Worth Noting: the really free school.

Yesterday I went to the Really Free School, a space invented by a collection of proactive individuals in the wake of an education increasingly becoming threatened by supermarket aisle logic. The Really Free School indeed professes to be free - and it is. 'You will not spend one penny inside these doors...' they say. It is also free in the sense that it is transient, unanchored and manoeuvrable, both in the sense that the schedule and topics covered are in constant flux, dependent simply on what sessions people want to propose, announced a couple of days before they are due; and that hired thugs turn up to eject them from their premises, and court proceedings linger threateningly. Happily though, no one seems too troubled but these somewhat empty threats.

Having previously been based in a house in Bloomsbury Square and Guy Ritchie's house in Fitzrovia, in obviously fun but unstable circumstances, the Really Free School seems to have settled for now in a pub, The Black Horse, near Oxford Street. That's where I went yesterday, having been intrigued by a lecture on the Middle-East.

On one of those pub-sign-balckboard-things you get outside pubs was scrawled a few of the events that were taking place. Another sign just inside the door had the schedule of classes happening that day. Such delights included Indonesian Lessons, ethnomusicology, a workshop by the Paper and the Middle-East history lesson I had gone for.

I chatted to a couple of chaps manning the door for a while, who are effectively living in this pub. They told of the ups and downs of their precarious existence spreading the good word of education. A bashed up piano was there. I sipped my coffee and gormed at things. An anti-capitalist banner spread across the inner wall, and I new I was in the right place.

I was directed upstairs to where the Middle-East class was due to be held, and I wandered into a room containing what can only be described as a 'circle group'. I've been in the vicinity of many of these recently. This one was slightly different as someone was sitting in the middle, presumably a kind of focal point of the discussion, a target of interrogation. The content had a revolutionary spirit, an analysis of the protests in Egypt and Libya and their analogous qualities to things happening back in happily democratic Britain.

I assumed the Middle-East class was next, so I slunk into a corner, found a chair a positioned myself upon it. No one questioned me, included me, or noticed me - it was business as usual. Then someone else came in and asked 'is this the Middle-East?' 'I think it's upstairs,' someone replied.

There was another upstairs. Stupidly I had remained in mere id territory, I still had another flight of stairs before reaching the ego. I went up too far, found come bedrooms, mattresses on the floor, sleeping bags, and went down again. I found a small collective preparing for the talk. A blackboard lay horizontally on a table with a map of the Middle-East on it, all in an unassuming beige room, where the windows failed to keep out the busyness of Oxford Street down below. As I enjoyed the juxtaposition, the talk started.

For one and a half hours this young guy, a student from SOAS, traced the history of the Middle-East from Muhammad to now, pointing out the misconceptions along the way; illuminating the complexities and ambiguities of territorial and religious stand-offs; the golden cultural ages, the inventions of writing and the wheel in the Persia/Iraq areas; the merits of Islam and the impact of Orientalism.

Sitting on benches and on the floor, our teacher found an attentive audience, peering over the map, making suitable noises when something clicked. The class came to an end and a more casual type of general chit-chat continued - the current turbulence in the middle east; what was going on later in the free school; how cool this whole thing is. I peered across the room, watching these intrepid conversationalists and keen learners, all so encouraged by the advance of the School, and slipped out the door. Down the superego-staircase, passing the continuing circle group, down down down back towards the cruel reality that was Central London outside, it's gates open and beckoning.

On the ground floor another class was underway: a discussion on disability activism was in full swing, impassioned and good-natured exchanges zig-zagging across a crumbling table, shiny with the beer stains of its previous life. I eased past and went outside.

Their radical anti-establishment ideology maybe a bit naive, as some have said, but it has a kind of from-the-rubble-build-something-great optimism. It also importantly contributes to the continuing debate that is surrounding education now, manages to avoid being a Big Society bastard, is fun and makes a mess. For a pleasant, learned experience in a place that welcomes all, you could do far worse, and someone who lacks my social ineptitude could really flourish here, provide their own lectures, man the door with the other revolutionaries, penetrate the circle group of dissent.

Go forth, intrepid rogue - heed the call of the Really Free School!

Between Pretension and Vulgarity: A question of deliverance

Well the rifles are still loaded and the crosshairs are faithfully positioned. No, I'm not referring to the arms bought by Libya from the West so they could shoot their own people, and then be told off by the West. I refer to the struggles back home, where despite the government mooning the public in a 'kiss my arse' moment of defiance and continuing to push through damaging cuts like they were going for a world record, the resistance continues now in the desolate no-man's land between the previous London and Manchester protests and the big one that's to come in March. Disparate groups are uniting, and much discourse is circulating, although I think it's amongst people who are already well convinced of the impending damage. The media have all but given up commenting on public dissatisfaction, as no windows are being smashed, preferring instead to focus on the Middle East and Cameron's apology. A politician apologising is a headline story - what toss. Only the Socialist Worker seems to make the connection between the demonstrations in Egypt and the unrest in Britain, but is this a good thing? The type of mediation, from the 'grass roots' to whoever is listening, is something that was discussed at the Goldsmiths teach-in last week, and maybe came up implicitly at the protest at Goldsmiths on Wednesday - an expression of disgust at having the New Academic Building opened by ex-Tory MP, ASDA-sell-off visionary, and all round embodiment of what Goldsmiths' students and many others question in our society, Archie Norman.

This protest was deemed a success, and it was - it was fun, and we ruined the corporate event that was planned for that evening, in the newest building of our 'radical' university. But did it lack something? A message? We had no big speech, just a few banners and some cross words with Archie Norman towards the end of the evening.

As Mr. Dan Taylor has noted here in a gripping account of the evening, the invitees seemed largely unimpressed and bemused by our demo, failing to understand it's relevance. An education editor from Channel 4 thought we were stupid, and Archie Norman was condescending and feigned perplexity. The talks outside with Archie Norman showed the polarity of approaches we protesters use to mediate our concerns, shown also in the two pictures up there. One is with the cold, brazen use of impressionable angry language, and one which provides some idea into the ethics behind the anger. As people struggled to get Archie Norman's attention, some we of the 'You rich piece of shit, fuck off out of our Uni, you don't belong here!' kind of persuasion; other's were more like, 'we are here because of the arrogance of those like yourself, who push for unfair free markets and the marketisation of education, and come to stamp your imprint on our university, which is already threatened by measures that you and your friends endorse, while all along your position in the wealthy elite renders you incapable of ever understanding the concerns of the struggling hopeless youth.' It is this negotiation of these approaches that we are struggling with. What is accomplished with either?

To those who we feel are causing irreparable damage - those in power, governmental power; and those who influence power, corporate power - we can probably give up reasoned arguments on the streets. No one is listening. This may be why my friend was chanting 'Go away, Tony Blair' during the first march in the Autumn. In recognition that our words fall on deaf ears, his voice assumed one emptied of content, it merely existed to add to the sounds of dissent. And to those in the general public, currently working out where they stand on the issues, chants about neoliberalism and capitalism come across as a bit pretentious and cliquey. Protests become things that 'other people' do - other people who think they know all the answers, just because they've heard some stuff at uni about how terrible capitalism is. This, too, is how the Socialist Worker comes across. Isms are exclusive, people don't want to be told they're stupid, or asleep, and they don't want to be indoctrinated. Also, 'socialism' has a lot of baggage, it scares people, and 'anti-capitalist' has cleverly become code for 'naive hippie'.

Do we crave media attention? Is this the way to get the message across? It is often assumed so - media attention seems to point to a legitimacy of action, it suggests that those in power are noticing what's going on. But it means that we have to play a certain game: smashed windows - great; 'bad' language - won't get shown; academic opinion - scarcely a mention, and presented as too highbrow to be realistic; student's opinions - it's hit and miss and usually a let down. I've never heard the word neoliberalism on BBC News 24. Playing along to these media guidelines is not and should not be the way that disgruntled citizens play out their grumbling objections, for it reveals a compromise. A story told through the media lens is never the true story, it is spun to satisfy particular ideas of what makes something newsworthy. Villains, heroes, shocks, blame and fear - all needed to work together in an audience-friendly narrative.

So one can understand those who say, like the girl standing next to me as Archie Norman was being berated, 'he's not worth it, I'd be happy just to smash his face in with this party hat.' It's because words of reason are no match for the intrepid capitalist, with a snake-like tongue of silver, after inevitably weaselling his or her way to the 'top'.

But anger is just as alienating, inseparable as it has become from violence- most people who you ask will not condone the smashed window at Millbank, a mixture of a refusal to admit that these moments of transgression have the biggest impact, are in themselves liberating, and a response to scenes depicted by the media as feral, dangerous and condemnable. People are also put off by swear words, as they are by more highfalutin language. In both instances, language is seen as belonging to a particular group that they are not in. They are hesitant to encourage the activities of a group that seems to exclude them.

I don't know how to engage with those who are sceptical of the sceptics, or those who wield the axes, but it might be a question to address. Should we make our message clearer? It certainly doesn't work when you have bodies like the NUS taking that role. Do we get lairy and wreck shit? It's certainly noticeable, but our integrity gets questioned, our anger is said to have no foundation. Is there political force in the use of irony - in the appropriation of political campaigns and corporate events; in the theatrics of the UfSO? Maybe next time, all fifty thousand of us should be chanting 'Go away, Tony Blair.' In the words of Superhans, 'It'll freak 'em out.'

Your head will collapse.

somone once told me, a someone who doesnt exist, that if you start writing then sooner or later you will become coherent. i dont know if thats true. i sometimes wak down the street with an intermineable chatter going through my head, virtually unnoticed by myself, and i thin that maybe i could convert this to words it would be ok bu then when i write something it tends to resemble something that you're upset you stepped in. anyway, this is an attempt to do that. it is free of revision, and correction, although only i am here to verify that. but which thats ok, because, what does it matter what you say wheny you are the only one to hear it? words become someting so important dont they? but only when they are recieved. this is something i need not be concerned about. well i was wondering wwhether the human so called race is a sociable one, and i was thinking that its not. what is it, do we think, do i think, that binds us together. language? no language separates us. we have languages that reaffirm our state lines, that reaffirm our sense of continental space. the dialects we have inherited from age old languages. we have infinitesimal variations between the same language. you say tap i say fawcett, but we both mean the thing you turn and hope for water. there is a language for the rude boy, a language for the aristocrat, a language for te man who sells you a hot dog, a language for the man who sells you a mpobile phone. theres binary language and texting language and the bad language you hear on the 171. when i walk downt eh road and come across a someone who i dont know, i at first trouble over whether i can or should or want to make eye contact. then what this eye contact means. do i now facy this individua;, do i hate them? am i startin'? do i want change? or, the least likely of all the options that confront my foe, am i nice? aM i worth knowing? what is it. why do we have people. an ant, whom i am not unlike in all but character, will just test everyone out. we don't. do we scrutinise, is that what iit is? without friends we lack connections, and without connections we lack opportunities, and without opportunities we lack hope. we are in stasis, time is a lie, so waht is hope anyhow. hey let's meet up in 100 years and have a party, what would hold us back? and there and i'll still be in a toilet cubicle because its the only safe place to finish my drink.

theres something offensive about looking up pixies lyrics- to get these moments reduced to banal symbols. where do we go from here, to deciphering them, sure, sure theres no going back to the days when you wondered what that was all about.

A coming myth tale

One tenth of a new century passes, a world warming now in

the sweeping cloth of democracy, its unequivocal legitim

acy, a mantra for capital on the airwaves, seeping into

the crevices, hiding under the tables in countries

we band together and name ‘developing’. 20

years ago, Francis Fukuyama hailed ‘the en

d of history’, the end of competing ideo

logies in the wake of a victorious libe

ral democracy, as the Berlin Wall fe

ll. Paul Virilio, come the year 200

0, contributes the end of geogr

aphy, as our hypermediated

world shrinks to the size of

a computer monitor. And

in 2010 David Cameron

comes to power and ta

kes it all to literally . . .

‘Fuck it,’ he says, ‘to hell with all the humanities.’

Myth: This time it's personal

***** 'OUTSTANDING!' - Total Theory Magazine

***** 'You'll never laugh so much!' - the Sun

Coming to a journal near you . . . (in the summer or something, maybe)

Yes, Yes, The Informal Formalities That Play Out in the Coffee House.

i enter the café, encouraged by its atmosphere that i might be able to work. within this space, this posited lounge of some other whom i will never quite know, i am a guest. i have not the instruments of procrastination that haunt me in my home. here i am freed from distraction, yet never alone—continually threatened by disturbance. why is it here, where i know not those who sit nearby, those who pass through with their awkward gestures, where i am curiously at ease? why not in my home, which i have been able to sculpt as i see fit?

upon entering i am confronted with a smile, a token or maybe not. i smile in return, and tentatively—for is one ever 100 per cent positive that their decision is the right one for that day?—order a coffee. the ballooning menu of hot beverages creates choices where really there are none; i make one and state it with a lingering doubt.

but, i am thrown! now is not the time, it's simply not the time!

'please take a seat and we'll have someone come over and take your order.'

you could not mistake the good will. the sincerity with which she spoke, the casual stretch of her arm towards the seating area. in here, so the story goes, you are to do nothing but relax—leave it to us, we'll take care of you.

an internal battle commences—it's against the nature of the humble western café dweller to drive such warm gestures into the corner of your mind which deals with doubt. here, once through the door, the contract has already begun: with the generous assumption that i have money, and will pay upon my departure, my contract includes not only coffee, but a service—i have an attendant. yet this gesture which apparently is for my benefit, constricts my ability to preside as is implied by my being posited aloft of the attendant, as the logic would suggest. am i really the one being waited on in this relationship? in my attempts to repress it, i find myself formulating a suspicion:

this café is teeming with bureaucrats.

having made the decision, my attempt to actualise the coffee had failed. i had wrongly attempted to subvert the order of things; i was put in my place, hurried through the door, towards the faces cast down examining salads, faces extracting narratives from words printed and bound, faces interlocked with more faces, smiles reflecting smiles, two dozen worlds hostile to invasion.

i weave. I sneak. i eschew eye contact. I try to ignore the perplexity arising like a mushroom cloud from the collective judgement of my audience. my sight becomes an instrument of dissection, cutting into available corners of space, measuring suitability, never hesitating in its mission, feeding information to my decision-making equipment which rejects, denounces, ridicules the offers to the bemusement of my audience, unable to continue until i have settled—'I NEED A POWER SOURCE!'

I did not scream these words out loud.

despondent, i resort to the guidance of the waiter, my attendant and friend, who tells me that 'there is a power source along the wall here. we oblige you to spend at least five pounds if you are to use it.'

the illusion of agency is threatened once again. the jovial way he slipped this new condition into the contract. my laptop has an nauseous battery, to which i sympathise; electricity is imperative. the waiter casually lists a few things on the menu, assuring me that this five pound lower limit will be surpassed naturally, in the general course of my stay. i need not even give it a thought.

yet, it was evidently necessary to bring this new stipulation to the fore.

there is something contradictory in the manner of the young gentleman. it seems, that is, it is assumed, that he is a person. he certainly looks like one. he claims to be my friend, in actions alone, defending me against the constraints imposed on my bill, whilst reinstating the need to conform to it. he is casual, yet formal; a man whom i can command, but to whom i am accountable.

i sit, amongst a medley of others, each here to achieve something, to appropriate this environment which is controlled spatially and temporally from above, where the coffee beans pile up and the cash register beeps; and, aware of the poised pencil and curious eyes, i am finally in a position to order.