Walls

“My life changed completely in 1989 with the fall of the wall.”    Angela Merkel

‘Every day the schoolboy would wake up, put on his uniform, dash downstairs, grab some breakfast, muster the bits and pieces that he needed for his day, place them into his leather satchel and head out the door. Sometimes the inclement weather would mean that he ran the mile to the school in the forlorn hope that running would help him to arrive drier. Sometimes the sun shone, he would meet his mates on the way and they would saunter, scuff their shoes and talk about the things which boys talked about. Sensible things, curious things, nonsensical things, bravado things, things better left behind in the kingdom of youth. Eventually they would come by the gates of the driveway which wound its way up to the manor house in the English village. They saw the gravel road, the Rolls Royce parked by the front door. Sometimes they would hear it as it made its way over the gravel surface. It was the sound of privilege and power and establishment and tradition. The daffodils by the side of the road always seemed to bow their heads, a floral homage, a yellow obeisance, when the car rolled by. When they walked further the view of the grounds became no more. An ancient wall, some 8 to 10 feet high, guarded a ‘terra incognita’, secreted a mystery, created imaginings. Sometimes the stories that they made up were funny, sometimes murder was committed, often it became a secret training ground for government spies. And as they walked the same road every day, and the wall continued to hide its purpose, the more outlandish and exaggerated became its mystery. At some point curiosity got the better of them and the bravest decided that it was time to storm the citadel. Therefore on a clear night, when the moon shone, they slipped out of their houses and met and scaled the wall.

Dropping down on the other side, they found themselves in an orchard. Unripe apples, round and succulent, yet green and still inedible, abundantly draped an avenue of trees leading their way forward. At the end of the grassy avenue there stood a shed. It became their goal. They looked about them, their hearts beat, their breaths were short, they moved forward. They reached the wooden doorway to find it unlocked. The bravest one lifted the latch and creaked it open. Inside they smelt the grass clippings, the mustiness given off from rake and hoe and fork, tools that turned the earth. They found a cupboard at the end and noted it was open. Inside were string and canes, a hammer and smaller tools. Suddenly they froze. They heard a movement outside, heavy footfalls on the grass. There was no way out. Their eyes widened with fear. Then they saw the unmistakeable beam of a torch. They turned their faces away from the light. Finally, miracle of miracles, they heard the retreating feet and turned to see the light moving into the near distance. First one face then another moved tentatively out into the darkness, tiptoed towards the wall until eventually they could resist no longer.  Suddenly they burst into action and ran full tilt and, with Olympic prowess, were up and over and back on the street with relieved laughter. They made their way home and went to bed.’

I have, Dear Reader, thought a great deal about walls recently. I like the walls of our house because they give us privacy and shelter but if they ever become barriers to allowing people in and shutting the rest of the world out, then they become a terrible thing. Why terrible? Is not ‘terrible’ an overly dramatic word? I think not. Our minds should be free of walls should they not? If I ever have a resolution it is to read more opposing points of view. I am becoming too prone to emotive sound-bytes; too smit by influencers who say the things that I want to hear. I need to read more opinions which I do not like so that my perspective becomes more balanced and reasoned. I need, in the words of Ronald Reagan to, ‘Tear down that wall.”

“The one eyed man is king in the kingdom of the blind.”

It could also be said that he is king in the kingdom of the bland. To misquote further if we blandly go where nobody has gone before we deserve to find ourselves at the edge of a precipice. To save our lives we need, more than ever, to be well read and better informed. We need to leap over our intellectual walls and find the burgeoning orchard on the other side. The apples may be unripe and this metaphor may be trite but both will ripen?!  We should never be afraid of the other side of the wall.

“Stone walls do not a prison make” Lovelace

It seems to me, Friends, that walls built around nations are never successful at keeping people or ideas either out or in. People are nomadic. Since time immemorial human beings have moved from place to place, just look at the vehicle traffic in our cities. Human beings have colonised, they have settled, some have stayed and some have moved on. And, yes, nation states have built walls and succeeded in thwarting people temporarily but, it seems to me, such a policy is always doomed to failure. One can kill a person or burn a book but an idea whose time has come will not be left untended. It will out. The primitive rulers of Afghanistan shall do their level best to curtail the rights of girls and women but they will not succeed for ever. That wall will fall.

Going back to Angela Merkel’s quotation, so recently Chancellor of her native Germany, she grew up in the communist state of East Germany behind the Berlin Wall where the dreaded Stasi knocked on doors in the darkness, where Putin honed his inhumanity. And yet no walls could curtail her thinking, no barriers could restrict the breadth of her mind. The wall did not work. It took a beautiful moment in history to open the floodgates of potential and innovation.

The Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, Hadrian’s Wall are all tourist attractions now. We are free to walk on them, around them, over them. And, Dear Reader, we are free to sit upon them on a hot summer’s day and read whatever book we want. (We hope!) They should be left as worthy reminders of what was. But, Dear Reader, there are still walls of the mind, walls around our hearts, walls springing up as barriers to our freedom of opinion, fences barring our ability to discuss and debate, citadels behind which there be dragons. We need to slay the dragons quickly  before they push us towards nastiness and nonsensical intent. There is hope.

“He that complies against his will

Is of his own opinion still

Which he may adhere to, yet disown,

For reasons to himself but known.”   Samuel Butler.

This Samuel Butler quotation, it has suddenly struck me, is currently unacceptable. Why? Because of its masculinity. But here I have to make a point. It is of its time. So, Dear Reader, I do not feel that I have the right to mess around with somebody else’s work. To me there is nothing more presumptive and arrogant than bowdlerising the writings of others to pander to current thinking. Sorry about that wee sideshow, Dear Reader, back to walls.

The most current example of a wall, probably the worst kind of wall, is that which is set to censor beauty and artistic appreciation, which is, of course, currently the fig leaf. Certain politicians in Florida have created a law requiring that a fig leaf be placed  around the genitalia of one of the world’s most iconic works of Art. I refer, of course, to Michelangelo’s ‘David’. What a ‘parcel of rogues in a nation’ that particular bunch of buffoons is turning out to be. They should come clean and rather than use a pathetic little leaf, maybe David should be holding an automatic weapon over his manhood, after all an innocuous AK47 is much larger than a leaf. And, of course, it has the added bonus that if somebody does accidentally catch a glance of what lies beneath, he or she can be quickly eliminated. Thus can the corruptive body parts of a human being be stopped from scarring minds for life.  A gun is much, much less offensive than other male equipment, don’t you know? I believe, Dear Reader, that we should leave the leaf on its tree and be able to view the fruits of the loom.

Thanks for reading.