What's New?

I have a confession to make.  I never watch TV news.  I rarely listen to British radio news.  So I didn't know until lunchtime that nothing was happening today.  No-one has told the birds......  The world outside still seems to be spinning…

When the news of no news caught up with me (in the same way that the actual news usually does, "mediated" via friends, family and the web) I watched the clips of silent newsreaders smirking, shuffling blank papers, tossing their hair, eyeing us like deep sea divers…  Had they dropped the performances and genuinely tried to say nothing, they might have 'spoken' eloquently.

The only news I hear on a regular basis is in French, on our local relayed version of FIP radio.  My French is good enough to pick up key events (to know if there is something I should investigate), but not good enough to be 'told' the details.  I like that.

I like to know what is going on in the world.  But I want to learn what it means through experience and conversation; through my senses; through connecting with a range of perspectives. I prefer "deepcast" to broadcast news.

One of the maxims in The Mastery of Self Expression workshop (www.brighton-mastery.co.uk) is that 'there is no new information in here (in our heads)…  all new information is out there…'  If we keep returning to our established thought patterns, we stay stuck in the stories we tell.  Equally, if we listen too much to one person's or one medium's 'take' on the truth, we can get stuck there too….

In his poem Asphodel, that greeny flower, William Carlos Williams talks of how hard it is to get the kind of information we need; the kind that might save us.

My heart rouses

thinking to bring you news

of something

that concerns you

and concerns many men.  Look at

what passes for the new.

You will not find it there but in

despised poems.

It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

Hear me out

for I too am concerned

and every man

who wants to die at peace in his bed

besides.

Where might we find some real news today?