Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D’you know that you can use it
–Working for the Clampdown, The Clash
London Calling is a great album to listen to when you’re in a pissed off, angry, self-destructive mood and want to go back to the days of 1979 when you first heard The Clash. Or at least would have heard, had you not been playing Fat Bottomed Girls and Bicycle Race on constant repeat.
I did own a pirated copy of London’s Calling on cassette tape when I was in college. ‘Working for the Clampdown’ is a great student song, all about the perils of capitalism and fighting the status quo — the societal norm, not the Rick Parfitt/ Frances Rossi duo. I’m sure I would have agreed, had I not recently seen Wall Street at the cinema and found ‘greed is good’ to be a bit more of a catchy soundbite. Always the trouble with the socialists, from Marx on they’ve been long-winded and media unfriendly.
But I do remember the line from the Clash that ‘anger can be power’ and it came back to me today so I had to look it up, which then led to playing the album which then led to not doing the things I was supposed to, which then forced me to lie in bed and start writing which I’ve been meaning to do for ages, which then energized me for the rest of the day. So yes, angry = power = doing stuff.
Unnecessary long way of saying that I have finally started a new script for a play that has already premiered in my head to incredible critical acclaim, thus ensuring that anything I write will not match up to this standard.
I’ve wanted to write something about aging and old people and nursing homes and death and destruction for quite some time. Less of the destruction perhaps, but it’s still going on the show poster so I can draw in a younger crowd. Having worked in a nursing home for over a year I’ve got plenty of material. I’ve experienced things that have made me laugh my arse off, made me cry, made me shudder and made me kick a brick wall, which pissed me off because it hurt like a bugger and scuffed my shoe.
So my play will be an amalgamation of all those things, maybe without the scuffing. It will certainly have teeth — unlike most of the old people, ha ha, just a sample of the incredible writing you can expect. Erik and I went to see a play at Fronterafest this year about ‘Seniors’ and it was complete wank. Full of stereotyped characters who had trouble reading things or hearing properly. Apparently hilarious to everyone but us. I have too much to say to squander an opportunity onstage like that. Not that I want to get on my soapbox either and bang on about how badly we treat the elderly. I mean we do, but the elderly can be mean old bastards sometimes too.
And talking of mean old bastards, there’s always god. I was looking up ‘Anger is Power’ on google and there was a link to some line in the bible that says ‘Who knoweth the power of thine anger; for your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you’. According to the handy translation this means:
‘the cutting down of whole generations of people – of nations – of hundreds of million of human beings – of the great, the powerful, the mighty, as well as the weak and the feeble, is an amazing exhibition of the “power” – of the might – of God’.
Well I guess that’s one way to justify the crap in the world. Some twat pissed god off and now we all have to pay. I guess Pat Robertson is even closer to god than we knew. Looks like Haiti really did bring it on themselves. See, thanks to god I’m now getting angry again. But unlike god, I shall use it only for my own personal gain and glory.
I now await my smiting.