Me and Nazanine Zaghari-Radcliffe

Some weeks ago I found myself talking to Richard Radcliffe.  We'd just watched Nazanine's Story.  It was a play about his family and events of the past 3 and half years. The play was about the arbitrary detention his of wife Nazanine in an Iranian jail. She'd been detained at Tehran airport on her way home to London from a regular visit to her family with her then 21 month old daughter.  The play tracked her detention in April 2016 to the present when, in real life their daughter Gabriella has just returned to live in London with her father Richard Radcliffe; Nazanine's husband.  The 5-year old girl is now disconnected from her mother and the family she has known for the past 3 and a half years and Nazanine is still in Evin prison for allegations of  plotting against the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I watched the play at the Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex with my Iranian born son Ben.  I'd had mixed feelings about going to see the play.  Part of me wanted to ignore the horror, to turn away, close my eyes and put my hands over my ears so as not to hear their cries, not to remember. I didn't want to get upset and get distracted from my mission to just get on with my life. To get on with my life because I'm not in Evin prison today.  I often think to myself - hey, I'm not in prison today - but it's never a very happy or particularly liberating realisation. Because there's Nazanin Zahari Radcliffe and at least 30 other dual nationals that whose lives are being spent in arbitrary detention in Iranian jails.

Since the first alarming news of Nazanine's detention I'd been following the horror as it's unfolded.  Each press release reporting the unlucky arbitrary detention allowed me to get immersed in their story.  Those headlines in the Guardian giving updates on Nazanine's detention somehow served to ease my breath, her trials and their anguish gave me an uncomfortable sense of well-being.  Following thier story allowed me to relax and take stock of where I was at.  I was not in prison. There's an episode in my life-story that I don't talk about much. I keep it quiet because it's an experience that is awkward to share. It remains buried: deep under a pile of more easily relatable anecdotes and life experiences.  At times I have told and been left feeling like some kind of paraniod fantasist. If I do talk about it I've learned that it's best to keep it light-hearted and easily digestable.  It's becaome a survival story.
 
Now I'm safe, living another episode of my life-story and I'm living as a regular, ordinary person.  Living in a secure home with a job that just about pays the bills if I'm resourceful. I didn't act on the job, offer, I'm not a spy and I'm not in prison.   Life is OK for me these days.  The panic attacks are less frequent and my body is less uptight and my outlook is more often upwards at the clouds and less around corners.  I can now walk up and down the streets in daylight and at night, cycle around town and hop on and off buses and trains feeling the freedom of anonymity.  I carry a mobile phone and leave it switched on becauase I have no reason to think I'm of any concern for the authorities.  Some habits haven't changed. I still like to run. I feel safe if I can run. So I keep fit and alert. I've learned to expect the unexpected and to feel safe in the knowledge that I'm prepared for fight or flight just in case.

I'd wanted to watch the play with my Ben. I wanted Ben to know what it is to be half Iranian;.to have 2 bloodlines from politically opposed countries; to hold 2 passports and to have 2 alliegances. I'd hoped the play would communicate what it means to be a trans-national. Watching the play, I'd felt a deep connection to their story and wanted to talk to Richard Radcliffe who'd been sitting in the front row, watching actors portray the horror of his life over the past 3 and half years. After the performance Ben and I walked down the steps of the auditorium and approached Richard who was in conversation with actors, the producer and academics from the Human Rights Centre.

We got his attention, he looked at me, shook my hand kindly and there was so  much I wanted to say but just as his wife is stuck in Evin prison the words were stuck in my head.  I tried to say thank you for sharing, thanking him was offensive, as if we'd been suitably entertained by this horror so my next idea was to say I can't imagine how horrific this is for you.  No, I couldn't say that because I could imagine it. Maybe I could say I understand what you're going through.  Fuck, no I don't really understand, my experience doesn't justify saying that I understand their experience.  My understanding is a very superficial understanding of their deep and ongoing torment. Then I came up with the word connection.  Yes, that's it, I feel connected to your ...   Oh shit, to their ... what? He's been framing it as their story but I couldn't use that term, this isn't just a story, it's real and traumatic and is ongoing, he's living it. It's their life. I can't say it's a story to his face. Neither can I simply say that I liked the play, it would be like saying thanks, that was entertaining, what's on at Lakeside next Tuesday?  I  couldn't even bring myself to say it was good or just that I enjoyed the evening.   I looked at Richard, knowing his wife is locked up in Evin prison  looked around at the others, the actors in the play the host from the Essex Uni Human Rights centre, at my son Ben standing beside me and then I looked back at Richard, noticing his thinning hair and said,
'I feel a deep connection with your case'.

Watching the play, shaking hands with Richard Radcliffe and hearing of the family's new challenges as their daughter Gabriella adapts to life in London all enabled me to express huge my sense of relief.  But that sense of relief is matched by feelings of guilt. Guilt is an odd feeling. Why should I be feeling guilty just because I'm not in prison today? I suppose it could be understood as survivor's guilt.  It's survivors guilt because Nazanine's detention is arbitrary.

arbitrary |ˈɑːbɪt(rə)ri|
adjective
1 based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system: an arbitrary decision.

Nazanine Zaghari-Radcliffe was in Iran to visit her family. She wasn't there to plot against the regime.  Her detention is arbitrary and cruel.  It's an unbearable injustice.

Job Interview

I have a job interview on Wednesday.

I've been working in a school as a supply LSA (learning support assistant) since December, I earn £65/day.  I have an interview for the same job at the same school but employed directly rather than as a supply staff working for an agency.

The job is in Chelmsford, which is 29 miles from my home.

In preparation for the job interview I thought I'd better do some maths to figure out the material benefit of getting a full time job.  After all I'd be spending the time of my life doing that work. 

It's demanding work with significant responsibility.  I've been working in education for students with special needs.  I've been bitten, scratched and hit in the face, and by Fridays I'm generally exhausted.
However, I like working, I want to continue working, and I like that particular work.  I like being part of a team and I like working with the students and I very much like wearing a lanyard and riding the commuter train and going to work.  It makes me feel that I'm participating, like I'm being a good citizen, a good role model for my children and most importantly, after an agonizing period of  unemployment, it makes me feel that once again I have a derserving and rightful place in society.

However,
the job takes my time, as well as my energy and focus, and my time is my life. Nowadays, my weekends are spent cleaning my house, tending the vegetable plot, bike maintenance, looking after myself and family and freinds and preparing for the working week ahead, all pretty normal stuff.  Full time, means full time; there's not much time to focus in a meaningful way on other activities; it means that I never will get to master the theremin, I haven't even practiced once since I started full time work last December.

But needs must, and I'm fit for work.

So, here's the maths. My question was this; what material difference will a full time job and a stable income make to my life?

I was shocked by the answer.

Annual income   £13,000

Annual travel cost from Wivenhoe to Chelmsford         £2,400
Annual council tax bill                                                    £1,800
Rental value of my house    £750/month   or P/A           £9,000

I'm not pedantic, and just wanted a very rough costing, didn't want to scare myself or face the likely reality that even in full time work, I'd still be poor, so thought I'd  stick to those 3 basics; travel, rent and coucil tax.  Three unavoidable and fixed expenses, outgoings that couldn't be massaged by maintaining a strict household budget.  Other expenses such as phone, electricity, water, food, I thought, those can be juggled, so they're less important, and I just wanted a rough costing, just to check for viability before I commit my life to a full time job.

So I added those 3 basic costs; housing, travel to get to work and council tax and it came to

£13,200.

The job isn't viable.    

If something isn't viable it means it isn't going to work.


              

F-rigging Facebook

FAcebook, as now know takes our data.  It does this because data has value. So it takes our data in return for using it's app that is in turn used as space to sell for advertising.

And we are the mugs.  Job seekers.

No income, eveyone wins they all get paid, but we who generate the data get used.  It's enough.  And to make it worse I thought as an add popped up on Facebook telling me that I could earn £1000/day as a model, of course I clicked on it and then today I found myself spending £38 on stuff I'll need for a photoshoot to get the photos I'll need to put together a portfolio if I have any chance of actually getting a job, even a low paid one, it has to be a scam.

It's all a scam

student loans to pay tuition fees

health insurance

even on my electricity bill which I paid today with money that can't be replaced, unless I get a modelling job, it has on the bill, a number to ring fot debt advice, ie. it is now normal that people can't pay their electricity bill, debt and financial struggles is normal, what the fuck is going on.

Well today I have 2 air bnb guests, ( I;ll be sleeping at my neighbour's house) that's £40, but I spent 40 today on toothpaste, tights and stuff I'll need for the photo shoot and tomorrows money will cover the cost of the train fare, shit. I am dum.  I am very dum.

I'm an outsider, and if I pretend otherwise I'm a fraud

I've been thinking about outsider art, like that of Daniel Johnson's Walking the Cow (click on the link below),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXCdYobgr5Y

And I think it's somehow relevant to me as a inactive in terms of official employment status.  I choose do voluntary work. 
 
Outsiders are invisible to the mainstream, they produce work in private.

Outsiders write in their bedrooms.

Outsiders use makeshift materials, they don't get funding for equipment, they record on a mobile phone or a webcam

Outsiders sometimes get noticed and celebrated by the mainstran, like Daniel Johnson has. 

I find my getting twitchy when I leave my bedroom and need to introduce myself to a group and there's a need for an identity, I'm an outsider because I'm inside, I work in my bed. I'm not part of a group or an organizationSometimes I'm asked to leave my bedroom and talk at puplic events.


When I watch Daniel Johnson perform his songs I ask my self what is it that makes me relate to this?

Why do I listen to the end and then play it again and again?

Is it just because he's different, his music doesn't conform to what society would normally regards as art?  Is it because, as an outsider myself I want to endorse the work of other outsiders?  Do I feel some sense of solidarity with an artist who expresses himself so openly and in doing so becomes vulnerable.  He's vulnerable to how he might be represented, people may laugh, people may say his work is rubbish, even worse it could just go unrecognized, all that passion and delivery and outpouring of what's going on inside, could just get absorbed in the ether and have no effect  whatsoever.

At the weekend I was playing cards with friends and family, we were talking about an upcoming event when I've been asked to speak.  It's an event by the establishment and for the establishment, and I'm the outsider called to entertain, but I'm not an entertainer per se, I just do stuff that seems to entertain people.  I have the time and energy to indulge in doing stuff that takes my fancy since I quit my book packing job.  I have time to watch youtube videos, and make you tube videos and podcasts and to write stuff for the ether.  Any way, while we were playing cards, I suggested that I could use the event to get some income, maybe pass round a begging bowl to pay the water bill that I don't have money for.

But I'm not serious, well actually, maybe I am serious. I do my voluntary job, without pay, I do public speaking, without pay, I'm working hard to organize a community event, I pay my council tax, without pay, (from money borrowed from my Dad) and my debt increases; without a solution

because,  I won't work for less than a living wage, and I won't sign a contract for zero hours and no I won't run a car to participate as rentier.

So I choose live precariously as an outsider.

But being an outsider, conversely means being mostly inside, inside the bedroom, can't afford the gym membership so the bedroom floor is where I work my biceps, the bedroom walls are is the gallery space for my artwork, the unsecured Wifi of my neighbours is my cinema ticket

Sometimes it's hard as an outsider without a source of funding to which you're accountable, to know what your doing and what are you doing it all for; to quote Daniel Johnson, "I really don't know what I came here for, I'm walking the cow"


out of work identity

I'm the outsder.

workers in the gig economy are outsiders, the shift in work automization will effectivly push more workers to the shpere of the outside, armies on non-participants, painting on bedroom walls and singing songs for the ether.

But the privelage of being an outsider is ... what is it? there was something I'd thought of, now it's slipped my mind

Outsiders don't go to meetings in coffee shops, they leave comments on Youtube videos.

not a teacher or an NHS worker, not in the MET or member of a sporting fraternity

The big question is how can outsiders act collectively?
How can we claim our rights to dignity through, proper housing, living wages and a fair standard to living.


insiders find outsiders quirky and interesting but they are nonetheless the 'other', exotic, refugees, the poor, non-participants, below the radar, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, they don't walk their dogs or do the school run, they've been working the nightshift but still can't pay the TV licence.