HOW 'EUROPE' IS THIS! ©Dave Duggan
I leave
Ireland to go in search of 'Europe'. In Amsterdam, I see French
actress and film star, Juliette Binoche, play Antigone in an ancient
Greek tragedy by Sophocles, opposite Belfast actor, Patrick O'Kane,
playing Creon the King. The production is a London, Paris and
Amsterdam co-operative venture. I sit high in The Gods, the third
balcony, between an English woman, an actress friend of one of the
cast and a young Turkish woman. How 'Europe' is this!
The
English actress' husband is exploring for oil on the Black Sea. The
young Turkish woman says that residents of Turkey beside the Black
Sea are perceived as country-bumpkins. She tells of a man who
invented a lock that is openable by any key, because he knows how
often all of us lose our keys. Instead of thinking the inventor may
have a screw loose, I'm inclined to consider he is on to something.
He strikes me as the sort of fellow I would enjoy meeting. The young
woman tells us that her father is a retired Turkish naval officer,
who didn't like working on the Black Sea. He preferred the
Mediterranean.
The
current tragedies on Mare Nostrum, as
the Romans called it – our sea - draws European nations
together to plan gun-boat activity against human traffickers, who ply
an ancient trade of moving people from poor and/or war-ravaged
countries to richer and/or more stable countries. It is a market,
driven by push/pull factors and, like all such trading, there are
massive casualties, ghastly forms of economic collateral damage.
There are
historical precedents. The coffin ships that left Ireland, in the
days of raging famine to plough the stormy Atlantic, were well-named
for the cargoes of dead they delivered to the shores of America. The
ships carrying kidnapped peoples from various coasts of the continent
of Africa, in vessels owing allegiance to businesses based in
Holland, Spain, Portugal and Britain – how 'Europe' is that! - were
trading in a marketable commodity; human labour. Today's traffickers
are in the business of meeting the desires of desperate people
impelled by their desire to reach 'Europe'.
The
morning after seeing the play, I am upstairs in a train – I feel so
'European'! - and witness a Die Bahn ICE train cruise by, which
causes me to reflect on the tremendous endeavours of science, social
organisation, engineering, financing, international co-operation,
skilled and unskilled labour, precision mathematics, design
aesthetics and sheer grease-gun-toting effort that led to such a
moment. The inter-city train I am travelling upon travels smoothly
beside a broad and serene canal, on which cargo-laden barges aim for
the Rhine. I note that the canal, filled to the brim with racing
waves, is higher than the train line. I feel vulnerable, an Irishman
from the distant edge of the continent, yet also safely 'European'.
My
carriage is packed with twenty somethings. They share the febrile
cross-conversations of university students. This status is confirmed
by the young man opposite me, in a conversation that reveals he is a
post-graduate philosophy student, who recognises most of the other
occupants of the carriage. He is confident that they, like him, are
heading to Utrecht to hear a lecture by the French philosopher, Bruno
Latour. Such has been the demand for tickets to this lecture that the
organisers moved it, three times, to a larger venue. Bruno Latour is
a member of a wine-making family in Burgundy. He won the Holberg
Prize in 2013, when the citation read “Bruno Latour has undertaken
an ambitious analysis and reinterpretation of modernity, and has
challenged fundamental concepts such as the distinction between
modern and pre-modern, nature and society, human and non-human.”
The title of his lecture is “How to sort out the many ambiguities
in the concept of Anthropocene.” The Dutch graduate student says
the lecture will range across the philosophy of science, the
relationship between Man (sic) and Nature and our experience of
modernity. I am stunned and exhilarated. Surely this is 'Europe'?
On board
the traffickers' ships, that cross the ancient Mare Nostrum,
the actuality of modernity must stretch the analysis and imaginations
of Bruno Latour and his acolytes. There are reports of babies being
thrown into the sea by ships' captains, of women giving birth amidst
the flotsam and jetsam. Fishermen from Lampedusa often pull up skulls
and bones in their nets, the remains of the desperate who search for
'Europe'.
I visit
the Hanseatic city of Doesburg, part of an early form of European
union. It is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the
city by Allied Forces in World War 2. The Stars and Stripes flies
gamely above a vintage truck. A performance by three singers in GI
period outfits is underway. They sing and dance in chilly Spring
sunshine, headset microphones wrapped round their cheeks like plump
tadpoles. The buildings around us, gothic russet-bricked marvels,
dating from 1447 yet looking very much part of today's urban
landscape, connect us with trading along the great rivers Rhine and
Issel and the way the current 'Europe' came to be.
Suddenly
a marching band is heard and into the tiny square process Scottish
bag-pipers, in kilts and vintage World War 2 tunics. They are the
Seaforth Highlanders of Holland and are warmly greeted by the crowd,
who cheer and clap. The crowd is exclusively white and manifestly
'European'. There is no irony here. Dutch men and women dress up in
traditional Scottish clothes and British Army uniforms, play
Scottish-Irish marches and are thoroughly modern.
Paul
Simon (American) and Sting (English) are international rock
superstars. The last concert of their year long tour is in the Ziggo
Dome, in the Arena zone of Amsterdam. It is a triumph of popular
music and technology, enjoyed by 17, 000 people who sing along and
dance in the aisles. I am once more in The Gods. The view is good,
the sound superb and the band magnificent, as they play extracts from
the soundtrack of my life, including Sting's mawkish lyric, “For
all those born beneath an angry star, lest we forget how fragile we
are.”
Paul
Simon and Sting, and their marvellous band, play zydeco, reggae, Cape
Town jazz, ballads, hi-life, three-chord blues, rock and roll, rai
and chaabi. All the music of the world is the sound of 'Europe'.
It is no
wonder the ramshackle boats keep crossing 'our' sea.
Juliette
Binoche will play Antigone at The Edinburgh International Festival in
August, in a modern translation is by Anne Carson. The tragedies in
'Europe' continue, ancient and contemporary.
Wish
I could say I did not see the stones shrieking
Dave
Duggan is a dramatist and novelist, living in Derry, Northern
Ireland. His most recent play, DENIZEN, a speech from the dock
by the last dissident republican, written as a verse drama, with
on-stage visuals, toured court houses.
www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter
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