Tag / journalism

by Cila Warncke

My Life in Music

Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

As mentioned in a previous post, I have written for online indie zine Pennyblackmusic for the better part of a couple of decades. One of my recent projects was a series of interviews about my fellow writers, which concluded with one of my fellow writers interviewing me. As my editor, John Clarkson, put it:

“For the last two years in her ‘A Life in Music’ column Cila Warncke has talked to several of our writers and photographers about how music has affected and influenced them. We were interested in finding out in ‘A Life in Music’ what ignited a bunch of obsessives’ passion for music, and discovered that much of our team had lead lives that were just as fascinating as many of the bands. Now that column is coming to an end, and in the last in the series we have turned the tables on Cila and Nick Dent-Robinson has spoken to her about her ‘Life in Music’.”

This may well be the first time I’ve been interviewed in print so thought I’d share.

Cila Warncke: A Life in Music by Nick Dent-Robinson

Cila Warncke is one of the earliest contributors to Penny Black Music magazine, having started writing for them more than two decades ago. Penny Black founder and editor John Clarkson recalls that Cila’s first interview for the magazine was with Cinerama about their “Disco Volante” album. She was the magazine’s first female writer and, as John Clarkson says, he is proud that Cila paved the way for many more excellent female music writers in Penny Black Music over the coming years – as rock music writing was notorious for being too much of a “boys’ club”.

As a professional journalist, Cila says she was attracted by the scope for originality and independence (and lack of male chauvinism) at PBM – and she has produced a fascinating range of articles over her time there. Although she left Penny Black Music in the early 2000s and worked on the glossy London-based music magazine, ‘Q” she was welcomed back in 2012 and has been a regular contributor since then. She has written about the impact of the pandemic on those working behind the scenes in the world of live music, about the eventual demise of ‘Q’ magazine and she wrote a very thoughtful piece about Marilyn Manson. Plus she has produced excellent articles on so many other diverse topics.

Cila also originated the ‘A Life In Music’ series where she probed fellow contributors to PBM about their musical tastes, background and aspirations. – All done with great tact, sensitivity and diplomacy plus insight – key hallmarks of Cila’s style. That series is now drawing towards its conclusion – but not before we turn the tables and seize the opportunity to ask Cila about her own ‘Life In Music”’

Born in 1980 and raised in a small town in Oregon over on the West side of the USA, in her late teens Cila moved to the East Coast to study English at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia – an esteemed Ivy League institution. Subsequently she moved to London to undertake further studies at King’s College before becoming a journalist. She thrived in the UK, enjoying all the many cultural opportunities available just after the turn of the millennium as well as the proximity to Europe. She and her fellow-American husband Chris Hall, a production audio technician in the world of live music, have travelled widely and have now made their permanent base in Valencia, Spain. Cila was at her home in Valencia when I started to ask about her ‘Life in Music’.

What are some of her earliest musical memories?

“Well, my parents weren’t musicians and because my mother was an Evangelical Christian, anything that wasn’t a hymn or soft God-rock was not too popular. It was a cool, rebellious thing to listen to anything other than that. My sister and I would listen to local radio, though and so I got some of the sound of late 80s/early 90s rock and pop culture through that. But my brother – who is around 6 years older than I – loved The Smiths, The Cure and some of the other British post-punk/new wave bands. I enjoyed that sound and I recall some of the record sleeves up on my brother’s wall – brilliant images which made a lasting impression.

The first (non-Christian!) record I remember buying when I was 13 or 14 was Sting’s “Fields of Gold…Best of: 1984-94” and my sister (who was 8 years older and much cooler, always) bought me Green Day’s ‘Dookie’ – which I still think is a great record!”

Read the rest of the interview at Pennyblackmusic.co.uk

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by Cila Warncke

5 – Loud, obnoxious, American

This column appeared in The Daily Pennsylvanian 21 years ago, on 31 January 2000.

Speak up!

Loud, obnoxious – and decidedly American

All I could think was that I’ll never be able to open my mouth in this class again. He was ruining it for me, ruining everything with his grating tone, his blatant rudeness, the patronizing way he kept interrupting other students to correct their opinions

If only he was German or French or Dutch or Spanish, I would have been all right. But he was American. Loud, overbearing, inconsiderate, arrogant and undeniably American.

As much as I wanted to light into him, my tongue was tied by the sudden awareness that my voice and accent would betray me in an instant. It wouldn’t matter what I said, my accent would stamp me just as quickly as his had identified him — and equate us beyond my power of control.

Until that mortifying hour in my critical theory class, surrounded by British students who were —justifiably — looking daggers at this specimen of Americana, I hadn’t realized to what extent language shapes and projects our identity.

It was the first time I had ever been afraid to speak because of how I would be branded by my accent and diction.

The worst of it, though, was the fact that my boorish fellow student could not have been French or German or Korean, or anything but a citizen of the dear old U.S. of A., for the simple reason that no other nation so assiduously fosters such linguistic arrogance.

Whatever his name was, the plaid-shirted Washington, D.C., boy was merely projecting a particularly noxious version of the snobbery of Americans toward anyone who doesn’t speak our language. (Granted, Brits and Americans ostensibly share a language, but the differences in manner and expression are so fundamental as to constitute British and American as two separate entities.)

It is a condescension that is manifested in American language education — or should I say the lack thereof. Some young people are fortunate enough to attend high schools that provide the opportunity to seriously study another language, but more often than not, language courses are viewed as something of a joke.

My own high school experience was with Spanish, a lovely and eminently useful language. However, for all the benefits I would have accrued by actually developing a proficiency in it, I was never given much in the way of an occasion or encouragement to do so.

Spanish class was a haphazard affair, a conglomeration of worksheets, flash cards, pop quizzes and lots of goofing off. In my second year, due to lack of funds and interest, it was taught on a semi-volunteer basis by an assortment of half-a-dozen people, some of whom spoke less Spanish than I did (which is saying something indeed). After muddling along with A grades for two years, I moved on to other subjects and was never given reason to use Spanish again.

However, the language problem is a more general one, beyond my own school or secondary education in general. I remember reading over a college application form from the University of Oregon where “foreign language” was merely a suggestion, not even a prerequisite, for study at the university level.

Frighteningly, we’re used to it. No one ever makes a big deal of it—not politicians and not educators, and I imagine parents only rarely. We are conditioned from an early age to regard learning another language as something that may be done, but is never in any way vital.

Sure, it’ll help you get into a better university, but not much else. Or if you wish to go into business, or international law, it might be useful to acquire another language. But the idea that it is a crucial part of educational and social development to partake of another culture through language study simply does not seem to exist in the States.

Hence the arrogance, hence the rudeness, hence the all-too-often-true stereotype of Americans as loud-mouthed, know-it-all morons. Because, you see, we are never forced to identify with another group through the intimate process of acquiring their mode of speech.

“Why should we?,” the argument goes. Everyone speaks English anyway, so why should we learn Spanish or French or what have you? We don’t need to.

Wrong.

We do need to. Not for the sake of mere communication, though.

Learning another language is not about knowing how to ask for directions or tell time or find the loo or order a meal, it is about understanding how to truly identify with someone else. It is about entering into their life through the medium with which we shape our lives – language.

Cila Warncke is a junior English major from Portland, Ore. She is studying abroad in London this semester. Bigmouth Strikes Again appears on Mondays.

by Cila Warncke

4 – Deaf Stereo

Profile of a short-lived indie electro outfit written for Clash sometime in ’06 or ’07

Photo by Rocco Dipoppa on Unsplash (NB: Not Deaf Stereo)

Deaf Stereo

Deaf Stereo has been percolating ever since Luke, Will and Ben met at Westminster Uni on a music course, at the turn of the millennium. It was four years before they had a name and an idea to go with it. “We decided to stop playing stuff we thought we should, and play music we wanted to listen to,” they explain. The music they wanted to play, if their first single is anything to go by, is solid, grooving beat driven indie pop. Disco biscuits with a side order of Jack Daniels, say.

“We’re into bands like the Chemical Brothers, Underworld… we like the peaks and troughs of dance, but we also wanted proper songs,” says Barney, who describes his role in the band as doing “keyboards and laptop stuff.” About a year ago, they completed their set up, with fifth member, Tom, the clean-cut drummer.

Sitting in the trendy bowels of the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, it’s Will, who plays bass, who keeps up the steadiest stream of patter. A series of wry asides from behind a hand rolled cigarette. “Would I ever sail a giant effigy of myself down the Thames? Shit. If I were as big as Michael Jackson that’s the least I would do. I’d have a whole set of them.”

Ben, (guitars, backing vocals) is small, dark, thoughtful. He takes on the philosophical questions. Or rather, turns questions philosophical. If you had a band uniform, say, what would it be? Luke (singer) runs a hand through his beautifully cut hair and says, “That’s something we’re still thinking about.” But Ben launches into an earnest and articulate explanation of the dangers of embracing style over substance. Absorbing this, Luke effortlessly readjusts his stance on the issue. “We happy wearing what we wear. No one’s told us to change anything yet.”

These small, subtle realignments happen more than once. Not in a deliberate presenting-a-united-front kind of way, but in a fluid manner which suggests long practice in accommodating each other’s ideas and opinions. Disagreements are minor: Barney prefers Addlestone cider, while Ben is happiest drinking mojitos. Will predicts a Dire Straits revival to general eye-rolling. When it matters, they’re in perfect sync. They want the right songs on the album (“we have a reputation as a party band, but we have some slower songs too, we want to showcase that”); they like the same venues (Koko and Fabric, where they played a riotous 3am gig); and perhaps most importantly, they all know what they want on their rider: “You mean when we have a rider? We’ll have as much as we can get! We got sandwiches when we were at Brixton, that was great,” Luke says.

So far, they’ve humped their equipment through calf-deep mud to play at Glastonbury last year. They’ve written a raft of songs which will somehow have to be whittled into an album. They’ve learned to party on backstage freebies because “we can’t afford to go out unless we’re playing.” They’ve been given some good advice: “Get a job, sort your life out, stop wasting your time,” Will guffaws. And what advice would they give someone following in their footsteps? Ben and Will catch each other’s eye and chorus, “Get a job! Stop wasting your time!” They all laugh.

by Cila Warncke

2 – Taste of Myanmar

This was from a 2013 recipe column, written after a trip to Myanmar.

Photo by Chinh Le Duc on Unsplash

A Taste of the Shan state, Myanmar

After fifty years of repressive military dictatorship Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a land of mystery. Most of us Westerners know little about it apart from news images of Buddhist monks, pagodas, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi. Though tourism has increased since a democratic government took power in 2010 Myanmar is still the least-explored part of Southeast Asia. Like many first-time visitors I was bowled over by how large and geographically diverse it is.

Almost twice the land mass of Britain, it drives a slender wedge between Bangladesh and India on the west and China, Laos and Thailand on the east. In the space of 10 days my companion and I went from the heat and clamour of Yangon to lush mountains in the Mon state, the arid plains around Bagan, and the otherworldly beauty of Inle Lake in the Shan state.

Set some 3000 feet up in the mountains in the eastern part of the country, Inle Lake is Myanmar’s answer to Lake Tahoe – if Tahoe were populated by artisans, fishermen and farmers rather than frat boys and Valley girls. The inhabitants of this bucolic water world are the most gracious and self-sufficient people we encountered and we were fortunate to see some of the local craftspeople at work making the region’s renowned hand-woven cloth and cheroot cigarettes.

Inle Lake is also justifiably famous for the quality of its produce which is grown on floating island gardens. Their crops include cucumber, squash and tomato, which are the most flavoursome I’ve ever eaten. Shan rice noodles – the quintessential Myanmar fast food – were my favourite culinary find of the trip. The following recipes are my interpretation of two ubiquitous dishes: tomato salad and Shan rice noodle salad. Due to the language barrier I couldn’t ask many questions about preparation and ingredients, so they are based on observation and repeated tastings.

Photo by Robin St on Unsplash

Myanmar tomato salad

As a starter or side for two

  • 2 large ripe red tomatoes
  • 1 large green tomato
  • 1 small red onion
  • 1/3 cup peanuts, coarsely crushed

Preparation:

  1. Slice the tomatoes, being sure to catch the juice
  2. Sliver the onion
  3. Mix the crushed peanuts with the tomato juice
  4. Thoroughly toss all ingredients. Season to taste.

Shan noodle salad

Serves two

  • 6oz of rice noodles
  • 1 cup cress or other fresh green
  • 1 cup bean sprouts
  • ¼ chopped green onion
  • French-fried onion strips
  • Crushed peanuts

Dressing:

  • Dark soy sauce
  • Fresh bird’s eye chilli
  • Garlic

Preparation:

  1. Prepare the noodles according to packet instructions
  2. When cooked quickly toss with the cress, spouts and chopped onions till the greens begin to wilt
  3. Garnish with French-fried onions and crushed peanuts
  4. For the dressing add finely sliced chilli and garlic to the soy sauce and serve on the side

NB: Use tamari instead of soy sauce to make this gluten-free

by Cila Warncke

1 – The Wrongs of the Religious Right

January 27th is my 41st birthday. To mark the occasion I am going to post 41 pieces of my published writing — one a day for the next few weeks. Some are minor triumphs; others capture a moment; others are naive and flamboyant. But they matter, to me anyway, because they are the warp and woof of my life.

The following column appeared in The Daily Pennsylvanian on Monday, 6 March 2000. The same day, as it happens, that I got my first tattoo before getting blotto at my best friend’s birthday party.

The wrongs of the U.S. religious right

‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’

According to The New York Times, current media-darling John McCain has just put his foot in it — big time. All because he had the gall — the audacity to suggest that maybe Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are not in fact directly related to God the Father.

“Talk about hate-mongering,” sniffs Marion J. Fisher, an elderly Baptist woman quoted in the Times article.

“To me, that’s what he’s doing, throwing mud and bad mouthing people who have faith and beliefs.”

Oh bless. The image of a lonely, chubby McCain figure standing on a platform flinging handfuls of slop at an overdressed granny is almost unbearably funny But that isn’t the point.

Was Ms. Marion J. Fisher — or any of the tiny-minded conservatives who are currently gathering wood to incinerate the political ambitions of the heretical McCain —actually paying attention to what he said? Has anyone had the courage to point out that, if anything, McCain was far too easy on the so-called Christian leaders he took a swing at?

McCain merely called them “agents of intolerance” when he would have done well to point out that their entire faith is founded on intolerance. He called them an “evil influence” on the Republican Party when he should have said they were an evil influence on society.

When, pray tell, did Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson do anything good for America? As much as the religious right would like to convince itself that America’s current host of social problems is a direct result of our collective straying from the fold, they are pointing the finger in precisely the wrong direction.

Fundamentalism, a throwback to our embarrassing Puritan ancestry, is a ball-and-chain around the ankle of American social and political life. When we should be concentrating on improving public education, fundamentalists start quarrels over posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. When we should be seeking to improve social services for single-parent families, they rant on about the evils of unwed motherhood And so it goes.

My most vivid memory of Robertson’s aspirations for our country is his suggestion that we build a wall along the southern border of the U.S. to keep all those damn foreigners out.

Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority recall Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads, whose drive for moral purity in 17th century England resulted in terror, regicide and a ban on dancing.

I’m sure God was impressed.

In short, these are not good guys. They would happily drag America back to Puritanism for their own personal gain, and apparently a lot of people love them for it. This is enough to give any free-thinking citizen serious pause.

Imagine life under the religious right. First, women could forget about reproductive rights. Second, we could look forward to children being indoctrinated at school, the tenets of Christianity being crammed down their throats. On the agenda for their education would no doubt be the evils of sex. a primer in xenophobia and a long list of who God disapproves of and why. And if you’re gay — just move to Canada now.

The ultimate drive of the religious right, after all. is not for spirituality, but for hegemony. If all they really cared about were their God and their faith, they would shut up and take themselves off to a prayer meeting. But that, heaven forbid, would be letting all us non-believers get away with it. Because the Christian right, you see, demands not just individual devotion but zealous proselytization, too. It isn’t enough to “walk humbly with God” — they have to make sure everyone else is goose-stepping along as well.

This is where the ordinary, anonymous zealots get their wires crossed with the big name zealots such as Falwell and Robertson.

The rank and file, I reckon, sincerely believe that the prominent leaders of the religious right are their best chance for the mass reform of America, while Robertson, Falwell and Co. are—I would wager—more interested in power than in redemption.

They found a niche in the market and hope that if they stick with it —convincing the faithful of the impending demise of Christianity at the hands of Catholics, Jews, homosexuals, atheists, immigrants and women — then maybe one day their domination fantasies will come true.

But don’t tell the true believers that, or you’ll be making the same cock-up McCain did.

Which is to say, you’ll be giving the religious right credit for more wit than they are actually able and willing to exercise.

Cila Wamcke is a junior English major from Portland. Ore. She is studying abroad in London this semester. Bigmouth Strikes Again appears on Mondays.

by Cila Warncke

Storytelling: Framing

Storytelling is the essence of communication. The elements of storytelling are like letters of the alphabet. When you know how to use them, you can tell your best story.

Element 19: Framing

What a story is about, and the conclusion it reaches, depends on how you frame it.

Case study:

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

hill-trump

Who they are:

Respectively, the Democratic and Republican candidates in the 2016 American presidential election. Clinton won the popular vote by an unprecedented margin. Trump won the majority of Electors and is slated to become the next President of the United States.

Why it matters:

The bitter, split decision presidential election highlighted the fact that there is no single “story”. What we think a thing means and what we believe about people and events, is drawn from a rich mass (or mess) of facts, ideas, information and preconception.

After last week’s storytelling post a reader rebutted my assertion that Hillary Clinton is “a experienced, qualified, sane, humane politician”:

Surely this must be qualified as “by comparison?” Isn’t it a fact that Hillary Clinton:

1) Supported the Iraq War forcefully and was a key proponent as an opposition pol from NY

2) Supported overthrow of Libya forcefully

3) Supported overthrow of Syria forcefully

4) Was endorsed by entire Bush family and most of GWB cabinet officials

5) Received 100s of millions from wall street banks and multi-national corporations

So, if Hillary Clinton wasn’t positioned against Trump and you judged her by her policies she would be a rightwing neo-con Republican.

I think perhaps you should also consider the story telling of the Clinton campaign which would argue that perceived racism and sexism are more important than real policies that have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries.

 

This is a perfect example of framing. My narrative frames Hillary’s experience and views as a positive; my reader highlights different, but equally legitimate, information that casts her in a different light. Trump can, likewise, be any number of things depending on how you frame him. He is either a robust example of American iconoclasm or a racist shit. He went bankrupt and made billions; the story depends on what facts you put in the picture.

In other words:

“While reality itself does partly determine the meaning we assign to it, it doesn’t insist on any one specific meaning. So, while we all live in the same reality, we interpret it differently. Most of the time, the differences are negligible: at the day-to-day level, we agree sufficiently about most things. But some differences are radical. And that’s what politics is about.

Politics is a colossal magnification of the differences in how we perceive the world around us. And an election is a simplified, brief magnification of that. In an election, time stops, and a complex, gradually evolving jumble of differences of opinion is frozen in a single statistical figure.” Rob Wijnberg via The Correspondent

Practice: “All I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being. All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown, in the late fifties, when the trains were still running. I am going to paint a picture of it, in words, on my word processor.” Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

Remember: “One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.” ~ Tim Burton

by Cila Warncke

Elements of Storytelling 12: Ethics

Storytelling is the essence of communication. The elements of storytelling are like letters of the alphabet. When you know how to use them, you can tell your best story.

Element 12: Ethics

Great storytellers hook their audience with a clear ethos, worldview, or proposition.

Case study: Kat Lister

kat-lister

What it is:

Freelance journalist Kat Lister has carved a successful career writing for publications including Marie Clare, The Telegraph, Huff Post, InStyle, Vice, and Broadly by championing the ever-contentious cause of women’s equality.

Why it matters:

Journalists have flirted with starvation since at least 1891 (the year George Gissing published New Grub Street*). Modern multimedia journalism is unapologetically fuelled by celebrity and sensation. To survive journalists must be inimitable. Lister nails it. Everything she writes, from investigative pieces on Syria, to reportage on young Muslims, to think pieces on Brexit, “glass cliffs” and IVF is examined through lens of her feminism. Lister’s cohesive, provocative ethical stance, plus ferociously good writing, whets editors’ appetites, and has prompted 40K shares and 140K Facebook Likes (and counting).

In her own words:

I write about women and culture

Read more / Follow @Madame_George on Twitter

Practice: “Put yourself at the center [of your stories], you and what you believe to be true or right. The core, ethical concepts in which you most passionately believe are the language in which you are writing.” ~ Anne Lamott

Remember: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” ― Elie Wiesel

*Free on Kindle: Amazon.com  and Amazon.co.uk

by Cila Warncke

Elements of Storytelling 2: Urgency

Storytelling is the essence of communication. Whether you are a writer, entrepreneur or politician your story is how you connect with people.

The elements of storytelling are like the letters of the alphabet. Once you know them, you can put them together to tell your story in the best way possible.

Element 2: Urgency

Great stories say things that matter. They aren’t just entertainment, they have an urgent message.

Case study: CALMZine

calmzine

What it is: CalmZINE is a by-men/for-men magazine published by the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). CALM is a British charity that works to prevent male suicide (in 2014 men accounted for 76% of UK suicides and it is the leading cause of death in men under 45).

Brash as the captain of a five-a-side team after six pints, CALMZine hums with the urgent message: You’re not alone. In another context its laddishness, #Mandictionary, its jocular tone, would be gratingly juvenile. But it works because it is fuelled by urgency. Life and death. Every article whether news, interviews, fashion features, sport or entertainment, is twined with the message: It’s okay to struggle. You’re not alone. We’re here to listen.

 

Why it matters: Nothing comes close to being as awful as suicide. I’ve seen friends, family, shattered by it and there is nothing to say. Not a single word of comfort. No, “everything will be all right,” no “it was for the best,” no “at least he didn’t suffer,” no no no. None of the platitudes we salve ourselves with in the face of ordinary death. You can always find mercy if you look hard enough. But not in the vortex of suicide. You can stare into that pit all day, until your eyes burn at the blackness. You can cry enough tears to fill the ocean and that hole stays dry and dead as a slice of outer space.

The hopelessness of words after the fact gives utmost urgency to every word spoken or written to prevent it. There are no second chances. Any comfort or stumbling block, anything that helps one person make the choice to live, matters more than art.

Their story:

CALM works to prevent male suicide by:-

  • Offering support to men in the UK, of any age, who are down or in crisis via our helpline and website.
  • Pushing for changes in policy and practice so that suicide is better prevented via partnerships such as The Alliance of Suicide Prevention Charities (TASC), the National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA). CALM also hosts the Suicide Bereavement Support Partnership (SBSP), which aims to ensure that everyone bereaved or affected by suicide is offered and receives timely and appropriate support.

Read the rest of the CALM story here

Practice: “Rather than daydreaming about what you’d like to write, sit down for fifteen minutes, keep your hand moving, begin with “I want to write about,” and go. Stay specific and concrete. Not ‘I want to write about truth, democracy, honesty,’ but ‘I want to write about the time my father lied right to my face and I could taste it all through dinner. It tasted like hot gasoline.’ ~Natalia Goldberg (Wild Mind)

Remember: “The one I felt pulsing in my chest [was] like a second heart… the story I couldn’t live without telling.” ― Cheryl Strayed

 

by Cila Warncke

Lit Crit: Tom Wolfe and the Art of Mau-Mau

I wrote this in 2009. Tom Wolfe is still a twit. Hence the re-blog. Enjoy!

The Wolfe in his lair

The Wolfe in his lair

Tom Wolfe’s famous new journalism is nothing but an abdication of the traditional journalistic ideal of objectivity. What makes him so beloved of white, middle-class, status-quo lovers is that he presents the ‘freaks’ of society exactly as they wish to see them. Peering out from his WASP bubble he offers no insight; only his own prejudice, funkily punctuated. Far from being revolutionary he is reactionary.

His 1970 essay Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is Wagnerian. He plays every finely tuned instrument of white middle-American fear and loathing with masterful aplomb. It starts with a statement: “the poverty programme encouraged you to go in for mau-mauing.” You don’t know yet what ‘mau-mauing’ is, only that it is encouraged by “the poverty programme” – a vague bureaucratic entity endowed with a definite article. This is a beautiful piece of disinformation. There is not now, nor at any point in American history has there been, anything that could be described, accurately, as the poverty programme. Governmental attempts to succour, redistribute, endow, benefit, aid, or otherwise un-disenfranchise its economic laggards are desultory, peculiar, and limited. Wolfe knows this because he isn’t quite brave enough to give “poverty programme” the initial capitals called for by that “the”.

Over the next few paragraphs a rough sketch of “mau-mauing” begins to emerge. His breathless sentences tap-tap into the brain. The ones doing the mau-mauing are: “hard-to-reach hard-to-hold-hard-core hardrock blackrage badass furious funky ghetto youth.” Not like you and I, whispers beneath the shout. Them. People who mess everything up with their hard-to-hold hard-core hardrock. Hammering chunks out of language itself. I’ll show you how they do it, he beckons.

“There was one man called Chaser. Chaser would get his boys together and he would give them a briefing like the U.S. Air Force wing commander gives his pilots in Thailand before they make the raid over North Vietnam.” This, people, is war. Those furious funky ghetto youth are an invading army, they are braced and coming at you, in your suburban homes and Lay-Z boy recliners and apple-pie-and-ice-cream Sundays. Beware.

Chaser “used to be in vaudeville. At least that was what everybody said.” Old journalism couldn’t get away with substituting “that’s what everybody said” (Who is ‘everybody?’ When and where did they say it?) for fact checking. Did or did not Chaser used to be in vaudeville? Why not ask Chaser? That would ruin the rhythm. What matters is not where Chaser learned his gift of the gab but the image caught up in that word vaudeville. Cheap light entertainment. Minstrel shows. Something tacky, tawdry, archaic. Like Chaser, who “always wore a dashiki, over some ordinary pants and a Ban-lon shirt. He had two of these Ban-lon shirts and he alternated them.” Wolfe pulverises Chaser’s credibility with every phrase. He wears a dashiki over ordinary pants (he’s inauthentic) and he only has two shirts (he’s poor). By the time Wolfe describes him as a “born leader” the words hum mockery. Born leader to dumb ghetto youths too high on their blackrage badass to know you don’t follow men who alternate their shirts and might have been in vaudeville.

The putative ex-vaudevillian wing commander exhorts his troops: “when you go downtown, y’all wear your ghetto rags…see… don’t go down there with your Italian silk jerseys on and your brown suede and green alligator shoes and your Harry Belafonte shirts… And don’t go down there with your hair all done up nice in your curly Afro… you go down with your hair stickin’ out… and sittin’ up… looking like a bunch of wild niggers.”

Wolfe’s phrasing lingers in sweet, heavy warning notes. Ghetto rags are a fiction perpetrated by slick-shod, Italian silk jersey-wearing, chocolate-coloured con artists trying to separate the God-fearing white taxpayer from his money by mau-mauing the poverty programme. Don’t even consider for a minute there might be real poverty down in that ghetto. Turn your back and they’ll all be in their Harry Belafonte shirts sporting nice curly Afros. Be wise to their jiveass. If they look poor it’s because they want to look poor. Don’t be a sucker.

It isn’t just the shifty slick-talking bloods leeching on: “before long everybody in the so-called Third World was into it.” The “so-called” (like “everybody said” before it) permits the double-barrelled phrase: Third World. These people aren’t even from here. You, dear reader, belong to the First World. They come from somewhere else, belong somewhere else. They aren’t your problem, the “Chinese, the Japanese, the Chicanos, the Indians” and especially not the Samoans who “were like the original unknown terrors… everything about them is gigantic…. They’ll have a skull the size of a watermelon, with a couple of little squinty eyes and a little mouth and a couple of nose holes stuck in, and no neck at all. From the ears down, the big yoyos are just one solid welded hulk, the size of an oil burner.” Hang on a second and listen while the nuances whisper out of those words: a skull the size of a watermelon; little squinty eyes – like pigs; not even a nose but nose holes like a fright mask; big yoyos; one solid welded hulk. They might be vegetable, animal, monster, mineral or machine but they definitely ain’t human. Not like you and I.

We know, now, who does the mau-mauing. Enter the flak catcher. This passage calls for subtlety. Tamp down the hard-hitting rhythm section, let the woodwinds carry the next segment through on their modulated breath. The “blacks, Chicanos, Filipinos, and about ten Samoans” confront (in all their oil-burner sized, “Day-Glo yellow and hot-green sweaters and lemon-coloured pants”-wearing glory) a single man who has that “sloppy Irish look like Ed McMahon on TV.” Read between them lines: you’ve never worn hot-green sweaters and lemon-coloured pants, but you sure as hell know what Ed McMahon on TV looks like. That’s someone you can recognise and root for. The levee holding back this colourful flood wears “wheatcolour Hush Puppies [and a] wash’n’dry semi-tab-collar shortsleeves white shirt.”

We know the bloods have “brown suede and green alligator” shoes at home; time to learn that “wheatcolour Hush Puppies… cost about $4.99, and the second time you move your toes, the seams split and the tops come away from the soles.” Don’t feel sorry for them. Don’t be a sucker. Look down again. The Samoans are wearing sandals and the straps “look like they were made from the reins on the Budweiser draft horses.” Dear god. Someone, or something, has to keep a check on these massive animals. Just as white America shifts anxiously on its sofa, half-hearing terrifying trampling feet Wolfe plays a silken note of assurance: “Nobody ever follows it up. You can get everything together once, for the demonstration… to see the people bury some gray cat’s nuts and make him crawl… but nobody ever follows it up.” They, the Third-Worlders. Huge. Threatening. Noisy. Ultimately harmless. Foiled not by the obfuscation of wheatcolour bureaucracy run by gray cats but by their own ineradicable indolence.

There is more to mau-mauing. Plenty more. A virtuoso teardown of sucker whites slices through the: “middle-class white intellectual women… with flat-heeled shoes and big Honest Calves” and their students who “would have on berets and hair down to the shoulders… and jeans, but not Levi’s… jeans of the people, the black Can’t Bust ‘Em brand, hod-carrier jeans that have an emblem on the back of a hairy gorilla” (Wolfe overlooks the subject-object confusion in his rush to hang the words black and hairy gorilla together).

He is wise to it, and he wants you to be wise too. Don’t get hoodwinked by those twinkling alligator shoes. “Boys don’t grow up looking up to the man who had a solid job… because there weren’t enough people who had such jobs.” Don’t think he’s gonna dwell on the whys and wherefores of there not being enough people who had such jobs, though. Your honour, the witness refuses to answer the question in the grounds that it may incriminate him. Slide fast to the details about “$150 Sly Stone-style vest and pants outfit from the haberdasheries on Polk and the $35 Lester Chambers-style four-inch-brim black beaver fedora” and the men wearing them who slid into neighbourhoods peopled by “the bums, the winos, the prostitutes with biscuits & gravy skin, the gay boys, the flaming lulus, the bike riders” and got “a grant of nearly $100,000”. That’s what happens when civilisation gets mau-maued by the Third-World; the ghetto youth get their grasping – “hanging limp at the wrist with the forefinger sticking out like some kind of curved beak” – hands on “a $937,000 grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity.”

Any do-gooder, white middle-class intellectual fool who thinks any of this makes a difference ought to think again. Give them jobs? What for? “The jobs themselves were nothing…. You got $1.35 an hour and ended up as a file clerk or stock-room boy in some federal office… all you learned was how to make work, fake work and malinger out by the Xerox machine.” Moreover, Wolfe can explain why “Nevertheless, there was some fierce mau-mauing that went on over summer jobs”. Not because the community needed those jobs or even wanted those jobs but because “the plain fact was that half the jobs were handed out organisation by organisation, according to how heavy your organisation was. If you could get twenty summer jobs… when the next only got five, then you were four times the aces they were… no lie.” Your taxpayer dollars at work: propping up the egos of pimp-swaggering furious funky ghetto youth.

There is one final movement, a violin-swelling, cymbal-clashing, curtain-call guaranteeing flight of earlicking fancy that makes the Ride of the Valkyries sound like a lullaby. There were so many groups mau-mauing, see, “you had to show some style, show some imagination.” Like Bill Jackson, who calls himself Jomo Yarumba and marches on City Hall with a “children’s army… sixty strong, sixty loud, sixty wild they come swinging into the great plush gold-and-marble lobby… with hot dogs, tacos, Whammies, Frostees, Fudgsicles, French fries, Eskimo Pies, Awful-Awfuls, Sugar-Daddies, Sugar-Mommies, Sugar-Babies, chocolate-covered frozen bananas, malted milks, Yoo-Hoos, berry pies, bubble gums, cotton candy, Space Food sticks, Frescas, Baskin-Robbins boysenberry-cheesecake ice-cream cones, Milky Ways, M&Ms, Tootsie Pops, Slurpees, Drumsticks, jelly doughnuts, taffy apples, buttered Karamel Korn, root-beer floats, Hi-C punches, large Cokes, 7-Ups, Three Musketeer bars, frozen Kool-Aids… a hurricane of little bodies… roaring about with their creamy wavy gravy food and drink held up in the air like the torches of freedom, pitching and rolling at the most perilous angles, a billow of root-beer float here… a Yoo-Hoo typhoon there.. a hurricane of malted milk, an orange blizzard of crushed ice from the Slurpees, with acid red horrors like the red from the taffy apples and the jelly from the jelly doughnuts… every gradation of solubility and liquidity known to syrup – filling the air, choking it, getting trapped gurgling and spluttering in every glottis – ”

The words scamper around like that hurricane of little bodies with their perilously angled food and drink. There is a racing pulse to the rhythm, ecstatic as a sugar high. You feel giddy just reading it. Every name snaps on your synapses like bubblegum popping. Without really knowing why you feel your throat filling with the solubility and liquidity of the syrup filling the air choking it getting trapped. You can feel the tide rising. Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood, only this time the savages are going to drown you in creamy wavy gravy Yoo-Hoo typhoon acid red horrors.

Thirty pages ago you didn’t know to be afraid. Didn’t know how the furious funky born leader pimp true artists of the mau-mau are just waiting to rise up out of the ghetto and wash over your hallowed gold-and-marbled halls in “purple sheets of root-beer” but now you do. Because you “didn’t know where to look…. Didn’t even know who to ask” until Tom Wolfe came rolling through your door in his white pimp-sharp suit with his fedora and silk handkerchief and (probably) Italian-style socks. The man is a “rare artist” of the mau-mau.

by Cila Warncke

Why the New Website?

IMG_20140215_194542911For reasons known only to the gods of the internet my trusty site cilawarncke.com disappeared. The former digital diary of my professional accomplishments is now white space. It’s a 21st century Ozymandias thing.

Rather than snuffle over spilt milk or, indeed, try to grasp the whims of the www I decided to start afresh. New year, blank slate etc. Thankfully there is minimal competition for domain names including Warncke.

I’ll be piecing this site together gradually, highlighting the various things I write and do, plus posting the odd blog.

Thanks for stopping by. If you need some words written, or just want to chew the fat, email cilawarncke@gmail.com.