You Will be Broken

I leave for Pennsylvania on Wednesday. This may be my last Scotland-based post till I am ‘on the other side’. I have been tasked with making a list for the insurers about what is in my shipping container and it occurred to me how little value most of what I am bringing is…. to anyone but myself. I was speaking to UNTOPIA Ewan Morrison about this as we both noted that our notebooks of our mad ramblings were what travelled back and forth with us across continents and oceans. Sometimes I peek inside one of my 300+ volumes dating back 40 years (I started journaling as a child) and curdle at the words on the page (from dull ramblings to idiotic worries) and yet I cannot part with them. They will be nonsensical to anyone but myself, offer no insurance value, and yet I must list them for purposes of clearing American customs. We all have fragile moments. The point isn’t that we will have them, it’s that they come and they go and we grow….

It stands to reason that one clear and present bit of utter madness would be staged by our theatre sector before I depart these fair shores and they have not disappointed:

Here we have ‘Day for Trans Artists’ hosted by the National Theatre of Scotland. Our National Theatre continues to participate in the theatre of victimhood offering itself as a saviour to those who will be broken in order to be saved. It’s all a bit nuts, and a bit gaslighting abusive relationship stuff really. Note ‘Adam’ lady bottom there. Adam who had a phallus constructed from her forearm and surgically attached to her genital region paid for (partly) with donations from NTS audience after performances of her ‘trans salvation story’. Note the copious medical complications associated with ‘phalloplasty’: urethral complications, necrosis, bladder and rectal injury, strictures, fistulas, risks of serious issues like sepsis….

And what will the National Theatre of Scotland offer for this broken (literally) individual? ‘A day of well-being’ and ‘collective wellness’. Funny I happen to think not chopping healthy body parts off might be a good start.

It’s facilitators are Nelly Kelly and Frankie Mullholland.

Nelly states “I am Nelly, a proudly disabled, autistic, queer, ENM, androgynous, fat, hot butch.”

What is ENM you may ask? ‘Ethical Non-Monogamy’ which basically means 'anything goes as long as you consent’-a sexual free for all couched in virtue. Because nothing matters (nothing) as long as you consent. No morals, no ethics, no sense of responsibility beyond your own pursuit of pleasure. SO GLAD that we have a National Theatre of Scotland practitioner and organiser telling us that.

Of course she’d be in good company. The Edinburgh International Festival’s dance tag line this year is ‘Hip hop meets Baroque. Ballet meets theatre. Contemporary dance meets kink.’

Kink. Of course. Yawn yawn yawn. So for this unique treasure of a performance ‘The Dan Daw Show’ we are told we are to see ‘sexy choreography’ (yawn) ‘touching theatricality’ (double yawn) ‘TO TAKE A STAND AGAINST ABLEISM’. (snore snore snore)

Social justice innit. Kink for social justice! Add a bit of virtue and anything goes it seems. (outside of the pursuit of artistic merit ahem)

When we discovered that Creative Scotland was funding the outdoor porn film ‘Rein’ last year in the Highlands we might have been mistaken that it was a bug. Even when we discovered its director Leonnie Rae Gasson made a show (with public funds) where children (in her charge) were tasked with making sex toys for the audience we thought - it’s just HER. But no, it seems to be a ‘thing’ and it seems to be growing. And can I say on behalf of the many Scottish residents (of which I am one for a bit longer) CAN WE PUT THE KINK BACK IN THE DRAWER.

It’s not liberating and it’s not healthy to pursue these kinds of activities or relationships. And we sure as hell should not be funding them. I was one of those youthful naive feminists who (at one time) also thought that ‘sharing my bed’ with multiple partners was liberating. It wasn’t. It wasn’t good for myself or the men I spent intimate time with. I believed the lie. But even insomuch (as my private journals will attest) I allowed myself to be pulled into the illusion, I didn’t receive public funding. And I grew up. And I changed. And I could.

What happens to these individuals who are groomed to live their personal lives outloud unhealthily? How do they come back? When National Theatre of Scotland hosts daft meetings like the one above, almost like religious revivals drowning sensibility and the potential for growth.

I was reading Annemarie Ward’s substack earlier about the addiction sector. The addiction sector wants addicts. It needs addicts. Its sole aim is its own maintenance. Too much of our economic systems are built on the suffering of others. It’s a remarkable sleight of hand wherein citizens are convinced that being broken is being whole. Where they are convinced that the seed is the flower.

That nihilistic rot is everywhere and it will literally get us no where. When Nelly falls more deeply into her own physical and psychological demise, NTS will tell her (as Adam) that it’s because of the ‘world out there’ and give them a foot massage, chanting familiar slogans and plotting more validation events. They will be denied wholeness. And we should all strive for more.

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