The Mourning Cloak

Antiopia’s Kitchen Party

The treble it trembles a wavering note. It flickers, like sadness, in A hand-me-down throat. Tongue jives with madness in a fickle sweet head. It could be your voice, or the voice of the dead. The hollow space carries the withering sound from a heart full of darkness to a strange thorning crown. Noise is a sorrow. A voice from on high sings a dirge to those living below.

Who are the dead? And where do they lie? Whose Heart strings the harp and the bow?

The growl of anguish in this bone-weary boy, a guttural hope a destitute joy. Mourning has broken like the first death. Shadows have spoken grasping at breath. The voice of the master is weirdly profound, or is it profoundly weird? Out in the kitchen, there are other sounds. The dead go on living in fragments of tune. Out of step with the world, to the beat of the spoon. It is not that we’re happy, or that we’re not. We simply believe in that big old stew pot. The newspaper lies, Kindling for the fire. The radio’s off, completely unwired. Snatches of songs, The ones never written, Play in the mind   a restless old kitten. The treble, it trembles a wavering note It flickers, like gladness, in a hand-me-down throat.

~Joshua Paetkau.

One of my favourite quotes, from Charles Peguy, goes something as follows: “Nothing is as old as today’s news. If you want to read something new go to the Odyssey and the Iliad of Homer.” Our age of fast food and fast news is unsatisfying to the storied souls of the human creature. We, the human race, are creatures of storytelling. We grew up, as a species, around the campfire telling stories and singing songs, and sharing in the body and blood of creation for our physical nourishment.

Later on, that became the kitchen. This is evolution, and the meaning of this evolution is pretty clear. Kitchens should be places of story and song. They are the places where the human creature is nourished, and the nourishment of body and mind is something that should not be separated in practice or in theory. What happens when that sacred space is invaded by the radio, the television, the internet?

What I would like to do, here on this blog, has something to do with storytelling and song, the sacred and the sacrificial, but at a human and humane scale. These are my reflections, nothing more; the traces of an erratic pattern through the air, maybe a bit like the winged flight of nymphalis antiopia, the mourning cloak butterfly.

I do not mean that I have nothing substantial to think about, or to say. Often, I think I might have more of substance, and so might you, than many of our so-called political leaders, or the crafters of political narrative today. The news cycle of today is so tired, so weary. Is it not time to ‘forget that tired story of betrayal and revenge?” Maybe the sacred spaces of our minds and kitchens should be rescued from the voices of the political and cultural mastery, and returned to the risk of an uncommon song of real togetherness?

After all, those voices from on high are often pretty dismal, even when they are eloquent and refined and eloquent. I can understand that a national broadcaster can help build a national consciousness, but what about kitchen consciousness? My contention is that there is more reality in the stewpot than on the television. My contention is that parliament is not so political a space as the hearth. Take a look, whatever country you happen to live in, at the political parties that exist. Are these the parties you would like to attend?

As for me, I would rather go to a kitchen party. The political parties are full of masters, droning on with pretentious self-importance. Masters whose voices authoritatively beckon us, and divide us from people we might otherwise care about and for. Masters who, like the wolf from the fairytale of Red Riding Hood, demand affection that by right belongs to our grandmothers. Why, exactly, are we looking for wisdom from people who do not know or care about the kitchen?

There is a big difference between the voice trying to find its own way by haltingly learning and mimicking the voices of the past – inventing its own variations along the way – and the monolothic overriding voice of conformity. Political parties are about toeing the party line, kitchen parties are about finding and remembering the harmonies, or even hashing out the dissonant chords. Sometimes it can be fun to sing out of tune, too, as the Beatles famously suggested in “With a Little Help from My Friends.” What would you say if I sang out of tune? Would you get up and walk out on me?

Friends, that is exactly what has happened. The ones who couldn’t stand the heat of the kitchen got out, and they walked out into a different place and they started telling stories, autotune stories, lifeless stories. Stories that deaden the soul, and allow mass slaughter to become routine. Stories that neither respect the elders, nor care for the young. Stories that make us believe things that aren’t true, and grant greater importance to some national fiction than to the life of a child? The life of the earth?

No. Thank-you. I have time for faltering, stumbling songs. I have time for stories around the kitchen table. I do not have time for the egotistical madness that has gripped our world in the fever dreams of the rich and powerful. Against those voices, against that tidal stream of eloquent despair masquerading as calculated political hope, it is possible to speak out, demanding real justice, and enacting a sustained practice of memory of the lives that have been forgotten.

It is not an easy task. The stories we tell, and the stories we live in can be strange, cruel, and twisted. Stories are powerful. Why not take some of the power away from those who have so wickedly misused it?