#and i am once again a victim of organising all my art to my art blog:/

[maivalkov]

I have seen not long ago a post about "spain's dark side" so...your opinion about that? (I kinda have a feeling of knowing why himaruya came up with that and, if I am right, I am not sure if I like it. It's not that I don't like the dark side thing, but if the reason is what I think, then I don't fancy it)

Great question! Please excuse the length of this response in advance, and if I go off on any tangents. To directly answer your question: I have a horrible feeling that Dark Spain is inspired by the Spanish Black Legend/La leyenda negra, and I don't like that at all. You've really hit on an important topic here, so I'm going to extend this discussion. I call this upcoming piece: Why I don't like Dark Spain and why we, as fans and creators, need to be mindful of how we enjoy our beloved series.

Side note before we begin: I'm going to be talking from a writer's perspective, since this is what I mostly do. My opinion is just that, nothing more. Some will agree with me, others won't, and that's okay. If you're happy with the terms, let's crack on.

Part 1: "Dark" characters I'm not against 2P or "dark" versions of a character if it's required for a particular setting. Let me show you what I mean, using some fic plots I just pulled from my head: Example one: You've got this gritty, fantasy gangster city plot. You use a real city as your location, but the characters are human. Antonio's the leader of a huge criminal organisation and therefore he will do incredibly bad things. It's trigger warnings ahoy. Is this portrayal okay? Sure. (read on before you hit that reply button) Example two: You're writing a horror fic. Antonio's a sexy merman who's more likely to decorate his cave with your entrails, than serenade you on a beach. Is this plot fine? Absolutely. It's dark af, but you're writing sexy merman horror. It kinda’ comes with the territory. Did you see how I wrote "fantasy" and "human" in bold? And did you see that I used Antonio, not Spain? There's a reason. I personally believe in this: When your story uses Hetalia characters in their human form (i.e: Antonio is just Antonio, he does not represent Spain), there's much more freedom and flexibility. I've read many excellent works with darker themes who use real locations alongside human versions of the characters, and do so brilliantly. They're wonderful stories, and they don't cause harm. They're fiction. Fantasy. Fiction. Did I mention fiction? On the flip side: When we are writing the characters as country personifications, who represent the people and the history, we must take proper precaution. The same applies to writing about historical events. (To be continued down below.)

Part 2: Dark Spain

As someone who's been in fandom 10+ years now, my problem with Dark Spain is this: a number of creators back in the old days seemed to agree with my Black Legend theory/concerns, and yet they willingly made content for it. Not everybody did this, but I certainly saw some who thought "wow dark crazy Spain because Inquisition", applied it to certain ships because "ohh angst leads to romance, what a plot" and that is wrong on so many levels. If you know the Spanish Black Legend, then you know how bad this is. It's an incredibly difficult topic because it is, in the simplest sense, massive propaganda designed to seriously damage a country's image. I welcome Spanish input on this, but personally I think using this as some edgy portrayal of Antonio in your fics is insulting. Don't bloody well do it.

(Please note that the fandom is MUCH better now, but it doesn't change the fact it has, and could still happen. I used past tense for a reason, as I do think things are improving.)

Russia is another character which suffers this treatment, and I do think we have a responsibility to be considerate. Many countries have done awful things, mine (the UK) included, and yet our characters have escaped receiving this Dark persona. It's not fair, it really isn't. It's a poor judgment call on Himaruya's behalf if my theory is true. If I'm wrong, then this argument is void. Either way I feel like Himaruya should've specified how and why Dark Spain came about. Part 3: Historical writing

Here's where it gets interesting. I'm not saying "don't write historical hetalia fanfiction", and I never will say it because historical fiction exists. You can go in your local bookshop and boom, people are making real money off it.

I'm not one of those lucky sorts, but I am contributing to that genre myself. Despite lots of magic, fantasy and general artistic license, my story Gatito can be considered historicaI.

It's set in England, 1569. Spain and the Netherlands are two of the main characters, and yes, their conflict is referenced. It coincides with the timeline, and all the while I write them as personifications, I can't pretend that tension between them doesn't exist. If I did, that'd probably be even more insulting to their history, and no doubt confusing for the reader.

The main plot is a daft mash of Arthur misusing his magic, a vile fictional man from Antonio's court who wants his head, and poor Netherlands and Portugal get wrapped up in the drama along the way.

The Dutch conflict is featured, but not the plot. The event is occurring right in the middle of a fictional disaster which Antonio is trying to overcome. It's acknowledged, but it's on the side, to put it simply.

I use human names (Antonio and Abel) and explore that situation from an emotional, human perspective. I do not claim that Abel is a victim, and no one thinks he is either. Personal HC time here: I don't think any of the characters look back at their history and think "wow, poor me". Everyone's made mistakes, and they've all played a role in hurting someone else. My history teacher once told me this: The more you look, the more you see. There's many sides to a story, and even to this day, I doubt historians have truly, faithfully documented events so that it's fair on every nation involved. That's why we need to try and learn history from multiple perspectives, and why when writing hetalia characters during a historical event, we should show the reader as many viewpoints as possible. If you don't, then... well. I frown at you. More on this in part 4.

Part 4: Conclusion/advice

I won't pretend to be a saintly figure in the fandom, and this rant is a bit of a mess, but I hope you get what I'm on about. Thank you if you're still reading.

I'm going to finish with a bit of advice that has helped me have a positive time, and allowed me to create works for a series I really love:

1- If your story is historical, and you purposely want to paint a country in a bad light, think before you do. Don't slander another country for the sake of your comfort character or ship. If your story is set during a battle then yes, they can moan about the opposition, but don’t go hardcore. You know what I mean.

2- Research, research, research.

3- You want to write a particular character. Their human name is unconfirmed, or you don't know a part of their history, but you want to write about it. What should you do? Talk. I had this very dilemma regarding Portugal's surnames, and I just asked Portuguese mutuals on Tumblr for help. I received numerous valid responses in under an hour, and I felt better for it. 10/10 highly recommend.

4- If you've gotta' write Dark Spain: Keep. It. Fictional. If you don't believe my theory behind it, cool, crack on. But if you agree with me, then yeah, I've said it enough. Respect the country.

5- DO explore history. It's fascinating.

6- If you write historical hetalia and you feel that something might be misunderstood: PLEASE USE DISCLAIMERS, END NOTES ETC. I write number 6 from experience. There is a scene in Gatito where a significantly stressed Antonio attempts to summarise the Dutch conflict. He's being blamed for countless fictional issues, and rather than think things through, he blames himself for Abel's pain as well. He does it on a purely emotional basis. Have you ever had that really bad day, and things keep getting worse? Someone comes along and says "you did x y z and I'm mad", and rather than argue your side, you accept it?

That's Antonio in that scene. I know it is, because that's how I intended it to be read. His answer is flawed, to say the least, but in his human heart, he can't help it. I used the end notes as a warning/apology/explanation for this scene. I don't want it to be misinterpreted, and I don't want to disrespect Spanish history.

7- If someone does comment/ask about a sensitive, historical part of your work: don't rant. And don't get offended. I believe we all need to talk more. Have conversations about HCs, how we would write/imagine different scenes, and use it to improve your work.

8- Have fun, and be sensible. Thank you again for reading, I hope this helps to some extent. I know I've thrown my opinion out here, but if you strongly disagree with me, don't @. Move on, embrace what you believe, and everyone's a winner. (This really should've been number 9 on the list haha.)

[a-collection-of-villainous-aus]

Blind Au

Drabble 3....uhhhh here you go, slides this out closes rock door and hides probably like forever. Will probably notice typos misspellings so on so forth after posting lol.

"Are you sure this is permanent, I cannot exactly give you a diagnosis when I have not been allowed to study you before."

Flug was looking over the readings on his clipboard, Hat had never so much as even let himself be scanned prior to this moment, how was the Doctor supposed to instantaneously understand all this jibberish, such complex equations, beyond anything ever seen before, it said Black Hat existed and yet didn't that he was alive but not, the coins edge neither one side or the other, absolutely perplexing to the mind but fascinating all the same.

"Are there not...those of your kind trained in the medical field?"

He enquired, already having a feeling he knew that answer, but finding one here seemed like it might just very well be impossible the doctor thought while turning the page.

The demons mint coloured teeth were clenched, jaw tense as he ground out

"My kind as you put it are not in the business of caring for each other...I destroyed anyone I thought would be a decent challenge...they were all worthless in the end."

Black Hat was currently sitting on one of Flug's desks as he'd refused to go in the infirmary where he would have been left alone in his darkness with only irritating beeps and other small sounds that may as well have been screaming at him.

" Well you seemed to think taking Demencia's eyes was good idea, obviously though her eyes are genuinely too important too take..."

He paused a moment, fingers drumming on the clipboard before suggesting

"Perhaps we could set up a ceremony in your cult, make some elaborate lie that you need to feast on the body and keep the eyes as treasured memorabilia that someone willingly fed themselves to you."

"Or we could just get someone off the street and take their eyes."

Black Hat returned flatly, how in the hell was Flug...Acylius, so matter of fact about all of this!

He could hear the scrawling of the pen, his breathing, heartbeat...while Hat was showing himself to be fine, he was honestly anything but.

Everything was so intense, despite only seeing a world of ebony he could feel those harsh cold lights, all of the doctor's chemicals, while able to detect each one singularly they also merged as a whole, a part...well more than a part of him wanted to press his face against Acylius's throat, take in his scent.

Even when he'd made the annual visit to see the troops at his University he recalled how the doctor had smelled even then, it was the first time they met.

Pfft please, no mortals eyes deserve to rest in your skull, they are not worthy enough.

Flug thought in response, scoffing at the idea, inwardly of course.

The demon though was letting his mind wander recalling he'd even asked him why he donned such a peculiar object on his head.

(waves hands, why don't we just do a flash back, bloody idiot writer.)

Black Hat had seated himself on the edge of a desk in his University that belonged some teacher, ankles crossed as he half looked with interest over a black and red paperweight, colours swirling within, similar to something akin to a place he'd once considered home.

Claws tapping over the object he then pocketed it, this supposed top of the line student was running late.

A few more minutes and he would leave, his time was too valuable too waste.

Finally the large oak door creaked open, fear filling his nostrils as well as coffee and fast food, he near expected some slob to come through but instead what stepped through was a lean man of six ft and seven inches to be precise.

He was a near tower of a man, for some strange reason he wore a recycling bin on his head, no wait he could sense an energy all around him, he was wearing something that disguised him to the world, some type of hologuise band on his wrist, so what did the others usually see then, the demon allowed his sight to be tricked by this creation.

Ah so that's what they saw, a nervous man hunched over and a good foot shorter, the bin was very real though and that nervous disposition seemed somewhat genuine, there had been photo's of Kenning Flug slys taken and shown to him or so he had assumed until now, now it was a question of was there were in fact any images in existence of this man.

Even Kenning was an Alias, his real name was Acylius Flug.

So question was what did this doctorrr look like?

What did it matter, he was here to study his work...not pick up on the subtle hints of vanilla...sandalwood, oh? Was that a surprisingly expensive whisky in there to amongst that myriad of tantalising aromas, sweet and warming, touching the tip of his tongue to his teeth, wondering what he'd taste like, especially with that intoxicating smell of smoke that only fires left behind.

Pupil momentarily dilating in excitement, it was not unheard of that Black Hat would bed a student at the University if they took his fancy for Five minutes.

Holding out a hand the demon snapped, usual scowl falling into place, good job that bin was on his head, he was supposed to be angry at him...not expressing an interest in his...everything.

"You are late, you had better pray that your work makes up for it"

"My apologies sir, it is not a mistake I intend to repeat again."

Oh no...even his real voice held that of a warm gavel, cigar smoke evenings mixed with a feeling of deep velvet red.

(Ultron's voice without the robotic sound)

Clearing his throat he returned

"You are correct in that matter, if you do continue such behaviour, you forfeit any possibility in working for me."

The slight nervousness in Acylius Flug's voice seemed a little forced, intriguing.

A brow raised, flipping through the pages in hand he had to admit these were extremely organised and well put together and what was here put this man as being one of the most intelligent beings on Earth.

(Alas sadly I am not, so do not expect any cool scientific facts from me LOL)

His scientific prowess was almost reaching off world levels, even that hologuise did not change his form with the shift of light to be made hard, it literally changed his cells to transform his body.

"I am curious, why exactly do you wear that bin and make your self look like that? With your natural height you could put the fear into most..."

He trailed off, looking him up and down, thinking of those long...long legs wrapped around his waist in an attempt to crush him, did they ever end, that height did send tingles down his spine as he bit his bottom lip.

" I do not want people staring at me for one and I would rather they had their attention drawn to the bin than my face."

Flug replied curtly, fists clenching, he knew that tone all too well.

"Are you having fun imagining me in bed with you sir? We are supposed to be here discussing my work are we not...also when I reveal myself to a victim I get to enjoy their horror as they realise the mistake they have made."

A smirk forming on his features

" I am sure you have sensed, I am not entirely human."

"Yes indeed and perhaps I was, there is no shame in admiring art when it is there to see."

"Oh, what next you intend to draw me like one of your French boys or some ridiculous shit."

Studying Flug's work once more he actually snorted at his students response, sensing the eye roll even under that bin, he was liking him all for more because he wasn't throwing himself at him.

"Does it not get a little warm under there, all that hot breath, condensation on the plastic, the air is no doubt hot and stale in there."

Black Hat was trying to make him want to take that thing off, make him feel claustrophobic inside of that recycling bin, he wanted to see his face, of course he could have demanded it but where was the fun in that.

Chuckling at the audible swallow, watching as his hands fidgeted.

"Why not take it off, perhaps I could give you a little fresh air."

He purred, coming in closer.

"No offence sir but I would prefer to be taken seriously in my work."

The old demon was disappointed when he moved away, practically flinching at his advances, should he be offended?

Perhaps, but it wasn't disgust he sensed from him, no it was something more guarded.

"You are being taken seriously, though a little pleasure with business never hurt."

Usually he was not so fascinated by the presence of a student, none who had been in his sights in this way had lasted with their clothes on for long and in this case bin as well and it well and truly seemed like they weren't making it to the office desk or floor anytime soon.

"My work is my pleasure, outside pleasures are mere distractions."

(End of Flash back)

"It was so green."

Flug had been taking in the readings on the medical charts, if they could even be called that and checking him over when he heard that wistful voice, making him pause, only the soft humming of machines in their quiet with the odd beep here and there could be heard.

That distant stare in his masters eye was unsettling, that was something he was going to need to get used to...something Black Hat would have to live with forever.

"Acylius, are you still there?"

Black Hat knew he was, though the mostly quiet was beginning to close in around him, all this darkness there was nothing visual to focus on, to distract.

It was like being born again, when existence was not even a thing where he was no more than a single thing, dark within darkness, when the first light spread open its flowering petals he wept at its beauty, never knowing he'd feared that endless abyss would be all he'd ever know until now.

"What was green sir?"

The doctor asked gently as he set down his clipboard, the sound he noticed made Hat twitch and focus on its source , shoulders falling at a near audible breath.

"That ridiculous bin you used to wear on your head."

Hat rolled his eye, unaware that Flug had just been about to examine his eye again, partially bent down, Hats hand landed directly on his face...his bagless, bare face.

He was tense, feeling the warmth of his skin through his glove, then again his clothes were a part of him, they were him.

So.

Flug just felt NOW would be a good time to expose his face when he couldn't see.

In another circumstance his fingers would have explored over his features, lips, nose to see what he looked like finally...but this stung, it was a cruel joke, he usually was up for those...but not like this.

Flug might as well be mocking the fact that he was blind!

Claw tips pressed into flesh as a distinct growl of annoyance left him, Acylius had dared not moved in case Black Hat decided to rip his face off.

"So, you're taking advantage of my condition, my eyes unable to see are now your masks to which you hide behind. You are to tell me that bear even Demencia have seen this exposed, but not me?"

His eye went grey with streaks of blue as the rage swelled within him, those colours had changed with the demons affliction

"Do you find my condition some kind of joke, do you enjoy mocking me boy, are you amused now!"

Black Hat snarled shoving him back, hearing the stumbling and desperate grabbing at items a sudden yelp he near laughed until the sudden thud of something hard and the scent of blood.

People usually complained when bleeding, whimpered, made some kind of fuss....

His brow furrowed

"Flug?"

Silence....

"Acylius?"

Silence...

"Mine?"

He asked weakly, climbing off the table, hands out trying to search for his doctor, why wasn't he answering, he could still hear him breathing-

The demon tripped on one of Acylius's long legs, eye widening, using his hands to feel over him.... Well that was impressive....no focus, not the time, Flug could be dying right now, he needed to find where the blood was coming from.

Everyone believed he could control how long his workers lived for, what stupid nonsense, he'd even admitted to vomiting on his last scientist and saying 'and now we have Flug.'

This man was his, even if the bastard felt nothing for him, the doctor belonged to him, no one was going to take Acylius away, the demon would fight death itself blind or not!

Resting his hand on the tiled floor he came in contact with a thick warm liquid, this...this needed to go back inside.

That labored breathing was growing more and more shallow, crimson light engulfing his hands, the blood started receding, coming alive almost as it crawled back to where it'd spilled from, following the trail to the back of his head, hair clumped and matted until it wasn't.

His doctor was still unconscious, but he would live, no one would believe him capable of the evil he could do, especially as he lay there with his head on Flug's chest listening to his heart beat.

With each beat he made his breath follow, taking in his warmth.

Black Hat, once truly believed seeing the first light had been the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen...but that day they met, that wonderful soul, it's burning red, like fires endless and bright, he'd seen and knew there were no words in all the billions of languages to describe Acylius.

It didn't matter if he was still faceless to him, this being was the first true light in his dark world.

What had his doctor hurt himself on...reaching out, it must be something close.

There was something wooden...with a metal front, claw tips finding all the little holes and jack ports, knuckles knocking on its surface, he knew that dull metallic sound.

Demencia's amp, Demencia had been the reason Flug had nearly died, he was going to kill her!

(He's shifting blame obviously, Flug will absolutely set that straight I assure you!)

End

[cookiedoughmeagain]

Haven DVD Commentaries: 4.08 - William

Commentary with Shernold Edwards and Speed Weed

They start by answering a question received via Twitter: “If Audrey wasn’t interrupted by Heavy and Crush, was she really going to shoot Nathan? Was she able to do it?” And they are both very clear the answer to this is; “Yes, absolutely.” Referring to the revelation at the end of the episode that all of the Trouble-related craziness that happens in this episode is because of William, Shernold points out that William sending Heavy to interrupt Audrey and Nathan at that point was really bad timing on his part, because if he had just left them alone for things to pan out, then all of his [William’s] problems would have been solved.

They’ve been joined for this commentary by Loretta, Shernold’s dog who Speed says has “become a fixture” in the writers’ room this season.

Shernold says a common question is “How did you come up with the idea for the episode and/or the Trouble?” and that this episode started kind of selfishly for her in that she a) likes to not shoot in the woords (because there are ticks!), and b) “I love the cast and all of the relationships that the writing staff has built over the last three and a half seasons.” - all the developing relationships and the secrets. “We have such a wealth of great actors that I just wanted to throw them together and shake it up” and see what could come out. And she adds that she likes to do Troubles that affect people’s mental/emotional states, or their perception, “mostly because while Production can do amazing things, I also know I can get a bit more of what I want when I don’t have a lot of special effects.”

Speed talks about the guy playing ‘The Sinister Man’ [the shorter of the two of William’s guys from the Barn] as a jack of all trades who works on the show as an electrician setting up the lighting, “and he stepped into this role and just really knocked it out of the park. He is - in the best of ways - really creepy. And I had not met him, and I had seen the dailies” for an earlier episode “and he creeped me out in those dailies. And then I was getting a doughnut and he was an electrician that day and he came up on the other side of the table to get a doughnut and I jumped back, I was scared of him! I was not expecting to see him.”

They comment on Sinister reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Shernold says how great their crew is that when she was writing the script she had this idea that he should be “reading something ancient and political and whatnot … and then I get on set and he is actually reading that book. And that was one of those moments where I realised; Of course - if you write something down, it’s gonna happen. It’s someone’s job to look at what you wrote down and go get that thing, find that thing, or make that thing… and I’m always so impressed with production teams and what they manage to do.”

In terms of the episode plot, Shernold comments that she liked the idea of everyone being suspicious and having secrets. “It’s funny that I’m a TV writer because when I’m watching shows I’m the kind of person” who’s wondering why the characters don’t just tell each other the truth and then everything would be sorted out. “And everything would be two scenes long; there would be no television shows.” But even so she is always watching things wanting characters to just tell each other what’s going on, ask each other the right questions etc. “So I kind of wanted to do an episode where I got to have a bit of fun with that.” And she also talks about having fun playing with William as appearing to be this vulnerable guy who doesn’t remember anything but then at the end we learn he’s been manipulating everyone all along.

Shernold says that Brian Millikin reminded her that Adam Copeland referred to this as one of his favourite episodes to do because he got to push his range further than he had before. Speed talks about how Adam started in this small part of the cleaner, this back-seat role and how “in this season we’ve really pulled him into the front seat. And in this episode we really pushed him to show what he can do emotionally. And because of that and because we saw what he can do, we have pushed him in season five in every direction we want to. We believe in this room there is nothing he can’t do and every single day the dailies come back and prove us right.” And Shernold agrees; “We’re throwing everything at him.”

They take another question from their Twitter selection; “Please comment on how the script may have morphed due to production requirements and what you may have fought to keep in the script.” Speed talks about how there’s always a back and forth with this on any show but that it can be particularly an issue with Haven because they shoot an epsiode in 7 days where most shows usually take 8 days. He describes television as “guerrilla filming; very fast and very practical. We write fast and we shoot fast.” A typical feature production will shoot two pages of script a day, a lot of shows shoot 7 pages a day, on this show they shoot up to 9 a day. Shernold adds that the effects for the episode worked out really well, but were also practical to film - e.g. where a paranoid Dwight sees Duke taunting him with a knife through the window, that was really simple to film, and so a cost-effective way to add something creepy to that scene.

They also talk about production issues in relation to episode 4.12 - they were going to shoot a lot of it at the Gull, but Hurricane Gabrielle was rolling in and so it was practical for them to be right on the coast like that. So they ended up having to build the safe house for the episode.  It was late in the season so they had already starting pulling down sets, so they built the safe house for the episode in the same spot where the set for Audrey’s apartment had been ie they re-dressed the apartment set to look like somewhere else. And they did it in a day.

Shernold talks about the scene where we Nathan get Troubled and how it was cool to see Lucas play that moment where “he gets infected and affected” and how it was fun to write too becuase it was “poking at something that would absolutely make that character jealous… I had a lot of fun writing Jennifer’s jealousy scene too becuase, again, it comes from natural emotion” and Jennifer “has no filter right now.” And she says it was also really fun for her that Duke was a straight man for all of this; everyone else was freaking out but Duke never got affected, and she liked how that worked out.

Shernold re-iterates that everything is set in the police station so that she didn’t have to go out into the woods and deal with the ticks when she was up there for filiming, and Speed says that he must have been a bear in a previous life because he loved getting to go out in the woods when he was up there for his first episode with the Douens (for which he credits Shernold for coming up with the idea, or telling him about the Trinidadian myth they’re based on) and would much rather be outside all day.

They both comment on the coolness of Gloria. And the niceness of Colin Ferguson.

Shernold talks about how it’s fun to be on set and get a good look at the props and how invariably someone from the art department will come up “and ask ‘Is this what you were thinking?’ and it’s like, ‘No but it’s fantastic because it’s better.’”

They pick another Twitter question; “Is Julia Carr a Teagues, becuase her tattoo fades in and out?” And Speed says it’s a very astute question but he can’t really answer it “because we are still honestly discussing whether we’re going to answer it or not” in the show.

Another Twitter question; “Are you all still sticking to the original arcs while adding side arcs to stretch the series with the same ending in mind?” And the short answer, Speed says, is “Yes.” Long answer is, “Man, was there ever a more complicated show than this?” We have conversation where we have to remind ourselves what we’ve done in those side arcs because “we have a very florid and rich mythology, with truly ornate and complicated” set of rules.

Shernold comments on the extent of Speed’s vocabulary (he was once an English teacher) and says that she learns a new word every day but she is always highly amused when he uses the word fingered [to the extent she makes herself laugh saying it] and he defends himself that “it’s an old procedural word. We used it all the time when we were writing Law and Order Special Victim Unit, that the cops fingered somebody.”

Another question; “How do you keep track of the bits of information revealed in previous seasons and decide how much more to reveal in new epsiodes?” And between them they answer; “Four words; Brian Millikin and Nick Parker.” Speed adding, “They are the brain trusts of this organisation. And as I was just saying; it’s a very complicated mythology. And it’s not just what appears on screen; every script goes through five, six, seven drafts and so there are things in our brain trusts that never made it to film but which we think about. So we often have to ask Brian or Nick, and sometimes they have to actually go back and check what got shot. I’m not talking about the big things, I’m talking about nuancy little things - to keep track of it is extremely complicated and we’re very lucky to have such people on the show. I will say, this is my eighth television show and I have never seen a collective IQ as high as on this show. And I think it’s required, honestly, to keep track of everything.” Shernold adds, “This kind of story telling is not the easiest and as a fan of shows that have these long story arcs, everyone has a different opinion on what they want to know about.” And that will vary in the writers’ room as well in terms of what aspects of the plot people want to focus on and develop. “So you just have to try and keep all the balls in motion and address as much as you can” as you go along.

[Shernold interrupts herself to laugh as Duke get’s tasered] “I’m so amused because this whole episode is basically just - shit Shern would do.” Speed replies, “That’s why it’s great!”

Another question; “What input did the cast have to the episode? Was anything changed at their suggestion?” Speed talks about how they often do have suggestions and make changes because while the writers are “keepers of the characters” the actors are keepers of their characters too and they as writers are always very interested in knowing what the actors think about an episode, particularly in relation to the character they play. They struggle to think of a specific example for this episode but Shernold talks about how in 4.12 there’s a fight between William and Nathan and then William walks away whistling - the whistle wasn’t in the script, that was all just Colin on the day “turning that moment into something even better”. And she also remembers another scene where William is in the background of a scene on a tennis court and Colin added to that by picking up a racket, swinging it around and messing about.

When Sinister makes Audrey jump at the interview room window, Shernold talks about how she likes that moment because she wasn’t there when it was filmed and when she was first watching the dailies she’d basically forgotten she’d written it, to the extent that watching it for the first time really made her jump.

Speed takes a moment to shout out to Glen who plays Stan; “He’s part of the mortar that puts together the bricks of our show.”

As everything starts to come to a head in the police station, with Nathan and Dwight pointing guns at each other and Audrey trying to calm everyone down, Shernold talks about how she likes this scene and also how it’s a trade off for production because a lot of this episode may have been simple to film but at some point everyone has to get together and “the poo-poo has to hit the ceiling”. And scenes like this with multiple people speaking are really complicated to plan and time consuming to film because you need to get all the different angles to show the close-ups on all the different speakers so that it flows and is easy to understand when you watch it. Speed gives credit to the director for the work in getting the filming of the scene to work, because not only do you have multiple people you need to focus in on, but you’ve got people standing sitting and on the floor as well so it’s this three dimensional problem to plan it all out. Shernold likes Jennifer’s line to Audrey here about ‘How many men do you need?’ and is also still enjoying Duke being the one with the cool head.

Shernold is Canadian and says that “I get a lot of flack in the room for how I say ‘Dwight’, apparently I say it ‘funny’. I don’t hear it. You guys can be the judge.” [I don’t hear the difference either but then maybe she says it the same way a British person would - she says Z at one point here and uses the British ‘zed’ so maybe :) ]

Up on the hill where William finds the box in a tree stump - that is not a real tree, that’s a something the props department made. The field is just around the corner from the stages but even so Shernold talks about how she outsmarted herself and wrote something that meant she had to come outside and “the mosquitoes got me.”

Speed notices that Emily is still wearing the nose ring and says that this was “a whole big thing” as to when she would take it off. Shernold points out that at this point Audrey is still pretending to most people to be Lexie so it’s still part of that.

Shernold comments on what a good job Colin does as William reveals himself as the bad guy behind the Troubles.

Speed talks about how in the writers’ room they refer to these big mythological reveals as ‘red meat’. “We hope our fans are like rabid dogs - we say that with awe and respect - gobbling up the mythological red meat.

Another Twitter question [though not directly relevant to this episode]; “Why is Mara so important that the whole of Haven is used in her punishment purgatory? Did she save Haven while she was in the Barn?” Speed responds; “It’s a good question and the short answer is; tune in to season five.” In season four we learn about Mara and how she and William created the Troubles; how that is related to Haven “comes out in bursts of red meat in season five.”

Shernold notices the growing patch of blood on Dwight’s chest and talks about how it’s someone’s job to track that through the scenes to make sure it’s at the right size at the right time; how “it’s someone’s job to track everything. And I admire that so much.”

Shernold comments on the title of the epsiode (William) and confesses to being “the worst title-maker-uper”. Speed agrees that “titles are hard” and adds that “TV is not really a medium that lends itself to titles.” Shernold talks about how the titles she comes up with don’t tend to make it past the first draft before Matt McGuinness or someone else steps in and changes it. Speed talks about how they went through a whole load of different titles for 4.12 and how his favourite (and Shernold agrees) is still; “Don’t Cry For Me Audrey Parker” to the tune of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Don’t Cry For Me Argentina. But Matt McGuinness didn’t agree. It was Gabrielle Stanton who named this episode William.

Speed: “Speaking personally as a guy who wore a ponytail in college, I’m a big fan of Duke’s hair this season.” Shernold: “Me too.” Speed: “But I will say that for continuity that little thread that he has hanging down over his eye was very tricky to deal with. Shernold: “It was tricky. Because sometimes he would give a great performance, but the frickin piece of hair was not consistent with the earlier shot. Or in the middle of a performance a breeze would come by and move that piece of hair. That piece of hair was our biggest foe this season; forget William - that hair was the evilest thing.”

Another question asks about “the funny things going on between takes” and Speed says it’s a good question but the truth is there’s not much to tell. There is some preservation of energy because people are giving their all during the takes. Shernold agrees but adds “Lucas Bryant is a hell raiser. There was one scene at the Gull where he was dropping little bits of things on people and then inadvertently spilled a cup of something on Emily Rose.”

[sablelab]

Covert Operations - Chapter 25

DISCLAIMER: This is a modern AU crossover story with Outlander and La Femme Nikita. LFN and its characters do not belong to me nor do those from Outlander.

SYNOPSIS:  As the teams return to Section One after a successful mission with their captive in hand, Claire and Jamie prepare to debrief. Tony Wong tries to come to terms to where he is while Madeline prepares for another interrogation.  The target is confident that whoever will interrogate him will not succeed but Tony Wong has never met a woman like Madeline, Section One’s second in command.

THANK YOU so much for supporting my writing of this mystery of intrigue and covert operations. I appreciate your comments and I am very pleased that you are reading my story. It gives me a happy validation that my work is appreciated so my thanks again to those who are reading and liking this fiction. Previous chapters can be found ...

 https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations

CHAPTER 25

Returning back to Section One after their mission to Aberdeen both teams made their way through Van Access. The mission had been successful and they’d captured their target Tony Wong without sustaining any injuries.  As major Team leader, James Fraser preceded first and stood to one side as Team B filed past and continued on to Munitions to return their weapons. However, their team leader stopped in front of Jamie instead of following his operatives.

“Jamie. I couldn’t have done what you did there tonight. I learned a lot,” Joe Abernathy commended.

“Thank you,” he acknowledged with a slight tilt of his head.

At the same time as they were speaking, Jamie’s team members exited Van Access with their elusive target in hand. Tony Wong’s arms were in a straight jacket that prevented him from trying anything stupid, while Rupert Mackenzie and Geillis Duncan walked beside him on either side. He was constrained between them and on seeing their captive approach; Abernathy nodded to Jamie then followed on after his team towards Munitions.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Even though well restrained, Tony Wong was defiant, proud and resolute.  Despite the plight he was in the triad member watched everything taking mental note of his captives and his place of incarceration while trying to come to terms to where he was.

He observed.

Looking around at the unfamiliar surrounds he wondered where he could be.  What was this place and who were these people?  He knew that wherever he was wasn’t somewhere he had been before or cared to be again. He was never in a subservient role to anyone except Sun Yee Lok, and he didn’t like the fact that he was the captive and all trussed up as well. It was most demeaning given his position in the Rising Dragons’ triad.

He scrutinized.

The man ... James Fraser ... who had captured him was interesting, but impossible to read especially with those blank facial stares.  He was a formidable opponent and possessed all the attributes that would make him an enormous asset to the Rising Dragons … agility … stealth … ruthlessness … cunning.  He had known it was useless to try and resist capture especially when he was aware of what had happened tonight.  His building had been well fortified yet his men had been overpowered by a few assailants and in particular this aloof leader.  His capture at his office after Fraser had disposed of all of his men spoke volumes as to his merciless ability and skill as an assassin.  He was truly one of a kind. An exceptional mercenary, who could kill in cold blood yet show no emotions whatsoever was the epitome of the kind of person he admired and sought for the Rising Dragons.  

He’d remembered seeing the brunette woman in the van once before and was now aware that it was the two of them who had been at Charlie Yin’s boat and disposed of six of his best men at the dock. She was skilled in martial arts also and had obviously been well trained by a Master. They were a fearsome pair and would go far in his organisation and Sun Yee Lok would welcome such people without hesitation. Perhaps he could work out a deal and persuade them to change sides and thus gain his freedom from his incarceration.

He listened.

James Fraser acknowledged his team members, Geillis Duncan and Rupert Mackenzie who stopped in front of him waiting for their orders.  “Take him to Containment, then debrief in thirty minutes.”

Hmmm!  The Rising Dragons had places of containment for torture purposes.  He had them at his warehouse no less … but here he was in foreign territory and the unknown was somewhat disconcerting. Just what kind of coercion would they inflict on him?  It didn’t matter what they did for he’d been in worse situations. Nothing they could dish out would be close to what he had used before. Too many perplexing questions went through his mind.  They had certainly gone to great lengths to capture him. Why?  Why were they interested in him?

He internalised.

Just who were these people and why was he here?  No doubt he would find out soon enough.  It would all be very enlightening. Whoever they had to debrief with were obviously their leaders.  He looked forward to seeing if they too were as ruthless as his captors. He was not afraid; on the contrary he was confident that he would overcome any adversary they could throw in his way. There was nothing he hadn’t seen or tried to extract information from his victims.  The deaths of Wu and De Marillac’s’ daughter were testament to just what he was capable of.   The fact that he was their prisoner was irrelevant.  Whatever they did to him would be noting to what the Rising Dragons would do to them in retaliation of his capture.  He smiled, satisfied that they would never outwit the Hung Kwan … The Fighter … Tony Wong.

So … he waited.  

Death with Honour … Strength by Dare.   Abiding by the Rising Dragons’ mantra whatever his fate would be his strategy. If he were to die here then he would make things very difficult for them.  He wasn’t the chosen head executioner in the Rising Dragons’ hierarchy for nothing! If they wanted any information from him they would die trying to extract it or have to kill him before he would divulge any information.  Self discipline was his way of life and there was no one who could better him at his own game.  

Whoever these people were ...they were in for a big surprise.

Casting his eyes briefly in Jamie’s direction, Tony Wong walked with head held high with a defiance few hostiles showed.

 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

James Fraser, however, missed nothing.  

Section One’s Level 5 operative was well aware of Tony Wong’s demeanour. He’d seen many terrorists over the years walk into Section One little realising what their fate would be.  He’d witnessed belligerent hostiles who thought they could outsmart whoever was in charge, to the bewildered targets who had no idea of their destiny.  No one ever left Section One and certainly those who were captured never left Section alive.  Their fate was already determined once information was gauged for they were of no further use.  Section One had achieved what they needed and dealt with the terrorists accordingly.

Jamie observed Tony Wong closely, noting the cocky attitude of their captive as he passed by. There was a look of admiration … but also arrogance in having been captured in his eyes. Wong’s self-importance was obvious and with a look that could kill he was taken away.

Tony Wong may prove to be a challenge for Madeline, Jamie thought, but one she would relish no doubt.

Lagging behind, Fergus Claudel filed past with Claire. Watching as Mackenzie and Geillis Duncan disappeared around the corner with the target, they stopped and faced Jamie. Fergus couldn’t contain the look of admiration that crossed his face when he looked at him.

“James Fraser. What you did was so gutsy.”

They merely exchanged a look. The IT whiz nodded to Jamie’s acknowledgement then continued on to Systems with the tapes of the mission in his hand knowing that Madeline would want to go over them as soon as possible.

“Do you want me to debrief?” Claire asked trying to gauge Jamie’s mindset.

However, as per usual, he replied in his succinct Section mannerisms. “Return your weapons to Munitions first.”

“And the debrief?”

His eyes were saying one thing but his words another. “Twenty minutes … and don’t leave Section.  We may need to go back out again.”

“Okay …” Claire hesitated before adding, “You can't deny what happened tonight, Jamie.  You took a risk.  I would have provided backup.”  

He knew there was truth to her words and with his reply he tried to convey why he did what he did as he moved closer into her personal space.  Reaching out to touch her Jamie tenderly stroked Claire’s hair and cheek with the tips of his fingers. She closed her eyes momentarily just absorbing the gentle caress to her face but opened them again when she heard him speak.

“I knew what I was doing Sassenach,” he replied quietly while his eyes looked intensely into hers.

“Yes ...” she answered back capturing his gaze with a similar intensity.  

Her words were softly spoken but her eyes revealed her inner angst. Jamie continued to lightly stroke her cheek and Claire felt the reassurance in his touch before reluctantly breaking their stare.  She took a step back and with one final glance she continued on to Munitions knowing that her partner had done what he had to do in his own inimitable way.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Slightly turning his head, James Fraser’s eyes followed every step she took as he watched Claire Beauchamp disappear around the corner, then with a resolute yet thoughtful disposition he about faced and headed in the opposite direction. Determinedly Jamie continued to his office to write his report on the mission knowing that there would be questions asked by Operations and Madeline as to their handling of Tony Wong’s capture, and … the missing hours beyond Section One’s surveillance on Lamma Island.  

In his indomitable way Jamie, however, had already surmised his plan.  As usual he had suitable answers to all and any questions they might pose about their mission.  

Sitting down at his desk, he began typing his report.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Tending to her array of exotic orchids Madeline’s undivided attention was focused on the delicate plants that gave a glimmer of warmth to an otherwise austere office. Although some of her orchid specimens gave the appearance of vulnerability they were resilient and hardy. The orchid was a deceiving plant that could weather all kinds of environments … and much like her … they were illusory. Appearing to be one thing, orchids were in actual fact the very opposite. The analogy was not lost on Madeline for being a woman in Section One was a decisive advantage in her line of work. People’s perception on first seeing her in the White Room was misleading, for she was anything but delicate. A hostage’s first mistake was in thinking that because Madeline was an attractive woman she would be a push over but nothing got past her and nobody outwitted her. She likened herself to a Black Widow spider actually … lure them in, deceive them and then go in for the kill. The perfect tactics. While pottering with her orchids, she waited for the call from Fergus Claudel as to Tony Wong’s arrival at Section One. She was eventually roused from her task when his voice interrupted what she was doing. “Madeline?” “Yes Fergus …?” While nonchalantly still tending her plants, Section’s Head Strategist listened to all that the young man had to say until he had finished. “Thank you. Inform Operations I’ll be there shortly,” she replied replacing her orchids carefully back onto the shelves. Madeline’s self-satisfied smiled was hard to contain for the mission had been more than successful. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Having been notified that Jamie and Claire had returned with the target in hand, Madeline made her way from her office through the labyrinth of corridors to the Perch. Lost in thoughts of her impending meeting in the White Room, she was cognizant of, but ignored the operatives, profilers and other personnel that were going about their duties in Section. They in turn attempted to avoid her as best they could too unless they came into her direct path. Madeline was not a person to engage in conversation with, and evasion strategies seemed to be the best strategy for all concerned. Her minimalist actions made her difficult to read and people never knew what she was ever truly thinking and this made them extremely nervous and uncomfortable in her presence. Madeline knew she was feared by her subordinates … and with good reason. Her ability to analyse people was her speciality and because of this she was able to manipulate those around her for the better good of Section One. She was true to the ideals that Section stood for in that the end did justify the means. Protection of the innocents and the protection of the whole, even at the expense of a few terrorists made her line of work to some extent enjoyable and Madeline looked forward to matching wits with Section’s latest arrival. Making her way up the stairs into Operations' perch, she was confronted with Dougal Mackenzie standing observing the hive of activity taking place in the communications centre. Standing quietly behind him, she watched as Section’s formidable leader monitored the comings and goings below him. Operations knew immediately the moment she had entered, and acknowledged her presence by giving Madeline a brief glance before turning away from the window to face his second in command. “You’ve heard the news?” “Yes, Mr Claudel informed me.” “Tony Wong has been quite evasive.” “Yes. He has.” “He may prove difficult.” Completely calm, and unfazed, Madeline answered, “Nothing is too difficult for me Dougal … you of all people should know that. He’ll be taken care of soon enough.” A wry smile crossed his face at her reply. “Carry on then.” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Madeline, Section One’s chief strategist, best manipulator and psychologist stood outside the doors to the White Room. Inside the room was Tony Wong a hierarchical member of the Rising Dragons triad and the means to an end. Her latest victim was a wily customer, but the smile that briefly lit Madeline’s eyes indicated that not only was Tony Wong in for a huge surprise, but he would soon find out that the Rising Dragons was child’s play in comparison to Section One. She knew what had to be done and their triad member was her crucial focal point. Being in the White Room gave Madeline an immense pleasure, an adrenalin rush that left her heady and satisfied. Capitulation of the target by revealing the Intel Section needed to bring about the end game in a mission was always enjoyable and satisfying no matter how it was achieved. The creaking noise of the steel doors echoed forebodingly in the stark white room. They opened and Madeline entered. She had stood on the threshold of the White Room so many times over the years that it was all a blur now. In truth it was a bit blasé too. The targets who eventually found their way to the White Room were all lowlifes … all the scum of the earth. All were insidious terrorists who killed for the sake of killing, were manipulative of innocents or were destructive dictators bent on power at the expense of their people and country. They came from all walks of life and Madeline had seen them all … dealt with the belligerent, the scared, the indifferent, the bold and the confident. In all cases bar one that she could think of … when one terrorist called Tyko managed to briefly escape before being recaptured … all had seen the benefit of divulging the Intel that she wanted. Standing there Madeline took inventory of her newest challenge …Tony Wong. She had been studying his profile trying to find his vulnerable spot, his Achilles heel, the point where he would capitulate and crack under pressure. Her job was to know the other side, to get into their criminal minds and to understand them. Everyone who got to ‘know’ her better in the White Room had a weakness. It was her job … no pleasure to discover what it was … then leave them dangling with some hope before coming in for the kill in their compliance and submission when they broke. Madeline knew that in order to make them break you exploited their weakness, while the breaking point came when you threatened or harmed their own life, personally and repeatedly. Some terrorists broke quickly ... others were more antagonistic.

Just where would Tony Wong slot in along the continuum? Mr. Wong should prove to be interesting. Madeline had witnessed his cockiness, his trite performance of invincibility, but that was nothing new to her. She always got the upper hand, after all this was her domain and she was the queen of it for she had an uncanny insight into the human psyche. Pitting her intellect against this adversary would be a challenge that she was looking forward to. Honing her skills against a foe who seemed to be cut from the same cloth was always exhilarating. Madeline looked forward to Tony Wong’s reactions and she was well prepared to meet the elusive man. Given his background in the Rising Dragons as an extortionist and organizer of murders, she was conscious that he would be aware of torture measures in order to break a person and would have inbuilt defences to protect himself and his way of life at any cost. However, Section one’s ‘chief persuaders’ ... Henry and Elizabeth ... were well up to the task of making anyone talk … eventually. Seeing Tony Wong get a taste of his own medicine and studying his threshold for pain would be very interesting indeed. Madeline had one or two things up her sleeve if needs be, that he would “enjoy” … but all in good time. Footfalls echoed on the tiled floor and Tony Wong awaited his opposition.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~to be continued

Should you wish to access the other chapters of this story … go to

https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations

THANK YOU so much for supporting my writing of this mystery of intrigue and covert operations. I appreciate your comments and I am very pleased that you are reading my story. It gives me a happy validation that my work is appreciated so my thanks again to those who are reading and liking this fiction.

[poetryasf-ck]

Good Grief #4 - Lloyd Robinson

Lloyd Robinson has almost twenty years of performance experience as an actor, poet, and musician. He is one of the few performers holding the title ‘Bad Boy Of Spoken Word’, is a multiple slam winner, the reigning Axis slam champion, and qualified for the Scottish National Slam Championship the last three years running.

Lloyd is the host and co-organiser of Edinburgh’s most exciting new-material poetry night, ‘The God Damn Debut Slam’ in the Scottish Poetry Library. He has been featured at many of Scotland’s more popular spoken word events, in particular Hidden Door Festival and StAnza literary festival. He has also independently released an album of spoken word and music, ‘Reclaimed Memories’, has a degree in Creative Writing & Drama, and a diploma in psychotherapy.

Image credit: Perry Jonsson

1. Why, if there was a reason, did you write this poem/these poems?

Catharsis. Therapy. As a tribute to my brother in law who took his own life, and to raise awareness of the very real issue of Male suicide. I have a compulsion to try and ‘fix’ bad situations, but obviously this was unfixable, so writing about it was the closest I could get.

2. Why, upon writing this poem/these poems, did you perform them?

To raise awareness. And to be totally honest, to shock the audience. I want them to be uncomfortable. I want them to remember this material out of everything else they see, and have a newfound respect for the gravity of the subject. Not only that, but suicide is still socially permissible to joke about, and I want people to think twice next time they laugh at it.

3. How does performing this piece change how you look at what happened to you?

It makes me feel more in control after something very chaotic. I like to think that he would like the piece and be proud of me.

4. How do you separate artistic performance from lived personal experience?

Focus entirely on replicating my more successful rehearsals, improving performance and heightening audience reaction. I am making art for public consumption, so I choose that as my focus. Also, quite subconsciously I (for the most part) avoid the ‘I’ pronoun, instead using ‘we’, which gives me a little more distance.

5. Do you find yourself affected negatively by performing this piece? If so, how do you look after yourself?

When I started performing it, I would be somewhat exhausted afterwards. These days though, not so much. It can depend on the audience. If they’re clearly very emotionally affected that has fed into my performance before. I’ve never lost control and become tearful, but I have felt intense.

6. Do you practice any aftercare after performing this piece (either for yourself or audiences)? (E.g., talking to audience members who are upset, taking some time out after your performance to ground yourself, ensuring you perform in places where you feel safe etc.)

I try and be around post-show; I reliably get at least one audience member come up to me afterwards who has been affected by suicide. They always thank me because being bereaved in this manner can completely alienate people and make them feel alone. For that reason I consider it important to perform this piece and make the time for them, so they realise they are not.

7. Do you do any content warnings for this piece? Why?

Depends on the night. If it’s a night with a more therapeutic lean, or it is specifically designed to be a safe space, or friendly to vulnerable people then yes. Really, in that context I probably wouldn’t perform it anyway unless it was actually requested or on theme. If not, then no. When people go out to see live entertainment, the performer should work in service of entertainment. Theatre isn’t supposed to be 100% safe, and performance poetry IS theatre. If an audience has come to a poetry show on purpose, the implicit relationship is that there will be emotional themes addressed, you don’t have to know anything about the scene to realise that. People watch theatre to be elevated and catharsis through experiencing challenging performances is a big part of that. Content warnings, unless handled very carefully, can break the rhythm and illusion of the show, as well as creating preconceptions about a piece.

EG; I have been in the audience when someone has started a poem with ‘trigger warning, suicide’ which IMMEDIATELY put me on edge. However, the poem itself was really comforting and I’m glad I ignored my instinct to leave.

THAT BEING SAID context is important, I’m not about to blanket damn trigger warnings. A LARGE part of serving the entertainment of the night is the ability to read the room, spot when something isn’t appropriate and make a call. If I’m doing the poem as part of a longer set, I will usually do a brief intro to it, not specifically making a content warning (although one is implied), but to steer the audience into a different energy. In reality you can never 100% tell which way a performance will go. Someone could be fine hearing a poem about suicide, but get upset with a poem about food because they have a history of eating disorders. There does come a point where you have to acknowledge all audience reaction as valid even if the audience straight up walks out. Sometimes trigger warnings are very necessary. Sometimes putting a trigger warning in front of a piece is actually more about giving yourself an illusion of control that you don’t, in reality, have.

8. Does the artist owe any kind of protection or safeguarding to their audience?

Yes and no. The artist owes organisers and programmers an accurate representation of their performance practice and general content so they can be booked for appropriate nights. They owe it to the audience to create art to the best of their ability. If their art is massively triggering, though, they have to be prepared to not be booked very often, or only for specific nights, or to have to put on their own shows. It is the organiser’s job to keep the audience safe, especially at curated nights, where they should know their regular audience well enough to bring in acts that will succeed. When there is an open mic element, the responsibility is a little more shared. Again, you have to read the room but you also have to acknowledge that you are a part of a community. If you are unfamiliar with the nights setup/it’s your first time, you should either scout it out first or bring a backup piece in case your chosen material isn’t going to work. There is no ‘don’t be an asshole’ rule, but there is an understanding that you should ‘try not to be an asshole’. Still, ultimately it is the organisers responsibility. They have to serve the needs of their night, and if someone steps to the mic and directly works against those needs, they have to be able to stop it.

BUT AGAIN this is not a hard and fast rule. Art practices don’t exist in a vacuum and absolutes are rarely sufficient to support the balance between safety and progress. Nuance exists.

For a scene in rude health, there needs to be a wide variety of event types. The safer spaces need to exist, because vulnerable people deserve entertainment and self-expression, but they ideally would exist in parallel with middle-of-the-road-pop-Poetry for the newcomers, and a more extreme end of the spectrum where limits can be tested, because such testings are VITAL to the evolution of the artform. ‘Saved’ by Edward Bond featured the stoning of a baby onstage and it resulted in a court case that DESTROYED the Thatcherite censorship of British theatre. ‘Shopping & Fucking’ featured drug abuse and violent rape, but broke new ground, opened doors for today’s pioneers of queer theatre and predicted the neo liberal society of today. ‘Ubu’ by Alfred Jarry was considered so nonsensical and artless that it caused TWO FUCKING RIOTS on opening night, but it spawned numerous artistic movements, without which we wouldn’t have Monty Python or Mighty Boosh. Nights need to exist where decency is malleable, simply for the evolution of the artform. Great art is not impossible when subjects are considered ‘off limits’ or ‘inappropriate’ BUT there are great things that can be achieved by breaking perceived barriers.

HOWEVER. NUANCE AGAIN.

We can’t have a blanket ‘anything goes’ approach, even at the most basic level. You have to restrict hate speech for a start, because one confident speaker given a platform can convert others to a cause. You have to no-platform predators and abusers because they will pretend to be innocent and use a platform to find more victims. This, as far as I can tell, is the most pressing responsibility an artist and an organiser has. It’s not a service to the artform, it’s a service to society, so in this case, yes, the artist, and to be honest EVERYONE is responsible for bombarding hatespeech, bigotry and abuse with poison until it dies like the fucking cancer that it is.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

9. Do you believe writing about areas such as grief, loss or trauma is a form of healthy catharsis or memorialisation?

Yes. NEXT QUESTION.

Alright, alright;

Writing stuff down can allow you to recognise and acknowledge your feelings much more clearly. Also, there are three poems that, whenever I perform them, will make me feel like the lost are still here with me.

In fact, every year on the anniversary of my brother in laws passing, I meet with my family, we chat, we support each other, and I perform two poems; the one I’m writing this survey about entitled ‘jump’, and another, more personal one that I rarely perform in public. Before I started organising this, we were stuck with ‘just getting through the day’ when it came around. It’s still the worst day of the year for us, but we have something to focus on that brings us together.

However, once again, we should be wary of absolutes. People can process grief in many different and utterly unexpected ways. This works for me and a few folk I know, but it could be catastrophic for others. Grief is one of those things where you have to acknowledge every possible emotion, no matter how illogical, as valid. If the bereaved responds by instinctively picking up a pen, whether to memorialise or seek catharsis, then writing is a valid response to grief. Therapy and/or seeking advice from medical professionals are also valid responses. It’s a simple case of ‘you do whatever makes you feel better’. If that includes enrolling in clown college and riding a unicycle everywhere; valid response.

10. What kind of warnings signs would you point out to someone new to poetry or performance who was performing about their traumas?

First of all, unless they specifically asked me, I don’t think I would. In this hypothetical I’m going to assume they are an adult presenting as neurotypical. They have a right to explore their own trauma/reclaim their narrative in whatever fashion suits them and I wouldn’t want to patronise them by giving the impression that I thought they needed help (see my question 9 chat about valid responses; we mustn’t tell people how to or how not to grieve). Humans are much hardier than they often give themselves credit for. The only context in which I would intercede would be someone clearly exhibiting signs of severe anxiety/depression, & I had even the slightest suspicion they might be a danger to themselves. However, these conditions make it very difficult for new voices to leave the house, let alone sign up for an open mic, so while I acknowledge there’s a risk, it isn’t a particularly likely scenario. I feel like that’s not the sort of answer you’re after, though.

I do think there is a bit of a danger (the extent of which I’m unsure of) that a new poet could see performances on YouTube and in slams that lead them to think they have to mine their own trauma to get material. The warning signs of this would be asking yourself ‘what can I write about’ and the answer being ‘ooh, that horrible thing that happened’.

When rehearsing the poem, it is perfectly normal to cry (or similar emotional release) even a few times. If you well up during a public performance, also fine AS LONG AS THE PERFORMER FEELS IT HELPS.

If, however, you have an uncontrollable emotional response EVERY TIME you perform it, I’d start to question whether you should.

If the idea of performing it causes anxiety above the usual pre-show nerves, and that anxiety reduces when you decide ‘oh I’ll perform something else instead’ then that’s a CLEAR indication.

It is hard to point to specific warning signs other than the above and feeling peer pressure to perform grief-motivated poetry, because everyone’s responses can be incredibly varied. All I’d really say is some advice I was given when I started writing;

“There are two types of writing; what you send out into the world and you do for yourself. The first type needs to flexible so you can improve it based on the responses you get. You have to learn that constructive criticism is valuable and not a personal attack. The second is imperfect and often messy, but it helps you learn about the craft and your own mind. Always remember the two are flexible. You can start writing something personal and realise it’s for everyone. You can send something out into the world and then entirely take it back upon realising that this was just for you.” 

lloydcarltonrobinson.bandcamp.com/releases

https://www.patreon.com/poetryasfuck

[colonel-crapshot]

Grancrest Senki Episode Twenty One

D'aw this is a sweet scene to start off with

WHY DO I SUSPECT IT?!

OH BOY. MAGES COLLEGE IS ON THE GO

Is it time to fuck shit inwards?

That's a lot of fire

Oh boy! Theo JUST gets to be Emperor and suddenly civil upheaval!

That assassin must be terrible at his job if he let his victim scream that long

Must be his first day "First day on the job as a hitman for hire and the job is 'Kill all the Lords'. Nothing small then I see!"

Question: Wouldn't breaking the wands be counter productive to your means of self defence? Unless mages can control the chaos without wands. Then again, I suppose if you break it and then find somewhere to hide you're likely to survive longer than if you have to fight off wave after wave of the worlds newbiest assassins

Aishela seems a shade down. I'm both saddened by and suspicious of this

Aishela, please don't do something stupid

The focus on you makes me only ever more suspicious

Well that answers my question. So the following becomes, how WILL you be fighting in this upcoming battle?

Ah, I suppose the factor is difficulty of casting. The wands likely facilitated ease of casting as opposed to the possibility of casting at all

Hello again Aishela, what news hath thee?

Aishela has a grudge against pappy? I mean, not like I don't know someone else like that *side eyes @fictionerd *

Aight, I can dig that. That is quite a valid reason to hold a grudge

OH SHIT. THE RETURN OF THE CAT!

Aishela's reaction is so precious~

And back to stoning pappy. Again with respectable reasons. But I do need to back up from Aishela a bit before she starts getting bad ideas. Pappy can't exactly go showing favouritism to his daughter by vetoing something that was out of line. If he does then Siluca would serve as a reason for other, less intelligent brats, to go around treating the rules like suggestions rather than absolutes

I respect both of their opinions, even if I do lean a little more on the side of the emotional bombshell that is Aishela

He cried?! I mean, I get it. But Pappy hasn't done much more than crack a minor half smile in the ENTIRE time we've seen him.So forgive me if I find it a shade hard to believe that he sobbed himself silly whilst hugging Siluca

This is sweet. We're hashing out some shit like a familial unit rather than having Aishela storm off after running her mouth for a bit.To be honest if Aishela had done that I'd have had a slightly more sour taste in my mouth about her

... The more I think about Aishela and tastes in my mouth the less I think I should think about Aishela and tastes in my mouth ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

"But I'm not a Meletes any more." I think that shows more of his character than you might realise Aishela my dear

She's writing a letter... I’m immediately impaled by seven flags

NO AISHELA! DAMNIT WOMAN

Also, WAY TO GO BUTLER KICKASS

I fucking figured her old connection to the Mages College would rear it's head!

Oh goddamnit.

Theo, even half asleep wants to be considerate of others.

Just let the Valkyrie in to the tent. Sensible. Not saying I wouldn't, but that's a whole different kettle of fish

I'm sorry. We expect a chair and some rope to bind Aishela?

Theo, please do your magic and save Aishela's character

"Siluca, please look at my left breast." I'm suspicious, but then again if that were a trap for me I'd fall for it hook, line and sinker.

I know this is a serious issue and we NEED to get that circle off of her. But I took more than a few glances at the ravine she can form with those beauties strapped to her chest

NO. GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!

PRISCILLA?! IS OUR WHITE MAGE GOING TO MAKE A MOVE?!

"Not destined to die here." NOW THERE'S A FATE I WILL GLADLY LET SLIDE ON THROUGH! GO ON, SPLASH HER WITH THE GRAIL JUICE!

The tattoo is gone too... I mean, we've seen Artists don't NEED tattoos. But still YAY. I'll take it!

A no longer cursed Aishela is among my favourite things.

AH! So the Art is specific, and hers was on the Tattoo

D'aw. Why do you have to be so hurtful against Theo?

OH BOY. We're gonna hear the darkest secrets of the super secret organisation under the Mages College: Pandora

The Mages Academy sound like dicks

I like Siluca trying to rat out othe reasons that the Mage Academy would want to be apocalyptic dicks to everyone. But I, unsurprisingly, am once again more with Aishela on matters. Some people just DON'T like the idea of not having power. The Lords power is going to remain fairly constant, as they have land, people and currency. MAGES on the other hand won't have nearly the influence they do without their mystical might backing them up. And even the Crests will remain consistent POST Chaos as they are a ward to it's entirity

And artists will lose the might of their arts, some just dying all together like Ol' Vampy

Hmmm. so there are Lords in on this too?I wonder if the Crests don't quite work like I thought so. 

Probably. I'm hardly perfect

Can I just get an image of that full body pan we got of Aishela as Siluca hugged her? It's both touching and shows off Aishela's KILLER figure perfectly

I think slightly more highly of my own family there Siluca, but I've seen plenty of others that do follow along to the beat of what you said

Well SHIT. Some of the dick heads still had wands

... Would we not sweep both the questions about Grancrest AND the Mage Academy problem aside by just MAKING Grancrest?Mages would lose all ability to control the chaos. Artists would return to more human displays of art and Lords wouldn't have kickin' crests

MARCH FORTH TO THE STRONGHOLD OF ASSHOLES!

I like that we got to see more of Aishela this episode. In all the ways that could infer

Link: Grancrest Senki Episode 21

[derrickperegrine]

come back down to my knees gotta get back, gotta get free

a continuation of the last meal

(click ‘keep reading’ or read on ao3)

‘It’s that house, right around the corner,’ Millicent’s voice confirmed through the legilimency link, authoritative despite the wavering connection.

Graham rolled into the cobbled streets from the shadows. ‘The red brick one, right?’ he asked as he tip-toed forward, although no one would have been able to hear him even if he had been walking normally.

‘Did you have to do a forward roll?’ Millicent hissed at him.

Graham grinned impishly. ‘Got to get into the character and mood, Hellcat.’

‘You’re not even that type of assassin! You’re a demolitions expert!’

Graham sighed dramatically. ‘A man can dream, though.’

‘You chose to be a demolitions expert, Cracker.’

Graham shrugged even though Millicent couldn’t see him. ‘Many of us hold down more than one job nowadays,’ he contended.

‘We have to, because there are no jobs for Slytherins!’ Graham could hear her rolling her eyes. ‘That’s the reason why we’re in fucking Norwich, in the middle of the night, hunting down a fucking ex-Death Eater, ex-Ministry employee.’

‘A doubly unsympathetic character,’ Graham shook his head as he melded into the shadows of the house. ‘Honestly, he deserves to know that we’re coming for him. Put fear in his heart for once,’ he commented as he snapped open the briefcase he carried with him. He stuck his hand into its endless maw and groped around for his first bomb.

‘Angel already explained; we obviously can’t,’ Millicent hissed, ‘Travers is too cautious and too skilled for us to hope to take him out, one-on-one, without causing a huge ruckus.’

‘Hellcat, I’m planting bombs. We’re causing a huge ruckus.’

‘Yes, I am aware, but at least we’re not going to be putting on a huge laser show for everyone while we’re at it.’

Ah, yes. How could Graham forget their near-detection at one of their earlier missions, in which an agent and a mark engaged in some serious dueling, resulting in colours of various kinds bursting at the windows, loud incantations ringing into the night, and a mess of magical signatures? It took them so long to cover up all their tracks from that one. Graham didn’t remember who was the agent for this mission. He paused to recollect as he fished his bomb out of the briefcase.

It might have been him.

‘I don’t remember exactly either but it was probably you,’ Millicent confirmed.

‘Laser shows are cool, though,’ Graham argued weakly.

He stuck his other hand into the briefcase and found a pair of spectacles in a side pocket. He slid the spectacles out of the bag, unfolded them by shaking them roughly, and slid them over his eyes.

A world of black and white, bones and shadows flashed before him. Pellucidity Lenses. Graham had snatched up a pair from Zonko’s during his school years and held on to them; who knew that they’d be useful tonight, years after, in the assassination of an ex-Death Eater?

The main supports of the building showed themselves before Graham, thick and sturdy wooden posts, exposed and vulnerable to Graham’s attacks. Taking out his wand, Graham levitated his bombs to the strongest parts of the building; which were simultaneously the weakest parts. For once you take down the sturdiest parts of a building, the more fragile parts inevitable cave in and collapse. Spectacularly.

The figure of Travers reclined above Graham in his bedroom, unknowing of his immediate fate, and unbothered by his identity. Graham smirked; it was just like Travers to be so arrogant, thinking that no one could find him, an ex-Death Eater, in lovely Norwich, so seemingly tranquil and un-evil, with its numerous cute tea rooms and colourful bookshops.

But Lucian could sniff out anyone. How he did it, Graham didn’t want to know.

Though, that being said, Travers was quick and slippery; after all, it took skill to be able to wriggle out of the rubble of the Battle of Hogwarts, to lie low for so long, and to make it away, undetected -- by most. Graham raised his wand and the words tumbled liltingly from his mouth; the air around the building shimmered with the faint glitter of a force field. Didn’t want anything coming out of the house, or hitting anything beyond the perimeter.

‘I hope he doesn’t see that,’ Hellcat commented boredly.

‘He won’t, he’s probably sleeping,’ Graham reassured her. Even if he were awake, it would be really strange for him to stare out the window, Graham thought to himself, He’s a known Death Eater, not some Emily Dickinson type.

Something crackled on Millicent’s end of the link, and it sounded like muffled laughter. Graham smirked to himself and got back to work.

To the casual observer, it may seem that bombing a house was simple and facile work; it did not require the exertion that physically murdering a person required, nor did it call for extensive magical skill and knowledge to execute.

However, to truly pull off serial bombings, it took skill.

Planning explosions are much like choreographing theatre, Graham considered. One must not place bombs at too obvious of locations for then the end result ends up looking evidently rehearsed, premeditated, unnatural; the goal was not to simply take out a victim, but to do it most discreetly.

Enough to pass under the noses of certain aurors. Minimalist enough to make it look like an accident; although with a varied enough arsenal to produce diverse effects, masking distinctive patterns and tell-tale signs; to eliminate all evidence.

Bombing a target was an art. It required imagination, technique, and vision; and of course, personality. A certain flair, a half-signature -- or else, how would people pick up that the Organisation was out there taking them out?

Graham placed his weapons strategically around the building, his mind whirring to figure out how they would detonate and how the building would collapse in onto itself; and how it would inevitably crush the mark inside, no blood on Graham’s hands.

It was simple, detached business; as simple as being a rogue assassin gets. You kill your mark from a distance, watching it all happen like you’re a bystander; you kill them without touching them, hearing them, seeing them.

That was good, Graham thought to himself; he never wanted to see a Death Eater again in his life. His chest burned with a feeling of annoyance at the thought.

‘You alright?’ Millicent asked.

‘Yep, m’alright; I’m almost done.’ Graham responded. He took one last sweeping glance over his work, and then checked to see if Travers was still in bed. He hadn’t moved an inch. ‘Hellcat, I’m on the move,’ he reported as he packed away his things and started walking quickly away from the house.

‘Keep to your side of the road, the Muggle cameras won’t see you as long as you keep to the shadows. The churchyard should be an adequate location.’

‘I copy you, thanks Hellcat.’ He lurched forward in the dark, until he saw the headstones of the old churchyard jut out of the ground like jagged dark teeth. He tiptoed behind the tallest one he could find -- one ought to be careful around old burial grounds, for frequently the dead are buried shallowly upon one another, and the ground will cave in under pressure -- and pressed himself against the cool stone.

‘I’m ready whenever you are,’ he said.

‘Detonate at will,’ she said.

Graham pointed his wand at the house, and twisted it in a quick circle. He cast a quick muffliato around his ears, and ducked.

There was a blinding flash of white light -- like that of lightning -- that briefly lit up the night, and a loud, angry bang; and then the dying sound of crumbling brick and rising dust; ashes to ashes. The building crunched apart easily and loudly; Graham needed to get out of here fast.

He stuck his head out from behind the gravestone to observe the devastation one last time. The top floor of the building had been blown to bits, and caved into the first floor,. The entire structure lay in jagged ruins. There’s no way Travers could have survived that. Graham waved his wand and performed a quick check for sign of life -- none. ‘Target neutralised,’ he reported.

He just caught the beginnings of Millicent’s ‘Good,’ before he apparated away.

The door chime pinged as Graham touched his card to the reader. He gripped the handle and pushed the door open; as he walked in it clicked shut behind him, and he threw himself onto the bed.

It would be too suspicious if there was surveillance camera footage of him coming into Norwich the day of the explosion and leaving right after it, so the Organisation had agreed that he should stay a few nights at a cheap hotel, laying low and pretending to be a traveller.

Graham flipped over onto his back and surveyed the room. It was a small, plain deal, with beige walls and brown curtains, and just big enough for a bed, a desk, and a closet-sized bathroom. Almost feels like a box, Graham thought, sighing. He sat up and removed his clothes, draping them over the chair by the desk. He crawled under the covers, and with the snap of his fingers extinguished the light.

What am I going to do tomorrow? he questioned himself boredly; then he realised that he asked himself this everyday. What was there to do for his kind? Sure, he still had his parents’ fortune and estate, but what’s a full vault if no one will take your gold, and what’s an enormous mansion if there’s only one person? What’s a home if your family will never come back, and your parents will grow old and die far away, in Bourges, where they went to hide from the worst of the War? Thanks to the current political atmosphere, it’s likely they’ll never come back.

Perhaps it’s all well that they didn’t come back. Graham imagined that it would be awkward to explain to them what he’s been doing. It was even awkward for Graham; in all his school-time daydreams about his future, being a rogue amateur assassin was definitely not on the list.

However, despite the nature and reputation of this sort of ‘occupation’, surprisingly it wasn’t totally objectionable, Graham decided. He didn’t mind the killing; it was necessary, he believed. Former Death Eaters definitely deserved to die, and moreover Graham wasn’t willing to let them live in order to incite another pureblood elitism movement. But he did not reap enjoyment nor righteousness from killing these Death Eaters; he wasn’t fueled by vengeance like Pansy, or indignation like Peregrine, or opportunity like Lucian. He was simply doing his part to prevent all their fates from befalling future generations. It wasn’t fair that their lives had to be decided by the actions of people who didn’t give two shits about them.

So Graham decided to take things into his own hands; to let his actions better the lives of those who came after him, because he cared. He had hope; after all Voldemort was finally dead, and wounds would heal. There could be a day when Slytherins were forgiven and pardoned; but that day would not come if Death Eaters had been allowed to exist, crusts of salt over old cuts. He had to remove them.

He sighed, turned to his side, and closed his eyes. He felt like he was nothing; he felt like a tired heaviness. Who knew how weighty nothing ended up being?

Tomorrow he would do something to lighten himself up; after all life is wasted if you spend all your time wallowing in your thoughts and marinating in your sadness.

Sun streamed through the big window panes of the tea room, a rare treat in the middle of March. Graham sipped his cup of assam placidly, feeling the aromatic warmth fill him up from his core to his fingertips. He put the cup down onto its saucer, and set them both on the table. Picking up the butter knife, he cut open one of his two fruit scones, and smeared it with clotted cream and strawberry jam.

As he bit into the buttery, sweet goodness, his mobile pinged with a local headline. He was sure it was about the job last night, and he knew that he really shouldn’t read it if he didn’t want to spoil his good mood; but he couldn’t help it. What if it’s something important? Setting down the half-eaten scone back onto the plate, Graham picked up his phone and tapped at notification.

BOMB ATTACK AT FORMER DEATH EATER’S SECRET RESIDENCE, the headline blared, with a smaller line of all-caps words along the bottom of it, AURORS ARE BAFFLED. Graham picked up his cup again and sipped nervously. It was not ideal that the aurors picked up on it being a targeted attack. It was alright, though -- the Organisation needed to remind people that they were out there, once in a while. Spook them out, make the chase interesting; or else assassination would just become a bore.

Graham put down his cup, and picked up his scone again. Between bites he read the article, and felt his heart grow cold despite the warmth of the freshly brewed tea. The aurors picked out Graham’s pattern-less pattern, correctly concluded that the house belonged to Travers although the body should be beyond recognition after the ordeal, and correctly identified the perpetrators as ‘The Last Meal’ -- which, actually, was not altogether unexpected, as they were the only known rogue assassin group. But, worst of all, they found bomb fragments at the site.

That was impossible. None of Graham’s bombs left any trace -- in fact, they were less traditional bombs, and more alchemical concoctions that he brewed in his parents’ empty estate; he encased them in a thin shell that usually crumbles to dust with the force of the blast; and any last remnants would dissolve with the evening dew. The fact that aurors found fragments at the site meant something very, very bad.

Someone was interfering with their assassinations.

Graham’s hand shook as he drained his cup and read on. The next line nearly had him spluttering.

‘The body was not identified to be Travers’. Aurors suspect that it belonged to an ordinary Muggle. There was no residual magic around the body.’

Graham’s heart sank so low that he was sure it rested under his feet, beneath the cold stone floor of the tea room. How could the body have been a Muggle’s? Travers lived in a Wizarding neighbourhood? Graham pondered to himself. Had he killed a Muggle?

The rest of the article yielded no more information. Nervously, he closed the application and asked the waitress for the bill. After paying for his breakfast, he walked briskly out of the tea room, hoping not to look too suspicious, straight to his tiny hotel room again.

As soon as he burst through the door, he dialed Lucian’s secure number, and tapped his feet impatiently as he waited for Lucian to pick up the phone. It rang a couple of times before Lucian managed to find it; Graham heard Lucian shutting off the coffee grinder in the background.

‘Cracker, what is it?’

‘Lumos, have you read the news today?’

‘No, not yet. Why?’

‘We’re in deep shit. Read it and get back to me.’ He hung up before Lucian could answer; rude, he knew, but he was too paranoid to stay on the phone for too long, even if their numbers were all secure. Supposedly.

He called Millicent next. ‘What have you done?’ she seethed through the receiver right after she picked up. So she had read the news.

‘It wasn’t me,’ Graham explained, ‘You know that I clean up a scene like no one else. I think someone has set us up. Or used us to set someone else up, rather.’

‘Why would anyone do that?’

‘I have no idea,’ Graham confessed, ‘But I’m having Lumos look at it.’

‘Shit. We should tell Angel.’

‘Probably, yeah,’ Graham nodded to himself.

‘I’ll call him. Stay put, keep a low profile.’

Graham nodded even though she couldn’t see him. Millicent hung up.

‘Fuck!’ he cursed softly as he threw his phone against his bed. It bounced off and fell onto the carpeted floor. Graham didn’t pick it up.

This was impossible. They had pulled off the perfect hit. The most the aurors should have been able to do would be to figure out that it was on purpose, and done by the Organisation. That was supposed to be the worst case scenario. It wasn’t even supposed to get there.

What they got instead was incredibly fishy. Various theories raced through Graham’s mind -- it was possible that someone had the body replaced with one that was less mashed-up and more identifiable; after all, the bomb fragments were all placed after the deed. On the other hand, it was possible that ... someone had planted the wrong body there before hand. The thought left a bad taste in his mouth -- someone was out to screw them, why? They were doing the community a service, taking out these bastards. Or ... they might have really killed the wrong person. Graham immediately rejected that conclusion; no, something was definitely planted, or else how would the bomb fragments be explained? Moreover, Lucian was never wrong when it came to target locations ...

Graham’s phone began buzzing on the ground. Speak of the Devil. He picked it up and quickly dusted it off his trousers. ‘Lumos?’

‘What the fuck have you done,’ Lucian’s voice teetered along the edge of disgruntled and absolutely furious.

‘Listen, you know my methods, you know this wasn’t me,’ Graham argued defensively.

‘Are you saying I found the wrong target?’

‘No, no!’ Graham shook his head. ‘No, you’re never wrong.’

‘Then whose fault is it?’

Graham took a deep breath. ‘I think it’s an outside party.’

Lucian said something muffled that sounded a lot like Fuck!

‘I think someone is either using us to set someone up, or actually setting us up,’ Graham continued.

Graham heard the sound of things being kicked, and something that maybe sounded like Perry and bastard. Was Peregrine behind this? Graham frowned. It wasn’t like Derrick to do something like this; did he know something that Graham didn’t?

‘I’ll look into it,’ Lucian said suddenly, his voice seeming louder after the prolonged disturbed non-silence that he had performed. ‘I’m going to catch this fucker.’

‘Keep me updated,’ Graham said.

‘I’ll keep you in the loop. When are you coming back to London?’

‘The day after tomorrow,’ Graham answered.

‘Shit. I guess they can’t have you coming back quite so soon after the incident,’ Lucian reasoned, ‘In the meantime, can you comb the Norwich wizarding community for possible clues?’

‘I suppose my Glamour skills aren’t too rusty; I could cast a passable disguise,’ Graham agreed. Of course, a Glamour wasn’t ideal, but he did not have the resources nor the luxury to attempted something like a Polyjuice potion; he couldn’t be seen shelling out that amount of cash, for those very specific ingredients neither.

‘Good,’ Lucian said, ‘Be careful, Cracker. Something’s been afoot and this could be connected,’ he continued.

‘What? When were you  going to tell --’

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Lucian hissed, and Graham could hear the blade’s edge in his voice. ‘I’m trusting you. Don’t betray us.’

Us? Who was us? Graham decided not to press on further. Lucian would tell him all in time, he was sure. He trusted Lucian as well; though if something is truly happening around the Organisation, he wasn’t sure who to trust anymore.

‘Alright, we’ll keep in touch,’ Lucian said by way of goodbye and hung up.

Graham put the phone on his bedside table, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep.

He needed to fucking reset his brain. This was all too much.

Norwich was very pretty at sunset. The sky stretched on for many hues, smooth and warm, filling Graham with a sense of lightheartedness and strange wistfulness. As he walked down the cobbled paths, twisting into winding alleys, he looked up at the sky, looming reassuringly above him. He would have liked to seen it on a better day than today.

He reached up to scratch his head and found his fingers tangled in long, coarse, and unfamiliar hair; he still was not used to his Transfigured wig from an old cotton shirt. He let his hand drop back to his side, and sauntered up to the gate of the Alchemists’ Alley.

The wrought iron, recognising his magic, parted easily like soft wire for him, and he slid into the Alley. Graham surveyed the scene before him, and decided to head towards the busiest pub he could see -- usually there was good information to be picked up there.

He dropped into the Facetious Friar, and slid into a table in the corner. He ordered a gnome-brewed stout from the barmaid, and wandlessly cast a hearing enhancement spell. After being a part of the Organisation for so long, magic like that came naturally.

The barmaid brought him his stout and he nursed it slowly whilst eavesdropping on everyone’s conversations. There was quite a lot of talk about the bombing, unsurprisingly. A place like Norwich did not get many bombings or assassinations.

It seemed to Graham that the residents were mainly worried that there had been a Death Eater amongst their midst, and they had not noticed it. ‘Truly a slimy Slytherin,’ one man said disdainfully, and Graham felt annoyance twist sharply at him. It was annoying because it was true -- the Organisation was just as slimy and slippery, if not more so, than Travers and his type. Only Slytherins can capture Slytherins.

Hours passed as Graham listened patiently to fragments of conversations. Nothing important or significant came up, and Graham was about to leave, when someone suddenly sat down across from him, and looked him straight in the eye.

‘Graham Montague,’ Harry Potter said, ‘It’s been a while.’

Graham’s immediate instinct was to get up and run, as fast as he could; but of course that was a fucking foolish idea, Potter would catch him in no time. It’d just make him look guiltier. Not that wearing a Glamour and a wig wasn’t guilty enough; though how did Potter see through his Glamour? Graham looked at Potter’s bright red uniform with the Head Auror badge over his heart. Shit, he should have put more effort into his disguise if he was supposed to evade someone of that rank.

Nevermind, he can try his best to play along with it; if Potter ever asked him, it was for an amateur theatre production he just came from. Yes, theatre was plausible. Graham cleared his throat and tried to form a polite greeting in his head. ‘Potter, how nice to see you. Certainly wasn’t expecting to see you again, after school.’

Harry laughed, and the corners of his eyes crinkled up amiably. Graham wondered how this man became the mascot of all those who hated Slytherin. He looked so relaxed, so approachable; which struck Graham as odd, given what Potter had gone through. What was his game?

‘Nice? Oh it’s certainly not nice to see me. I’m here on official business,’ Potter gestured at his auror uniform, ‘Unfortunately there’s been an explosion here, I’m sure you’ve heard already.’

‘Well, yes,’ Graham confirmed. He did not want to talk more about the incident; if Potter were to delve into the details of the case, he would have no choice but to lie even more, which would lead to more storylines for Lucian to follow and for everyone to continue playing. It would be a mess.

‘It’s not a nice way to go,’ Harry commented, and looked into his own drink. He was drinking some kind of ale, Graham decided. Harry wore a sort of expressionless look, but it could have easily been exhaustion from work, or his way of showing pity. He used to be an easily readable person in school; and Draco Malfoy delighted in driving him obviously nuts, but Harry after the death of Voldemort seemed much more like a guarded, impartial person. Graham wondered what he was afraid of, and what he believed in, for he could not see either fear nor belief in the post-War Harry Potter.

He tried to not watch Harry too conspicuously as he drank more of his stout. Harry still looked the way he did when they were at school; he had the same smooth brown skin and green eyes, and messy black hair which he now wore rather long. His face was sharper and older looking, but he was still the same boy from Hogwarts.

‘But he was dead before he got to the house,’ Harry said, and Graham nearly spit out his drink.

‘I don’t know if you’re supposed to be telling me that,’ Graham pointed out, although he did not object to Potter divulging extra information to him. Perhaps the bloke had a bit much to drink; but Potter didn’t look drunk. He looked perfectly lucid.

‘Of course I’m supposed to,’ Harry replied, ‘We’re on the same side.’ Graham looked at him unsurely, but Harry’s gaze was adamant.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Graham said quietly.

‘I know of your Organisation,’ Harry explained. ‘I admire your work.’

Graham shook his head. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he lied, ‘I know of no such organisation, I’m merely passing through Norwich on my way to see my uncle and aunt.’ Shit shit shit shit, how did Potter know? Were they exposed or something --

‘If I didn’t know about you and the Organisation, how would I have been able to find you?’ Harry continued.

‘F-find me?’ Graham stumbled. ‘You mean, you didn’t just bump into me right now, you’ve been ... looking for me?’ Shit, was it me? Was it me again?

Harry nodded. ‘I’ve been looking for all of you. The time is about to come,’ he explained opaquely.

‘How do you mean?’ Graham’s heart was thumping uncomfortably in his chest. Fuck, did Lucian know this?

‘It’s nearly time for dessert,’ Harry said simply. He whipped out his auror’s notebook and a quill, and wrote down a number on a piece of paper. ‘Here’s my number; let’s keep in touch.’

Graham accepted it and started at the scrawl of numbers. His mind was wooden, unable to process all that was happening right now. Harry Potter? On the side of the Organisation? While it wasn’t hard to believe that Potter had interests in taking down Death Eaters, it was unlike him to be in contact with a rogue assassination association ... and to be so forward about it ... it’s possible that this is someone else, Polyjuiced as Potter. But how?

‘You can trust me, Graham,’ Harry reassured him. ‘I never meant for it to be this way. I’m going to help you all get back your lives.’

‘But why?’ Graham asked as Harry got up, about to leave.

‘You don’t deserve it,’ Harry explained curtly, and turned around; walking away into the darkening alley.

Graham was filled with an uneasiness for the rest of the evening. He walked back to the hotel slowly, thinking over everything that has happened to this point. Things just seemed to unravel, and any answers he received only turned into more questions. Half-afraid, he didn’t want to know the truth behind any of this; but he also felt compelled to uncover all this, even if it was just for his peace of mind. His curiosity always got the better of his common sense.

But, if it was something far more nefarious, horrifying ... Graham wanted to get out whilst he still could. He could still live a passable life; Draco, Blaise, Theodore, and Terence were all getting along alright ... it wasn’t a ideal life, but it was structured and normal; it was still something.

But part of Graham would miss his personal agency. The hope that he carried with him always. And a part of him that he hated knew that he would miss the thrill; the rush of euphoric fulfillment after a successfully executed hit, the knowledge that he made a difference in the world.

But Harry Potter promised him more of a future. Graham mulled over it in his head. It was true, he supposed that Potter could grant immunity to anyone; but if he truly wanted to, he would have done it ages ago. There’s no way this is fucking legitimate. Fuck off Potter, I’ll never trust you, Graham thought to himself.

His phone pinged beside him, on the bedside table. Graham picked it up and saw that the text was from Lucian. ‘Any new findings?’

Harry Potter visited me today, Graham typed out swiftly.

Fuck, Lucian responded immediately. Don’t trust him. He’s involved. Wait, when was Lucian going to tell him about this? How did Lucian already know about Potter? Graham stared distressfully at his screen. Could he not even trust his own teammate?

I know. And wasn’t going to, Graham wrote, finally.

Lucian’s side fell silent. Perhaps he had said all he needed to say. Graham put the phone back onto the table, and snuffed out the light.

He drifted off towards sleep, heavy with consternation and unfinished thoughts. For the first time since Hogwarts, Graham felt lost; disengaged and baffled. He could no longer trust what he knew to be true anymore; he could no longer control the outcome of his own life.

Man is truly never a master of his own fate.

[itsarisingrage]

A response to #MeToo

I have been feeling a white rage in my gullet about the stories  being shared by women about the abuses of power in the arts and elsewhere. The rage came up too quickly. It is burning my oesophagus and it will not fuck off. It is too readily available, that feeling of ire. It’s ready to bubble to the surface because it has been shoved down and ignored for decades. We all feel it, regularly and try to cool it with conspiratorial shrugs of ‘Ah he’s a perv’

‘Look you know what he’s like.’

‘I don’t think he meant it.’

‘Your man's a sleaze but I can handle him.’

But we can't handle them. No matter how brave and smart we are. Not without it leaving a mark.

It takes a toll, like  a cancer that starts when puberty comes knocking.It manifests in the constant hedging of our bets in public.

‘I want to say something to him but it’s not safe.’

We can’t say what we feel in a face to face situation because we are not safe.

The deluge of stories is unsurprising but it is horrific to read. The constant battle within me is of fury and empathy versus defeat and comfort. 

I have wanted to leave the arts a thousand times because of the way the industry makes me feel about myself, my body and my brain.

But strength can still outpunch the trauma so I want to name a few of the moments that have stayed with me from within this industry.

A director stroked my hair and face and told me I was not beautiful and was unlikely to get much work, despite being talented.

That same director sent me threatening text messages at 7am suggesting that my lack of sycophancy towards them would affect my casting in an upcoming play. They told me to ‘Be careful’. This came after my not stopping to speak them in a corridor. I was making a concerted effort to distance myself from their constant bullying of me and many other peers.

An adult stage manager kissed me hard when I was 15 and told me that if I stayed quiet, we could perhaps have no-strings sex on a regular basis.

A colleague told me to shave my face, ten minutes after commenting on how much better my arse was looking since I started working out.

A prospective agent told me that I would work when I was over 40 because then I could play the mothers and not have to compete with the really beautiful ones.

A headshot photographer told me that ‘even beautiful people’ get nervous about having their photos taken so not to worry.

At 26, a casting director told me that lipstick made me look really old and asked my agent to tell me to never wear it again.

A peer yelled down a crowded stairwell,  ‘I heard you like plastic’ in reference to my being in a relationship with a girl.

Too many people to count asked if they could ‘Get involved’, ‘Get in between’ me and my ex partner.

My ex and I had numerous arguments with theatre peers over their inappropriate homophobic comments, which because they were couched in comments about our ‘sexiness’, were supposed to be taken on the chin.

The list goes on ad nauseum. These are all different experiences and range from ‘almost harmless’ to ‘assault’ but they pile up inside you.

I am so painfully sick of talking about food and dress size and facial hair and shape and arses and casting. I’m sick of  hearing and saying ‘Well I won't get seen for that because I'm not pretty enough/ thin enough’. Many of my incredibly wise, sharp female colleagues hardly eat because they’re terrified of not working. 

All of this steaming up from the same heap of crap. It is insidious bullshit and it is ruining lives and stealing joy.The deep rooted scars of this day to day bollocks are changing the kind of artists we are, the way we speak or don't speak in rooms; if we can even get into rooms. We have to shrug so much off before we can even begin to do our work. We are often denied the chance to be epic, flawed big people.

I wanted to write something to show solidarity with all of the ferocious, vulnerable women who have spoken out against the abuses of power in theatre in Ireland and the UK but I couldn't find the words. So, I went to meet a pal in a local pub two hours ago and on my way there, a young man yelled something at me from a van, not sure if compliment or abuse. Then, as I stood at the bar, the young woman serving me was approached by a male customer who told her he’d like to see her shake that cocktail whilst wearing a bowtie. I didn't say anything to him. She said she was glad she wasn’t made to wear one of those and I said I was too and he went on his way, unscathed. I reached out to her and she told me she couldn't say anything to him because he's connected to her boss in some way. She sighed and smiled and gave me more wine than I had paid for. I was out of the house for 70 minutes in total.

I wanted to go over and say something to the man in the bar but the words wouldn't come. Just like the words wouldn’t come when a waiter shoved his crotch into my backside, during a powercut. The words wouldn’t come when sexual comments and suggestions were made in my workplace. They wouldn't come when I was demeaned so subtly I only fully realised afterwards but I was left with a need to quell my rage in order to get on with my job.

The words won't come when a man spreads his legs so wide on the tube that I have to pretzel myself tiny and drop my book. But I don't tell him to move, in case he punches me and I lose an eye, as happened to an old flatmate. 

The words didn't come in nightclubs when men grabbed us and put their hands up our skirts as we walked past at 16 years of age, 17, 18, 19 and beyond.

But the words are coming now. They are streaming out of brave, articulate women and men. We are forming an army of solidarity and honesty. The words are coming hard and fast and loud. They cannot be stopped by lawyers by liars or by power. The tide is turning and I am galvanised and sickened all at once.

Thank you, a thousand times to each and every person who has spoken out.

And to those women and men who feel like they can't speak on this, then don’t. Get in a blanket, listen to your sisters, write in your diary, seek help from the number listed below.  

I believe you before you open your mouth

With love and courage and a prayer that things really properly change, so we can get back to our work.

https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Sexualhealth/Pages/Sexualassault.aspx

https://www.nhs.uk/Service-Search/Rape%20and%20sexual%20assault%20referral%20centres/LocationSearch/364

Rape Crisis

Helpline: 0808 802 9999 (12-2:30 and 7-9:30)

rapecrisis.org.uk

National organisation offering support and counselling for those affected by rape and sexual abuse.

Victim Support

Supportline: 0808 168 9111

[fardell24b]

Changes in Time and Space v2.0 - Chapter I: Invasion at the Azores - Incursion

Chapter 1 – Invasion at the Azores – Part II: Incursion

29 September 2018, The Azores Autonomous Region, Portugal, just outside the city of Ponta Delaga

The Doctor and her companions were still behind the trees in the park as they watched foot soldiers march out of the Drahvin starship. Felicia was worried. “What are we going to do?”

The Doctor thought for a moment. “We will have to find the leader. Then I’ll have to improvise.”

Daniel gave this some thought, before asking; “Are we just going to march onto that ship?”

“I haven’t any other ideas, Dan. We need to find out why the Drahvins are invading Earth in this time,” she answered. “And why they're starting in the Azores.”

“I see that, but how are we going to get on board?” Sigrun asked.

“We will have to wait until all of the soldiers get out of the ship,” the Doctor answered. “Then we hope they won't find us here in the meantime.”

Soon the soldiers had left the ship, and the door remained open. “Ok, now, everyone. Run!” The Doctor directed.

The Doctor and her companions darted out from behind the tree, and ran towards the Drahvin starship. The starship looked the same as all other Drahvin ships she had seen, made out of a trashy tin-alloy that could easily be punctured by weapons fire or micrometeorites.

The Doctor bounded up the debarkation ramp, followed by Felicia, Daniel, Jia’hale and Sabir with Sigrun bringing up the rear.

“Ok, we need to find the bridge,” the Doctor said.

“Why?” Daniel asked.

“The leader is most likely to be there,” the Doctor answered.

“Wouldn’t that be at the top of the ship?” Sabir asked.

“You have been watching too much Science Fiction,”  the Doctor objected “Most often the bridge isn’t on the top, but in a more protected position within the ship.”

Sigrun reflected for a moment. “Wouldn’t it be worth a try?”

“Absolutely. Otherwise we wouldn’t know,” the Doctor replied.

“Let’s go then,” Daniel said. The Doctor lead the way along the corridor and soon found a service shaft that lead upwards. She started climbing, followed by Daniel, Felicia, Sigrun, Jia’hale and Sabir. They soon found themselves on the top deck of the Drahvin transport.

“It's clear,” the Doctor said. “Let's go.” Her companions followed her out into the corridor, and followed her towards where the sonic screwdriver was indicating the bridge was.

They soon arrived at a door, which was locked. “Deadlock seal, the sonic screwdriver is useless,” the Doctor said.

“We could try a ventilation shaft?” Sabir suggested.

The Doctor thought for a moment. “There's no guarantee that it would be big enough.”

“But we could try,” Daniel said.

“Of course, Dan,” the Doctor said. They then looked along the corridor for any openings to the ship's ventilation shafts.

They soon found one, about 10 meters from the bridge door. This time the Doctor could open it with the sonic screwdriver. It clanged down onto the floor.

“Ok, I'll go first,” Daniel said.

“No, Dan, I'll go first. You don't know what would be in there. It could be booby trapped!” the Doctor said.

“Of course,” Daniel said, the Doctor usually went first into dangerous situations like this.

“You can bring up the rear” the Doctor said. The Doctor then entered the ventilation duct, with Jia'hale following.

Sabir, Felicia and Sigrun followed, and Daniel came last.

The Doctor leapt out of the ventilation shaft onto the Drahvin Bridge, where many Drahvins were waiting.

“Hello Doctor!” one of them, who seemed to be in charge, said. The Doctor looked up straight, and her companions carefully exited the shaft.

'Of course it has to be her!' the Doctor thought to herself. “Hello, Kellira.” She had met this particular Drahvin many times before.

“You know her?” Daniel asked.

“In a way,” the Doctor answered.

Kellira made a signal and suddenly every Drahvin on the bridge were pointing their guns at the Doctor and her companions. It appeared they were outwitted.

“We are in trouble now,” Jia’hale said in an exhasperated tone.

“What do you have planned now?” Daniel asked. Sabir, Felicia and Sigrun were speechless with shock.

“I have no plan,” the Doctor admitted. “I probably could have contacted UNIT or Torchwood.”

Kellira made another signal and one of her soldiers stepped forwards.

“Silence!” she shouted.

“There is nothing you, or the Earth organisations you referenced, can do Doctor!” Kellira objected. “Our plan is proceeding perfectly. The Azores will be ours and we can then interfere with Earth's history to our ends!”

“You can’t do that!” Jia’hale said.

“Yes we can,” Kellira said.

“You Drahvins are all the same! You use anything as a weapon.,” the Doctor said. Whatever your plan is, it will fail!”

“But you have no plan! Every time we met before, I could see that you had some kind of plan, you obviously didn't think that the bridge would be heavily guarded,” Kellira said.

“I have almost lost count of the times when I didn't have a plan and still defeated my opponent,” the Doctor said. “And as I once told a Dalek Emperor; doesn't that scare you to bits?”

Meanwhile, Sabir was edging along towards a computer console; all of the soldier's had their eyes on the Doctor...

“What is your plan?” Sigrun asked.

“Wouldn't you and your Time Lord friend like to know. You will not find out!” Kellira said.

“What is the point of taking over the Azores anyway?” Daniel asked. ‘They are quite isolated.”

“I am not answering that question,” Kellira said.

Unnoticed, the Doctor grabbed her sonic screwdriver and changed the setting...

The setting hadn't been used for a while, but she was sure it would work. She activated the setting. Bizzzzt, bizxewt, wizzzte.

“What was that?”Kellira said as she heard the Sonic screwdriver.

Sabir whirled around to the nearest computer station. Amongst other things the sonic screwdriver had brought up a directory listing.

“Call up their plan” he heard Felicia call out.

“That is what I am doing!” he shot back as he began looking through the files.

Jia’hale and Sigrun had flanked the Doctor, and they both charged at Kellira, ready to take  her down...

Outside the city, the TARDIS waited patiently for the Doctor and her companions. It then received the signal from the Doctor, via the communications system of the Drahvin starship that she was in. She knew her thief was in trouble.

She sent a few messages to allies of the Doctor via the worldwide internet and then set into motion, homing in on the Doctor's signal.

Sigrun and Jia’hale had knocked Kellira over but it wasn't long before she recovered and fought back. Her soldiers did shoot in the direction of two companions, and the Doctor, but most of the shots went wild and some of them fell victim to friendly fire.

Kellira stood up again. “Feisty are you two? But I am a highly trained Drahvin warrior, you stand no chance!” she said fuming and charged at Sigrun, who promptly twisted her onto her back.

“I am also trained; in Terran Eastern Martial Arts. What do you say to that?” Sigrun then said.

“That just makes it more of a challenge! It will make no difference in the long run,” Kellira said.

Sabir had called up the file containing the plan. “Of course it would be encrypted!” he said, however he knew how to get around that.

“Yes, Kellira, I summoned my ship,” the Doctor said. “I can then use it to further the destruction of your plan.” The TARDIS finished rematerialising and she clicked her fingers, opening the doors.

“I haven't decrypted the file yet, but it can be accessed from the TARDIS,” Sabir as he ran from the computer panel towards the TARDIS.

“Guards, surround the Time Lady's ship!” Kellira ordered.

Many of the Drahvin soldiers tried to surround the TARDIS. But there was an interruption. Jia'hale lashed out, all feet and fists, and cleared the area near the door. Sabir unlocked the door and dashed inside.

“Feeling inadequate now?” Daniel goaded.

This only added fuel to Kellira's rage. “I am more than 'adequate' obligatory male companion. Not even the TARDIS can decrypt that file!”

“You seen very confident for a Drahvin who has just been outwitted, unless you pilfered some encryption software from a derelict Dalek ship,” the Doctor rejoined.

“I wouldn't think even you would risk that.”

Kellira called for the guards again, but found none were answering. While Daniel and the Doctor were talking to her, they had either been caught in their own crossfire, or had been knocked out by Sigrun and Jia'hale.

“You're still very confident, Doctor. The Drahvin forces are still as of this moment taking control of the city of Ponta Delaga, and I am still confident that you cannot change that fact, or decrypt that file,” Kellira said.

  “Sigrun, Jia'hale, you hold Kellira here while Felicia and I help the TARDIS and Sabir crack the file.”

[ukdamo]

KZ Mauthausen

One of mine, November 19th, 2013

It’s no sort of a boast to say, ‘I’ve been to a few concentration camps’. Opera houses; perhaps: art galleries; perhaps: concentration camps, hardly. It’s true nonetheless, I have visited a few concentration camps.

 It’s not that that the camps hold a lurid fascination for me, or that I am impelled to visit and tick them off on a list. Concentration camps are not munros.

 When I try to analyse my reasons for visiting, they multiply, become elusive, and I struggle to apprehend and organise them. They are definitely manifold. There is an historian’s interest – longstanding now - perhaps an integral part of my make up, inescapable. There’s also muted sense of obligation on my part, a sense of ‘ought to’. That sense pervades other aspects of my travel, too – it takes me to battlefields and war cemeteries wherever I find myself: USA, Turkey, Tunisia, France, Belgium, Russia. The ought to is, I think, a way of grappling with, and trying to understand big questions – questions about war, about sacrifice, about the deepest human motivators. Standing on the ground where things happened helps me focus my mind, offers me a degree of clarity, helps me draw out the physical threads of place and time and interweave them with the cognitive threads of what I know. It’s invariably humbling.

 I have a sense, too, courtesy of those who deny the Holocaust (I think of David Irving, in particular), that the Shoah needs contemporary witnesses, people who have been, have seen, have been humbled and upset, and can testify to it.

 There’s one more reason, which is more deeply personal: recognition that it could have been me. More: that it could still be me. This sense of personal involvement stems from being homosexual. When I say, ‘It could have been me’ I recognise that I always cast myself as a victim – never a perpetrator. And I always think I wouldn’t have survived.

 In those camps where there is a book of visitors’ remarks, perhaps the most common entry is ‘Never again’. I think that an empty slogan. The Nazis didn’t invent genocide, though they industrialised and perfected it in ways that are so perverse that they call into question our shared humanity. But, if I speak of a shared humanity, I have always to pose the question – might I have been the one who slammed the Gaskammer door shut on someone else? I recall a German TV documentary where the teenage children of Holocaust survivors revisited the places their parents or grandparents had been so brutally treated. Sitting with them, sifting through photographs and documents, were German teenagers. One of the Jewish youngsters said, ‘I’m always scared that I will see the face of someone I recognise’. ‘So am I’, replied the German youngster. Yes. That captures it, perfectly. It is important to sift yourself. And some locations, because of their poignancy, or power, or pain, make that demand urgent and insistent.

 As I noted above, I don’t believe in Never Again. I’ve lived through the Srenbrenica and Rwanda. Never Again is a cheap shot. Conventional piety. Wishful thinking.

I have no truck with it.

 I believe in vigilance and respect…

   I crossed from Germany into Austria in the late evening of October 19th, at Passau, where the rivers Inn and Ilz combine with the Danube. The Hitler family lived in Passau from 1892-4, moving there when Adolf was three.

 My driving route took me along the right bank of the Danube, heading south east, towards Linz. A full moon was reflected in the river and, on the left bank, a sequence of picturesque villages with their churches and castles illuminated. I arrived in Linz a little before 9pm and headed straight to the hostel. It’s a purpose-built, post war edifice with clean 1950’s lines and interior spaces to match. The rooms, all en-suite, are impressively comfy and airy. It looked a very efficient set up. I slept well.

 The following morning, when I drew back the curtain, the window was misted with condensation. Wiping it aside, I could see autumnal leaves outlined crisply against a cornflower white sky. That boded well for the day. After a good breakfast (a typical Austrian affair of cold meats, cheese, fruit, yoghurt, breads and cakes), I organised myself and went into town.

 Linz is as lovely as you might expect a baroque town on the Danube to be. I spent the morning meandering, stopping off to admire churches and the architectural fancies that offered themselves up. The High Mass was drawing to a close when I got to the New Cathedral (a 19th CE Neo-Gothic build), so I sat quietly and waited for the dismissal, so I could then take a few photos without disturbing the service. There was a small choir – five or six voices – singing a glorious polyphonic mass setting.

 As midday approached, I returned to the car, crossed the river, and followed the left bank. The Danube was actually blue, for once: generally-speaking it’s a mucky brown. Following the river downstream, Mauthausen is a bare 12 miles from Linz.

I was there in 20 minutes.

 To get to the camp, you turn off the main road and drive through the village, climbing the valley side until you reach the ridge line.

 The first thing you note when you park and get out is the view. It’s a beautiful situation – to the south lies village, the river and the Danube valley – lots of woodland and rolling hills with isolated houses and farms.

 The camp looks like a granite-built fort. Its towers and retaining walls are imposing, not to say intimidating. It has permanence and power written all over it. Exactly as intended.

 Mauthausen was a Grade III camp, intended to be the toughest environment conceivable for the incorrigible political enemies of the Reich. The Nazis intended that the intelligentsia of Europe come to Mauthausen and be worked to death. Its nickname among the staff of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) was the Knockenmühle – the Bone Grinder. It was founded immediately after the Anschluss (1938) and was one of the last camps to be liberated.

 The Bone Grinder… therein lies the key. Mauthausen was founded because of the adjacent granite quarry. Its stone had been used to pave the streets of Vienna: now it was used to build the camp itself (inmates transferred from Dachau) and then the grandiose Nazi monuments that glowered down on the subjects of the 1000 Year Reich. Some of its stone was used in the Congress Hall, and other buildings, of the Reichsparteitagsgelände (Nazi Party Rally Grounds), in Nuremburg, which I had left only the day before.

 As the war progressed, and Germany secured direct and indirect control over more and more of Europe, the inmates became more diverse in their origins – to the Germans and Austrians were added Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Spaniards, French, Greeks. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, trade unionists, socialists, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, Jews, Russian (and other) prisoners of war, partisans from Yugoslavia: in their hundreds of thousands, they came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps and were worked to death in the quarries, or gassed, shot, hung. Estimates vary – but it is reasonable to believe that 320,000 people came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps. 75% of them didn’t survive. But death was profitable: in 1944, the camp turned a profit of 144 million Euros (at 2013 exchange rate).

  When I came to Mauthausen I knew what to expect.

 The first camp I ever visited was KZ Sachsenhausen. It lies to the north of Berlin, in the village of Oranienburg. I went there in a bitterly cold February, in 1996, to stand before the memorial to the homosexuals done to death by the Nazis, and leave a poem and some rainbow ribbons. That same trip, I went to the Haus am Wannsee, which hosted the conference convened in January, 1942 at which the planned extermination of European Jewry was formalised, organised and rubber stamped.

 If Sachsenhausen brought tears, Wannsee brought an even icier chill – the hand of the perpetrators. Crunching up the drive towards that familiar building, sited on an idyllic lake (Heydrich intended it to be his home after the war), there was menace in the air.

 In January 2005, I went to Prague with Peter, and intended to make a side trip to Theresienstadt. Peter said he’d skip that but then changed his mind and came with me. I think he regretted it: it was grim. As I knew it would be.

 Almost exactly a year later, Gordon, Richard and I went to Krakow in Poland. Inevitably, we went to Auschwitz. It was a bitter winter, and the camp was a snow-covered expanse. It was easy, in the mind’s eye, to step back in time and imagine being there in the winter of 1944: the war lost but the exterminations more frantic than ever, the levels of degradation surpassing even the obscenities that preceded them.

  As I walked towards the camp entrance at Mauthausen, I brought these experiences with me. I had an idea of what lay behind that forbidding perimeter. I didn’t expect to be surprised. I did expect to be upset – as I had been before. I expected to be rattled. To be provoked. To be made to squirm and feel uneasy.

 The visit is self-directed, though an excellent audio-guide and a simple map make sure you don’t get lost.

 Some of the camp buildings are no longer there: the SS barracks are gone: the site is now the memorial garden. Some barrack blocks are demolished but others remain to suggest what they were like when the camp was in use, others are exhibition spaces.

The prison, the execution rooms, the crematoria, are all extant.

 The exhibition spaces are sensitively and comprehensively detailed, and give a genuine insight into the camp’s history. You are uncompromisingly confronted by the filthiness of Nazism. Each camp I have visited offers a unique experience, though each share common threads. Each has shown me something I hadn’t grasped until that point. At Mauthausen, it was the level of brutality dispensed to children. Looking at the youthful faces in inmate photographs was very disturbing.

  The barrack blocks are stark: the triple bunks, kapos’ day rooms, and the washrooms stood empty and silent. The washrooms rattle me: they were favoured suicide locations for prisoners in extremis. I’ve seen photos of emaciated victims, strangulated on taps, pipes and even toilet fixtures.

 I moved on. The triple bunks – top bunks were the most sought after – men topped and tailed – perhaps three per level, nine in all. The ones on the lower bunks were subject to the dysenteric effluvia of those on the upper ones.  When a transport arrived, overcrowding became endemic.

 In the prison block, you can see the ‘interrogation’ rooms, placed so the screams could be heard throughout the cell block. Below, in the basement, the exectution rooms. Prisoners were shot in the back of the neck (I saw such a set up at Sachsenhausen) or hung from a pulleyed hook, or gassed, or injected with petrol, or stripped, sprayed with water and left to freeze to death outside in the winter temperatures, or pushed off the quarry heights, or made to push others off the quarry heights and then shoved after them. Others were driven onto the electrified fence, or shot whilst penned into the garage courtyard. The bodies were cremated by prisoners who were themselves shot and subsequently cremated.

  Mauthausen has two double ovens in situ and complete. They stand open-mawed and stark. Topf and Sons Ltd, produced them. They were manufacturers of industrial malting ovens for breweries, and commercial incinerators. Their chief executive saw a brilliant opportunity to expand operations and submitted designs for ovens that could operate continually as crematoria: the Nazis were more than happy to sign the contracts. As Topf’s letterhead said on their Auschwitz correspondence: Always ready to serve you…

 This is what concentration camps are like.

 This is why it’s important for me to come, and stand, and be upset, and remember.

 At Sachsenhausen it was the crematorium that brought me close to dissolution.

At Auschwitz, the gas chamber.

At Theresienstadt, it was the sight of that vile slogan, glimpsed through a flurry of snow: ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

At Mauthausen, I felt more composed than I had expected. Reflective, quiet, brimful of thoughts and the clamour of the past but it was manageable and I felt able to ‘hold the ring’.

 Having paid my respects at the memorial plaques, I left the camp proper and walked slowly through the memorial garden, towards the quarry. I made a mental note to pay my respects at these formal monuments on the way back, and continued to make my way to the stone works.

 The well-made path gave out and I noted that I was now walking on the uneven setts and broken stones that led along the edge of the quarry, to the Death Steps.

 I was alone by now. Everything was quiet, save for the crunch of my footfalls on the stones. Their unevenness threatened to throw me off balance, and I found myself looking at my feet and paying close attention to the sensation of planting my foot, feeling my ankle adjust to keep me upright.

 As I type now, I can recall the sensations and sounds with absolute clarity.

 As I got nearer and nearer to the Steps I began to feel genuinely unsteady; there was an upwelling of panic, a constriction in the chest, a stomach-churning gripe: I was unable to proceed. I feared that I was going to crumple to the ground and cry uncontrollably.

 I stood stock still. I had to physically regain my balance. If there’d been something close at hand to grasp, I would have held on to it. But there wasn’t. I had to be still, gather my scattered self, recognise what was happening, compose myself, regain a measure of control.

 When I’d done so, the sudden realisation dawned that I couldn’t walk down the Steps. I knew it would be sacrilegious to trip down those stairs in my Fitflops. But I also knew I had to get down. I had to stand in the quarry. This was the place where remembrance meant most.

 To me, it felt an age, but it can only have been a few seconds: the solution was plain. I must go unshod. Bare-foot, I could do it.

 It all felt OK then. After a deep breath the urge to cry and the unsteadiness left me. There was still the hypersensitivity, as I placed my feet on the uneven stones, but I could make my way to the Steps.

 I had another lurch as I stood at the top. But I was able to quieten that, and sit down.

 I unlaced my shoes and slipped them and my socks off. A young family was coming up: the kids were counting the number of steps aloud: Ein hundert sechs und achtszig – 186.

 They passed by, making no remark.

 The stones were cold but supportive.

 Berries and twigs and clusters of fallen leaves were scattered on the granite steps, and I could feel their imprint as I descended. Down I went, where so many had gone before me, beaten and driven.

 In the quarry itself, the workings reared up before me: a cliff. Nature had softened and reclaimed some of it. There were two great water-filled pits that reflected the autumnal leaves and blue sky. It was strangely reaffirming.

 There were stone chips underfoot, as well as springy grass. I stooped to pick one up and carry away with me. Once home, I will put it alongside the brick-flake from Auschwitz, in plain view, where it will help me remember.

 I walked for some time, occupied with my thoughts, wondering at the strength and unexpected immediacy of my upset at the top of the quarry. I remembered seeing ‘Bent’ – firstly a play by Martin Sherman (1979), later a film by Sean Mathias. It dealt with two gay men sent to Dachau in 1934. A scene in it had them working moving heavy stone blocks. There was some clue there to my distress.

 And there was an incongruity: I remembered that beautiful polyohonic mass setting, 12 miles and 20 minutes away....

 And I had been bare-foot once before. 20 + years ago, in Lourdes. I had make my way around the massive, verdisgris’d Stations there, It was my leave-taking from the Friars Minor. The circumstance was very different, but the motivation shared some ground. Standing bare-foot on the bare earth and experiencing things for what they actually are; there is comfort in this discomfort.

  For me, Mauthausen had brought home again the reality. Not an issue of ‘there and then’ but ‘here and now’.

  And so it must remain, to me.

 Without vigilance and respect, I believe it will come again, and swallow our humanity.

[talhaghafoor2019-blog]

One Year Since Chester Bennington’s Death And Linkin Park’s Music Helps Us Deal With The Loss

PA

Chester Bennington died one year ago today, July 20, 2017, found at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, California after taking his own life.

The music industry and beyond switched its default setting to mourn once again, as tributes for the 41-year-old dad of six flooded social media.

We all knew the music of Linkin Park – the band Chester fronted for years – resonated with an army of disenfranchised outsiders, but the outpouring of grief was overwhelming in scale.

Getty

From the moment Hybrid Theory exploded onto our Walkmans with the opening bars of Papercut, we were hooked.

Each song is a three-minute ball of nu metal energy; a heady cocktail of hip-hop, modern rock, and atmospheric electronica, punctuated with instrumental experimentation, which was like sweet musical nectar to our adolescent ears.

The six-piece painted pictures of dark places which piqued some listeners’ curiosity to the depth of the human condition, and simply reminded others of their own struggles.

Hearing Chester brazenly scream ‘shut up’ at the world in One Step Closer felt euphoric to hoards of youths like us, who felt they hadn’t quite found their own voice yet.

The debut album quickly garnered mainstream success in a way never before achieved by an alternative metal mash-up.

Hybrid Theory was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2005, making it the best-selling debut album of the decade, as well as one of the few albums ever to hit that many sales.

But with great songwriting comes great pressure, as UNILAD Sound discovered:

Linkin Park took their responsibility to fans seriously, and created music marked by a perpetual sense of honesty. Honesty about struggling and, as they put it, dancing with demons.

Chester had been sexually abused as a child, went through the strain of his parents’ divorce at just 11, was bullied at school and eventually turned to drug and alcohol abuse.

To overcome addiction and emotional trauma, he started writing poetry and music.

You can find out how others cope with their own cases of child sex abuse below:

One year after his suicide, it’s natural to read into the award-winning song lyrics written by Bennington and his bandmate Mike Shinoda.

Dr Arthur Cassidy told UNILAD this type of ‘parasocial interaction’ between rockstars and their armies of supporters occurs when ‘fans know lots about their pop singers and rappers but the celebs know nothing about their fans’.

This idolisation can create a lot of unrealistic expectations and put pressure on public figures who are – let’s remember – humans with vulnerabilities and mental health stressors themselves.

Listening to Chester, immortalised in his music, can’t bring back the frontman.

But, today, let’s stick on Hybrid Theory or Meteora and appreciate how he can still help fans deal with their own grief, sadness and struggle.

Chester’s earlier piercing vocals – the perfect foil to Shinoda’s low-key licks – are spiked with anger and frustration, but singing along to the epic choruses brings catharsis, whether you can hit the high notes or not.

Sometimes, Chester’s words are ragged with emotion, screamed through gritted teeth. Often, in the bridge, his melodic vocal captures a quiet pain, selflessly showing his own vulnerability to help others put words and metaphor and tunes to their own.

Getty

Over time – and six further album releases – Linkin Park’s raw anger matured and became more nuanced, as did their ability to layer sounds and create walls of sound, both on stage and in the studio.

The final album almost reads like an acceptance letter, an ode to the trials and tribulations of life, which can make you that little bit stronger when you have a support network.

Now, the Linkin Park back catalogue helps us grieve one year later and carry forward the messages of unity and inclusivity Chester championed throughout his life.

Chester began his musical career with Grey Daze, a post-grunge band from Phoenix, Arizona, who recorded three albums; Demo in 1993, Wake/Me in 1994, and …no sun today in 1997.

Then he joined LP – founded in rural LA by Shinoda, Rob Bourdon, and Brad Delson – where he worked hard beyond their musical output to support fans and his show business peers.

Their rap metal style welcomed more diverse collaborations, ushering in Projeckt Revolution and the likes of Cypress Hill, Adema, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, and later Busta Rhymes, Pusha T and Steve Aoki, to bring members of different musical tribes together on tracks.

Jay Z has famously paid tribute to Chester a number of times since his death, performing the Grammy-winning Numb/Encore from their collaborative 2004 album, Collision Course, on stage to emotional crowds.

All the while, Linkin Park were accepted by the rock’n roll’elite, winning countless awards during their run and playing on the same stages as the likes of Metallica, Iron Maiden, Placebo and Deftones.

Meanwhile, the band founded a charity called Music For Relief, which staged fundraising events for the victims of over 20 natural disasters, and still works hard to help those hard up today.

We are deeply grateful to every person who donated in any amount to @MusicForRelief's One More Light Fund in honor of @ChesterB 's birthday. Together, you raised more than $90,000 to shine a light on mental health. Thank you for making this possible!

— Music for Relief (@MusicForRelief) April 9, 2018

In 2013, Chester fronted Stone Temple Pilots – a band he cites as an early musical influence – for two years before leaving to focus solely on Linkin Park.

Their last album, released in May a few months before Chester’s death, was received badly by the old vanguard of Linkin Park fans, some of whom unjustifiably said the band had ‘gone soft’.

While tracks like Talking To Myself and Battle Symphony have a more mainstream electro vibe, in hindsight, the new sound marked a moment of acceptance for Linkin Park by the pop culture jury.

Yet, they weren’t forced to change to achieve global success and recognition.

They grew and used their own progression and creative talent to break through barriers, and break the mould of what music critics think matters.

Collaborations with Stormzy, Pusha T and Kiiara show the band were moving forward towards the future of alternative metal, its chameleon-like changeability, and how young artists could take up the baton.

A post shared by LINKIN PARK (@linkinpark) on Jul 20, 2017 at 3:49pm PDT

Shinoda, who has since confirmed LP will continue, said of the title track:

was written with the intention of sending love to those who lost someone. We now find ourselves on the receiving end.

In memorial events, art, videos, and images, fans all over the world have gravitated towards this song as their declaration of love and support for the band and the memory of our dear friend, Chester.

We are so very grateful and can’t wait to see you again.

Chester is remembered in his latest solo project, Post Traumatic, as well as through the , set up by Music For Relief, which aims to shine a light on mental health matters.

Chester’s wife, Talinda Bennington, also initiated a movement called 320 Changes Direction, in honour of her husband to help break the stigma surrounding mental health.

She encouraged other public figures to post to social media saying, ‘I am the change’:

Today we honor the life and music of @linkinpark’s @ChesterBe. @TalindaB joins me on @Beats1@AppleMusic to talk #320ChangesDirection alongside a special Playlist made by @mikeshinoda. 10 am PT. Be the change. https://t.co/Urz4A9nnO3#IAMTHECHANGE#MakeChesterProudpic.twitter.com/vDindLb4bB

— Zane Lowe (@zanelowe) March 20, 2018

Just days before Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK, Talinda called out the media for perpetrating the stigma of suicide in the language used to describe Avicii’s death.

Today, across the world, fans will show there is no shame in depression or poor mental health, having organised meet-ups and tribute nights to Chester, celebrating his life.

Talinda compiled a list of events and shared it online for those interested:

With the one year fast approaching, there are so many beautiful memorials planned all around the WORLD in honor of Chester. I wanted to share them with you. ❤️

https://t.co/cwboB8Jxbt

— Talinda Bennington (@TalindaB) July 3, 2018

Meanwhile, the fans of Linkin Park and Chester have found other more permanent ways to honour his memory – and his creativity and love for body art – in thousands of memorial tattoos.

While the alternative ink is a fitting tribute, there’s no better way to show respect and love for Chester than reaching out to someone you think might be struggling too.

You can check some of the ink designs out below:

Arm still a little swollen and my hand as well but guess it’s ok now. Time to post a pic in my feed 4 days past. Watch my story to see more if you’re interested 🔥

A post shared by 🌙💀🦋 (@jasminlivingthings) on Jan 29, 2018 at 3:31am PST

amazing ♡ great artwork by @babichtattooart • #chestertattoo #chesterbenningtontattoo #linkinpark #chesterbennington #wemissyou #potd #tb #art #beautiful #love #tattoo #artist #artistsoninstagram

A post shared by Chester Bennington Fans (@chesterbenningtonfans) on Dec 3, 2017 at 7:40am PST

Memoriam tattoo … 😶 #memoriam #memoriamtattoo #linkinpark #riptattoo #chesterbennington #chesterbenningtontattoo

A post shared by Astrid Köpfler (@astridkoepfler) on Jun 24, 2018 at 10:43am PDT

Homenaje de Vani 💕🎤

A post shared by Fresia Tatuajes (@fresia.tattoo) on Jan 9, 2018 at 4:31pm PST

This means so much to me. This man and this band have helped me overcome some of my darkest days and will continue to be my therapy for the rest of my life. This will be a reminder of that and to #makechesterproud ❤️ Now, time to start saving for my portrait piece! 😉😄 #LP #LPtattoo #LPfan #LinkinPark #LinkinParktattoo #ChesterBennington #ChesterBenningtontattoo #music #musicislife #musicistherapy #fuckdepression #clubtattoo

A post shared by Ashley (@shleebers) on Oct 1, 2017 at 9:44am PDT

Linkin Park is hands down my all time favorite band and made a huge impact on me in my life. When Chester passed, I wasn't expecting it to hit me as hard as it did. So when Chester passed, I wanted to do a memorial tattoo for him. So I got this today. Still have the shading to do. Really happy with how it's turning out. Thanks @gabslopez2u #tat #tats #tatted #tattedup #tattoo #tattooart #tattoosocial #tattoos #tattoosofinstagram #tattooed #tattooedandeducated #tattooedandemployed #inked #inkedup #linkinpark #linkinparktattoo #lptattoo #chesterbennington #chesterbenningtontattoo #calftattoo #pain #painful

A post shared by RJ Clark (@welcome.2.my.life) on May 30, 2018 at 6:00pm PDT

All those years ago, at the turn of the millennium in 2000, Hybrid Theory left us with a High Voltage closing sentiment, as Shinoda spits, ‘From now to infinity let icons be bygones’.

Even though Linkin Park shunned labels, thrived on authenticity and embraced difference, funnily enough, the band which so dismissed the need for idolisation by way of their own uniqueness, made Chester an icon of kindness and inclusivity.

In the end, that’s all that really matters.

Getty

RIP Chester.

You can speak to someone confidentially about your mental health and wellbeing by calling one of the following numbers: Samaritans – 116 123
, Childline – 0800 1111 (UK) / 1800 66 66 66 (ROI), 
Teenline – 1800 833 634 (ROI).

If you have a story to tell, contact UNILAD via [email protected]

This content was originally published here.

[ticketybooworld-blog]

VOICES INC ONLINE! Recovery from Mental Illness is ‘ always ‘ possible!

Blog created by Barrie Macvicar - Positive about Pain & Mental Health Support Group. (facebook) 

The Hopesturn Project

So who is Peter Hawes? Well to me Peter Hawes is a man who came into my life at just the right time. That time was when i was still a service user in February 2012. I met Peter on joining an online support group called

Intervoice - The International hearing Voices Movement.

The reason i had joined this group speaks for itself. Yup ! It’s in the name? Yeah ! That’s right. I was ‘ hearing voices.’ I was hearing lots of voices. Peter was one of the first to answer my call for help when i was in distress then with my experiences.  He and a selection of others were instrumental in helping to teach me how to go about managing to facilitate my very own recovery. These guys just threw me some tools and helped to keep pointing me in the right direction. I then i had to get on with the hard work myself. What work? Rebuilding my entire life and mind. I had a lot to do. I guess i kinda became the apprentice of my own existence. I had to start all over again and these guys showed me how,

Peter Hawes, Kevin Healey,(Recovery Network Toronto)  Egan Bidois, Mike llm Kruger, Rachel Waddingham, Richard Walkinshaw, Shirley Coffey, Lani Maria E, Paul Baker , Margaret Wylie,  Marry Maddock, Earla Dunbar Suzanne Beachy and loads more all came together to offer advice friendship and support. Support that helped me Barrie Macvicar find the strength to both change and rebuild my life.

On meeting Peter i was heavily medicated. On multiple medications & diagnosed Paranoid Schizophrenic. I was in mental health services & was treated in both the hospital setting, as well as in the community. For the last two years of my time in services i was also fortunate enough to have 3 days per week home support.from a charity known as Penumbra.

Thanks to Peter and all the others i am sat here today no longer in mental health services nor hearing voices and no longer in need of support. I was discharged in August of 2013.  I now live medication free. I no longer have any active Schizophrenia and i have the doctors letter to prove it. I am just getting on with enjoying living my life as best as i can. Independently. Still using the tools and the knowledge given to me by my crew above to keep myself well. At the same time as having the comfort of knowing they are all still here online at the touch of a button.

Yeah ! There is a lot to be said for online support and the friendships and knowledge that can be gained right here on

SOCIAL MEDIA !

So get yourself started and take a look at Peter’s websites below. Where you can see his work at

VOICES INC ONLINE

you can also watch a film of Peter here doing some of his Glass work and at the bottom of this page you can a look at Peters latest genius creation.

RECOVERY BOX ! 

Peter is my brother from another mother he’s both a friend and an inspiration and i’m sure once you will see why on reading the remainder of this blog. 

Thanks everyone 

Barrie Macvicar. 

So

What is Hopesturn?

An article by Peter Hawes

Based on a project designed by everyone

So I feel to explain hopes-turn I should give a back history of the realisations that led to hopes-turn. I spent 15 years in the psych system believing one universal truth that was pushed down our throats for years. It was quite simply “you have a mental illness and medication helps so take your meds” This turned out to be untrue for me and multiple others, although I will admit that there is some the bio medical model works well for. I dont meet them often but I have seen the rare few. I then exited that system and became a victim of trauma and then later joined the hearing voices network. The hvn was somewhat productive but when I tried to push other ideas and views I was asked to conform. I couldn’t do it as it involved lying to the people on things I believed to be true. So as it turns out I did basically 15 years in a one size fits all system and then another 3 in a one size fits all system. As if that wasn’t bad enough I started my own organisation voices inc. Which was based on art therapy involving fused glass and my own psychoanalytical/ holistic theories on recovery. Voices inc while being a good project and helping a lot of people didn’t work for everyone. We had a 70% variable success rate of recovery for our attendees. Perhaps that’s cause it was a one size fits all system...... WTF are we all doing us holistic heroes in mental health like seriously there is no one size fits all system. I myself was very opinionated and just didn’t get the whole everyone’s different individuality thing so my thinking at the time was very black and white and I had the belief that this works for everyone cause it works for me and others. I will admit it was a bullshit attitude to have. But I never said I was ever perfect nor that my journey was complete I always said when up on stage that we are all still learning and growing together. Myself included. So I took some time off to learn what I needed to learn and evolve into who I wanted to be. I've spent the better part of the last year learning to listen to people and understand individuality and learning to be a team player and delegate as I felt these were all skills I needed to learn and doing so would make me a better leader and friend and just person in general. Somewhere between listening to people and understanding people me and my awesome bunch of past and present voices inc members came up with an idea. I remember the day well we were all sitting round at my right hand man Michaels place bitching about the system and lack of supports, when Robbie one of my proteges made the comment its a shame we cant get voices inc centres set up everywhere then we could reach everyone. I thought about this and theres no way we could reach everyone thats impossible. So my response was yeah voices inc is awesome robbie but I wish there were more holistic methods coming through so we could cater to the choice and individuality of the consumer. I believe it was tori who made the comment hey if we took out all the holistic therapy and art therapy out of voices inc could the same methods be used to set something else up? I went holy crap that girl has a point. Thus we all became very excited about the possibility of the new project we had devised over a bitching session at the current mental health system. Thus Hopesturn project was born. It is among my favourite projects for the simple truth that it was created not just by me but by multiple members and so has many shades and different perspectives. So now you have the story of how it was born it still doesnt answer wtf is hopes-turn? Hopes turn is a peer run initiative, hopes turn is you, hopes turn is me and hopes turn is anyone who wants to make a difference. Basically its a collective of knowledge and ideas and resources to establish different peer support groups. Hopesturn is brilliantly an anagram for “Helping Other Peers Establish Support Through Unification Recovery Network” There will be many exciting advances and opportunities in hopesturn such as--------- hopesturn radio- where peers can run there own time slot on a radio show about whatever subject they want. The benefits of this are that not only does it keep the peers running the shows motivated to talk or educate on topics they already know about, but it also provides an entirely peer run radio station for people to listen to on a variety of topics. Hopesturn peer support app – The hopes turn app is being designed at the moment and will be a bunch of chat rooms with possible gearing towards a social network theme. So that it is connecting peers with similar lived experience to each other to chat and make connections whatever there framework be it mental illness or trauma based or behaviour based or the aliens implanted a chip in my brain and that’s where my distress comes from :-P either way there’s sure to be a chat room or option to network with peers with similar views. There are also currently being set up a bunch of resources usable by hopes turn members to create and developed there own peer support groups from online conference rooms to learning resources around topics based on networking or finding a venue or even raising funds to keep your group running. The goal of hopesturn is to establish the training and resources to develop more peer run options so if anyone has an idea for a peer support group they can get this up and running. For example lets say there’s a guy called bob. We will for the sake of the argument say bob has bipolar the mental illness and identifies as such because that’s his framework for his experiences and symptoms. (I personally think bipolar actually is biological and has to do with a sensitivity to hormones and instability in environment in child hood where the child has many ups and downs) It does not matter what I think though, cause this is about bob and how bob sees things. Bob has found that dancing helps him with his highs and lows and helps him keep balance in his life. Bob then wonders if this would help other people given how beneficial dancing is for him. Lets also say for the sake of the argument bob is on lithium remembering that bob is in the mental illness framework but bobs not anti psychiatry nor pro psychiatry he just finds lithium helps him (I'm still anti psychiatry and anti meds but pro free choice and I can be anti psychiatry and anti meds cause it works well for me but each to there own) So bob decides to try set up a group called Bipolar Bobs Dancing group. Lets say he decides to run it on a Monday night for 3 hours between 5pm and 8pm. But bob while having a good idea has absolutely no idea on how to get his idea from a hypothetical to a reality as hes never done anything like this before. So bob jumps on hopesturn and finds an article on sourcing products to sell at markets. Bob is also recommended by another member dan who runs a group for depression about crowd funding and finds an article on how to set that up plus get some kick ass exposure for his crowd funding campaign. Bob also finds on hopesturn 3 other members in his local area with bipolar who are interested in helping set up his group. Bob also finds on hopesturn network a mental health worker who works in his local area and will organise a venue. Bob also finds a link to a guy who will design a flier for his group. Bob sets up the crowd funding campaign and maxes out exposure and while the crowd funding campaign is doing its thing raising cash bob gets the flier he had designed canvassed around town and local organisations. Bob uses some of the crowd funding money to run the group for the first month and invests the rest into sellable market products which arrive a week after the group starts and gets an awesome turn out. Member’s who attend bobs group are more then happy to help raise funds by doing markets sell the stock bob has ordered in. Before you know it bobs group has become a social enterprise and begins to grow. Bob then gets some of his best dancers and starts a flash mob in the city to raise awareness for bipolar and gets an article in the paper and segment on the news with contacts he found on hopeturn for media publicity. So you see how this sort of thing can just keep growing when a collective of knowledge and resources and people work together. I've done a lot in mental health and my reputation and accomplishments are re-known and I get a lot of people asking me how I accomplished all that I have in the last six years from the whole public speaking, websites, book and articles and being on tv to setting up 2 mental health organisations. The truth is there’s nothing special about me.. sure I have a high iq and adhd and a bunch of cool people behind me but at the end of the day I'm just like you the only difference is I worked out six or seven years ago that there is nothing we cant do as humans, we are basically geared to evolve and grow on a daily basis so the words can't or impossible are to me just bullshit words for things we haven’t figured out how to do yet. So I never stop I just keep looking for solutions I'm hoping that this project designed by the collective of peers will reach so many and help them figure out how to do things and over time see the possibilities are limitless. I am also hoping that it will provide more peer support options to cater to peoples individuality so that many systems can be developed cause not everything works for everyone and its important to have multiple options and support resources for consumers to access to fullly aid them in there recovery, whatever that looks like to each and everyone. Remember we own our own recovery and its different for all of us. So stay tuned guys cause this is all going off like a match at a gas station in the not too distant future . Me and the team are just finalising some of the projects and then BOOM. I will add some fliers of some of the projects that hopes turn has initiated so far and I have included voices inc because the methods removing the art therapy and holistic therapy are what we used to get the other groups up and running

. 

Above (right) you can see some examples of Peter Hawes glass work. Peter is also well known as Peter Hawes Glass Artist and here below he shows how some of that work is done. 

RECOVERY BOX  ! The Recovery Box idea was formulated on 27 February 2018 when Peter Hawes and Douglas Holmes met in Point Cook, Victoria to put their ideas down on paper and to start clarifying what was needed to turn the Recovery Box from an idea into a project that would change how information would be made available to Consumer, Carers, Mental Health Professionals and the general public. The original idea was to develop an App that could be incorporated into the product Peter had developed and was already selling successfully online.

The original idea was to develop an App that could be incorporated into the product Peter had developed and was already selling successfully online.

However as the brainstorming continued using GLOSS – OFF, both Peter and Douglas made the decision to rebrand a box with its own firmware and content.

This link will explains GLOSS – OFF https://youtu.be/BDJyhqbsZv0

Peter organised a meeting with Kevin and we agreed to work together to see how we could turn this idea into a product that would revelocision how new people coming into the current Mental Health system would access information that could improves people lifes journey

A small working group of interested people would be asked to participate in a working group to assist with identifying what information would be included under each of the heading in the App:

The Headings for each of the Channels include:

Stories Coping Strategies Recovery Resources Medical solutions Events To view RECOVERY BOX - CLICK HERE

[ukdamo]

KZ Mauthausen

One of mine...

KZ Mauthausen

It’s no sort of a boast to say, ‘I’ve been to a few concentration camps’. Opera houses; perhaps: art galleries; perhaps: concentration camps, hardly. It’s true nonetheless, I have visited a few concentration camps. It’s not that that the camps hold a lurid fascination for me, or that I am impelled to visit and tick them off on a list. Concentration camps are not munros. When I try to analyse my reasons for visiting, they multiply, become elusive, and I struggle to apprehend and organise them. They are definitely manifold. There is an historian’s interest – longstanding now - perhaps an integral part of my make up, inescapable. There’s also muted sense of obligation on my part, a sense of ‘ought to’. That sense pervades other aspects of my travel, too – it takes me to battlefields and war cemeteries wherever I find myself: USA, Turkey, Tunisia, France, Belgium, Russia. The ought to is, I think, a way of grappling with, and trying to understand big questions – questions about war, about sacrifice, about the deepest human motivators. Standing on the ground where things happened helps me focus my mind, offers me a degree of clarity, helps me draw out the physical threads of place and time and interweave them with the cognitive threads of what I know. It’s invariably humbling. I have a sense, too, courtesy of those who deny the Holocaust (I think of David Irving, in particular), that the Shoah needs contemporary witnesses, people who have been, have seen, have been humbled and upset, and can testify to it. There’s one more reason, which is more deeply personal: recognition that it could have been me. More: that it could still be me. This sense of personal involvement stems from being homosexual. When I say, ‘It could have been me’ I recognise that I always cast myself as a victim – never a perpetrator. And I always think I wouldn’t have survived. In those camps where there is a book of visitors’ remarks, perhaps the most common entry is ‘Never again’. I think that an empty slogan. The Nazis didn’t invent genocide, though they industrialised and perfected it in ways that are so perverse that they call into question our shared humanity. But, if I speak of a shared humanity, I have always to pose the question – might I have been the one who slammed the Gaskammer door shut on someone else? I recall a German TV documentary where the teenage children of Holocaust survivors revisited the places their parents or grandparents had been so brutally treated. Sitting with them, sifting through photographs and documents, were German teenagers. One of the Jewish youngsters said, ‘I’m always scared that I will see the face of someone I recognise’. ‘So am I’, replied the German youngster. Yes. That captures it, perfectly. It is important to sift yourself. And some locations, because of their poignancy, or power, or pain, make that demand urgent and insistent. As I noted above, I don’t believe in Never Again. I’ve lived through the Srenbrenica and Rwanda. Never Again is a cheap shot. Conventional piety. Wishful thinking. I have no truck with it. I believe in vigilance and respect… I crossed from Germany into Austria in the late evening of October 19th, at Passau, where the rivers Inn and Ilz combine with the Danube. The Hitler family lived in Passau from 1892-4, moving there when Adolf was three. My driving route took me along the right bank of the Danube, heading south east, towards Linz. A full moon was reflected in the river and, on the left bank, a sequence of picturesque villages with their churches and castles illuminated. I arrived in Linz a little before 9pm and headed straight to the hostel. It’s a purpose-built, post war edifice with clean 1950’s lines and interior spaces to match. The rooms, all en-suite, are impressively comfy and airy. It looked a very efficient set up. I slept well. The following morning, when I drew back the curtain, the window was misted with condensation. Wiping it aside, I could see autumnal leaves outlined crisply against a cornflower white sky. That boded well for the day. After a good breakfast (a typical Austrian affair of cold meats, cheese, fruit, yoghurt, breads and cakes), I organised myself and went into town. Linz is as lovely as you might expect a baroque town on the Danube to be. I spent the morning meandering, stopping off to admire churches and the architectural fancies that offered themselves up. The High Mass was drawing to a close when I got to the New Cathedral (a 19th CE Neo-Gothic build), so I sat quietly and waited for the dismissal, so I could then take a few photos without disturbing the service. There was a small choir – five or six voices – singing a glorious polyphonic mass setting. As midday approached, I returned to the car, crossed the river, and followed the left bank. The Danube was actually blue, for once: generally-speaking it’s a mucky brown. Following the river downstream, Mauthausen is a bare 12 miles from Linz. I was there in 20 minutes. To get to the camp, you turn off the main road and drive through the village, climbing the valley side until you reach the ridge line. The first thing you note when you park and get out is the view. It’s a beautiful situation – to the south lies village, the river and the Danube valley – lots of woodland and rolling hills with isolated houses and farms. The camp looks like a granite-built fort. Its towers and retaining walls are imposing, not to say intimidating. It has permanence and power written all over it. Exactly as intended. Mauthausen was a Grade III camp, intended to be the toughest environment conceivable for the incorrigible political enemies of the Reich. The Nazis intended that the intelligentsia of Europe come to Mauthausen and be worked to death. Its nickname among the staff of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) was the Knockenmühle – the Bone Grinder. It was founded immediately after the Anschluss (1938) and was one of the last camps to be liberated. The Bone Grinder… therein lies the key. Mauthausen was founded because of the adjacent granite quarry. Its stone had been used to pave the streets of Vienna: now it was used to build the camp itself (inmates transferred from Dachau) and then the grandiose Nazi monuments that glowered down on the subjects of the 1000 Year Reich. Some of its stone was used in the Congress Hall, and other buildings, of the Reichsparteitagsgelände (Nazi Party Rally Grounds), in Nuremburg, which I had left only the day before. As the war progressed, and Germany secured direct and indirect control over more and more of Europe, the inmates became more diverse in their origins – to the Germans and Austrians were added Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Spaniards, French, Greeks. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, trade unionists, socialists, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, Jews, Russian (and other) prisoners of war, partisans from Yugoslavia: in their hundreds of thousands, they came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps and were worked to death in the quarries, or gassed, shot, hung. Estimates vary – but it is reasonable to believe that 320,000 people came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps. 75% of them didn’t survive. But death was profitable: in 1944, the camp turned a profit of 144 million Euros (at 2013 exchange rate). When I came to Mauthausen I knew what to expect. The first camp I ever visited was KZ Sachsenhausen. It lies to the north of Berlin, in the village of Oranienburg. I went there in a bitterly cold February, in 1996, to stand before the memorial to the homosexuals done to death by the Nazis, and leave a poem and some rainbow ribbons. That same trip, I went to the Haus am Wannsee, which hosted the conference convened in January, 1942 at which the planned extermination of European Jewry was formalised, organised and rubber stamped. If Sachsenhausen brought tears, Wannsee brought an even icier chill – the hand of the perpetrators. Crunching up the drive towards that familiar building, sited on an idyllic lake (Heydrich intended it to be his home after the war), there was menace in the air. In January 2005, I went to Prague with Peter, and intended to make a side trip to Theresienstadt. Peter said he’d skip that but then changed his mind and came with me. I think he regretted it: it was grim. As I knew it would be. Almost exactly a year later, Gordon, Richard and I went to Krakow in Poland. Inevitably, we went to Auschwitz. It was a bitter winter, and the camp was a snow-covered expanse. It was easy, in the mind’s eye, to step back in time and imagine being there in the winter of 1944: the war lost but the exterminations more frantic than ever, the levels of degradation surpassing even the obscenities that preceded them. As I walked towards the camp entrance at Mauthausen, I brought these experiences with me. I had an idea of what lay behind that forbidding perimeter. I didn’t expect to be surprised. I did expect to be upset – as I had been before. I expected to be rattled. To be provoked. To be made to squirm and feel uneasy. The visit is self-directed, though an excellent audio-guide and a simple map make sure you don’t get lost. Some of the camp buildings are no longer there: the SS barracks are gone: the site is now the memorial garden. Some barrack blocks are demolished but others remain to suggest what they were like when the camp was in use, others are exhibition spaces. The prison, the execution rooms, the crematoria, are all extant. The exhibition spaces are sensitively and comprehensively detailed, and give a genuine insight into the camp’s history. You are uncompromisingly confronted by the filthiness of Nazism. Each camp I have visited offers a unique experience, though each share common threads. Each has shown me something I hadn’t grasped until that point. At Mauthausen, it was the level of brutality dispensed to children. Looking at the youthful faces in inmate photographs was very disturbing. The barrack blocks are stark: the triple bunks, kapos’ day rooms, and the washrooms stood empty and silent. The washrooms rattle me: they were favoured suicide locations for prisoners in extremis. I’ve seen photos of emaciated victims, strangulated on taps, pipes and even toilet fixtures. I moved on. The triple bunks – top bunks were the most sought after – men topped and tailed – perhaps three per level, nine in all. The ones on the lower bunks were subject to the dysenteric effluvia of those on the upper ones.  When a transport arrived, overcrowding became endemic. In the prison block, you can see the ‘interrogation’ rooms, placed so the screams could be heard throughout the cell block. Below, in the basement, the exectution rooms. Prisoners were shot in the back of the neck (I saw such a set up at Sachsenhausen) or hung from a pulleyed hook, or gassed, or injected with petrol, or stripped, sprayed with water and left to freeze to death outside in the winter temperatures, or pushed off the quarry heights, or made to push others off the quarry heights and then shoved after them. Others were driven onto the electrified fence, or shot whilst penned into the garage courtyard. The bodies were cremated by prisoners who were themselves shot and subsequently cremated. Mauthausen has two double ovens in situ and complete. They stand open-mawed and stark. Topf and Sons Ltd, produced them. They were manufacturers of industrial malting ovens for breweries, and commercial incinerators. Their chief executive saw a brilliant opportunity to expand operations and submitted designs for ovens that could operate continually as crematoria: the Nazis were more than happy to sign the contracts. As Topf’s letterhead said on their Auschwitz correspondence: Always ready to serve you… This is what concentration camps are like. This is why it’s important for me to come, and stand, and be upset, and remember. At Sachsenhausen it was the crematorium that brought me close to dissolution. At Auschwitz, the gas chamber. At Theresienstadt, it was the sight of that vile slogan, glimpsed through a flurry of snow: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. At Mauthausen, I felt more composed than I had expected. Reflective, quiet, brimful of thoughts and the clamour of the past but it was manageable and I felt able to ‘hold the ring’. Having paid my respects at the memorial plaques, I left the camp proper and walked slowly through the memorial garden, towards the quarry. I made a mental note to pay my respects at these formal monuments on the way back, and continued to make my way to the stone works. The well-made path gave out and I noted that I was now walking on the uneven setts and broken stones that led along the edge of the quarry, to the Death Steps. I was alone by now. Everything was quiet, save for the crunch of my footfalls on the stones. Their unevenness threatened to throw me off balance, and I found myself looking at my feet and paying close attention to the sensation of planting my foot, feeling my ankle adjust to keep me upright. As I type now, I can recall the sensations and sounds with absolute clarity. As I got nearer and nearer to the Steps I began to feel genuinely unsteady; there was an upwelling of panic, a constriction in the chest, a stomach-churning gripe: I was unable to proceed. I feared that I was going to crumple to the ground and cry uncontrollably. I stood stock still. I had to physically regain my balance. If there’d been something close at hand to grasp, I would have held on to it. But there wasn’t. I had to be still, gather my scattered self, recognise what was happening, compose myself, regain a measure of control. When I’d done so, the sudden realisation dawned that I couldn’t walk down the Steps. I knew it would be sacrilegious to trip down those stairs in my Fitflops. But I also knew I had to get down. I had to stand in the quarry. This was the place where remembrance meant most. To me, it felt an age, but it can only have been a few seconds: the solution was plain. I must go unshod. Bare-foot, I could do it. It all felt OK then. After a deep breath the urge to cry and the unsteadiness left me. There was still the hypersensitivity, as I placed my feet on the uneven stones, but I could make my way to the Steps. I had another lurch as I stood at the top. But I was able to quieten that, and sit down. I unlaced my shoes and slipped them and my socks off. A young family was coming up: the kids were counting the number of steps aloud: Ein hundert sechs und achtszig – 186. They passed by, making no remark. The stones were cold but supportive. Berries and twigs and clusters of fallen leaves were scattered on the granite steps, and I could feel their imprint as I descended. Down I went, where so many had gone before me, beaten and driven. In the quarry itself, the workings reared up before me: a cliff. Nature had softened and reclaimed some of it. There were two great water-filled pits that reflected the autumnal leaves and blue sky. It was strangely reaffirming. There were stone chips underfoot, as well as springy grass. I stooped to pick one up and carry away with me. Once home, I will put it alongside the brick-flake from Auschwitz, in plain view, where it will help me remember. I walked for some time, occupied with my thoughts, wondering at the strength and unexpected immediacy of my upset at the top of the quarry. I remembered seeing ‘Bent’ – firstly a play by Martin Sherman (1979), later a film by Sean Mathias. It dealt with two gay men sent to Dachau in 1934. A scene in it had them working moving heavy stone blocks. There was some clue there to my distress. And there was an incongruity: I remembered that beautiful polyohonic mass setting, 12 miles and 20 minutes away.... And I had been bare-foot once before. 20 + years ago, in Lourdes. I had make my way around the massive, verdisgris’d Stations there, It was my leave-taking from the Friars Minor. The circumstance was very different, but the motivation shared some ground. Standing bare-foot on the bare earth and experiencing things for what they actually are; there is comfort in this discomfort. For me, Mauthausen had brought home again the reality. Not an issue of ‘there and then’ but ‘here and now’. And so it must remain, to me. Without vigilance and respect, I believe it will come again, and swallow our humanity. damian, november 19th, 2013

[ukdamo]

KZ Mauthausen

A reflection, written by me, written after a visit on 2013

KZ Mauthausen

It’s no sort of a boast to say, ‘I’ve been to a few concentration camps’. Opera houses; perhaps: art galleries; perhaps: concentration camps, hardly. It’s true nonetheless, I have visited a few concentration camps. It’s not that that the camps hold a lurid fascination for me, or that I am impelled to visit and tick them off on a list. Concentration camps are not munros. When I try to analyse my reasons for visiting, they multiply, become elusive, and I struggle to apprehend and organise them. They are definitely manifold. There is an historian’s interest – longstanding now - perhaps an integral part of my make up, inescapable. There’s also muted sense of obligation on my part, a sense of ‘ought to’. That sense pervades other aspects of my travel, too – it takes me to battlefields and war cemeteries wherever I find myself: USA, Turkey, Tunisia, France, Belgium, Russia. The ought to is, I think, a way of grappling with, and trying to understand big questions – questions about war, about sacrifice, about the deepest human motivators. Standing on the ground where things happened helps me focus my mind, offers me a degree of clarity, helps me draw out the physical threads of place and time and interweave them with the cognitive threads of what I know. It’s invariably humbling. I have a sense, too, courtesy of those who deny the Holocaust (I think of David Irving, in particular), that the Shoah needs contemporary witnesses, people who have been, have seen, have been humbled and upset, and can testify to it. There’s one more reason, which is more deeply personal: recognition that it could have been me. More: that it could still be me. This sense of personal involvement stems from being homosexual. When I say, ‘It could have been me’ I recognise that I always cast myself as a victim – never a perpetrator. And I always think I wouldn’t have survived. In those camps where there is a book of visitors’ remarks, perhaps the most common entry is ‘Never again’. I think that an empty slogan. The Nazis didn’t invent genocide, though they industrialised and perfected it in ways that are so perverse that they call into question our shared humanity. But, if I speak of a shared humanity, I have always to pose the question – might I have been the one who slammed the Gaskammer door shut on someone else? I recall a German TV documentary where the teenage children of Holocaust survivors revisited the places their parents or grandparents had been so brutally treated. Sitting with them, sifting through photographs and documents, were German teenagers. One of the Jewish youngsters said, ‘I’m always scared that I will see the face of someone I recognise’. ‘So am I’, replied the German youngster. Yes. That captures it, perfectly. It is important to sift yourself. And some locations, because of their poignancy, or power, or pain, make that demand urgent and insistent. As I noted above, I don’t believe in Never Again. I’ve lived through the Srenbrenica and Rwanda. Never Again is a cheap shot. Conventional piety. Wishful thinking. I have no truck with it. I believe in vigilance and respect… I crossed from Germany into Austria in the late evening of October 19th, at Passau, where the rivers Inn and Ilz combine with the Danube. The Hitler family lived in Passau from 1892-4, moving there when Adolf was three. My driving route took me along the right bank of the Danube, heading south east, towards Linz. A full moon was reflected in the river and, on the left bank, a sequence of picturesque villages with their churches and castles illuminated. I arrived in Linz a little before 9pm and headed straight to the hostel. It’s a purpose-built, post war edifice with clean 1950’s lines and interior spaces to match. The rooms, all en-suite, are impressively comfy and airy. It looked a very efficient set up. I slept well. The following morning, when I drew back the curtain, the window was misted with condensation. Wiping it aside, I could see autumnal leaves outlined crisply against a cornflower white sky. That boded well for the day. After a good breakfast (a typical Austrian affair of cold meats, cheese, fruit, yoghurt, breads and cakes), I organised myself and went into town. Linz is as lovely as you might expect a baroque town on the Danube to be. I spent the morning meandering, stopping off to admire churches and the architectural fancies that offered themselves up. The High Mass was drawing to a close when I got to the New Cathedral (a 19th CE Neo-Gothic build), so I sat quietly and waited for the dismissal, so I could then take a few photos without disturbing the service. There was a small choir – five or six voices – singing a glorious polyphonic mass setting. As midday approached, I returned to the car, crossed the river, and followed the left bank. The Danube was actually blue, for once: generally-speaking it’s a mucky brown. Following the river downstream, Mauthausen is a bare 12 miles from Linz. I was there in 20 minutes. To get to the camp, you turn off the main road and drive through the village, climbing the valley side until you reach the ridge line. The first thing you note when you park and get out is the view. It’s a beautiful situation – to the south lies village, the river and the Danube valley – lots of woodland and rolling hills with isolated houses and farms. The camp looks like a granite-built fort. Its towers and retaining walls are imposing, not to say intimidating. It has permanence and power written all over it. Exactly as intended. Mauthausen was a Grade III camp, intended to be the toughest environment conceivable for the incorrigible political enemies of the Reich. The Nazis intended that the intelligentsia of Europe come to Mauthausen and be worked to death. Its nickname among the staff of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) was the Knockenmühle – the Bone Grinder. It was founded immediately after the Anschluss (1938) and was one of the last camps to be liberated. The Bone Grinder… therein lies the key. Mauthausen was founded because of the adjacent granite quarry. Its stone had been used to pave the streets of Vienna: now it was used to build the camp itself (inmates transferred from Dachau) and then the grandiose Nazi monuments that glowered down on the subjects of the 1000 Year Reich. Some of its stone was used in the Congress Hall, and other buildings, of the Reichsparteitagsgelände (Nazi Party Rally Grounds), in Nuremburg, which I had left only the day before. As the war progressed, and Germany secured direct and indirect control over more and more of Europe, the inmates became more diverse in their origins – to the Germans and Austrians were added Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Spaniards, French, Greeks. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, trade unionists, socialists, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, Jews, Russian (and other) prisoners of war, partisans from Yugoslavia: in their hundreds of thousands, they came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps and were worked to death in the quarries, or gassed, shot, hung. Estimates vary – but it is reasonable to believe that 320,000 people came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps. 75% of them didn’t survive. But death was profitable: in 1944, the camp turned a profit of 144 million Euros (at 2013 exchange rate). When I came to Mauthausen I knew what to expect. The first camp I ever visited was KZ Sachsenhausen. It lies to the north of Berlin, in the village of Oranienburg. I went there in a bitterly cold February, in 1996, to stand before the memorial to the homosexuals done to death by the Nazis, and leave a poem and some rainbow ribbons. That same trip, I went to the Haus am Wannsee, which hosted the conference convened in January, 1942 at which the planned extermination of European Jewry was formalised, organised and rubber stamped. If Sachsenhausen brought tears, Wannsee brought an even icier chill – the hand of the perpetrators. Crunching up the drive towards that familiar building, sited on an idyllic lake (Heydrich intended it to be his home after the war), there was menace in the air. In January 2005, I went to Prague with Peter, and intended to make a side trip to Theresienstadt. Peter said he’d skip that but then changed his mind and came with me. I think he regretted it: it was grim. As I knew it would be. Almost exactly a year later, Gordon, Richard and I went to Krakow in Poland. Inevitably, we went to Auschwitz. It was a bitter winter, and the camp was a snow-covered expanse. It was easy, in the mind’s eye, to step back in time and imagine being there in the winter of 1944: the war lost but the exterminations more frantic than ever, the levels of degradation surpassing even the obscenities that preceded them. As I walked towards the camp entrance at Mauthausen, I brought these experiences with me. I had an idea of what lay behind that forbidding perimeter. I didn’t expect to be surprised. I did expect to be upset – as I had been before. I expected to be rattled. To be provoked. To be made to squirm and feel uneasy. The visit is self-directed, though an excellent audio-guide and a simple map make sure you don’t get lost. Some of the camp buildings are no longer there: the SS barracks are gone: the site is now the memorial garden. Some barrack blocks are demolished but others remain to suggest what they were like when the camp was in use, others are exhibition spaces. The prison, the execution rooms, the crematoria, are all extant. The exhibition spaces are sensitively and comprehensively detailed, and give a genuine insight into the camp’s history. You are uncompromisingly confronted by the filthiness of Nazism. Each camp I have visited offers a unique experience, though each share common threads. Each has shown me something I hadn’t grasped until that point. At Mauthausen, it was the level of brutality dispensed to children. Looking at the youthful faces in inmate photographs was very disturbing. The barrack blocks are stark: the triple bunks, kapos’ day rooms, and the washrooms stood empty and silent. The washrooms rattle me: they were favoured suicide locations for prisoners in extremis. I’ve seen photos of emaciated victims, strangulated on taps, pipes and even toilet fixtures. I moved on. The triple bunks – top bunks were the most sought after – men topped and tailed – perhaps three per level, nine in all. The ones on the lower bunks were subject to the dysenteric effluvia of those on the upper ones.  When a transport arrived, overcrowding became endemic. In the prison block, you can see the ‘interrogation’ rooms, placed so the screams could be heard throughout the cell block. Below, in the basement, the exectution rooms. Prisoners were shot in the back of the neck (I saw such a set up at Sachsenhausen) or hung from a pulleyed hook, or gassed, or injected with petrol, or stripped, sprayed with water and left to freeze to death outside in the winter temperatures, or pushed off the quarry heights, or made to push others off the quarry heights and then shoved after them. Others were driven onto the electrified fence, or shot whilst penned into the garage courtyard. The bodies were cremated by prisoners who were themselves shot and subsequently cremated. Mauthausen has two double ovens in situ and complete. They stand open-mawed and stark. Topf and Sons Ltd, produced them. They were manufacturers of industrial malting ovens for breweries, and commercial incinerators. Their chief executive saw a brilliant opportunity to expand operations and submitted designs for ovens that could operate continually as crematoria: the Nazis were more than happy to sign the contracts. As Topf’s letterhead said on their Auschwitz correspondence: Always ready to serve you… This is what concentration camps are like. This is why it’s important for me to come, and stand, and be upset, and remember. At Sachsenhausen it was the crematorium that brought me close to dissolution. At Auschwitz, the gas chamber. At Theresienstadt, it was the sight of that vile slogan, glimpsed through a flurry of snow: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. At Mauthausen, I felt more composed than I had expected. Reflective, quiet, brimful of thoughts and the clamour of the past but it was manageable and I felt able to ‘hold the ring’. Having paid my respects at the memorial plaques, I left the camp proper and walked slowly through the memorial garden, towards the quarry. I made a mental note to pay my respects at these formal monuments on the way back, and continued to make my way to the stone works. The well-made path gave out and I noted that I was now walking on the uneven setts and broken stones that led along the edge of the quarry, to the Death Steps. I was alone by now. Everything was quiet, save for the crunch of my footfalls on the stones. Their unevenness threatened to throw me off balance, and I found myself looking at my feet and paying close attention to the sensation of planting my foot, feeling my ankle adjust to keep me upright. As I type now, I can recall the sensations and sounds with absolute clarity. As I got nearer and nearer to the Steps I began to feel genuinely unsteady; there was an upwelling of panic, a constriction in the chest, a stomach-churning gripe: I was unable to proceed. I feared that I was going to crumple to the ground and cry uncontrollably. I stood stock still. I had to physically regain my balance. If there’d been something close at hand to grasp, I would have held on to it. But there wasn’t. I had to be still, gather my scattered self, recognise what was happening, compose myself, regain a measure of control. When I’d done so, the sudden realisation dawned that I couldn’t walk down the Steps. I knew it would be sacrilegious to trip down those stairs in my Fitflops. But I also knew I had to get down. I had to stand in the quarry. This was the place where remembrance meant most. To me, it felt an age, but it can only have been a few seconds: the solution was plain. I must go unshod. Bare-foot, I could do it. It all felt OK then. After a deep breath the urge to cry and the unsteadiness left me. There was still the hypersensitivity, as I placed my feet on the uneven stones, but I could make my way to the Steps. I had another lurch as I stood at the top. But I was able to quieten that, and sit down. I unlaced my shoes and slipped them and my socks off. A young family was coming up: the kids were counting the number of steps aloud: Ein hundert sechs und achtszig – 186. They passed by, making no remark. The stones were cold but supportive. Berries and twigs and clusters of fallen leaves were scattered on the granite steps, and I could feel their imprint as I descended. Down I went, where so many had gone before me, beaten and driven. In the quarry itself, the workings reared up before me: a cliff. Nature had softened and reclaimed some of it. There were two great water-filled pits that reflected the autumnal leaves and blue sky. It was strangely reaffirming. There were stone chips underfoot, as well as springy grass. I stooped to pick one up and carry away with me. Once home, I will put it alongside the brick-flake from Auschwitz, in plain view, where it will help me remember. I walked for some time, occupied with my thoughts, wondering at the strength and unexpected immediacy of my upset at the top of the quarry. I remembered seeing ‘Bent’ – firstly a play by Martin Sherman (1979), later a film by Sean Mathias. It dealt with two gay men sent to Dachau in 1934. A scene in it had them working moving heavy stone blocks. There was some clue there to my distress. And there was an incongruity: I remembered that beautiful polyohonic mass setting, 12 miles and 20 minutes away.... And I had been bare-foot once before. 20 + years ago, in Lourdes. I had make my way around the massive, verdisgris’d Stations there, It was my leave-taking from the Friars Minor. The circumstance was very different, but the motivation shared some ground. Standing bare-foot on the bare earth and experiencing things for what they actually are; there is comfort in this discomfort. For me, Mauthausen had brought home again the reality. Not an issue of ‘there and then’ but ‘here and now’. And so it must remain, to me. Without vigilance and respect, I believe it will come again, and swallow our humanity. damian, november 19th, 2013