Jersey does have a few lovely sculptures but when ‘JERSEY GIRL’ was first revealed it immediately became MY FAVOURITE of them all! One of the best things about this sculpture is its lack of sophistication. My little brain doesn’t need a prompt to help me understand it. Yes I am sure it has a formal specific ‘grand’ intention for its being brought into existence. I imagine it is all to do with representing the opposite of ‘not being bound’. I never investigated after I saw it because I didn’t want others’ words to contaminate that feeling it evoked in me. I DON’T WANT to be corrected if I am wrong about it. I also love the fact that it makes one look ‘up’. I remember when I first gazed upon it and feeling the appreciation rising up. There was NO ‘WORD’ that sprang to mind at that first glimpse. IT WAS DEFINITELY A FEELING and so I love this piece too for those few seconds of ‘no words’ in my mind. But then a word got imposed on the moment and the word was FREEDOM and this word or its synonym LIBERATION just.says. EVERYTHING. ~ these are words without caveats; nothing can threaten the existence or meaning of these important words.
2020 IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF JERSEY’S LIBERATION FOLLOWING GERMAN OCCUPATION. We always CELEBRATE Liberation from Occupation. We APPRECIATE it because we can all imagine what it might be like to have Liberty taken away. WE MUST NEVER FORGET and we have been fortunate that for 75 years we have been Free to mark the occasion (even now it is only postponed). We don’t take our Freedom for granted. Or do we. Whilst writing this I have googled and gathered something termed ‘global Freedoms’ have been in steady decline in recent years! I didn’t know. I’m disturbed by my lack of awareness but don’t know what to do with it so I file it away for the moment and come back to writing. I think HAS ANYTHING in our patch in recent times thrown Freedom and Confinement into more sharp relief than this pandemic? (I choose the antonym ‘Confinement’ very carefully as possibly being more ‘agreeable/acceptable’; because one cannot even begin to compare what is happening now to anything in history or currently in other parts of the world where people were/are wickedly deprived of their Freedom in the most horrible of ways. (My level of comprehension and communication is inferior to many so I ask the smarter person to either indulge me or look away if, in their eyes, I picked the wrong antonym and respectfully I am sorry if it still managed to offend anyone; that is the opposite of intention here; these are just my musings).
FREEDOM OF CHOICE is something that we VALUE in our society and we are acutely aware that not every society enjoys such Freedoms. We are sad because once ‘stay home’ and ‘self distancing’ is decreed it is no longer our ‘choice’. WE LOVE OUR ‘RIGHT TO CHOOSE’. People all around the world fought/died for these kinds of rights in the past, present and will do so in the future (judging from the state of some regions). So with this virus came not just a threat to our health but, around the world, also a threat to Freedoms. Locally, we watch closely to make sure measures introduced to protect us for the duration are appropriate to the situation, not politicized or overly authoritarian and that such measures rushed through in the panic will ‘auto-expire’ at the end of this crisis (and not be used ‘against’ us in other ways after the fact).!! So many balls to keep an eye on but especially the ‘human rights’ ball! We also keep an eye on the more vulnerable societies right now where some went to sleep in a democracy and awoke in something more akin to a dictatorship effecting total power under the guise of ‘emergency measures’ (how will it pan out for them in time…) AND gotta make sure Bill Gates doesn’t micro chip us all while our backs are turned to boot 😉 ! Thinking like oh that’s China or that’s Hungary or that would never happen here or that’s not our problem is not ‘thinking’ at all; history has shown us things CAN backslide and it being ONE world we know it will affect us somehow; it IS our problem. It’s a fine line and we saw a few hints of how it can go wrong where Freedom of speech nearly became an early victim when some tried to whistleblow or critique the inadequacies in some circles. There might even be censoring of important research on the origins of this virus. Censoring or curtailing speech under the guise of greater good ‘its bad for moral etc’ (which might be popular with many but personally, I am not a infant and I want to know exactly what is going on and how it is) is still trying to silence someone and if we don’t believe in Freedom of speech for someone who wants to tell us something that might make us worry then we don’t believe in Freedom of speech at all. If we are not in possession of all the cold hard facts because of this how can we make informed choices; are the uninformed choices subsequently made really ‘Free’ choices. I digress. Anyway, who hasn’t heard that if you want to overthrow the Liberty of a nation then you begin by subduing Freedom of speech; without Freedom of speech there is no Liberty. HAPPILY. LOCALLY. Official 75th Celebrations for Liberation are only postponed. We still get to respect and celebrate the occasion privately and later publicly. There is so much to be grateful for.
WE KNOW this time of covid-19 is important and will change our world forever. We know it is Gaia making us ‘look’ at the state we are in; giving us time (stay at home) to see more clearly that we are overlooking the point of human existence. We are part of a ‘whole’ and these events are part of the bigger picture of ‘Liberation’ and ‘awakening’ of consciousness of the individual and the whole. Getting to the new world is not going to be a smooth trip, we are not all going to allow ourselves to change overnight when we come out of the restrictions but in these events more people will recognize our global dysfunction and more minds may have their structure changed and the ones who were ‘there’ already get to hope something better for our society and that a better future for our children will come out of this ‘sooner’. BECAUSE of the Free society we are privileged to live in (and may or may not take for granted) we get to hope and push for that change, we get to make noise BECAUSE we are not ‘repressed’ we are not autocracy so whatever happens we will probably fare better than some parts of the world. When we get Liberated from covid-19 we mustn’t forget; if we forget we will just revert to what was before.
RIGHT NOW, I still won’t seek out the true intention of ’Jersey Girl’. I know there is an official Liberation Sculpture in Liberation Square; it just didn’t ‘speak to me’ in the same way BECAUSE it was already imprisoned by its label and words before I ever saw it. So it was ‘limited’ to Liberation from Occupation; In this respect it definitely does its job; it is definitely a worthy sculpture. BUT. For me ‘Jersey Girl’ is LIBERATION WITHOUT END! I guess sculptures are a personal thing 😉 . How privileged to live in a patch of the world where we can create something that has no utilitarian purpose whatsoever. Simply an indulgence for our eyes, minds, spirits and souls! I AM GRATEFUL I am somewhere I can own my interpretation even if that ends up being the same as everyone else’s or being totally off piste! IN JERSEY WE ARE ‘FREE TO THINK AND BE DIFFERENT’ AND ‘FREE TO THINK AND BE THE SAME’.
I WONDER now: if I caught my first glimpse of ‘Jersey Girl’ in the time of covid-19 would the piece be powerful enough to take me away from the worries of the day… So I remember that first glimpse and that I was Free enough to get lost in the moment. JERSEY GIRL IS TRANSCENDENT; something not alive, something inanimate that ‘speaks’ and for me it is an ‘expression’ of what is most sacred to all who live: LIBERTY
Om Om Om Stay Safe Stay Well Stay Free
Liberation Freedom Moksha Mukti Liri Askatasuna Llibertat Frihed Vrijheid Vabadus Vapaus Liberté Freheit Elefthería Szabadság Frelsi Saoirse La Libertà Laisve Frihet Wolność Liberdade Libertate Sloboda Svoboda Rhyddid
17/4/20
added
23/4/20 I Just Found Out!
The Bronze Oak Tree Sculpture St Helier
is called the ‘FREEDOM TREE’ !
I never looked closely for any name,
I’m not blind ~ I just didn’t see!
So we’ve got a half million pound
12 acorned ‘Freedom Tree’
To assist us ‘meditate on Freedom’
(THIS certainly wasn’t Free! 😉 )
We’ve also got ‘Liberation Sculpture’
in Liberation Square
(I declare ‘tis cultured,
if you go and have a stare 😉 )
Sculptures as worthy ‘expressions’?
If they are awesome to them some will flock
For others they are just Jersey’s follies,
but ALL of them beat ‘The Steam Clock’
Be it Toad or Clock or Cows or Tree,
we’re stuck with them now (as you see)
But ‘read my blog’ tis our beautiful ‘JERSEY GIRL’
that speaks loudest of FREEDOM, to me…
I wrote this little poem because for some reason FB algorithms not circulating my Freedom blog; FB ‘telling’ me I haven’t written anything for a while but I did! I put this blog on and only 2 people reached; I don’t know if there is something FB considers contentious in it (they took offence to blog I wrote 5 years ago saying it ‘contravened’ something yada yada.. I am wondering if some phrase or word in my blog is ‘flagged’ mmmmm)