A few days ago, Woodsy and I decided that we wanted to write something together. Woodsy wanted to write a poem, I can’t write poetry. I wanted to write a piece of prose, Woodsy doesn’t write prose – much. So, what is below is the thoughts of both of us, all thoughts exchanged by email.
We would like to know what you think…
Woodsy – A sweet little meal in your light
When you ring those friends,
the kind you value when value seems an empty word,
just wanting to hold their voice,
long enough to show them…
long enough to let them know
just how much the sky has grown
since riding home in their light.
When you want to thank them,
praise them,
treasure them
for all the moments when you held back,
scared to mess up something precious…
And they ring back saying:
“We’re just putting a meal out… are you up for coming down right away?”
When it’s wow…
a whole new flavour,
catching you now.
But you don’t want to name it
or frame it
or tie a big fluffy ribbon round it.
You want it simply
what it is…
a genuine place,
making a brew
and
giving me space.
A flood of calm in the wake of things said…
a beacon,
caressed in time so softly spent…
holding me upright
in a world upside down…
finding my words
and teasing them free…
melting the clench in my fists over tea…
telling the world’s meanest fingers
they don’t have to scratch anymore.
Being safe,
when there’s nothing safe left.
Being the home
I couldn’t find hanging on a wall,
or framed in pretty smiles…
Being the wild thing
that held me when nothing else heard,
that warmed me madly in chilly fabric…
rain on my cheek,
sea-sprayed railings
and the sound of midnight tide,
folding…
like wet laundry.
Like me,
spun loose and soaked…
Like you…
holding a voice that weeps in the strangely distant air
nursing the wounds
from small but unshakeable holocausts
because you have your own share of dark, smoky pillars –
and you know,
better than most,
how the lies of the righteous hang prettily there.
I have been working with Woodsy since the beginning of 2019. It is not for me to tell his story, that is for him to do, but his has not been an easy life. He started sending me his thoughts and poetry after we had met a few times because we both felt it would be useful for me to have a wider insight into his thoughts through his writing. I have published a few pieces on my blog and Woodsy does a number of performances of his poetry at various different places in the region every week.
We had been discussing where we go from here and the kind of things that would be useful and helpful for us and for others. We agreed that perhaps Woodsy would write something and I would respond to it. Neither of us knew what would come of this. Woodsy has excelled himself, as usual, all I need to do now is to try to say something else that would also be useful…
Well-being is a very slippery subject. It means so many different things to different people. Different experiences produce different ideas about what well-being is for a human being. To begin with well-being is a socially constructed concept, it is determined, it seems to me, by the prevailing power in a society. While there may be some universals such as security, warmth and light when we get into the realms of experience well-being becomes a much trickier subject. For some people parascending or parachuting is a peak experience of well-being, for others it would be the greatest nightmare. For example, I used to love caving and I would like nothing better than disappearing down a big damp cave somewhere in Yorkshire to explore with some friends. Today, 40 years later, while it wouldn’t quite be a nightmare, it would certainly not be my idea of fun.
Our needs and wants change over time, sometimes on a daily basis, the very idea that it is possible to categorise these and subvert them into some kind of model protocol that can then be applied to the population generally has always struck me as being rather bizarre.
Woodsy catches this superbly in just a few lines,
“When it’s wow…
a whole new flavour,
catching you now.
But you don’t want to name it
or frame it
or tie a big fluffy ribbon round it.”
The idea that the poetry of human thought or even actions, can be represented by a reductionist approach to well-being just suggests how limited the imagination of some of our social scientists is when trying to work with people who are distressed.
When I started working with distress a quarter of a century ago, I sat in that reductionist paradigm. The irony is that because I knew so little, I thought I knew so much. Today, now I know so much more, I have come to know that I know so little.
I am always minded of Voltaire’s famous statement,
“Doctors pour drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into patients of whom they know nothing”.
While I think this statement is a little cruel today as in physical medicine so much more is known about diseases and the drugs that we used to treat them in physical conditions, the statement remains largely true of what medicine chooses to call psychiatric conditions.
It is axiomatic that those who work with people who are in distress know little or nothing of them.
“You want it simply
what it is…
a genuine place,
making a brew
and
giving me space.”
Or
“Being safe,
when there’s nothing safe left.
Being the home
I couldn’t find hanging on a wall,
or framed in pretty smiles…
Being the wild thing
that held me when nothing else heard,
that warmed me madly in chilly fabric…”
Woodsy’s words provided me with such an insight into what was needed. Not a fancy intervention, not a demand to breathe and meditate, not a job to go to (meaningless or otherwise), not a challenge to irrational thoughts and beliefs, but a place where Woodsy felt safe and listened to. A place where distress could begin to unfold, and a sense of calmness and warmth could seep into the cracks between the distress.
Today we try so hard to fix everything yet, ironically, the more we try to fix it, the more broken it becomes. I also think that so much of the time we don’t even know what we are fixing. We are just like rats in a maze, responding to the needs of the maze, going down blind alleys, panicking that we are not going to get where we are going, yet not knowing where we are going.
Our science of the mind reduces us to protocols, to predictable behaviour. When we do not respond in the expected way we are discarded, “they didn’t engage”, we become outliers in the great scientific experiment, unwanted, unloved, unheard and unheeded.
The science of the mind currently ignores the quality of life and merely measures the quantity of life. Services for the distressed, unhappy, disordered people in our society attempts to pat them into shape so that they fit into the sausage machine that are our current services. When they don’t fit the machine spits them out.
Today’s world doesn’t value human beings equally. We are measured by our output, usually in financial terms. I have always found it strange that dustbin men, cleaners, health care assistants and other service industry staff are among the lowest paid people with the least training, yet they interact with more people than just about any one else on a daily basis. Their work is not valued, yet stop emptying the bins, stop cleaning, stop caring and the difference is felt immediately. In contrast, the highest paid, like politicians, bankers, fund managers and other financial industry people are rarely missed for months on end.
“When you ring those friends,
the kind you value when value seems an empty word,
just wanting to hold their voice,
long enough to show them…
long enough to let them know
just how much the sky has grown
since riding home in their light.”
To me, Woodsy seems to be making a clear comparison here between the genuine friendship of people who allow him to be who he is and the stark contrast of the way that value is measured by statutory organisations, “when value seems an empty word”.
Woodsy’s experience of support from statutory services has, shall we say, less than a positive experience in the past. It is interesting to note that as Woodsy begins to develop a reputation and an audience, the attitude of many in the statutory services has changed significantly.
Trust, hope and friendship have always been high on Woodsy’s list of desirable characteristics. The consistency that goes with those qualities and the ability to trust them is something now that is only beginning to re-emerge, and it shows in Woodsy’s recent poetry.
For example, a little further on in the poem the observation is made,
“You want it simply
what it is…
a genuine place,
making a brew
and
giving me space.”
All Woodsy is asking for is an opportunity to reflect to gather thoughts and an opportunity to hear those thoughts out loud instead of buzzing like a swarm of angry bees within that grey blancmange that is the human brain. Thoughts that are intractable, painful and always negative. All that is wanted is time and space to begin to reorder those thoughts, have the opportunity to pay attention to new ones and bring in that which is desirable rather than trying to remove that which is undesirable.
Throughout the poem the desire for contact, connection and perhaps even community is screaming through the isolation of our day-to-day mechanical world where being connected means having a job, making money. The value of meaningful relationships, trust and hope are demoted, like a second-rate football team, to a lower division. Self-esteem, self-worth and the valuing of each other has become less important than our ability to make money, the climb up the greasy pole of success by standing on the corpses of those around us who we dismissed as unimportant in the race for wealth, fame and recognition.
The cynical use of media to normalise stigma, seeing the not so lucky, the distressed and ill as feckless, wasters and a drain upon society are all tools that have been used in the past to “cleanse” a society. Those tools are coming back into common parlance today we see politicians and the media flagrantly using the fears of others to further their own personal causes. The money and power is not used for the benefit of all but wasted by the few.
Perhaps as a final thought, it might be that money is not the best currency for reward and that perhaps care and compassion might be better forms of currency. For then the good nurse, refuse collector or shop assistant might be rewarded more appropriately for the work that they do for others. Those that change the world like engineers, architects would begin to develop their ideas around effective spaces in which good care for each other can take place, while the banker and hedge fund manager might struggle to make a living!
Using currencies like quality of life, sustainability and ecological soundness would make it impossible for people to gather and secrete wealth, as the only way to gather it would be to act, at some level, for the benefit of others and on a continuous basis. The irony of this is that we would naturally develop the “caring capitalist”. Now that would be a better world! A world more suited for those such as Woodsy. that would be a better world! A world more suited for those who just want an opportunity to create and discover too, such as Woodsy.
