Author: Michael Michael

Of this time

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Just to let you know that I have not forgotten you.

The genger battle of our age is no longer solely about sexuality but increasingly about transitioning from male to female, or vice versa. There are now, in certain countries, protected rights to choose gender, and the more I research into it the more apparent it is that some level of choice has always existed. It is about whether or not one accepts the interplay of gender stereotypes as they exist within any given culture or whether one subverts or challenges those self same stereotypes.

The debate also undermines the definitional stance that many cultures assign to gender as a concept, something I am increasingly coming to question. Oppositional definitions and binary polarities seem to me to do a disservice to the potential of whole human experience. It seems to me that the possibility of merging opposition would be preferable, and that losing the pretence of clear cut definition would serve humanity better.

Were you a saint or a sinner – who is to decide?

As ever, your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

A competition of priorities

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

There are those who think that freedom is the absolute priority, freedom to say and do and be, and to some extent I understand the argument. But it also has to be recognised that absolute freedom would mean that people are free to undertake acts of atrocity, and I could not subscribe to that. So the question comes to be: freedom on whose terms?

I am sure you believed in your life time that you should have been free to lead the life that you wished to live, and there has now been over a century of civil unrest and political challenge throughout the world in order to try to achieve that. I suppose the attainment of such a level of freedom would have to ask the question as to whether these ‘freedoms’ were being won at the expense of others, and if that is not the case then all well and good.

But then again surely priorities should be far more basic, and commonly shared. Food, shelter, warmth, water; from such basics everything else can be built and developed. But it pains me to report, Oscar, that even in the advanced state of human evolution that we currently exist, there are still people who experience hunger, thirst, lack of protection against the elements. It is as if overlooking the plight of the weakest is somehow acceptable, with states, religions, charities, all looking the other way. Of course no single person can achieve enough to change it all, but so much of the collective consciousness seems to be about now knowing, not recognising, not responding. Preserve the self before you make any attempt to preserve the other – that appears to be the overriding philosophy. Again, I can understand the argument, but surely some awareness of the plight of others would benefit the whole.

I have travelled, Oscar, in the country of Vietnam, in the capital of Hanoi. What impressed me the most is that crossing the road was about simply stepping off the kerb, with awareness, with due care, and mingling with the hubbub. All traffic would give way to the weakest, so that pedestrians were given right of way, and motor vehicles would work around their needs. Just as cars would work around the needs of motorcyclists, and lorries of cars. It looked rather a chaotic system, but it seemed to work very effectively. What was most impressive, was that ‘giving way’, and understanding the needs of the weaker, were the order of the day. It seems to me that this could be translated in a much broader sense into our understanding of each other, and our recognition that selfish squandering is of little benefit to the whole.

Did you care, Oscar, for those who were weaker than you, less influential, less powerful, with no voice, no right to be heard, no social recognition? I think to some extent you came to, but only as you experienced levels of privation.

Best wishes,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Under pressure

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder if you will be able to relate to anything that I am about to tell you.

You died over one hundred years ago, which seems to me to be a blink in the eye of the earth’s history, and just a moment in the history of humanity, and yet in that time there have been so very many minor changes to everyday existence, that I wonder if you would recognise at all the lives that we now have to lead. Your death, let’s face it, which was horribly premature, really only occurred a couple of generations ago, and had you survived into a ripe old age you may well have seen many decades of the twentieth century. To a young whippersnapper of today you could be a great-grandfather, and to me, teetering beyond middle age, you could have been a grandfather. But I fear my life experience would be totally alien to you, pressured as it is by the nonsensicalaties of the humdrum.

I think that even the language that I am about to use would not be easily understood, and have just put into quotation marks all those elements that I think you will have difficulty with. I know you cannot correct me if I am wrong, but I am not expecting to be wrong, able as I am to chart developments over a century or so.

So, these are the events that have put me under pressure today:

The ‘batteries’ in my ‘remote control’ for the ‘television set’ which I own have ceased to work, and so they needed to be replaced. Before I left my home to go to the ‘supermarket’ I needed to remember that given the effects of the current ‘pandemic’ I would have to take a ‘face mask’, and, because of the effects of ‘global warming’, a ‘reusable plastic bag’. I checked my ‘bank balance’ ‘online’ via my ‘mobile phone’, and set out. The pressure was building because funds were not as high as I had expected, and the ‘elastic’ on the ‘face mask’ is given to snapping under duress. At the ‘supermarket’ a ‘traffic light system’ shone green and allowed my entry, and I used the ‘hand sanitiser’ before wheeling out the ‘trolley’. Now the ‘face mask’ steams up my spectacles, so I had to remove them and put them into my pocket, along with my hat, because I could not put the ‘elastic’ of the ‘face mask’ over my ears until they were suitably revealed. This meant my head was cold, and I could not see clearly; I certainly could not read the all important ‘small print’ which accompanies every item under consideration for purchase. However my quest was underway, and the suitable ‘batteries’ were found, and there was a selection of different ‘brands’, all ‘advertising’ their differences, and their ‘price ranges’. Again, this prefigured more pressure; I had after all checked my ‘bank balance’, and wasting money on a supposedly superior ‘brand’ seemed foolhardy. I opted for ‘mid-range’, paid by ‘debit card’ at the ‘cash desk’, removed the ‘face mask’ outside the store, replaced my spectacles, and put the hat on to my now distinctly chilly head. I had not needed the ‘trolley’, so it was pushed back into position, but not before locking it and retrieving the coin which had allowed me to have it in the first place. Back at home I have been able to replace the ‘batteries’ in the ‘remote control’, and so can now happily while away the hours watching the drivel which is ‘beamed’ to me ‘digitally’ should I really wish to do so. A source of more pressure, I can tell you, besieging one’s mind with nonsense, empty aspiration, and of course endless ‘product placement’. Whatever you are able to understand, Oscar dear, I am sure you see that basically one can bring on one’s own demise in this day and age through ‘anxiety’ and ‘worry’, through interminable pressure, and all for nothing, or very little, at all.

Forgive such selfish tripe, Oscar; I know you had greater concerns, but I do wish to highlight to you that what you miss by having lived a century or so ago is actually not so much. All of the significance of our current age, our successful mass communication techniques, our digital economies, our ease of availability and of indulgence, seem of little real value, bring endless personal challenge and discomfort, and their insistence adds to feelings of unending pressure.

Ah, to breathe.

I took a walk in order to achieve the above and so was able to breathe fresh air.

To breathe fresh air.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Lottery

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope you are faring well.

I do not think you will have encountered the phenomenon of the ‘lottery’ in your lifetime, certainly not to the extent that we do nowadays. You did have events called ‘sweep-stakes’, I know that, and there was also horse racing, and dog racing,and pigeon racing, and all manner of gambling opportunities. Cards were played for high stakes, and I would wager (to coin a phrase) that even popular and normal forms of intercourse at times involved the placing of a bet!

Now throughout many parts of the world we have national versions of lottery games, where very small amounts of money can be placed in the hope of winning riches beyond everyday comprehension. These are essentially state run, or at least privately run with state sanction, with arms of charitable donation attached and audiences of millions and millions. Vast numbers of people play them, place their bets, and spend interminable hours awaiting the outcome. Some win very big indeed, which is of course the lure, that life will be changed irrevocably by enormous riches. The build up is intense, with televised draws beamed into the homes of the nation, with celebrity endorsement, and then the random and automated selection of lucky draws that detail the numbers that will equal a jackpot. It is all very exciting, Oscar, and for many I would hazard a guess, is the most exciting moment in every week, where the anticipation built is suddenly released, and winning, or losing, is the outcome.

It set me thinking about surety and uncertainty. If you buy a lottery ticket you are sure of being entered in the draw, but there is uncertainty attached to the outcome, which may be success, or which may be failure. It is increasingly the case that all levels of surety are becoming less and less significant. You think that a university education will afford you a decent job and burgeoning career, but there is no guarantee, and for many a significant struggle to attain any level of economic security. You think because you marry the person you love that a lifetime of devotion and security is set, but as we witness everywhere, amongst heterosexual communities, and amongst the partnerships of gay people, and of those who nominate differently, splits and dis-unions are just as commonplace. You believe an investment is a good one, and then can lose money; you trust that banks are honest, but sometimes they are not; you invest in the rule of law, the sanctity of religion, the set patters of tradition, the map that you have been encouraged to stick to all of your life, and it can all go awry. It can all simply go, just evaporate, be nothing. You think that you are doomed to poverty and starvation, that your dreams will never be fulfilled, and that your hopes are mere fantasies – and then you win the lottery!

It seems to me that life is unavoidably a bit of a gamble. Things that seem set one day can change the next. Taking opportunities as they are presented, taking risks that are safeguarded and not a threat to personal well-being, acting rashly, at times impetuously, for a greater good, seem to me to be the mainstays of living a life.

You paid; I know you paid. Caught by history and social disapproval, by legal impediment. Your rash actions sent you into prison, and then into exile, I know all that, Oscar dear. Maybe it is no consolation that I write to you, that you are remembered in pockets of the world even to this day, that your works live on into their second century, and that yours is a voice still heard and considered. Maybe you did get your ‘big win’ after all, in life’s unending lottery, or maybe you lost out. Who can tell? You may have been disgruntled whatever the outcome of your time on the planet, or you may have been quietly jubilant and celebratory that you had made a mark.

There is a choice there.

Your friend, as ever,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

As if nothing is happening

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope you are at peace, rested, unassailed.

The daily assault of the mass media has already come upon me, as it is absolutely unavoidable in this modern age. I believe that you had newspapers to read, and even some black and white pictorialised magazines to consume, and that in the major cities young lads would stand on street corners and yell out the headlines in order to attract the purchasing of these organs. I believe that may have been the sum of the media. Apart from the theatre performances for which you were so famed, only accessible to the chattering classes, who would then chatter about the contents of the plays they saw upon the stage. Nothing more. Nowadays barely a moment goes by without mediated stories assaulting the populace from all angles, most pointedly now in the palm of one’s hand, as the mobile telephone ‘pings’ its unending importance, bringing us all what is termed ‘the rolling news’. It seems to be of significance for our culture to note that something is happening all of the time!

The peculiar thing is that once one sits back from it, mutes all of the noise, even ignores its insistence, that nothing really seems to be happening at all. There are endless sensationalised fusses made about supposed advancements in human achievement, both negative and positive, with details pored over and ‘evidence’ presented, but none of it really seems like very much at all. Man (or woman, or to my mind, human personage) climbs yet another mountain, and another one, and another one. It is as if humanity has to prove that it can overcome hurdle after hurdle that is set before its way – much of which, it has to be said, is self-imposed. We will defeat climate change (something that we, apparently, caused); we will restore the earth’s resources (all of which we greedily consume); we will conquer any threat to life that comes our way (even though we are the greatest threat to human life, over and over again). It is that last mentioned quality which hits me so hard the more that I think about it; the fact, dear Oscar, that it is ‘over and over again’.

These supposedly grand achievements dominate the headlines, relay to us all the victories and the conquests, the heights that we are able to scale, the grandness of our being, as a race, as a human race. I cannot help thinking that it is in our smallness that we are actually greater, far greater, and under-reported, under-represented, and under-recognised. Kind gestures; smiles; encouragement; the old person diligently avoiding the purchase of plastic; the young person deciding never to own a car; kisses; concerns; delivering shopping; singing a song, under one’s breath, on a bus, on a train; generosity which means sharing a meal, dropping a coin into an outstretched hand, buying a coffee with no requirement for payback; writing to a condemned man, a man condemned by history, martyred, remembered with reservation, and pledging,

I am, as always, your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Contemplating agedness

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

You did not reach a ripe old age yourself. It is a great shame that your treatment at the hands of the judicial system basically contributed to the foreshortening of your life, so that you reached only your 46th birthday. I for one am sorry that this was the case. In fact in your age, the late Victorian age, life expectancy for men was not too dissimilar from the age that you reached, although the prevalence of infant mortality skews somewhat the recording of accurate death rates. Nevertheless, lives on the whole were not long, and certainly not as long as they have come to be all these years later. Now it is common to hear of people living until they are over 100 years old, at least in the West, where not only medical advancement, but also economic plenitude, ensure that many are well cared for into their dotage.

What happens to them though is a different thing altogether, and comes to be slightly alarming. In the countries you inhabited, in Ireland, the UK, France, and even America that you visited, it seems to be the case that the aged are not treated with veneration, but are more often than not parcelled off into care homes, to be kept out of the way, and to lead quite restricted lives. Any health issues become the dominant issues of existence, and since the medics have plied these people with drugs for half of their lives, very often there is the onset of dementia, and of Alzheimer’s disease, taking their toll upon any quality of life. Through this age of the pandemic of Covid 19 the very aged are kept isolated completely from the rest of society, even from their loved ones, in efforts to keep them alive and well (something which of course fails because these people are already old and frail). I must say, Oscar, I do find it bizarre that such efforts are made to keep people who are at the end of their lives going, celebrating the fact that 96, 97, 98 year olds keep on living within their peculiar rest home scenarios, while young people are sent out on to battle fields, are put in dangerous positions everyday, sometimes losing their lives pointlessly. Cars still zoom around cities, polluting the very air that we breathe, mass production of plastics persists, choking natural resources like waterways and seas and oceans, landfill sites become poisoned deserts where certain members of humanity have to eke out a living – and yet, where there is privilege, where there is plenty, keeping a few doddering old folk going beyond any version of a natural end is the priority.

Now I know I am being controversial, and that one day I may well be one of those ancient crones, but I pray to the memory of you Oscar, that should I find myself in such a position I will be fit and healthy and compos mentis. From my standpoint, as it is, in the present, I cannot think of anything worse than a gang of experts making decisions for me and choosing to keep me going no matter what state of being I may be in.

Oh, and it does have to be said – being very very old and very very gay may be a mix that is difficult to endure – unless of course I happen also to be very very well and very very rich too!

Your friend, as always,

Algernon B.Duffoure.

Seeing the future

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I was wondering if you knew what was happening to you, and if you could foresee what would happen. With the benefit of hindsight it all seems utterly predictable, as if you should have seen what was about to occur, that you could have planned differently, been more aware. I am wondering now if that is the case for all of us, that there are set inevitabilities about existence, and that all we can do is welcome each of them as they come. Very little happens that is truly surprising, that is so out of the concept of the ordinary that it becomes even remarkable.

Yes, there are natural disasters that suddenly crop up on news media that make us all sit up and think, but I wonder how unusual they are for the people affected, or for the people who have been arguing that these supposedly freak occurrences were bound to happen at some point in time. There is always some cause to whatever effect, even if it is one that is not readily foreseen. It is almost as if we are actually taught to ignore the obvious. I am in pain. I ignore the pain. I self-medicate in one way or another in order to try to suppress the pain. I seek medical advice and they too work to suppress the pain. But the pain persists, grows, becomes something more difficult to conquer. I die, it is reported, happy, and having lived a fulfilled life. That old story. Nobody seems to want to investigate the pain. My village cannot fish because oil tankers have polluted the water. People keep jumping from the top of tall buildings. Oscar, I do wonder if we ever learn anything of value at all.

With best wishes to you, as always,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

A voice in the wilderness

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Your voice was heard, for a while, because you were fashionable, because you knew how to move in the circles which mediated the voices of your age. It was something of a considered voice, as the organs of repetition were those of the print media, and so long diatribes could be printed, allowing views to be fully elucidated.

That is no longer the case.

Now we are in the age of ‘soundbites’, of ‘tweets’, of ‘instagram’. and so the only means of communication that attract mass consumption are momentary, barely registered, and in no way trying to uncover depths of meaning. It is surface and superficiality which are promoted nowadays, not research and thoroughness. In fact it is even being said that we have entered the age of ‘post truth’, where not even the truth itself has any currency or validity; it seems that what we believe is now more significant than what is true.

We know what is believed about you, depending upon one’s perspective, and those perspectives promoted within one’s culture and society. I am sure that in some parts of the globe you would be seen as totally irrelevant, just some man who once said some things and who did some other things, and so what? Your voice was heard within your own society but very possibly not in the societies of others who also swarmed the globe during your lifetime. Our self-aggrandisement makes us think that we are universal and timeless, when in fact we are all just cries in the wilderness, some louder than others, some more effective at gaining attention than others, depending upon circumstance, opportunity, relevance, positioning, privilege. You had all of these things, briefly, and you used them well, rode the wave of your success, until it fed your ego to such gargantuan excess that you thought you were right when you could very easily be proven wrong.

Whether or not you were right or wrong.

Whether or not truth prevailed.

It was just what everyone believed at the time.

I write here because I cannot reach you, you are dead and gone, and yet there are still so many things unresolved about your rather brief existence, so many questions left unanswered. More significantly, so many questions that still reverberate around the world to this very day. What is a society to do with its misfits? What if what they say has a poignant relevance? How can we collectively react to shifting sands, changing times?

It is a pleasure to stay in communion with you, Oscar dear.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

A state of wonderment

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

My state of wonderment is not at the effect of all that surrounds me, is not the appreciation of all of the elements of being, nor is it any form of sensory overload – it is all about wondering.

If you had lived.

If you had never got into so much bother.

If some level of tolerance and understanding could have saved you from persecution.

Today such levels of supposed tolerance and understanding do exist, but the same parade of characters and caricatures populate popular consciousness, are displayed within the media, all doing what they have been doing certainly since your time, and probably a lot longer. Women simpering around men, gay men kept in the background, or allowed to perform, to reveal levels of absurdity, make everyone laugh.

Things have moved on, things have not moved on at all – it is a constant theme of mine, Oscar dear, because I just keep on being reminded, and I do not have to wonder for very long, how things would be if …. because they never are.

The dominant order asserts itself, and reasserts itself.

I remember that when you were in prison they put you on a treadmill, and do you know, Oscar, that in the United Kingdom the use of the treadmill as a punishment for misdemeanours was outlawed by the Prison Act of 1898 – one year after your release. Ah, the hands of fate ……

Only ever variations on a theme.

Best wishes to you,

Algernon B. Duffoure

.

Dissent

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Is there room for dissent?

I am asking because it seems to me that the position your adopted was one of dissent; you did not agree with the overriding moral assumptions of your age, and you made that known. Or, at least, you put forward a different moral spectrum, harking back to the assumed societies of the Ancients, in opposition to the moral trajectory of your own age.

It was not well received, as we now know; and you paid a heavy price for insisting that your point of view should outweigh the feeling of your age. It leads me to wonder if that is the total capacity for dissent. There is some room within a free society (or one that calls itself ‘free’) for the voicing of views that go against the common trend, for them to be made known to some degree, for them to be heard, but it is through the course of history, beyond the interventions of any interlocutor, that opinion is changed, raising the dissenting voice to one that has influence. You spoke very eloquently about what you termed ‘Greek love’, that which exists between an older, educated, trusted male, and younger acolytes requiring teaching and instruction, and I am sure that in many respects you have a fair point. Of course it is the case that the younger learn from their elders, that a view of the world is formulated alongside, or even in opposition to, dominant tropes put forward by those who have lived the longest, but we know, Oscar, that your form of education went a little further. Your form of education did involve some level of exploitation, buying and selling, trading one thing for another. So it does have to be said, I think, that when the voices of the elders are essentially corrupting and are putting forward messages that are not really of benefit to humankind, then they do have to come under question. Which in some circuitous route does lead me back to the notion of dissent.

It is very difficult to argue that you were right in your views, but just as difficult to argue that you were wrong. Depending upon the stance taken either position would have been one of dissent, although I suppose arguing for ‘Greek love’ did fly in the face of the vast majority of opinions held at the time, and in your particular society, and so it would seem that that was where the dissent actually lay. It is not necessarily where the dissent would lie today. There are those who argue vehemently that free sexual expression across all sexes and genders, inter-generational and socially proscribed, is to be encouraged, promoted, and entered into the statutes of legal frameworks as characteristics that are protected. These arguments see the historical age itself as voicing a dissent to the current dominant order, hiding behind the archaic and the out of date to persecute freedoms expected. So that dissent shifts, and as such is policed, shut down, countered in a cultural warfare that allows some things to be said, and some things to be muted, misrepresented, marginalised.

There must be a common ground. Beneath all of the positions held and assertions made, the learned rhetoric and adherence to beliefs, there has to be some measure of common ground; some argument that says: ‘This is best for humanity, really is, truly allows freedom with consideration of others, recognising all of our needs, all of our honest desires.’

Goodness knows, Oscar, why such questions preoccupy me; I want to find for you some understanding.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.