As has long been my custom – and the custom of just about anyone – in the dead days of December, I feel the need to look back at the year that was now that the Christmas beast has been slain. My dad’s new year tradition was always to spend January 1st reviewing and updating his CV so that it was good to go for any new career moves the coming twelve months might bring. In a few days, when 2020 is hatched, I intend to take up that tradition myself. I haven’t had need for a CV since I got my current job back in the summer of 2011, but earlier this year, after detailing My Triumphant Year of Failure, I felt it was time to start thinking about getting mine ready. I did. But so far it has sat filed away on my computer. 2020, I feel, might finally the year I take it out to stretch its legs, as one of the first things that comes to mind as I look back on 2019 is how much I feel I might have done all that I can at my current job.
I remember having the first thoughts last September – 2018 – as the academic year began, that I had been at the school long enough to see my first cohort through entirely – from Year 7 to Year 13. I was on duty on the playground and looked around, thinking how so many students and staff had changed in my time there that it was starting to feel like one of those long-running TV shows, well past its prime, where new actors are brought in to freshen up tired plots every few years until only one or two of the original cast remain, treading water by staying on long after they should have taken on new roles elsewhere. It was just a passing thought, but it lingered throughout 2019, especially as more and more of the changes I was noticing seemed to be coming at a detriment to some of what had originally drawn me to the place.
I still love my job, and enjoy the freedom of running my own department and being able to teach exactly the sorts of things I want to teach. I still have fantastic colleagues and some really great students. But everything feels fairly routine and it feels like it may be time to move on if something appealing comes up. Who knows – this time next year I may be writing about how wonderful 2020 has been at work and how I couldn’t ever imagine working any place else – but right now it feels prudent to make sure that CV is ready to send out at a moment’s notice.
In many ways I guess the theme of 2019 was one of malaise, endings and new beginnings. I already detailed in August the end of my improv group, The Kneejerks, this summer. Another big winding down of something that had started so promisingly and ended up leaving me cold. The good news since then is that a few weeks later Fat Penguin, a more comedy-focused improv training centre in Birmingham, were auditioning for new members of their house team. Having missed doing regular improv in 2019, and been frustrated for a long time about The Kneejerks lack of comedic focus, it seemed almost like fate that such an opportunity was arising at exactly the time I could take advantage of it. So I went and auditioned, and I got in! Since mid-September I have been performing weekly, doing the very Armando/Asssscat format which was what I wanted to do when we started The Kneejerks in the first place. First in the “incubation troupe”, learning the ropes and finding my improv feet again (my god I was rusty! Those first few weeks I genuinely felt like my mind was all gummed up with bad instincts and clumsy slowness.), and then graduating to the main house team by October. We rehearse once a week too – so after so long doing basically no improv beyond the occasional fortnightly messing about with ideas with The Kneejerks, some weeks I’m now doing two nights a week improvising: one night in front of an audience, the other night not. It’s so much fun, and has completely re-energised that creative muscle that was atrophying for most of the year.
In many ways it is the happy ending of finding Fat Penguin following the decision to end The Kneejerks that has given me the confidence to consider the possibility that there may be other jobs out there than the one I currently have. It is easy to stick in a sub-par situation out of some misguided sense of loyalty, or simply because it is convenient, but sometimes taking a risk can remind you that nothing is permanent and, importantly, nothing you don’t want to be permanent needs to be.
The other big ending of 2019, of course, was the end of my creative project started the summer before – the 86 album – which was also the origin of this blog. Which was, itself, a culmination of over eight years of grief and god knows how many years of emotional trauma. Getting that album finished was such a huge accomplishment for me both musically and psychologically. Showing myself that I could write, perform, record and produce an entire album all by myself, playing every instrument, regardless of if I’d ever played it before was a wonderful thing to know, and unlocked a whole creative side of me I didn’t know that I had. All those years playing bass and singing, but always feeling dependant on others for anything to be done – now I know if I want to write a song, or an album, I don’t have to wait for anyone else to give me permission. And then, of course, psychologically, as the song-writing was such a cathartic way of trying to get to grips with so many complicated feelings I had been trying to put into words since that first phone-call informed me my dad was dead in August of 2010.
As 2019 comes to a close, Strangely Shaped by Fathers has not only released “our” first album, 86, but also a two track single to follow that up. I also wrote and recorded an updated version of the song I wrote for my wife when we got married and played it for her and our friends on our anniversary and I have one new song I plan on releasing over the next few days. In 2020 I have plans to work on the next album – tentatively titled Finding Me – and have not been so creatively fulfilled musically for years. Furthermore, I managed to get much of my back-catalogue, in a variety of different bands dating back to my childhood, released digitally across all platforms, and even released a charity single for Cancer Research UK and played a charity gig at my school. It has been a good year for my music, and I have some lovely callouses again which had grown too soft from underuse. My wife’s wonderful birthday gift of an acoustic bass was a huge help here in facilitating an ease of just picking up a guitar and getting lost, and for that I cannot thank her enough. 2019 was the year of our tenth anniversary and we had a great time celebrating in Paris. But ten years of marriage is not about the gimmick of an anniversary; the fact that she still makes me so unbelievably happy every single day, the fact that we never run out of things to say or never stop wanting to spend time with each other (she’s here in the same room as me now, painting as I write) is a genuine blessing that, if there were a god, I would thank them for every day. Instead, I just thank her.
So, creatively, I have made music, performed improv, and, when time permits, have enjoyed exploring my writing here on this blog, specifically playing more with poetry this year than I have before (outside of a musical context). Indeed, I wrote a poem a few days ago I am so proud of I am not even going to think about publishing it online until I have tried to get it published properly. But this is not the only writing I have done. An idea I had in the Spring spawned over the summer and grew fruit by September – a philosophy blog for students and teachers to apply philosophical ideas away from the confines of the classroom and exam demands and write philosophy for pleasure has been a real source of joy, ensuring I am writing something at least once a week that has nothing to do with work. The blog has also been fortuitous in other ways, as it enabled one particular academic to contact me and enquire if I was the same person who wrote a PhD thesis about anarchism. When I told him I was, he told me he had long loved the argument I made in my thesis and wanted to turn it into a book! He runs a non-profit publisher out of Perth and wanted my book to be its next project. We met early October and since then the two of us have cut the 100,000 word thesis down into a lean-mean 60,000 word book which will be published in 2020. To say I am incredibly excited would be a massive understatement. And, again, it feels like the culmination of something – the thesis I wrote way back in 2008 finally finding its audience over ten years later and the book I always wanted it to be finally coming to life at long last. An album and a book, all in the same year. Sometimes dreams do come true!
Bizarrely though, despite all this good stuff, 2019 has probably been one of the worst years for my mental health in a long while. Anxiety is at an all-time high, with pretty much every day marred by insane thoughts about death and disease. I am meditating again, after not doing so at the start of the year, but some genuine physical ailments (floaters in my eyes, dizziness, sinus issues, ill-fitting glasses) have allowed my health anxiety disorder to be triggered like a mother fucker. In all honestly I don’t think I have slept an entire night through in 2019, waking up frequently and never quite getting consecutive hours of deep rest. The general feeling of exhaustion that has followed me around as a result has been further fuel to the health anxiety fire. 2020 I hope to find some sort of therapy that will help me navigate a better path through this. It is a not inconsiderable triumph that I have come out of 2019 alive.
Others were not so lucky. My cousin killed herself earlier this year and the funeral was probably the best I have ever seen in terms of Christian compassion. Not being religious, I don’t have access to those church-based support networks, but seeing how well they dealt with the whole thing, and how much they made the pain bearable for her family was inspiring. It genuinely made me buy a page-a-day bible to give the thing another read and see if there was anything of value. Unfortunately, the book just angered me daily with its contradictions and stupidity. I gave up in the summer, intending to restart in September and never did. I wasn’t exactly seeking religion, but I was expecting more wisdom than there was. I may come back to it in 2020, but that and the meditation was about as spiritual as 2019 could get for me.
Of course, politically, it’s hard for anyone to believe in a god after 2019. That December election was as big a punch in the dick as anything. It was like re-living 2016 all over again – Brexit, Trump, and a massive Conservative majority. Just a few months before I had marched in London for a people’s vote and things seemed to be turning our way. But I should have known as I went out leafletting for Labour in the cold November and December afternoons and had leaflets put straight in the bin on some doorsteps, and laughed at on others, that this would not go our way. Should have known, to be honest, from my own disillusion at the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Not that I didn’t support, and don’t continue to support, his politics. But earlier in 2019 I was considering leaving the Labour Party (in fairness, I only joined in order to try to push them into a more leftward direction in the post-Miliband days, and, as an anarchist, have no real party allegiance) because it was clear to me that Corbyn was not doing what was needed to win any arguments in the media. While I could hear him speak and parse the media bullshit with the reality of his words, it was more and more obvious that the general public just heard “anti-semitism”, “ineffectual”, “Corbynism”, etc. and that he was dead-in-the-water politically. I got more and more annoyed about Labour’s non-position on Brexit and basically felt it was time to tap out. Then the Brexit policy shifted, the general election was called, and I dared hold out a little hope that the sheer and obvious awfulness of Boris Johnson would be sufficient to make the British public see sense and prevent that awful liar from getting anywhere near Downing Street, especially after such a failed first few months after he took over from Theresa May.
It was not to be. And I spent much of the last few weeks not really able to process how fucking awful my fellow citizens are for not being able to see through bullshit and make such a shitty decision. I wrote the following poem to try and put it into words, but even this doesn’t quite get there:
The Choice Was Clear
The choice was clear:
Hope versus fear.
And I’m still shedding tears
(as the wrong people cheer).
Which maybe sounds too “them and us”,
For those of you feeling conscientious
About desperately finding some silver lining
In the clouds of this apocalyptic end-timing.
But right now I’m feeling nothing but hostile,
And it really will take me a very long while
Not to see undeniable division
Between how different people came to their decision.
Because there are consequences to their crosses,
And the inevitable life losses,
That their quivering hands delivered
As their empathy lay withered.
Pretending somehow they didn’t know
Why the lines for food banks grow
So many families unable to eat,
Many more sleeping out on the street,
Communities lying ravaged
As their services have been savaged,
By a rapacious drive for profit
With no one brave enough to stop it.
Deregulation, welfare cuts
Dead in a ditch, no ifs, ands or buts
Get Brexit done at any cost
It doesn’t matter what we lost.
Immigrants once more scapegoated
To justify the way we voted
Wrapped in a flag of sovereignty
And lofty dreams of being free
They sold the future of the many
So the few could make more pennies.
As the discourse loses root
From anything resembling truth
Outright fraud will get rewarded
Verbal bullying applauded
Rights and protections now eroded
Another dog whistle encoded
I cannot meet my neighbours eyes
Nor can I say I’m that surprised
Only that I’m disappointed
With the liar they’ve appointed
Substance swapped for sloganeering
The clueless crowds continue cheering
I cannot stand a thing I’m hearing
As the ship of state is steering
Towards an iceberg we all see
But dismiss as fantasy
A fake news conspiracy
Our unsinkable economy
Meanwhile some of us can’t sleep
Because the worry’s gnawing deep
Of when our country lost its way?
And if we’ll ever find our place
And feel again like we belong
When so many are so wrong?
And fat, fingered, base and greedy
The many sacrificed the needy
So the few could keep their money
Like flies to shit-smeared honey
Feet stuck in their mistake
It starts to dawn, but far too late
That they’ve sabotaged their fate
As they slowly suffocate
Beneath the weight of propaganda
Which wove gold from shards of slander
The winning strategy
Was to repeat it frequently
And add some false equivalency
Until anyone can see
Unless, of course, they are insane
That all politicians are the same
Even when they’re clearly not
And it’s a genuine choice we’ve got
Because the choice it was so clear
A vote for hope or one for fear
And we chose poorly in a landslide
As some swam against this harsh tide
Impossible to stop the torrent
Of the selfish and abhorrent
Drowning as it overcame me
Election night forever stained me
Crying out into the dark
It broke my misanthropic heart
And I picked up my poet’s pen,
Without country yet again,
Wiped my eyes and took a breath;
And came to terms with culture’s death.
So 2019 may also mark the end of something else – the end of politics as we know it. It began with the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump’s concerted destruction of epistemology in 2016 – truth no longer being a thing which mattered in politics – and has slowly eroded away until now we literally see a politician lie repeatedly and consistently in every campaign appearance and vote for him anyway. It’s hard to maintain the lies on which Western civilisation is based when there is no longer any agreed consensus on what reality even is.
2019 was also the year I finally came to peace with the fact that I would never be able to catch up with every TV show and movie I wanted to see and stopped trying. The joy of this decision cannot be overstated. Rather than trying to “keep up” and “avoid spoilers” I just watched what I wanted, when I wanted, and if I didn’t get to something “in time” I figured if it was any good it would still be good when I got around to it. If it wasn’t good later, then it probably wasn’t that good in the first place either. Likewise, I decided to stop giving WWE so much of my time. As more wrestling options arose with AEW, NXTUK and NXT on USA, I no longer had the five hours to spare on a subpar weekly Raw and Smackdown so made the decision to pull the plug. We now only watch the monthly Pay Per Views and feel all the better for it. Time is too precious to waste. I have read so much more in 2019 because of this. And have caught up on things that I actually want to catch up on rather than feeling some weird obligation to basically keep up with a conversation on Twitter I don’t even want to be having.
2019 was also the year social media won. I tried coming off Facebook completely in January, but was back by the summer. After an initial flurry of friends actually making the analogue effort to have a relationship in real life, I realised Facebook was, sadly, where people were living their lives regardless of whether I wanted to be there or not. By not participating I was basically removing myself from them, alienating myself and putting up walls. I don’t like it, but I’m back there again and actually know what people are up to in a world where they no longer actually talk.
Highlights of 2019 was all the theatre we saw – basically every show at the RSC in Stratford and most of them at the Old Vic in London. Plus we saw tennis at both Edgbaston and the O2, and MLB baseball in London! We saw Nick Cave, Muse, and Divine Comedy. We travelled to Sweden, to France, to the Lake District and the Peak District and prioritised having a good time at the weekend instead of letting work dominate our lives. While I did all this writing and music, my wife discovered pottery and painting, producing amazing works of art in a variety of different mediums. I got two new tattoos. We gave to charity. We saw family and friends.
Basically, 2019 sucked in a lot of ways, and was the best year ever in others. Like any year, it had its ups and downs, its highs and lows, its successes and failures. As the wider world continued its descent into a very bad place, and cognitively my mind continues to do battle with my will, we did what we could to hold the darkness at bay and bring light to our lives. And I think, in the accounting of it, we did pretty fucking well. A year of art, of love, of travel, of culture, of life lived against all the odds and in spite of all the obstacles is a year that has been grabbed from the claws of despair and held proudly aloft in a middle-fingered: fuck you. So fuck you 2019. You were great, and you were fucking awful in equal measure. I’ll be glad to see the back of you, but will miss you when you’re gone. I’ll never forget the good times we had and will try not to let the bad sour the sweet.
2020 – your move…
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