Iâve also been able to perform it in concert.
27. Since dedicating myself fully to music a little over two years ago, Iâve created more music than in all the 22 years before. Iâve published some of it, but thereâs still so much waiting to come to light, much more waiting to be shaped, and much more waiting to be played live and shared.
28. The next 50 years, Iâll make more music than in the previous 200. This is just the beginning.
Review: We Must Begin with the Land: Seeking Abundance and Liberation through Social Ecology by Stephen E. Hunt (Zer0 books, 2025)
Environmentalists find themselves in the paradoxical situation of living in a golden age of radical ecological thinking â even as our global economic system blasts through one climactic tipping-point after another, more or less guaranteeing the extinction of planetary life as we know it at present. A rich field of research and intellectual inquiry has sprung up from between the fault-lines of the emerging climate crisis, along with concomitant movements centred (among other aims) on food sovereignty, habitat protection, the democratization of land holdings, and anti-extractivist resistance. Joining in this spirit of stewardship and challenge, Stephen E. Hunt has produced a prospectus for what might be described as eco-socialist change, in an attempt to measure and mitigate âthe profound reengineering of life on Earthâ that capitalist food systems have wrought. In place of monopolistic land-hoarding and ever-expanding âagri-businessâ â which trace their roots to the era of settler colonialism â he makes the case for a not-for-profit, âcircular economyâ, based on the principle that ânutritious foodâ is âan essential human need.â
If Hunt draws inspiration from âutopianâ ideas â the notion, say, that local commoning could provide a vital food source for significant numbers of people in the U.K. (where he lives), in place of the corporate or commodified provisions they currently rely on â he is nothing if not clear-eyed about the scale and extremity of the climate catastrophe predicted to engulf our already warming world. The vitality of his analysis might be said to stem from its symbiotic pairing of transformative hopes with a deep-running awareness of natural necessities. It is simply not possible, he states, to reach or maintain âecological integrity within planetary boundariesâ without simultaneously âaddressing profound social problems embedded in deep history.â Far from being inevitable, he argues in a similar vein, famine is âprimarily a social problem that demands solutions founded on social justice.â
If Hunt often focuses on the practicalities of ecological action â how to grow wholesome food, and nurture communal practices, in a durable way â he nevertheless situates his proposals within an internationalist horizon. His book draws as much on the lessons of the Kurdish revolutionaries in Rojava, say, or the grassroots agricultural labourers comprising La Via Campesina, as on the experience of local campaigners in Bristol, his home. We Must Begin with the Land is anything but parochial. In fact, by arguing for the radicalism of community gardening, foraging, the conversion of waste grounds into allotments, and the like, Hunt may find himself in the vanguard of progressive thinking. Some commentators â not without reason â have attempted to hitch the cause of ecological adaptation exclusively to the wagon of the nation-state, essentially envisaging climate adaptation as a matter of enlightened technocratic adjustments from on high. Huntâs contrasting emphasis is on the importance of localised, grassroots environmentalism, with an anti-capitalistic edge â aligning him politically with the late Grace Lee Boggs, for example, whose campaigns for community-led ecological regeneration in Detroit offered a new model of labour agitation in that industrialised city.
Hunt also invokes the âsocial ecologyâ of Murray Bookchin, a multi-faceted philosophy that advances a critique of âthe historic turn towards hierarchy and patriarchyâ within radical movements â often hampered, ironically, by rigid structures and internal power imbalances â as well as a diagnosis of the âstatismâ and âcapitalismâ that define wider social structures, particularly in the global north. By re-examining our conceptions of urban and rural, of agricultural production and consumption, Hunt observes (via Bookchin), reformers can âensure that human and ecological well-being are at the heart of democratic initiativesâ, bringing the grand ideals of socialist transformation down to earth â and into an actionable zone inhabited by actual communities. During the Occupy Wall Street protests, he recalls (perhaps with a tinge of nostalgic over-statement), the occupiersâ âself-managed food provisionâ merged into something of an improvised welfare service. The movement exposed the degree of social isolation in the twenty-first centuryâs metropolitan centres. One of the chief benefits of communal eating is to help to address alienation.
Such schemes, of course, are driven as much by physiology as by psychological or socio-econonmic factors. Our ability not only to think beyond the present infrastructre of a capitalistic economy, but physically to survive, is directly connected to the attitudes we hold and the measures we take regarding food and the land it grows from. It was hunger, after all, and not just a spirit of experimentation and progressivism, that inspired the rebellious denizens of Kronstadt to cultivate the waste grounds of their city in 1921 â instituting a âhorticultural communeâ, according to the historian Voline, that the Bolsheviks, intent on centralization, were zealous in repressing, even after the famous mass of striking sailors there had been executed or dispersed. Then as now, democracy and ecology may be thought of as connected strands of any authentically revolutionary endeavour. As Kristin Ross has written:
Land and the way it is worked is the most important factor in an alternative ecological society. Capitalâs real war is against subsistence, because subsistence means a qualitatively different economy; it means people actually living differently, according to a different conception of what constitutes wealth and what constitutes deprivation.
Such issues take on a palpable urgency in the age of climate change, as extreme weather events merge with the predicted decimation of habitats and food-chains. Whether or not we realise it, how we feed ourselves (and learn to live with one another) is a crucial question for communities everywhere â a question likely to turn into an existential dilemma if left unanswered. In Huntâs words,
as the food crisis worsens, it will be increasingly necessary to make productive use of urban or âperi-urbanâ land for local self-provisioning… it is wise to activate urban gardening as a collective form of commoning that transcends the atomisation of communities into clusters of individuals.
Noting the explosion of factory farming and other for-profit models of meat production globally, he wonders: âCan the straight trajectory of relentless economic growth be bent into the spiralling plenty of truly regenerative production?â For readers in Ireland, these speculations hold special resonance. A nation-wide campaign centred on community-organised green spaces and vegetable allotments â such as Hunt envisions â could serve as an original, effective response to the expanding epidemic of dereliction afflicting Irish towns and cities (itself in part a symptom of the housing and cost-of-living crises that have caused concomitantly high levels of emigration and homelessness). As to the issue of food sovereignty, despite inspiring efforts by networks such as Talamh Beo to implement sustainable models of âagro-ecologyâ across the country, successive Irish governments seem to have remained in thrall to a meat (and dairy) industry operating on a commercial model hostile to workersâ rights and favouring large-scale operations that are emissions-intensive. Meanwhile, the goal of reaching even the minimum requirements for decarbonising our farming practices seems as illusory as itâs ever been. A dramatic re-set in local and national policy is needed â and soon.
Among other things, there is arguably a risk of hubris in a progressive politics that centres its aims and actions solely on the state and its traditional organs of power. As Hunt suggests, in an era of drastic ecological and economic ruptures, a consumerist society that simultaneously âdoes not know how to feed and dress itselfâ, that destroys abundant eco-systems to make way for industrial-scale farming and vast monocultures, can hardly be taken as the sanest or safest of socio-environmental paradigms. We must begin with the land, he declares â and re-build our agricultural economy from the grassroots up. The change we need starts here and now.
How would you feel upon discovering the objects of your daily, habitual useâordinary objects of every imaginable function and varietyâwere inspirited, sensitively keen observers with their own desires, gripes, preoccupations, and ways of understanding the world?
This is precisely the brain-tickling puzzle Jennifer Maierâs newly-released third collection The Occupant (University of Pittsburgh Press) shakes, opens, and pieces together with feeling and skill. A deft mingling of prose and traditional poems offer pathos, wit, and vulnerable, costly wisdom as 30-odd objects speak from the vantage point of their respective individual existences alongside the titular âoccupant,â â an unnamed woman living alone to whom they belong; and whose point of view is also poetically inhabited.
Maier is at her best in these moving poems, which deliberately rely on the rhythms of one personâs quotidian existence and âstuffâ to raise urgent, profound questions about human life and experience. Take, for instance, the goosebump-inducing rebuke of âAlarm Clockâ â
–Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â How like you not to see
that even I, untouched by time, canât keep it. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â –Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Some days I want to drop my hands
in futility at the way you equate passing with            –          dissolution: each tick a small erasure,
like the beat of your own heart: one less, –Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â one less. And have you ever stopped to think not even you can spend a thing you canât possess?
The wonderful tonal panoply of this collectionâwhich moves with the poetâs characteristically fluid grace through everything from wry humor (Think opposites attract?//Ix-nay on that) to loneliness (The woman wonders if she has taken up knitting because she has no children) to existential angstâis enabled by the dynamic marriage of Maierâs own prolific emotive range with the metaphysical conceit at play throughout The Occupant; which includes in its opening pages Paul Ăluardâs wordsââThere is another world, but it is in this oneâ âa marvelous and discreet key unlocking the pages that follow.
In penning this review, I found I couldnât waste my privileged position as Jennifer Maierâs MFA student-advisee. She was good enough to tell me (following the careful consideration with which she approaches even the smallest endeavor) what inanimate object she would herself elect to become for eternity. (I told her Iâd be a gargoyle, which is accurate, if mildly out-of-pocket) She went with a rather more elegant selectionâ
âAs ever, I would be torn between beauty (my French Empire walnut bookcase) and utility (a whisk, or a pair of scissors).  But if I had to be a single object for eternity, I think I would be a mirror â a beautiful one, to be sure.  As a mirror, I could encounter a wide variety of faces and objects and reflect them back, neutrally, without preconceptions. And I would certainly enjoy observing the private responses—satisfaction, dismay–of those searching my reaches for “what they really are,” or believe themselves to be.â
Because of the immense and obvious thematic consistency, I wondered if Jennifer had encountered a recent, fascinating-if-head-scratching development in philosophy. I shot her an email:
Are you familiar with the (quite new!!) trend in metaphysics called Object-oriented Ontology?? Thereâs SO much natural overlap with your book that I think Iâll have to highlight the connection.
In brief:
Object-oriented ontology maintains that objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects. For object-oriented ontologists, all relations, including those between nonhumans, distort their related objects in the same basic manner as human consciousness and exist on an equal ontological footing with one another.
She repliedâ
I was not aware per se of Object-oriented Ontology, but the objects in my home â or in the Occupant’s, for that matter â may well be “ontologically exhausted,â
especially today, when I’m trying to get everything back in order after last week’s renovations and painting (I decided to do the same color in the living roomâFarrow & Ballâs âElephant’s Breath,â partly for the name, and partly because I love how it slouches between gray and lavender, depending on light and time of day)
Ontological exhaustion is no jokeâperson or saucer or spiderâand the remedies seem few and far between. Even so, The Occupantâs occupant appears to find a strange, imprecise respite in Maierâs closing poem; in the character of the light, which may be instructive for us all:
–Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Time is flowing forward again; sunlight gilding this still room in the house of the mind that deplores a vacancy as, then and now, the Occupant looks up from her writing to trace particles of dust drifting everywhere in the air, alighting on every surface.
Jennifer Maier’s work has appeared in Poetry, American Poet, The Gettysburg Review, New Letters, The Writer’s Almanac, and in many other print, online, and media venues. Her debut collection, Dark Alphabet, was named one of âTen Remarkable Books of 2006â by the Academy of American Poets and was a finalist for the 2008 Poets’ Prize. Her second book, Now, Now, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2013. She serves as writer in residence and professor of modern poetry and creative writing at Seattle Pacific Universit
Saturday morning and LilâJohnny was on his way to work on the Market. He walked along the long curve of street that ran along the bottom of the hill bordering the old marshes where now stood council estates. The tall towers stood like giants against the clear cold blue sky where the first rays of orange-golden sunlight lit up the morning sky. The road was shiny and quiet, anticipating the monotonous roar of traffic that was sure to follow. A pair of skittish wood pigeons leapt from the ground at LilâJohnnyâs approach, the heavy beat of their wings breaking the silence.Â
LilâJohnny walked the long road until the bend where he turned into the park. The park too stood at the bottom of the hill, a great field ringed by trees. Up on the hill the close-knit silhouettes of Victorian facades looked down into the park and out over the marsh. In the park the sky opened out as if one looked up at an ocean above, a great blue expanse. He crossed the park, entering the walkway beneath the railway line and from there along a long sliver of park-lined path. Then abruptly right heading cross-country to the gate on the far side of a grassy green playing field.
As LilâJohnny turned right the Singing Bush tweeted and chirruped making him smile. The Singing Bush is a large undistinguished shrub that emits the sound of chirruping finches although not one of the little birds can be seen, completely invisible in the thicket of branches and leaves. Looking at the Bush one sees and hears a spirited shrub singing.
Through the gate onto a little path along a row of houses, across the road, down a backstreet and then up the grafitti-ed cobbled alleyway onto the Market. The metallic clink of poles of stallholders erecting their metal-frame structures, greets LilâJohnny. Boxes litter the road, vans parked across, the movement of bodies, soul music from a radio, a cluster of chain-smoking locals sitting outside the cafe. LilâJohnny walks briskly down the street, looking neither left nor right, dodging the assorted obstacles living and inanimate.
LilâJohnny arrives at the Shop, just one of the hodge-podge of shopfronts lining either side of this mile-long medieval street that acts as Market on some days and High Street on others. âRobert Walkersâ is written in large golden letters over the Shop. Below the sign is a large plate-glass window and to the right a single doorway leading inside. The Shop consists of a long wide corridor bordered on either side by high shelves overflowing with cut-price groceries and products â an Aladdinâs cave. At the far end of the Shop is a wooden table with cash register. Out the back is a vast storeroom.
Outside, Raja patiently sets up the stall, his slow thoughtful movements speak of his three decades performing this ritual. He turns his old lanky frame and smiles at LilâJohnnyâs approach, revealing a set of brilliant white teeth set against his dark Tamil skin, a sharp hooked nose and streaky black hair combed over his shiny pate. As usual he is smartly turned out in shiny dress shoes, sharp suite trousers, button-down shirt and overcoat. LilâJohnny salutes him as he passes though the door into the Shop.
As LilâJohnny is about to head into the back he brushes against the corner of a shelf inadvertently and CRASH! An avalanche of junk falls off. âFucking, fuck, fuck â Big Johnny you bastard â clean your shit up!â he curses to the empty shop. He hastily clears up the fallen boxes, dirty plates, cups of mouldy rotting tea-bags and assorted out-of-date packets of god-knows-what. He heads out the back into the storeroom, down the rickety wooden stairs and dumps the smeared crockery in the small sink. âYou can clean up this bloody mess yourself,â LilâJohnny says to the Boss who is not there.
Thus his workday begins. LilâJohnny leverages the weighty front door off its hinge and drags it into the back; he hoovers the floor with the trusty but mutilated Henry patched up with masking-tape; he fills baskets with nuts and, bending over the stall outside, flips the bags expertly into rows. In the middle of his routine LilâJohnny spies Big Johnny, the Boss, sauntering towards the Shop. The Bossâ belly sticks out before his tall wide ageing frame, his white button-down shirt falling out of his baggy trousers and comfortable shoes adorn his feet. âHere comes Johnny!â calls LilâJohnny to the approaching figure. âMorninââ the Boss says by way of return.
Big Johnny is vexed as usual. âCome on, come on, weâve got to get this stall out,â he says impatiently, pulling out a box here, dumping something out of another there, rearranging one corner then another in a seemingly pointless haste. Raja gesticulates wildly at the Boss and shouts something about buying too much junk which the Boss ignores. LilâJohnny smokes an insolent cigarette, watching the passing scene of early shoppers and day-trippers. LilâJohnny hears the beep-beep of his phone. He pulls out the little brick of plastic and looks into the archaic screen which reads:
âHow was the DJ gig last Saturday? (heart)â
Yes, there was a gig last Saturday, and yes LilâJohnny had DJ-ed. But who was the text from? LilâJohnny hates it when people did not sign off their texts with their name. It made for the situation that had just arisen. The number, ending 611, had not been saved to his phone. He had no idea who had sent it. âCome on, come on,â orders Big Johnny, âGet me a barrel out the back.â LilâJohnny snaps to attention and rushes out the back leaving the Text till later.
The stall consists of a long low table out in the street, piled with goods â herbal teas, 2litre olive oil, boxes of latex gloves, bags of sweets, 3kg brown sugar, packets of broken biscuits, nuts and dried fruit, bars of chocolate, spaghetti and lasagna sheets, dried chickpeas and tins of powdered milk. The stallâs flank is protected by a wall of blue barrels. On a stack of yellow crates sits a round battered Quality Street tin which acts as the cash register. Looking behind, LilâJohnny can see through the door and into the back of the Shop where Raja and Big Johnny stand serving customers; thereâs an animated conversation going on LilâJohnny canât hear. âAh â that Text…â he remembers.
âSat woz good fun. Sorry u couldnât make it. What u up to 2nit? LilâJohnnyâ he punches into the keypad – Send â thinking, thinking – Sent.
This gets LilâJohnny wondering who it could be. Marta âlovely long legs, wide strong back, cute bob? Sally â older, tresses of long golden hair, a subtle bust he hasnât quite figured out yet? Or one of those random meetings in the pub which had lead to a conversation and exchange of numbers? It puzzled LilâJohnny. âStop slacking and serve that customer,â barks Big Johnny pointing to a woman at the end of the stall holding out a box of tea. Yikes! LilâJohnny pulls out a blue plastic bag and slopes across the stall with a servile âMadam…â.
Thereafter the trade begins. âYes sir, thatâs ÂŁ1âŠ.4 for ÂŁ1 on those MadamâŠ.Would you like bag?⊅The price of the oils? ÂŁ7 for the Extra Virgin, ÂŁ6 otherwiseâŠ..Oi kid stopping hitting that packetâŠ..Whatâs it like? I am afraid I canât eat it for you sir, you need to decide for yourself⊅Thatâs ÂŁ3.50, youâve given me ÂŁ10, ÂŁ6.50 change comingâŠ.No Madam we donât take cards, only cashâŠ..A bank transfer? Sorry we only take hard currency âŠâŠPrice for that? Let me checkâ – LilâJohnny holds the item high in the air and shouts into the back of the Shop; Big Johnny signals with his fingers â4â which LilâJohnny repeats verbally to the customer. âItâs cheaper in the supermarket,â gripes the customer and walks off. âYeah well buy it from there thenâ LilâJohnny imagines himself saying. Things quieten down and LilâJohnny pulls out his phone. There is a message waiting. It reads:
âHey – thatâs great. At the Bolton Arms tonight. There is a good band lined up. Hope to see you down there?! xxâ
âBah! Sign your name!â thinks LilâJohnny aloud. He wasnât really planning on heading so far from his usual stomping grounds. The Bolton was an old Victorian pub someway along the path that runs beside the Great River. Would it be worth it? It all depended who it was on the other side of that number â 611. The number started to fascinate him. âWho are you Madam 611? Iâve got to find out. Iâve got to know,â he concluded with a determined air.
The day proceeded in its timeless routine. Come 4pm LilâJohnny starts packing up the stall, moving its constituting parts into the back of the Shop. By 5pm he is supping on a can of beer. By 6pm Raja has surreptitiously handed LilâJohnny a little bundle of cash that constitutes LilâJohnnyâs wages. LilâJohnny carefully deposits the cash in his secret pocket. Then there passes much banter and familial conversation between the three as they wait for the last of the custom to evaporate. At last they vacate the darkened Shop and lock up. Rajaâs nimble fingers weave the weighty metal chain through gaps in the shutter and with the âsnapâ of the lock, LilâJohnny feels released.
————————————
The Oxford Arms sits on a forgotten corner between a busy road, a raised railway line and the Creek. Itâs a spit-and-sawdust, no frills live music pub. LilâJohnny decides to go there first. At the end of a road coming off the Market sits the handsome, lonely building acting as a beacon for pirates and other neâr-do-wells.
LilâJohnny enters, orders a lager and slips back outside. He sups the clear pishy liquid quenching a thirst more mental than physical. He takes a deep pull on a spliff and breathes a deep sigh of relief.
Inside the pub there is a band playing some of sort of naff pseudo-punk. One of their songs is called âWisdom of the Bluesâ. LilâJohnny goes in. The lead singer struts his stuff on the dance floor while an older crowd bop to the music. Itâs boring music – a mish mash of everything and nothing at all â a noisy mess, played overloud. Two sexy older ladies dance, mobile phones in hand. Members of the band strut off the stage whacking people in the face with their instruments. âThank you, good nightâ. âOne moreâ the crowd shout. This last song has a terrible guitar solo.
Phil Sick â critic, DJ, music nerd – arrives. He is short with a great bush of ratty white hair; he wears glasses, long shorts, canvas Converse trainers and a black-and-white polka dot shirt. âOi oi, Sickâ calls LilâJohhny. Phil starts waxing lyrical about the âorgasmicâ female noise artist he has just seen at a bar at the end of the road; he describes the dry-ice and strobe in the dark basement. âIt was loud,â he says looking up at LilâJohnny with a glow of euphoric bliss. Sick then goes to stand in front of the speakers waiting for the next band looking like an untidy teenage girl.
The pub is busy. DJ Toffee is playing between sets, a munchkin of a man peeping out from behind the decks. There the crackle from his overworn records. He plays an eclectic mix of: âThe Israelitesâ, âI want to hold your handâ, âDisco infernoâ, âLeader of the packâ, âHow long has this been going on…â and âBlack Bettyâ in succession. The Soundman moves about the pub like a malevolent force, vexed because he canât play HIS playlist of neurotic trance. Will â patron saint of the Oxford Arms â is at his usual seat at the bar wearing a camouflage baseball cap, pint in hand, looking on blankly.
LilâJohnny looks up at the clock on the wall â it reads 8:00pm. âTime to move on meâthinks. Donât want to be too late, just fashionablyâ he says to himself. The Coyote Men, a four-man Newcastle rock band, its members dressed in tutuâs and Mexican wrestling masks, come on stage. They start playing a surfy caveman rock with a funky rolling bassline; Americana rock-and-roll with a Mexican twist. As LilâJohnny leaves through the side door, he catches a line from one of their songs: âLoopy Loopy Lopez \\ Break my heart, I break your legs..â. âGeez! Just when the bands were getting good. Oh well, it canât be helped.â
*************
Along the Creek and over it, through the busy town centre and onto the path that runs alongside the Great River. The almost-full moon hangs high and bright in the inky-black sky; LilâJohnny salutes it. The Great River is at high-tide and tonight it has a flat, reflective surface like a field of mud â smooth and defined. One can just hear the rushing river like the rustling of paper over the mournful drone of the air traffic above.
Beams of light shine across the River, shimmering pillars. On the other side skyscrapers are lit up like constellations organized by bureaucrats, geometric glittering anthills. Its dark by the river and people cut figures against the glowing skyline. Cylindrical metal buoys pockmarked with raised ridges make black patches against the luminescent river as if mines waiting for contact. A river bus pulls out of the quay and rides gracefully up the river trailing waves in its wake. A few seconds later the Great River speaks: the lapping of water, gurgle â slap â wash â the elemental crashing of waves.
LilâJohnny stops along the path, leans against the balustrade and looks out over the Great River, that still molten pond of glass. It exudes its primal silence. LilâJohnny gets to thinking: âWhat the hell am I doing? Does it really matter? I wouldnât be out this evening if I didnât have this mission to fulfill, this mystery to solve.â âMy little manor,â he thinks panning from the hills behind to the Great River before him. âI hardly ever leave this place. My little corner of the Earth. Some people want to travel but I just want is to follow my little circuit, see me old muckers, listen to music and dance the night away. In short â to party. Am I looking for love tonight? I donât know. Iâm looking for somethingâŠ.Iâm just not sure what it is yet. An answer, a sign, an auspice, destiny?!â
The stupid clump of a jogger and their loud rasping guttural breathing disturbs LilâJohnnyâs train of thought. Then the gabble of voices in the dark, moving forms. LilâJohnny pulls himself together and continues along the river path, gazing dreamily up at the evening star stuck up in the sky like a brilliant satellite.
Off the river path, halfway down a side street, a corner pub sits â a dumpy Victorian relic â painted black. Itâs the Bolton Arms and LilâJohnny quickens his pace because he knows heâs late. In through the door and straight to the bar; heâs gasping for a drink. The pub is packed.
LilâJohnny looks around making a visual inspection of the punters. While he is never good at remembering names or numbers, LilâJohnny has an uncanny memory for faces â he knows that if Madam 611 is there, heâll know. She is not there in that mass. While LilâJohnny waits to be served he surveys his surroundings. The pub is painted in a dark coat; there in one corner a raised stage stands with a cut-glass mirror behind and neon-red lights spell out âBoltonâ above â the red light reflects off the black ceiling and splashes across tables. A discoball, small and lonely, hangs high above the stage. There is a band setting up. Fairylights strung from the ceiling reflect in the large handsome windows creating a starry infinity. A big stuffed fish sits in a glass case above the bar.
âWhat you having?â asks the young barmaid. âPint of the pale ale pleaseâ. Pour â clunk â âCash or card?â â beeeep! LilâJohnny takes a long sip and returns to surveying the pub. People wearing leather jackets and denim shirts, young men with long hair, quiffâs black and grey, blonde bobs, pates, leopard print, glasses of white wine, teeth, smiling faces. There a mobile phone so sparkly that a magpie would be off with it. At the bar long blonde hair frames an angelic face with long eyelashes. A wealthier set than LilâJohnny is used to. They talk and eat and generally look bored.
Its the âMagic City Trioâ playing tonight. LilâJohnny knows them. A husband and wife outfit who sing and play guitar. The band includes a double bass, brass and drums. There are lots of pairs of glasses in the band. The husband wears a floral-print Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, tall with big lips and long greying hair; she is short and wears a glittery silver dress. They start off with âSpoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you…â. Their sound is a vibrant country honky-tonk with drawling vocals and twangy guitars. A mother with a snub nose sitting near the stage covers her young daughterâs ears with her hands; the child has a big unhappy look on her face. The young child looks askance at an older lady dancing wildly in front.
LilâJohnny decides to go out into the garden â a strip of gravel on which sit rows of wooden picnic benches. He lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag and watches the curling of smoke rising and dissipating into the sky. Looking up he sees the sweep of new build flats. From the flats emanates a dull green-grey light punctuated by chaotic, disjointed, angular shapes of the stuff inside;Â there the flitting light of a large TV screen. âSorry, the girls are coming with meâ says a lady to some leery lads chatting up her friends perched on the benches nearby. LilâJohnny surveys the garden and no Madam 611.
The reader may ask why LilâJohnny doesnât just text Madam 611? Why not just ask who she is and where she is? That would be unthinkable to LilâJohnny. He believes in fate, in chance â what adventure would there be if we just got all our answers from pressing some buttons on a phone? Its a matter of principle. If Lady Luck should favour him tonight he will meet up with Madam 611. She will appear from around a corner, they will recognize each other, embrace and sit down to talk; they will move closer to one another and nuzzle. LilâJohnny must continue on his mission until the battle is won or lost.
The beer has loosened LilâJohnnyâs hips and inhibitions. He joins the throng of dancers inside. âBurning ring of fire…â plays from the stage. Being the hill-billy he is, LilâJohnny slaps his thighs and keeps time to the music with his stomping feet. He sees the back of bobbing heads and heads and heads behind which the band can just be seen. Closing his eyes the rhythm runs through him and into his moving body. Things become fuzzy, ephemeral and euphoric, the spirit of Dionysus unleashed. Around him bodies pop, shuffle, jiggle and jive. Shaking hips, dancing bums, tossed hair and furtive glances. LilâJohnny is carried away, lost in the scene.
Time passes and the band has come to an end. The Strokes plays softly off a playlist. LilâJohnny falls into a large leather armchair and once more surveys the pub. The crowd has thinned and empty glasses fill the tables. LilâJohnny strikes up conversation with a pretty lady sitting nearby. They get to talking about how they each came to be here this night. âWell, I got this text from a number ending 611 and I had to see who she was…â. The lady looks at LilâJohnny biting on her curled finger, laughing. âI was just being honest…â protests LilâJohnny feebly. She leaves shortly thereafter and he is alone once again. An old couple trundle out of the pub, fingers intertwined in a caring embrace.
LilâJohnny gets his things and pats his secret pocket to see that his wages are still safe â all is well. He does one more circuit of the pub. Just as he thought â Madam 611 is not there. He knows the routine â she wonât text him again, he wonât text her, a stalemate of obstinate wills â such is the way in this cosmopolitan dump. He will now never know who Madam 611 is, she will be just another unsolved and soon forgotten mystery of his life. Despite his inebriated state, LilâJohnny He takes his leave of the Bolton and joins the darkness of the river path. The moon has shifted round and the tide on the Great River has dropped. LilâJohnny is drunk, happy and alone. He walks along the dead quiet river path homeward bound with an uneven swinging step, singing that classic reggae song out loud: âI got money in my pocket // But I just canât get no loveâŠ.â
