Rabbits Against The System

There seems to be a growing trend of passive protest in this country. We are developing a tendency for highlighting issues through negative action and I think this is a reflection of the British, certainly the English, temperament. In France, in protest to Sarkozy’s proposed reforms, public sector workers have gone on strike. In the UK… Hang on, that example doesn’t work. If train drivers, local council officers, utility maintenance workers went on strike nobody would notice any change from normal. I mean, there’s an elderly couple in Essex who for the past eighteen months have had their electricity cut off every single evening due to a clerical error. In Italy police accidentally shot and killed a football fan and half the nation’s cities were in flames before the weekend was out. In Britain we spend three years taking the Met to court for Health & Safety issues. In Colombia a football fan was so disgruntled by his team’s perceived lack of effort on the pitch that he shot and killed one of the players. That would, at least, end the debate over whether Gerrard and Lampard can play in the same team or not.

Bear with me. There is a point to all this.

Wednesday was No Music Day. You might not have been aware of this, but don’t worry, I only found out by chance, half listening to Front Row in the car on the way back from Sainsburys, on Tuesday night. It’s the brainchild of Bill Drummond, formerly of 90s pop pranksters the KLF, the idea being that there’s too much music in our lives, we’re saturated in it and it is only by isolating ourselves from music for a period of time that we can take a step back and think about what music means to us. Apparently Drummond’s original idea was to do it for a year, but clearly that wasn’t going to work. He tried it for a month and failed pretty quickly, then a week with the same predictable result until he got it down to just a day.

Drummond was trying to drum (heh-heh) up support for the campaign by speaking with the manager at the HMV shop on Oxford Street and Jeremy Irons, the Radio 2 presenter. They were both more interested in whether he really did burn a million quid or not. I, however, was quite intrigued by the idea.

On Wednesdays I have to go into college so I wasn’t going to be able to just lock the spare room door and hide away for twenty-four hours, but I was determined to see if I could avoid music for the day. I remembered not to listen to the radio or have the TV on first thing in the morning and ate my breakfast reading the paper in utter silence save for the bin men running up and down the road. I walked down to college, nipped into the library and then spent two and a half hours in a workshop. We then had lunch in the café in the University building which, to my surprise, doesn’t play music. So far, so good.

Things started to go a bit awry in the afternoon. For some unknown reason we have our afternoon seminars in the music department. So whilst trying to listen to the guest speaker we were subjected to a regular snare drum beat and the occasional primeval howling, increasing in volume whenever anyone opened one of the doors in the corridor outside. After the session a group of us descended down to the Hobgoblin for a beer or two. It’s a student bar, so whilst I was pleased by the fifteen percent discount, the juke box was blaring. Still I managed to tune most of it out only having a Leona Lewis song pointed out to me by one of the girls (I still have no idea who she is) and I caught the chorus of the Hoozier’s Worried About Ray, which always reminds me too much of the Lemonheads.

It was only a quick drink so I was back home by seven making some pasta and intending to watch eleven overgrown schoolboys ineffectively chase after a ball for ninety minutes. I turned the TV on deliberately late to avoid the Match of the Day theme tune, but forgot to anticipate the national anthems which resulted in a frankly unnecessarily dramatic dive across the lounge towards the remote. I didn’t stay tuned in after the final whistle to hear the inevitable Keanly-Cold-Patrol-shite themed slo-mo shots of multi-millionaires feigning anguish at missed chances. However, Beck was still not back from visiting her friend’s new babies/keeping out of the way as I have a one-sided argument with the TV and the house seemed very, very quiet. Even next door had decided against spending the entire evening running up and down the stairs for once. I tried to read but the complete absence of noise was a little disturbing and I resorted to playing darts, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud being quite reassuring, whilst pretending to myself that I was thinking about the piece of writing I’d been working on.

Continuing a theme, it would appear that Saturday was Buy Nothing Day, an international event since 1992. No, I’d never heard of it either. In fact, I only discovered its existence by reading an article in the Guardian, the irony being that in order to find out about No Shop Day I had to go to the newsagents and buy a newspaper first. This particular anti-capitalist programme is being spearheaded in the UK by a group of “compactors”, people who not only take their recycling to militant levels, but refuse to acquire anything new beyond the essentials of toiletries, food, drink and - er - a pet rabbit.

However, by the time I actually got around to reading page nine I’d also bought some milk and Beck had bought some lamb chump steaks for our dinner. Whilst I applaud the sentiments I decided we were too far gone down our road of corrupt bourgeoisie-ness and that we might as well continue with our plan of going to a bar in the evening.

I’m lucky. When I worked for a large media company most of the men surrounding me would arrive on a Monday morning complaining about yet another Saturday afternoon spent following their missus up and down Oxford Street, or if they were lucky nipping off to something more interesting, like counting bricks, before reconvening in Cost-Ner-Bucks to listen to her whitter on about the great bargains she found over a jumbo cup of muckachino. I loathe going shopping. The volume of people, the sweatiness of over-heated stores, the bland inanity of it all drives me up the wall. Fortunately, whilst Beck quite enjoys it, she rarely has the time to go and even then seems to have decided that she’d rather take a friend than have me muttering about Chinese sweat shops, scowling at the staff and innocently asking “haven’t you already got a pink jumper?”

“Compacting”, though, seems quite interesting. In many ways it’s quite similar to the decisions I’ve taken now that I have no income. My savings are only going to stretch so far so I’ve cut certain things out. I’ve been getting books from the public library (which also helps stem the tide of paper taking over the house), I’ve not brought any music since I picked up second hand copies of Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker and Sly & the Family Stone’s Stand back in July (although Beck did bring me back some cool Canadian, acoustic, folky stuff) and despite having only one pair of jeans without a potentially embarrassing crotch hole I haven’t brought any new clothes.

But what do we term essential? I would deem beer pretty damn essential and it’s still included in the weekly groceries, although I have downgraded from bottled real ale to cans of Tetleys. I would also include leisure, cultural and sociable activities - all of which tend to require some kind of expenditure. Even if you only want to watch a low budget, independent thought provoking film rather than, say, XXX2: The Next Level you still need to pay for a cinema ticket, rent or buy the DVD or at the very least buy a TV and a licence (although I did manage to get our TV for free, but that’s kind of beside the point).

Humans are sociable creatures. You need to spend time with friends, but can you do this in a economically positive way? On Saturday night we went out to a local wine bar run by a husband and wife team who’ve been there for years. We brought a bottle of Grenache from a little Languedoc vineyard and supported two small businesses rather than going to an All Bar One and having a couple of glasses of Jacob’s Creek. Surely this positive action is actually better than hiding away and doing nothing?

The woman in the Guardian’s article talks about how she used to register that the seasons were changing by the arrival of different clothes in the shops (actually, wouldn’t this make her about six weeks early all the time?) but now she just goes for long walks in the countryside and takes in nature at work. A nice image and I love walking at all times of the year and seeing the differences, but for those of us who don’t have a Dale attached to the back garden (and I’ve no idea whether she does or not) won’t we still be putting money into the system by buying petrol or a bus ticket or whatever?

Whatever we feel about it, whatever our personal ideals we cannot escape from the fact that we live in a capitalist consumer driven society. The economy works by us being able to go out and buy shit and a strong economy makes it easier for people, like me, to live their life how they wish to. It’s easier to go without if it’s a choice rather than an imposition. The truth is that if we completely remove ourselves from consumerism, if we just eat home-grown vegetables, make our own clothes, generate (somehow) our own electricity then we remove ourselves from society and, to a large extent, from reality.

Mind you, for twenty-fours hours once a year that’s probably not a bad idea.

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I’ve just googled for compactors, wondering if they have a website I can link to, but all I can find is companies offering either compacting advice or services. Now there’s an irony. In the absence of anything more useful you can read the Guardian article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/24/recycling.ethicalshopping

You can find out more on No Music Day and Buy Nothing Day, in preparation for twelve months time, here:

http://www.alandunn67.co.uk/nomusic.html

And:

http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/