Thembi Mutch
Photo by Luke Thomas
By Thembi Mutch
September 11, 2008
It’s been huge news here, the Big Bang experiment. So, whilst Americans bicker about ‘lipstick on a pig’ – (what a fabulous image, where would it go? Around the snout, or decoratively across the whole face?) – we focus on bigger issues. Like where did we all come from? Or more specifically, how did we all come from.
It’s great living in a country where anti-evolutionists don’t even get a mention at all. It’s just assumed that we come from a group of prions, or eons, or just ‘stuff,’ and the big G (or Big A, if you’re a Muslim) doesn’t even get a look in. Hurrah!
So, the deal is, at 9am, as I stumbled around searching for the coffee and treading on the cats, whilst all over Britain we collectively all tune into the radio, we hear a group of scientists in a Swiss laboratory try and recreate the moment just after the Big Bang.
Or was it the actual moment of the Big Bang?
Somewhere on the French/Swiss border, in a place called CERN, a thing is connected to another thing, and when those two things are connected, well, not much happened. I’m not great at science, but it’s the genuine particle!
Put it this way, when I discussed the issue with the nine-year-old kids playing on my street (yes, in ye olde theme tyme Britaine we still do such archaic things as ‘play out,’ and no, the kids are not all dressed up in bandannas brandishing flick knives. They’re normal kids with scuffed knees, using jumpers for goal posts, and with snotty noses)…. Anyway, the kids argued about whether the scientists were actually recreating the earth, or just pretending to. I think that pretty much sums it up.
Needless to say, listening to the sound of a wire, or an electrode (we were never told which) connect to another, did not make for good radio. In fact, enchantingly, the presenter managed to talk across the ‘moment of truth,’ which lent the whole thing an element of farce.
It’s endearing the way the BBC still tries to bring subjects of enormous enormity to us plebby listeners, and yet fails to ask the basic questions about where we live, and how we live, and what it means to be a citizen. Instead, the BBC (whom I work for, so I am foolishly biting the hand that feeds me) harangues us about the credit crunch, the appalling reception of Prime Minister Gordon Brown at a recent meeting with trade unionists. Another news item dealt with the fact the Russians have planted a flag on the bottom of the ocean at the North Pole, because there aren’t enough ice floes now to plant them on. And because they’ve worked out that though there’s nothing of any value at the North Pole (YET), there will be. I like this idea – it seems worthy of further exploration, and in some way linked to interesting attitudes to space and territory, which are changing incredibly fast as we map out cyberspace. And linked also to the growing surveillance culture here in Britain, where there are more than 37 cameras watching us every ten square meters.
In some ways navigating my way around the sheer amount of white noise available in the public sphere is so exhausting that eventually I fail to have any reactions at all, apart from a general sense of ‘God, inequality is increasing inexorably.’ Or, ‘God, not another camera watching me do something that I haven’t even realised is wrong.’
(Funny how I revert to extortions of God when things are difficult).
For example, a friend emailed me to say a colleague in another town is being taken to court because he left his bin lid open, and then challenged the bin men when they refused to take it. So he’s going to court because his bin wasn’t shut properly. And another friend, who is a political counsellor, rang me earlier to say a controversial planning application for a new office will be dropped. NOT because there were several hundred signatures protesting against the development. No, because there is a posse of dormice – a protected species – living on the site. I wish I was joking.
In a tired haze, I begin to wonder if the mice are behind the open bin lid, too. Or maybe they hijacked the Big Bang experiment? Or, am I losing it?
Maybe that’s the point: Blind me with science. Muddle me with inane details so that even listening to silence is quaint, rather than inordinately annoying and pointless.
Thembi Mutch is a freelance journalist focusing on human rights issues. After graduating from the London School of Economics with a BSc in Political Science and Anthropology, Thembi launched Shocking Pink, an alternative anarcho-feminist ‘zine in the late 80s. In addition to her radio and television reportage, Thembi has been widely published, including in the London Observer, British Journalism Review, the Financial Times, the New Scientist and with the BBC. She is currently writing a thriller about international foreign aid and is working on her PhD thesis on the subject of women’s political marginalization in Tanzania and Zanzibar. Thembi is a lazy gardener who likes growing her own food, and currently lives in Hastings, England. Contact Thembi at thembi.mutch@gmail.com.
The Hunger Site
September 16, 2008 at 2:12 am
Don’t forget, Thembi Mutch, alternative johnny, fogcityjournal, Botswana, See-ate-all – ahmm.
The credit crunch is upon us. Set that video up at the Golden Gate.
September 16, 2008 at 1:52 am
did his pen still work after 35 years?
;- )
I’m working on an article about the ‘credit crunch’ but finding it hard not to be utterly offensive about American wealth, and their sense of entitlement to it… welcome to the real world peeps…
And another thing. Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac? Merrill Lynch? Why do financial institutions have such STUPID NAMES?
September 16, 2008 at 12:24 am
Thank you Thembi. Here in Iowa, people have far too much time on their hands but it runs through their fingers into the grave below. I once met a very pleasant guy who when asked “what do you do..?’ replied,”ï’m retired.” I asked again, ” what did you do before retirement..? ‘ he responded, “I walked around McDonnell- Douglas with a pen and a clipboard for 35 years. Didn’t do anything, just walked around.”
alternative johnny
September 12, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I am not sure that just because shopping malls exist they are bad: but I agree with you about large corporations being way too powerful.
Maybe the problem, like voting in a bad leader, is that we use malls, unquestioningly, and we’re responsible for their existence. Did you know that when a Tescos (the largest supermarket challenger to Walmart here), is built, the store DEMANDS that a whole new circuit of roads are built to ensure they get through traffic? That’s standard practice.
We’re responsible. We don’t protest when these monoliths get built, and we flock, like lethargic lemmings, to their magnetic charms. We buy the hype that we ‘need’ a new whatsimogadget.
The problem seems to be that we, in the words of a mythical grandma, know the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. So unless our ‘leisure time’ has a consumer price tag on it, indeed unless we can validate the way we occupy our lives by making sure it has an exchange value (my labour = hard earned dollars to be exchanged for bowling/soccer/little league/shooting ) then it’s meaningless.
So staring out the window, growing veg, writing poetry, reading, talking to each other, or going for a nice walk, becomes the domain of ‘alternatives’ or hippies. Whereas in fact it’s the issue that these things are free, (and require effort and imagination) which to some is a problem, and therefore to be denigrated.
Shopping, hanging out in the mall, choosing between the zinger burger and the zonger burger doesn’t require thinking, and thinking is, as we know, the enemy of most governors, except the most sane and confident.
Alternative johnny- isn’t that metonym for condom? it was when I was at school.
Avanti hasta la revolucion.
September 11, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Thank you Thembi for your limey input on the cosmos and what’s making the agenda in your world. I believe firmly in the separation of church, synagogue, mosque, and state – but what concerns me more is the relationship between state and corporation. These new mega-cathedrals of capitalism, with the zinger burger and mocha as their communion host and wine, are the real centers of worship and reverence. No fake-Walton from Arizona or alarmingly ambitious ambulance chaser from Illinois is gonna change a thing.
In solidarity – alternative johnny