Once again there is an air of anticipation in the basement
restaurant of Stravaigin where forty people await the inauguration of the
fourth meeting of the Cleikum Club. Amidst the chatter Neil Butler cuts through
the blethers with several gongs of the Horn of Cleikum (if you recall – a
genuine historical artefact rescued from the embers of the original Cleikum Inn
in Peebleshire – now remember, it’s a genuine historical artefact) and
introduces the topic of debate for the evening ‘What is Radical?’. A topic which is seen to adopt a large number
of guises and offer itself to a range of concepts, Butler rhymes off just a few
ways it will be appearing in the evening’s programme in the forms of radical song, radical love,
radical ideas and a radical menu. Carol Wright is introduced as our
free-radical hostess for the evening – as Neil points out - ever the
non-conformist, Carol certainly embodies the resistance to acquiescence so abundant
in free-radical thinking!
Butler’s initial foray into investigating radicalism,
he explains, led him first of all to the world of science and mathematics and
although this evening was barely going to touch upon these subjects, the line
of thinking was identical – the idea of extremes and ideas and notions as being
‘out there’. He goes on to illustrate his point by using the obvious example of
the youth of the 1960s and 70s (of which he was one) thinking of themselves as
the quintessence of radical. They explored radical art, had radical parties,
produced radical ideas and followed radical politics. Neil touches upon a
notion that proves to be a recurring one throughout the evening. A sense that
being radical is very much of it’s time and what is thought of as radical at a
certain time may not remain so at a later point. The concept of radicalism is a
fluid and subjective one – something which is constantly changing and evolving
– which would be why is lends itself so aptly to this hot-bed of discussion.
And so on with the meeting and our radical singer for the
evening is Alistair Ogilvy (the first performer in the history of The Cleikum
Club to make a second appearance) and he kicks off proceedings by introducing
his first choice of song for the evening. In his initial preparations for the night,
his mind immediately went to the musical juggernaut that is Woody Guthrie when
thinking of radical and influential songwriters and their music; however he
decided to go with a woman whose political views within her songs seem fundamental
in setting the radical tone for the evening. ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’
encapsulates Joan Baez’s views which punctuated her seemingly radical nature
and activism in politics in the 1960s and is beautifully reproduced by Alistair
with his own radical twist in that he is accompanying himself on guitar which
he rarely plays!
The first radical course of food is served – Red Clydeside
Borscht with tolpuddle bread. The traditional Ukrainian peasant dish of borscht
resonates with the Red Clydeside term included in the title in reference to the
radical working class movement seen in Glasgow and surrounding areas between
1910 and the 1930s. One of the main priorities of this time was the campaign
for safer and cleaner living conditions in the squalid slums of Glasgow’s
tenements as well as it’s fierce militant opposition to Britain’s participation
in World War 1. Visually stunning as well as deliciously topical, the borscht
goes down a treat and we move swiftly on to Neil’s introduction of the first
speaker and, of course, the traditional round-up of artefacts from the Museum
of Cleikum.
Karen Lawson takes the stand as the Curator of Dangerous
Ideas. She introduces the festival of the same name to take place across
Scotland in mid June as a commemoration of how to change the way we see and
think about education. Education as a whole is and should be a radical concept.
And pushing this theory further, Lawson queries if schooling should be the be
all and end all of how to teach children. She uses the example of the work of
Michel Foucault in his publication ‘The Order of Things’ where he cites a
Chinese encyclopaedia which lists the classification of the animal kingdom.
Before explaining his theory fully, Lawson asks the audience to think about how
we would classify animals in our own head. As grumblings and murmurs of
‘mammals’ and ‘amphibians’ are overheard throughout the room, the noise reaches
a steady crescendo as Neil has to interject with the horn of Cleikum to bring
order to the rabble once again. Lawson reveals the encyclopaedic definition
from the source to contain ‘frenzied’, ‘belonging to the emperor’, ‘embalmed’,
‘tame’ and ‘sucking pigs’ to name but a few. What Foucault is illustrating is an opportunity to recognize the limitations of our own
classificatory system by which we would not think of this alternative. This is
integral in Lawson’s explanation of how we need to think of education differently
as she explains that we are unable to think beyond what we know as the norm or
outside of what we have already been educated in. The festival aims to promote
using the best of what we do know and not what we don’t know – hence the
radical concept embedded in the manifesto as the festival takes the opportunity
to explore different ways of educating people by combining arts and education.
Lawson is the ambassador for pushing boundaries in teaching and utilising more
varied techniques in providing a well rounded education. This involves using
not only people already in the education system but combining skills and
innovators from every walk of life including business people and artists to
fully explore different ways of enlightening. The festival will incorporate a
number of events and activities to encourage people to view education
differently including an auction where people will bid on dangerous ideas as
well as philosophy cafes popping up in various locations to discuss ways of
ideas to enforce radical change in teaching. The crux of Lawson’s idea is having
the impotence to change things for the better and step away from the safety of
convention and this, in itself, is radical.
Da Vinci’s seafood salad is next
on the menu and appears most vitruvian in nature based only on its
[pro]portion! As it turns out – it
proves to be most delicious and visually stunning piece of foodie architecture
and an excellent platform to lead into Neil’s next introduction as he discusses
when and how radical ideas move into the mainstream making them commonplace in
society. The group are left to ponder the question as the evening moves on.
Donny O’Rourke takes the stage to
talk about the radical concept of love and not just in the conventional sense. He
begins his exploration by describing his lonely experience of voting earlier
the same day and impressing upon the audience the privilege that voting
represents - that men have died for this right and behaved in their own radical
ways in order to secure it for future generations. He continues this political
thread by uttering his dismay at the once radical Liberal party who have all
but succumbed to the right wing manifesto by allowing the Conservatives an in
when they should have stuck to their principles and pushed their own,
independent agenda as far as possible. Afterall, O’Rourke points out,
radicalism was created by the left as he exclaims to ‘challenge the right of
the people who think they own everything and us’. And it appears unfortunately that this is something
the left are rapidly losing sight of. He urges us to be radical and see through
the illusion of the modern politics of Clegg, Cameron and Murdoch and not
confuse them as radical. Following on from this O’Rourke goes on to classify
the two types of Socialists that exist – the ones who bring walls down and
other who push people up against them. Being a socialist is about love and consent
and feeling free as ‘a man who possesses is a man possessed.’ As Robert Burns
is quoted on his deathbed as saying ‘share it all’, Donny sanctions this
heartfelt statement by adding ‘being rich is wrong.’ As the audience glimpses
O’Rourke’s politically charged culmination, he ties the strands of all his
previous statements with the smallest of phrases – ‘there is only love –there
is nothing else’. He tells us to be radical by choosing love over hate and
choosing life over death. He states that
Karl Marx told us that we know what to do in life, as did Jesus (whether we
believe in him or not) in his Sermon on the Mount – it’s not as if we DON’T know
what to do. And so as he promises this to be his last song of the evening he
breaks into (in his own words he ‘breaks into song the way vandals break into
churches.’) and gives a rousing rendition of ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ thoroughly
impassioning the audience as he cements his stamp as the ambassador of the
radical notion of love in all contexts.
Moving on to the star dish of the
evening, the eager audience is presented with Uncle Ho’s Hanoi Stew. Initially
a rebel resisting the French rule of his home province, Uncle Ho went on to
become the President and Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
through his impassioned and revolutionary tactics. Warning the French as the
prospect of war with the country loomed he exclaimed "You can
kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you
will lose and I will win." A true radical, nationalist and patriot, Ho
retained his unbending and uncompromising political stance to unify his country
despite the mounting threat from opposition and the enormous death toll of his
countries’ soldiers and civilians. The evening, as enjoyable as it has been up
to this point is running behind schedule and so we swiftly move onto the final
course of the less-specific but none the less topical dessert of [the] Free
Radical Fruit Pudding.
It is pertinent to mention here the clever timing of the end
of the meal to welcome our last radical speaker’s subject of debate –
cannibalism. Mr Ian Smith takes the podium and offers another way of perceiving
the subject merely as radical cookery – much like the type the group as
experienced this evening from the chefs at Stravaigin but we are assured that
no humans were harmed in the making of our meals tonight. Iain begins with a
brief history of cannibalism and it is soon apparent that there are many more
dimensions to the argument than meets the eye (no pun intended). Smith begins
his exploration by introducing Jonathan
Swift’s epic, satirical essay of 1729 ‘A Modest Proposal’, or, to give it its
full title which hints a little more to its content; ‘A
Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of the Poor People from Being a
Burthen to Their Parents, or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the
Publick’. Swift’s incredibly dense thesis encompasses his views of politics,
religion and the economics at the time to produce a brilliant parody expressing
his outrage at the Irish and English political policies of the era which kept
the poor impoverished and the wealthy landowners rich. The well-meaning persona
of the writer as an economist is rhetoric at its absolute best as his
underlying benevolence for the situation directly contradicts the callous acts
he is a proponent of. Here we see the
real question of morality surrounding cannibalism as it is so well justified by
Swift – could Ian actually sway the audience into thinking the act morally
permissible? Well we’ll see. Medieval
Scotland is where the cannibalistic journey begins with Sawney Bean and his
cave-dwelling family who had a terrible habit of picking off hitch hikers and
other individuals, killing them and devouring their remains in their coastal
hideaway. Bean and his wife had several children and even grandchildren brought
up in this existence not knowing any different. After several decades of
committing these atrocities, the group were eventually apprehended by order of
King James VI and taken to their execution. The men had their genitals, hands
and feet removed and allowed to bleed to death as the women and children
watched then they were promptly burned alive. Ian takes this opportunity to
question what the younger generations of this family were thinking as they
watched their fathers and brothers dying in front of them for an act that,
according to them, was just a way of life. Morally permissible yet? The
audience is unconvinced so far but Ian has more up his sleeve. He brings us up
to date with one of the most recent recorded incidents of cannibalism cited in
1972 with the Andes Flight Disaster. In this case, after a plane crash in the
mountains between Chile and Argentina, survivors were left with no choice but
to eat the corpses of the dead passengers that had been preserved in the snow
in order to survive. Ian explains that
the group didn’t come to this decision lightly, but after consuming all of
their rations and hearing on their radio that the search parties had been
called off, the bleak desperation of their situation became apparent and this
was the only means by which they were going to survive. The moral twist to the
tale comes when we learn that the entire group were devout Christians and so
their decision to turn to cannibalism was made that bit more difficult (that’s
if it could ever be an easy decision!) with the moral compass of religion
looming over them. In the end they justified their decision reasoning that it
is a mortal sin to commit suicide in the eyes of God and so they must use every
tool at their disposal to ensure their survival. The question of religion
brings an added dimension to the morality argument as Ian explains in the past,
he has presented this talk to many audiences, one being a devout Catholic group
in Portugal and he got away with it! He goes on to mention the concept of the radical
theology employed by the Andes survivors as they were able to reconcile their
cannibalism in religious terms. Ian then offers us the two distinctions between
types of cannibalism. Endocannibalism refers to eating your relatives or tribe members
as a mark of respect. Exocannibalism refers to the consumption of your enemies,
sometimes to take on their powers. A radical idea indeed, cannibalism has many
more aspects to it than initially thought. Ian’s explanation goes a long way to
examining past practices and reasoning of this very taboo subject in an
accessible and light hearted way as he round up his talk with a list of
interesting recipes from various regions and people from around the world. As
the Mongolians had a penchant for pickled ears, the early Chinese enjoyed a man
pie and the Aztecs, never doing things by halves, liked to cook whole bodies with
peppers and tomatoes. And so Ian vacates the podium to rapturous applause as
the audience feels that bit more enlightened but also thankful that they had
already finished their meal.
Neil
is with us again to remind the audience of the next Cleikum Club meeting,
breaking from tradition and taking place the following month on June 14th.
This will be the last meeting before taking a break for the summer months and
we’re going out with a bang exploring ‘What is a dangerous idea?’ in
association with the Festival of Dangerous Ideas taking place in mid-June.
Alistair
is introduced once more to conclude the evening with a ballad he explains that
his mother doesn’t like him performing.
Going back to the radical notion of love, The Ballad of the Speaking
Heart explores the perils of romance and a mother’s unconditional love for her
child. The young, foolish man in the ballad would do anything his true love
desires and unfortunately for his mother, she desires her heart. The boy slays
his mother and in rushing to give the heart to the girl he falls and the heart hits
the ground and says ‘are you hurt son? Are you hurt at all?’ Performed on a
shruti box, the haunting bellows and Alistair’s beautiful voice heightens the
emotion of the song and proves the radical notion of love once more.
June
14th 2012 is the date for the
last Cleikum Club for this season with the topic of debate ‘What is a Dangerous
Idea?’ We’ll be back later in the year
with more fiery discussion and delicious food at Stravaigin Gibson Street in
Glasgow.
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