Realities Blog - Jul 2017

Relentless Realities Blog for Jul 2017

July 28, 2017

Roy Merchant

Many of you will know that I am trying to be a writer.

What you may not be aware of is that for the last year I have been toiling under the weight of writing a kind of autobiography about my life set around the music that I love.

Don’t get me wrong, I love most music, but I have gotta say that I am passionate about (in no particular order) Rhythm and Blues, Soul Music from the 60’s and 70’s, Blues, Jazz, Ska, Rock Steady and Reggae. And a bit of classical thrown in.

Also Love Funk, but only when James Brown plays it (You should have been in Singapore in 1967 and 68 to see Neil dance to “Cold Sweat” and “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” in the dance halls of the RAF bases. It was truly a sight to remember and is still almost touchable 50 years later).

Well, the book is nearly finished and is being edited as I write. Hopefully the Editor thinks it is wonderful and amazing and I do not have massive rewrites to do, mainly because there is another one rattling around in the brain and I have a collection of poems that I need to be getting on with.

The main reason for this email is to let you know that I have a website where you can follow my writing and additionally, from time to time I give away some free books, articles, poems and other interesting stuff and thoughts.

I am asking a big favour of my subscribers. I invite you to have a look at my latest musings and give me some feedback. Be as honest (brutal) and helpful as you want, but please no rude stuff, I have kids and grandkids who are encouraged to look at my site.

I would love you to join and subscribe to our site. 

To sign up, just click on this link:

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Thanking you in advance,

Roy.

Relentless Realities Home Page

ps: See below for a free peak at the new book. Don't forget to subscribe:

Excerpt from: Rhythms Of My Life

I mentioned earlier about Neil dancing to James Brown’s music in 60’s Singapore. Here is a excerpt from my new book: Rhythms Of My Life, which tells it as it was.

James Brown I feel Good album – 1968

By January 1969, the northeast monsoon had taken over dictating the weather in Singapore and the swimming pools in the Royal Naval Dockyard recreation area were empty again. By now all the black service men from the Navy, Marines, Air Force and the Army had met each other, either at dances in the airbase at Changi and Seletar, the Army base or the Naval base down at Sembawang. Some nights we would go along to house parties and have a great time with people from all nationalities. We could not understand that the same esprit de corps that we found at parties was not there the next day we turned up for work. By then we had gone straight back into being looked down on as if we did not belong. As if our lives were less important than everyone else’s.

It was in the dances at RAF Seletar that we heard James Brown being played loudly and enjoyed by everyone. At the time “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” had been around a while, It was off the album “I feel Good”, but in England I was not really a great James Brown fan. Yes, I had listened to the album “Live at The Apollo” like everyone else, but it was only on the lonely dance floors in Singapore, where we were in our triple ply mohair suits and our made to measure shirts with the silk handkerchiefs dancing a dance of their own, that the album made sense to me.

Us black boys who had called ourselves “The Untouchables” would pursue fun across Singapore as if our lives depended on it. We would beg the DJ to keep playing “Night Train”, “Cold Sweat”, and “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”, “I Feel Good” and everything that James Brown had out, so that we could stay in the groove all night. We would dance. Neil would hold us all entranced as his small stature gave him the perfect balance to mesmerise everyone with the way his body translated what was in his mind and the mind of the musicians on the record.

There were times when Neil was so good, everyone else just stopped and looked. He had a way of flicking his handkerchief to “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” which was simply magical. The handkerchief seems to stay in the air as if it was suspended, whilst he did a double spin and the splits, then he would catch it as he was half way back up into the standing position. Simply breathless. We used to leave RAF Seletar exhausted.

Full copyright : Roy Merchant July 2017

Thin line between love and hate

A short extract from my upcoming book, keep an eye out for it:

The Rhythms Of My Life

Thin line between love and hate 1971 – 72

I first heard this song in the summer of 1972. Although it had been out for nearly 6 months and I was an avid music fan, it had passed me by. But then 1971 and 1972 were 2 of the busiest years of my young life so far.

Yeah, sure, in the navy I was busy when I was busy, but most of my time was spent waiting to be busy. Waiting to go on duty, waiting to listen to the torpedoes going out and tracking them, listening to the fishing vessels through the sonar and trying to imagine what kind of propellers they had and how many shafts. Looking out for the Special Boat Section guys to get back from wherever they had been and hauling them back on board.

Back in Civvy Street, I was cast adrift and had to learn very quickly that I actually had to make the decisions, rather than simply follow orders. I had to take responsibility for my actions and their consequences. It was all down to me.

I had got myself a job in a store in Holborn as a part time salesman, whilst I was studying electronics at the skill centre and then college. I was down Ridley Road every Saturday listening to the records, at least that’s what us boys said. In reality we were there to check out how high the miniskirts were this week and which girl we could invite to the party that Saturday night.

One Saturday, I was there watching this girl waltzing her way down the market, having held up the traffic on the High Road, in what could only be described as a belt and a blouse. Her skirt was so short, her boyfriend was no longer proud to be walking beside her and was now walking ahead of her, with a look of fury on his face and glaring at all the men who was looking at a certain part of her anatomy in the most disgusting way. It was almost as if they thought that some type of collective wish would undress her and they could have a treat.

The boyfriend was now getting angrier and angrier as his sense of humiliation and powerlessness became more obvious. The boys were now wolf whistling her and she was soaking up the attention, the way a sponge soaks up water.

One guy finally pushed the boyfriend’s humiliation to the point of no return, when he broke all the rules and started chatting the girl up in front of him.

At this point the boyfriend decided to abandon the girl and he dived into the record shop, just as the record “It’s a Thin Line Between Love And Hate” came on. My friends and I looked at each other and started the most painful laugh we have ever laughed. The coincidence was so startling that we asked the record shop owner, if he had done it on purpose. He gave us a blank look which told us it was just an amazing coincidence. That was my introduction to the song “It’s a Thin Line Between Love And Hate”

It’s a song about still waters running deep and not to take your lover for granted. An amazing story, which has a beginning a great middle and a brilliant ending. Written by the Poindexter brothers and Jackie Members, sung by the Persuaders and released in 1971. None of us got the girl, she went off with a “Brick Toilet” of a chap, who no one was going to challenge. I think she was looking for security, more than love. She did not need any more love than the love she had for herself.

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Full Copyright Roy Merchant 2017

“Packit Eena Mi Han”

Packit Eena Mi Han

  Poem from upcoming book "Relentless Realities"

 
 

 

We came over to England to help the mother country get back on her feet after her war with Germany. Our mother was waiting for us with open arms. At least that’s what we were told. The reality was a little different. This poem is dedicated to all those young men and women of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s who could not find a way through the silent but deadly racism and one particular victim still haunts me.

I first met him in 1965 at the Labour Exchange in Spurstow Terrace in Hackney. He was playing the fool and making a lot of noise as he waited to collect his unemployment benefits. He was young and life was in the future and he was just doing this until he got a job. He obviously could not live on the pittance he was handed out. He could only afford chicken back with that, but he was OK, living at home with Mum and Dad and no bills.

I was lucky, the Royal Navy came to my rescue and I did not see him again until 1973, when I came out of the Navy and went to the Unemployment Office again to sign on. He was still making the same noises and I realised that this place was contaminated and if I stayed I too would be stained with the lethargy and hopelessness that I witnessed there. I never went back.

In that stark moment I realised that Britain give you the pittance to stop you being a nuisance and if you could reduce your spend to the point where you could live on the benefits, then the children of the wealthy could carry on eating steaks and drinking champagne and you would carry on blaming yourself for your continued failure.

Out of that moment of truth and a walk down Ridley Road market one day, came this poem: “Packit Eena Mi Han”.

It is in heavy Jamaican patois because that’s who we were and deep down who we are, where we all started out, so let your mind focus and concentrate. The understanding will come.

Things I wish I knew at 20

Things I wish I knew at 20

A section from my upcoming book
  “Rhythms Of My Life”

Equality and Capitalism

I wish I knew at 20 how difficult the battle would be for human equality on this planet. It was obvious to see that it was going to take some time for everyone to get a fair share of the spoils of living on planet Earth. But at 20 I thought, give it a few years and it would all be sorted, because us humans are basically good people and would see the right way and do the right thing in the end.

All I can say is that the end is nowhere in sight and equality is a distant dream. I think that what I failed to understand or comprehend is the fear that drives some of our actions. For us all to be equal, some people have to give something up, either some of the wealth accumulated or in some cases stolen over the last 1000 years, the knowledge we have been keeping to ourselves about how to do things, or simple suspending the belief that we are better than everyone else and that’s why we have as much resources as we do.

Once we stop thinking that nature has given us an entitlement to the wealth, education, knowledge etc., and that actually, we may have just been lucky, we will be able to correct the way we think the world works. The trouble is we are selfish beings and confuse the strategy we need as individuals living out the next few years and the human race trying to outlive time. I think in the end we will find the solutions to these struggles and forget that they were ever there. The trouble is that it takes millenniums for this to happen and individually we are only allotted 70 years to live, so we can never see the outcomes.

I wish I knew at twenty that Capitalism was not going to be the solution for humanity’s woes. That in the end it created more problems than it could ever solve and the only beneficiaries were the super-rich.

Do not get me wrong, I am not poor, whatever that means. I mean that I have enough food to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over my head. I live on a pension which I spent a lot of time and money accruing during my working years. I retired some years ago due to ill health and reaching the ripe old age of 65.

I am part of the baby boomers, that lucky generation of people who live in the Western Capitalist system, who were born between 1945 and 1965. The golden years after the Second World War, where there was a massive rebuilding and research programme based on science, technology and capital investment.

Whatever we did turned to gold. All our investments paid off, it did not take a great deal of skill to keep or maintain our wealth. It simply grew. We bought a house and the value would increase whilst we slept. The price of everything came down year on year. Disposable income went up and most people could afford a house, if they really wanted to.

Poverty in the UK during the 60’s and 70’s was not real poverty, not compared to the deprivation I had witnessed in Bombay, Subic Bay and Hong Kong, or the abject emptiness I had heard of in parts of Africa. In England, people complained about indigence, without ever really knowing what it was. I ignored the empty noise as I truly felt that ignorance of what it is to go without food and water for days made people imagine that they were worse off than they actually were. The soft belly of the welfare state had the effect of keeping the poor and unearning anaesthetised from the reality of poverty.

In the great competition between the richer and the poorer, the richer found ways of ensuring that the poorer remained uneducated and ill equipped to challenge their children for the spoils of the land. The poorer became reconciled, sedated, and almost asleep to the aspirational possibilities that the post war opportunities presented to the winners of the war in the west.

The super-rich were taking the acquisition of resources to another level and between 1960 and 2016, the grabbing of worldwide resources by the super-rich, became obscene. Over twenty trillion pounds of the world’s resources has been stolen in some cases, but certainly trapped and stored away by the super-rich in off shore funds, gold and private banks. Far away from the prying eyes of governments and their tax officials.

This money would never again see the light of day, because it would never be needed for day to day survival or expenses. This was money to ensure, or is it insure, that these families are moneyed for 5,000 years. If that means 10 million people die of hunger in Africa or Asia, what concern was it of theirs?

“These poor people, did not know what it was like to work hard anyway, they sat down all day waiting for someone to hand them something to eat, these poorer people are like cockroaches, who are not really fit to be in the same species as the winners”, says the super-rich and their sycophants.

People escaping from the wars created by the super-rich to make more money, were decried by the west as immigrants, terrorists and other negative stereotypes to enable the poor to fight amongst each other.

Slowly the middle classes were being destroyed by the power of the super-rich, so in the end there will only be the super-rich and the serfs.

No one wanted to be seen as poor, so everyone became temporary poor, so all the systems that would have helped people with low income were ridiculed and killed off by the very people, they were originally intended for. The middle classes were so busy making sure that the poorer ones were not bridging the gap between them, they failed to see how far ahead the super-rich were leaving them behind. 

And the poorer, who had been kept uninformed on purpose as part of the “killing off the competition” programme, did what they always do. They had long ago given up on blaming the rich for anything, as it has always given them more problems than it was worth. However, they still needed someone to blame for their ills, and the easy target was someone even worse off than them.

Imagine, blaming someone with even less power than you for the problems you have. If they were that powerful, surely they would not be worse off than you. When you are kept uninformed and uneducated, logic escapes and flees in exasperation.

Life....LIVE

"Life"

A video of me performing one of my poems in front of an audience at a club in East London.

The poem is called "LIFE" and as it says, takes you on a journey from the cradle to the grave.

It is from my book "Walking In The Shadows Of Death" (available on Amazon) and will be reiterated in my upcoming collection of poems "Relentless Realities". 

Hope you enjoy it. 

Share it if you do.

Copyright: Roy Merchant

"Life"....LIVE

Trouble At Manger

December 18, 2016

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Roy Merchant

 I am in the process of writing and editing a collection of my short stories to be called "Images".

I am doing the final draft of this section and (unintentionally) it is Christmas. The coincidence appealed to me and I felt compelled to share the story with you.

This section is about the involvement of Herod The Great of Judea and his Mighty Roman Emperor Augustus in trying to locate the new Messiah. It is not your normal Christmas tale. If you like it, let me  know via the website, I might publish the complete short story as a stand alone now...........Happy Christmas

From the soon to be published collection of

Short Stories by Roy Merchant entitled:

"Images"

“Trouble At Manger -Chapter 3"

Augustus and Herod

I was 57 years old at the end of 6BC and had done most of the significant things in my life that I was going to be remembered for, when news reached me from one of the outposts in the Levant that a prophecy was going to be fulfilled. Something about a Messiah about to be born who would come to free the Jews.

At first I was not worried about it, because in 40BC, when Herod had come to Rome begging myself and my old ally Mark Anthony’s help to get rid of Antigonus who had marched in and stolen his crown, we had decided to back him and crowned him King of Judea. It did not mean much to us, but it meant a lot to him. I remember saying to Anthony, my ally at the time that he looked a bit mad, but he would do as he was told. We did not have much choice anyway, as we had our own troubles trying to steady the ship of Rome, only 4 years after the death of Julius Caesar and us hunting down the assassins remorselessly.

I remember exactly where I was when the news of Julius’s death came to me and to the day I die, I will always remember the passion I felt as Agrippa, I and Mark, before he became besotted with Cleopatra, created the new Republic.

I was always hearing about new prophets, messiahs and sages coming up and predicting the end of Rome and although I did not pay them too much mind, I kept flashing back to the Ides Of March and feeling that had Julius had been a bit more attentive, he might have avoided his own assassination. Only trouble with that is that I would not have become an Emperor.

I told the messenger to get back to Judea quickly and instruct Herod the depressed as all his subjects called him to search for this messiah and inform me at once when he was found.

I must say that I was not worried about a messiah from the Levant, I had to get the maps out to see where Bethlehem or even Nazareth was. I laughed to myself and thought, “What could possibly come out of those places”. Me being a very very cautious ruler however, also planned to cover my bet, by keeping a very close eye on this little area and that madman Herod from now on. He was a tyrant, but he was my tyrant.

Calls himself great! Herod the Great, if he is GREAT!!, then, what in Jupiter’s name am I?

Herod had been looking for this messiah, ever since his spies in the temples had told him that the priests had been talking incessantly about the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah for a long time and that the talk had been getting more insistent since around 8BC.

For the last 2 years all he had been hearing about was the MESSIAH. Now, whilst he was not a very religious man, being king, he had quickly come to realise that the temple was a very powerful place and had to be taken seriously, or there could be unimaginable consequences.

The power struggle between the Sadducees, the modernisers, those who currently favoured the Hellenic (Greco-Roman) ways of looking at the world and the Pharisees, a very traditionalist’s sect who believed that nothing should change had basically been going on for at least 1400 years, ever since Moses got the Jews out of Egypt. Herod knew that this latest argument was just that, the latest argument. There would be more in years to come, about everything under the sun. What he had to do was to manage this one and whoever came after him, would have to deal with what they found at the time. None of them loved him anyway, he mused.

He had been looking all over the kingdom to find out who, or what this Messiah was. Some said he was the chosen one, a new Moses, who would come and get the Jews out of bondage for ever. Others said that he would be the prophet of prophets, or the King of Kings. Now, Herod was not all that worried about the prophet of prophets, but the King of Kings was something else. That meant taking over his kingdom, killing off his legacy, leaving him as a nonentity in the annals of time. Funny how Jesus’s existence, ensured that his name would last forever, instead of fading back into the obscurity from whence he came, but that is another story.

On the 25th December 6BC, his sages came to him saying that a new star had settled over the tiny little village of Bethlehem and all the Pharisees were saying that it was the sign that the Messiah had arrived. He sent his best men, the Praetorian Guards to look for this new King. They went and looked at all the places they thought a king would be staying in, or being born in, but could not find him. They reported back that there was no King born in Bethlehem that night.

The next day, I mean the next day, 26th of December, the messenger from Augustus came. He did not even knock, just pushed the guards out of the way and barged into my sleeping chamber, where I was busy entertaining a new wife and demanded that I got dressed and tell him what I knew about the rumours about some Messiah. I nearly screamed. If I heard that name one more time, I was going to kill someone. The look he gave me told me that I had better calm down. So I did.

I felt humiliated. I, the son of Antipater, the ruler of Batanea, Peraea, Samaria, Galilee, Judea, and Idumea, the one who had made Judea yield to the power of Rome was being treated as a powerless pawn by a messenger, the messenger I tell you, of Augustus.

In any other time, I would have been seen as a great leader, my kingdom was the size of David’s at its most powerful. I had made an enemy of all my kindred people to ensure that the relationship with Rome remained intact. I got more tax collected for Rome than anyone else. The Jews hate me and would kill me without any mercy, the minute I show any weakness and still Augustus treats me as just another vassal. A Roman thrall.

Survival is the greatest instinct known to man. It overcomes humiliation, it overrides bravery and courage. It leaves you incapable of doing unselfish things and I was a great survivor.

My soldiers searched high and low, up and down the hills in every nook, every cranny, and every cave from the shores of the Dead Sea right up the hill to Bethlehem and still we could not find him. We heard that Magi’s from another country had come to see him, that the shepherds had also come across to worship him, that he was circumcised and was also presented on the 40th day, but somehow he always eluded us. My soldiers killed all the first born children under 2 years old as a lesson to the Jews, but no one came forward with a name, an abode, a relative, anything that would give us a clue as to the whereabouts of that blessed Messiah. And each day the messenger from Rome took my failure more personal, almost as if he thought, I was failing to find this messiah on purpose.

I wanted to build a great dynasty, nothing like Rome you understand, even I did not have the ego, or energy to sustain the power required to build something as huge as Augustus has done with Rome, but I was absolutely fed up to the teeth with just being seen as just a satellite of Syria and slowly, but remorselessly having to be at the beck and call of a Governor or Prefect of Rome who did not even stay in Jerusalem, but had to go and be stationed miles away in Caesarea, that’s almost in Syria itself.

I do not think that Augustus ever really cared about finding the Messiah. He just wanted to tease me, to show me up, to constantly remind me of my incompetence. To show me that without him in Rome, I could not be trusted to manage a little domain such as this. I could not even find a baby in a tiny little village of about 600 people.

I heard that the Messiah and his family fled the 250 miles to Egypt and although I was embarrassed at being made a fool of, at least he was out of my hair and the mocking face of the Governor and the messenger was no longer constantly in my palace humiliating me.

It was in my 75th year in 4AD, when I had achieved all I was going to achieve and the madness and the constant pain and tiredness from my weak blood flow was making me see things in ways even I was beginning to question, that I had the vision.

I was in my sleeping quarters having just failed to satisfy my tenth wife yet again and just welcoming the quietness of sleep again, when I felt a presence in my chamber. The presence was like a spirit, only it seemed almost holy, almost divine and of a power far greater than any I had ever encountered. I had seen Julius Caesar, I had met Augustus and Mark Anthony. I had spoken to Cleopatra on one of my treks into Egypt, when Mark Anthony was playing the fool. These people had personal power and charisma that you knew was more powerful than yours could ever be, but the spirit of Yahweh’s son was a source of grace whose power was beyond comprehension.

In my quiet contemplation with him and at some time in the twilight hours, he walked with me and he talked with me and his voice was quiet. No word was uttered from his mouth, but the primordial conversation with his eyes, went on for a long while as we walked in that garden of his village house in Cairo.

He told me I was forgiven, that Yahweh, decided what was, what is and what will be and that I had no choice in the path I took to fulfill the prophecy. He said I will always be remembered for the bad things I had done, but I will also be remembered as the greatest builder in Israel’s history. He told me to close my eyes and feel no more pain. I did as I was told and the arteriosclerosis pain disappeared along with all the other agonies and the voices in my head.

I smiled, my breathing stopped and I was no more.