Back to Identity?And scrambled transmissions from Planet Cod.

Looking myself in the eye .Holding my own gaze . Wondering , always wondering whether i was telling myself the truth. My new father met me in the mirror . Came to my rescue . Swift tongued with eyes of sure fire , flames from beyond . He told me never to rely on anyone .There’s no one you got that cant leave , turn on ,or steal from you .There aint nothing ya got that ya can’t loose . THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE MY SON … IS YOURSELF .So , my soul is mine .That’s all i have in a world whose main function is to decieve me into believing that i can own anything for the right price .That all it takes is the right look , the right style . ALL I CAN EVER HOPE FOR IS THE POSSESSION OF MY SOUL . So leave me be , fifteen years of age and a fascination in the man Lennon .Leave me be , no … im lonely … even amongst my friends im an outcast . I live in a house that’s on the same road as my school . Gets dark early . I’ts autumn . The people i live with , my foster family , have nearby convinced me that every caukasian man, woman and child is rascist to a lesser or greater extent .They said it wasn’t just a matter of bigotry . They said it was more complex than that . They said that rascism was so deep in the history of the british culture that the majority of people were unconscious of its existence within them . My foster family meant well , i can see that now but only because , as an adult you gain insight into the twisted logic of the adult world . Though they believed in what they tried to instill within me , a sense of identity as a Black britishman . BLack BRITishman . A BLACK BRITISHMAN … HEAR ME ? BLACKI BLACK BLACK , BRITISHMAN … Actually , all they acheived was the opposite . Whether or not i ever was , i was no longer in a neutral place with regards to the issue of race . Through living with this family , rather than feeling reconciled to “my people” i felt further seperated from my friends .I already had problems with regards to relating to other kids on account of personal differences . Now it was as though my individuality was being swallowed by something altogether foreign to me . FALSE ! What could be more false than the idea that a likeness of skin colour and hair type could be enough .Enough what ? ENOUGH And as far as im concerned it wasn’t and never was . Of course i was the only member of that household to listen to and respect , let alone ,like the beatles .The family had a lot of relatives in london and so there were weekends where i’d have to go do the rounds with them . Visiting this aunt and uncle or that aunt and uncle . I loved it , at first , because these people were so very different from anything i’d known .London , i loved london . The largeness , movement and vibrancy strangeness and novelty of London city stirred something in me that i’ll always be grateful for . Grateful to that time . Grateful to my life . And grateful to that family , even though we were soon to fall out . BIG TIME !We argued . DAMN RIGHT WE QUARRELLED ! And it makes me sad now , though it shouldn’t because all it was , was life working itself out through us . “SO YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RASCIST” “YES , THINK ABOUT IT , THINK ABOUT THE BOOKS YOU LEARNT TO READ WITH IN SCHOOL ” . The books i learnt to read with in school had large print . They had simplistic silly sweet little stories that and all the characters were white . This , of course , was the 1980s . The only famous black men you had were , Ediie Murphy , Lenny Henry and Frank Bruno . I dont recall any black women . In the 1980s it was still very much the case that the black characters were killed off early in movies . The were usually stereotypes , either shifty or comical . There were films where blacks were heroes but really only through association with the white lead guy . I wasn’t looking for a black role model . I turned ten years old in nineteen eighty seven . I was just a child in that decade and so i didn’t begrudge the media perception of Negroehood. By the time im in the car arguing with my foster family about the racial climate , im fifteen years old . Im fifteen old . Im Black and for the first time in my life everyone im living with is black . They come from a west indian background . They had lived in London , the nations heart , where my foster mother had been a social worker . I remember she told me , once she told me how she’d worked with teenaged black girls whose self harm had been a direct reflection of their sense of racial inferiority . When she looked at me she said what she saw was pretty much the same thing . Except , i didn’t hate myself . I was myself as an individual and i liked my individuality .Though they may have meant well , my foster family were robbing me of the sense of having the right to be who and what i was .One night i asked my foster mother ” if there was a war betweenn black and white , could i still listen to thje beatles ?” . That was before we fell out BIG TIME . WE HAD TO FALL OUT ! Fifteen years old . Man i was a born romantic . For as long as i could remember i’d dreamt of romance , all through primary school , i’d dreamt of romance . You think im joking ? I dreamt of romance . I never knew any black girls and them people i was living with were taking liberties in stance of speech that threatened my sense of self with regards to the beautiful brunettes in class . Didn’t stop me dreaming . Didn’t stop me hoping . Didn’t even stop me trying to get beneath the skin of Maryanne , Maryanne … My thoughts began upon a philophosy no one would understand . The world had left me no choice but to go deeper into myself . The dualism of my nature afforded me a carefree recklesss front that played distraction from my deep and melancholic core . Lovesick and lonely , a soul homesick and setting a course back to the mother realm of the unborn . LET US DIE TO THIS WORLD OF FAC’ADES AND DECEPTION , IT’S IGNORENCE AND BLINDNESS WILL ROB ME OF ME , LET ME DIE , LET ME OUT OF HERE !There is a society that co-exists within and alongside our adult MESS . It is a kingdom that i like to call the Kingdom of Kids . It is a Kingdom , not in the sense that it has a king or queen , but in the sense the that it has its own way of seeing things . It has promise , vitality and most importantly , it has spirit. In this Kingdom a street is something you might just as soon roll along as walk or run . The steps down into the park . You just as well jump . You are not alone in your thinking that life is about whatever turns you on as opposed to whatever salary you’re on . THE KINGDOM , AH , THE KINGDOM …! Where i went to school , there were very , very few children of a dark skin . Still, you were likely more likely to experience ridicule on account of a welsh or scottish accent than for the shade of you body . THERE WAS NO RACE PROBLEM EXCEPT FOR THE ONE PREACHED TO ME BY MY BLACK FOSTER PARENTS ! They had a take on things that they’d gotten from theirv lives and they were trying to superimpose it onto mine . One of the biggest problems with this was that ,while i was as african looking as , De La Soul … MY FAMILY WERE WHITE ! THEY STILL ARE ! The problem at the heart of all the problem adults ever had with me as i grew up , the problem was their failure to appreciate the fact that all i was interested in learning was ,WHO I AM NOT WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO BE ! And if that’s what you want , to be yourself , if that’s all you want then you find that YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON QUALIFIED TO BE A ROLE MODEL FOR YOU ! There are people , colours , musics and atmospheres EVERYWHERE that show you what you’re not … and what you are .And it’s just a matter of learning to read the signs FOR YOURSELF , IN YOUR OWN WAY , IN YOUR OWN TIME ! And even the Kingdom of kids has a problem with accepting this . It’s far too easy to over romantisize youth and memories of being younger and more self assured and more beleiving of the mythical “GOOD IN EVERYONE”. There is a “survival of the fittest” theme to childhood and adolescence that is equally as cruel as the dog eat dog theme of adult life . That’s why i say i was an outcast amongst my friends . Perhaps what’s cruellest about this “survival of the fittest ” theme through childhood , is the fact that all the while you’re having to toughen up to endure it , the adults are patronizing your innate wisdom with fuckin’ cliche’s like , “ignore them and they’ll go away” . There are many , many more but i dont carry around a list of them in my skull nor the depths of my pockets . When Kurt Cobain was going through his crises in the international spotlight upon the world stage i was tuned into the sixth decade of the 20th century . Now , when he shot himself , i had to take him seriously . I had to take him seriously , not as the poster boy of a fresh wave of youth culture . But as a raw force of individuality driven to despair by the emptiness of his dreams come true in a WORLD WHERE EVEN DREAMS MANIFEST AS NIGHTMARES !IM TELLING YOU THAT A MAN BECAME MY HEROE BECAUSE THE DISGUST HE FELT FOR THIS WORLD WAS STRONG ENOUGH THAT HE TOOK A SHOTGUN TO HIS HEAD AND BLEW IT OFF ! 1994 . I was sixteen and although they class you an adult at eighteen , i had no fuckin’ intention of staying here long enough for them to have me forced on a daily basis to do something that made everyday school attendance seem less like burdensome demand and more like an invite to socialize in the Kingdom … AH , KINGDOM !It’s not a kingdom in that it’s a place .Nor is it a Kingdom in the sense that it falls under the authority of an ethos or manifesto . ‘Cause despite the peer preesures and the needs and desires to belong to some crowd or other , the prevailing nature of that Kingdom is spontaneous , ingenius in it’s simplicity , heart wrenching in it’s sweetness and compassion , beautiful and humbling in it’s optimism inspiring in it’s courage and brutal in its honesty . THE KINGDOM OF TEENHOOD IS WITHIN YOU ! PEACE , LOVE , EMPATHY xxx