I've been away on holiday in Denmark where I was born. While I was there, several major events occurred, some of which hit hard:
1. The attempted murder of Kurt Westergaard, he of the Mohammed cartoon fame, in his own home. He was in fact only one of 12 cartoonists, but became the "face" of the issue. I'm a staunch defender of the right to free speech, especially where this is enshrined in one's own country.
2. The shocking attempted bombing of the plane bound for Detroit. It is chilling indeed that a single deranged individual has the power to sow havoc around the whole world and demonstrate how fragile our safety is. We were subjected to intense searching at the airport after this, with random body scans and sniffer dogs. Must say I was grateful for that.
3. COP15, the world climate change conference. There was no room at the inn during the conference, but I made it there the day after it ended. Many exhibitions and writings on the subject were still available and I learned a lot about just how urgent the problem of global warming really is and how much evidence already exists to demonstrate this urgency. We have fouled up our own backyard and our own children will pay the price. One day they will ask us "if you knew it was happening, why didn't you act to stop it?" But too many countries lack the political will to take it seriously. Depressing. It reminds me of what TS Eliot wrote in the poem
The Hollow Men:
"This is the way the world ends.
this is the way the world ends.
this is the way the world ends.
not with a bang, but a whimper"
4. The heaviest snow conditions in Britain in the last 30 years. We made it out of Heathrow at midnight on 5 Jan, after a 4 hr delay to deice and redeice the plane. At one stage the captain announced it was "not looking good". It reinforced for me, how the world weather is changing, with more extreme events. Some say we are headed for another Ice Age, and will become extinct like the dinosaurs. We certainly deserve to.
Well, there, I have minced no words about my opinions. (It is my blog after all.) Why am I writing this in a blog about fibre art?
On the plane home, in the middle of a sleepless night, it all got to me. I sat for probably half an hour with tears rolling down my face, silently listening over and over and over to Katie Melua's "Spider's Web" on the headset. My head filled up with images of destructiveness, hate, arrogance, the complexity of protest and convictions, consequences, sorrow and fear. We will succumb to flames that will burn to our own destruction.
I will probably try and use these images in a visual composite of all my impressions. There's a danish 'silver lining' proverb - probably has an equivalent in every language, but I learned the danish one first -
"There's nothing so bad that it isn't good for something".
I'm a speck of dust in the universe and cannot change the world. So perhaps I can just make a statement about it, as I see it.
