0:01

BBC Sounds music radio

0:03

podcasts. Hello, welcome

0:06

to the podcast of shortcuts. I love

0:08

today's episode. We have some brilliant, brilliant

0:10

pieces for you. I really hope you

0:13

enjoy it. It's about the hereafter. So

0:15

it is slightly magical, I suppose, slightly

0:17

supernatural, but really just

0:19

about the real past and

0:22

our real collective future. This

0:26

is shortcuts. Brief

0:28

encounters, true stories,

0:31

radio adventures and

0:33

found sound. Today,

0:36

hereafter. The

0:41

one thing that is possible is world making

0:44

in your art and also living

0:47

as though the future that you're

0:49

describing is already here with total

0:51

certainty. What's

0:53

in a word? How many languages

0:55

has it traversed? And who brought

0:57

it to mind? I

1:00

measure the red shift as they drift away

1:02

from me, and I

1:04

am still here blue. The

1:12

future is a place where sensible

1:14

people make plans or

1:16

people who are very down to earth

1:18

work towards. To

1:21

me, the concept of hereafter has a

1:23

mystical sense to it. It's

1:25

not as solid or prosaic as

1:27

thinking about the future. It's

1:29

thinking about a time which is

1:32

completely unwritten, a time

1:34

which doesn't yet have a physical space. Sound

1:39

artist and producer Laura Carti

1:42

folds time to revisit

1:44

the lived histories that we

1:46

are too often denied access to. A

1:50

heritage of resistance now

1:52

rendered taboo. And

1:54

for our first piece, Laura explores the

1:57

origins of Jamaican folklore as a gateway

1:59

to the future. to understanding the

2:01

legacy of slavery on the island. This

2:04

is Language in the

2:07

Land of Dappies. Can

2:15

a word die? Or

2:17

is it merely a living ghost

2:20

reborn indefinitely, cradled

2:22

by new tongues and new forms,

2:24

in glittering accents birthed by an

2:26

occupation of soul, body,

2:29

and mind? Used

2:34

by familial strangers who reject

2:36

its saltwater traces, turned

2:39

to crayal disdain and

2:41

wonder. How

2:54

do you feel about the fact that the

2:56

world is so different? Any

2:59

information on it is obscured. The

3:02

last thing fair is still there, that it's used to hurt

3:04

and harm, and

3:07

it's just all evil, depraved people and the princes of

3:09

society that really dabble in that.

3:14

If you're looking to like hosteles, use Obia

3:16

or Mayal to empower themselves against

3:19

these masters, like, this is a real thing,

3:21

why can't we even learn

3:23

about it from just a historical aspect, or

3:26

a cultural aspect, people just don't want to discuss

3:29

it at all. It

3:40

seems to me that all of us sleep with

3:42

that Jesus the Caribbean, but

3:44

elsewhere in Africa that

3:47

we talk about zombies. The

3:51

main first line of change, like we said zombies,

3:55

and the other line, maybe we should have their somewhere big

3:57

for the zombies, for zombies. It

4:09

would have like a blazing fire

4:11

in its eyes as it was

4:13

very frightening. Especially the

4:15

men who used to drink and have

4:17

to walk in the dark to get

4:20

to their homes, they would tell you

4:22

that they had encounters with this doppie,

4:24

this rolling car. I

4:29

don't know if people

4:32

in Jamaica tell those kind of

4:34

stories now, not with the kind

4:36

of socialization that

4:38

they have. I

4:42

think that aspect of the culture is

4:44

dying slowly. Jamaica's

5:07

mantra is that of many one

5:09

people, an idea of national pride

5:11

stemming from our mixed origin. At

5:14

the same time, those origins don't

5:16

get equal attention. Great

5:19

Britain had and still has such

5:21

a huge influence on the country,

5:23

from language to education systems to

5:25

the more deeply rooted ideology of

5:27

citizens. And the fact of

5:30

the matter is, once you plant that

5:32

seed that someone's traditions are inferior,

5:34

it's amazing how after a while you don't even need to

5:37

convince them. They'll start convincing

5:39

each other for you. It's

5:41

like a weed that keeps coming back long after

5:44

you've left, and after they've left

5:46

too. hearing

6:00

the word Duppy at some time or

6:02

another and wanted to learn more. My

6:06

mother is African American and my father

6:08

is Jamaican, so my access to this

6:10

part of my culture is one-sided. My

6:14

father never told me Duppy stories, instead

6:16

swapping them out for Ace of Sables.

6:20

Though, truth be told, I don't

6:22

think he was raised with them

6:24

either. His father was a principal

6:26

and education was paramount, so stories

6:28

about the unexplainable that couldn't be

6:30

rationalized were perhaps not viewed with much

6:32

importance. But here I am,

6:34

26, and on a quest to connect

6:37

with parts of me that, in many ways,

6:40

I'm only just meeting. So

6:49

I interviewed my cousin's grandpa, and he was

6:51

telling me about Roland Cass and his wife.

6:53

She was so incensed. She's

6:56

like a true, bloodied, fresh, general monk. She was like

6:58

screaming in the middle of him trying to tell me,

7:00

and she was like, I don't want any of that

7:02

in my house. I'm

7:04

reading her quote. She's like, them back

7:06

from Africa teens, guess them was slaves

7:09

and carry over them African mentality, the

7:11

evil, like, why are they

7:13

trying to spoil the younger generation, draw

7:15

close to Christ? How

7:33

can you not loathe something deep

7:36

down within yourself to sit a comment like

7:38

that? Or maybe to

7:40

avoid that reality, you push everything and

7:42

anything away that connects you to Africanness.

7:45

Except, of course, your face, skin,

7:47

hair, and whatever else. But

7:51

that's just that weed that keeps coming back. of

8:01

churches because remember all the slave society

8:03

operated, the slave

8:05

masters used religion

8:10

to control the

8:12

slaves. If you

8:15

misbehaved, you're a part of the

8:17

Devil region. If you're conformed to

8:19

what they were saying, you're a part of

8:21

the Christian religion and

8:23

you go to heaven and

8:26

so on. If you didn't get your misbehaved and

8:28

you're too black, you're almost at the

8:30

upper. Your

8:35

body is not your own, it hasn't been

8:37

since before you were born. Scarier

8:41

than river mama and more haunting than old

8:43

Hag is adopting the masters

8:46

tools to dissemble ourselves and our collective

8:48

memory. Our folklore

8:50

connects us far into the path to

8:52

lands our feet will never touch. Dappi,

8:57

Taino, Obia, Patkan,

9:01

what's in a word, how

9:03

many languages has it traversed and

9:06

who brought it to mind? That

9:18

was language in the land of Dappies

9:20

by sound artist and producer Laura Carti.

9:23

You also heard the voices of Candice Thompson,

9:26

Carmen Johnson and Alexander

9:28

Powell. Our

9:35

next portal bends into a hereafter

9:37

that blends the past, present and

9:39

future all in one. Made

9:42

by the audio producer Amber Devereaux, they tell

9:44

us that this is an

9:46

exploration of chrononormativity, the

9:49

idea that we all follow the same timeline

9:52

and what it means to live in opposition

9:54

to it. It's a

9:56

journey through space and time by way

9:58

of Oscar Wilde, Virginia. the

10:01

existential angst of turning 30, an astronomer in

10:03

Chile, and

10:05

a slightly unnerving 1950s public information film about

10:08

how to be a person.

10:12

This is All My Friends Are

10:15

Turning Into Stars. A

10:20

man whose desire is to be something separate from

10:22

himself, to be a member of

10:24

a parliament, who is a stressful grow star,

10:27

or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, invariably

10:30

succeeds in being what he wants to be. That

10:33

is his punishment. If he

10:35

is the one to must, have to wear it. I'm

10:39

interested in how galaxies form as

10:42

holes across, you know, cosmic

10:44

time. When you look up at

10:46

the sky on a clear night, what do

10:48

you see? There's the moon and the stars.

10:51

See, you know, we know the universe is 13, 14

10:53

billion years old. The

10:55

moon looks like the biggest thing in the sky,

10:57

doesn't it? Those tiny looking stars are probably larger

11:00

than the moon, but

11:02

they are much farther away. And

11:05

yeah, when stars form, the side galaxies grow in

11:07

a hole. I

11:18

was having coffee with some old friends. We'd

11:22

spend the morning bouldering, scurrying

11:24

up climbing walls and falling down. A

11:27

lot. We sat

11:30

with aching arms and legs and backs.

11:34

Not quite as spry as we used to be. It

11:39

was one of the first times I'd gone outside

11:41

looking like some kind of rough approximation of my

11:43

new gender, trying to

11:45

relearn how to wear clothes again. Not that I'd

11:48

ever really figured it out in the first place. I

11:52

felt large and awkward, like

11:55

a teenager again, except 31

11:58

and surrounded by... other

12:00

31 year olds who seem to have their lives

12:02

together. We

12:05

talked, we caught up and soon

12:08

the topic of house prices

12:10

and mortgages came up

12:12

of investments and

12:15

dog ownership. Worlds

12:18

that were far away from

12:20

me, undiscovered,

12:23

unknown. We

12:28

are at the age where we talk about these things.

12:32

We are at the age when we

12:34

talk about settling down, about finding the

12:36

forever home. We

12:39

are at the age where we relive

12:41

and retell stories rather

12:44

than live new ones. We

12:47

are at the age where we become a

12:50

fixed point in the sky. Medium

12:54

and millions of miles away. Medium

12:56

and millions of miles away. Medium and millions of

12:58

miles away. Medium and millions of miles away. Heterotemporality,

13:04

or the equally wonderful word,

13:07

chromonormativity, is the idea that

13:09

there is a correct progression to life,

13:11

a correct way to be an

13:13

adult. It's a

13:15

list of unwritten instructions. Get a job,

13:17

get a real job, get married, get

13:19

a house, get a car, have children,

13:21

have hobbies, be a productive member of

13:23

society and raise the next generation of

13:26

productive members of society. We

13:29

are instructed and molded into its

13:31

shapes and patterns by the world around

13:33

us. Why, I'm in favor of marriage.

13:36

In fact, I spent a good deal of my time helping

13:38

people to get ready for marriage. What's

13:41

that? I call it a marriage development

13:43

board. It represents the

13:46

psychological distance between a husband and a wife

13:48

in the time they are born until they

13:50

die. My

13:54

partner and I got married before I came out as

13:56

non-binary. When I did come

13:59

out, we believed in marriage. noticed that her families

14:01

stopped asking us if we were planning on having

14:03

children. My

14:05

new identity, a new queerness

14:07

that could not be hidden or adapted,

14:11

didn't feature on the marriage development

14:13

board. It wasn't on

14:15

the list of instructions. There

14:17

was a new distance now. We

14:21

had accidentally become exempt from the

14:23

usual ebb and flow of adulthood.

14:25

The mask

14:27

was intact. I hit

14:30

a landing. You made a good start towards getting

14:32

ready. Homer

14:40

owns a coal and gold

14:42

skull, and I am still

14:44

here, watching him. I

14:48

measure the red shift as they drift away

14:50

from me, and I am

14:52

still here blue. What

14:59

is a star? It's actually

15:01

one of those questions you've asked different astronomers to get to

15:03

in answers. I'm Dr. Matthew

15:05

Temple. I'm a research fellow at the University

15:07

of the Tallahas in Chile. The

15:11

way a star forms is to do a process

15:13

of gravity. A star

15:15

has to start with a

15:17

gas cloud and then collapse down. It collapse

15:19

down until the density at the center of

15:22

the star is such to ignite nuclear fusion

15:24

reactions. These often have some dust and so

15:26

on as well. You get these beautiful images

15:29

of things like Hubble's telescope and James' telescope.

15:31

As it's collapsing down, you start seeing these

15:34

small pinpicks of light, which is where you've got

15:36

the proto-star forming. Often it's

15:38

charged with dust and then it ignites and

15:41

starts to radiate out. Then it blows that

15:43

dust away and you see the star unveil.

15:46

You can think of almost like a life

15:49

cycle. A star is born and then it

15:51

lives and then it dies in a supernova.

15:53

That actually sends out lots of material from

15:55

the dying star into the surrounding medium and

15:58

then that triggers a new phase. of

16:00

Star-Formation as well. So you end up with this really sort of interesting

16:03

and complex sort of life cycle within the

16:05

galaxy and within a Star-Formation

16:07

region. Get a job, get a field job, get

16:10

married, get a house, get a car,

16:12

have children, have hobbies, be a productive

16:14

member of society, raise the next generation

16:17

of productive members of society,

16:19

make them and bring them a mile

16:21

away. Then

16:24

came the most exquisite moment of our

16:26

whole life, passing a

16:28

stone iron with flowers in it. Sally

16:32

stops, picks a flower,

16:35

kissed her on the lips. The

16:38

whole world might have turned upside

16:40

down. The others

16:42

disappeared. There she

16:44

was, alone with Sally, when

16:47

old Joseph and Peter faced

16:49

them. Stargazing, said

16:52

Peter. It was like running

16:55

one's face against the granite wall

16:57

in the darkness. It

17:00

was shocking. It was horrible.

17:03

She made old Joseph tell her

17:05

the names of the stars, which

17:08

he liked doing very seriously. She

17:11

stood there. She listened. She

17:14

heard the names of the stars.

17:20

Queer time, queer

17:23

space, exists

17:25

in opposition to

17:27

chrononomativity. It

17:29

is, as Jack Halberstam writes, an

17:31

outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative

17:34

life schedules, and

17:36

eccentric economic practices with

17:39

the potential to open up new life

17:41

narratives and alternative relations to

17:43

time and space. It

17:47

is a failure to follow instructions correctly

17:49

by choice or by circumstance, but

17:52

finding beauty and meaning in

17:55

the failure. It

17:58

is Jupiter, not Jupiter. quite

18:00

a star, but something else. With

18:02

its own mini solar system of moons orbiting

18:05

it, it

18:07

is Neptune hiding in

18:09

plain sight. It is Uranus

18:11

spinning the wrong way, sideways. It

18:14

is Pluto, defying

18:17

and confusing conventional classification.

18:21

We may not be a fixed point in the

18:23

sky. We may still be at the mercy of

18:26

other cosmic forces pulling us in different directions. We

18:28

do not bend reality around us as the stars

18:30

do. But

18:32

we still affect each other's orbits. We

18:36

still warp time and space. In

18:38

our own ways. That

18:48

was All My Friends Are

18:50

Turning Into Stars by Amber Devro. You

18:54

heard from Dr. Mati Temple with

18:56

additional voices by Lou Sutcliffe and

18:58

Alessa Catterall. The

19:03

last thing you're going to hear is a

19:05

vision into a new hereafter, conjured

19:08

by the composer and researcher

19:10

Sara Rahman. She

19:13

says, there's not currently

19:15

any obvious path to reconstructing

19:17

a popular faith in political,

19:19

economic or even some social

19:22

institutions. But while

19:24

it might not always feel like it today, the

19:27

unwinding of colonial modernity

19:29

is underway and accelerating.

19:34

Sara sits down with psychiatrist

19:36

Isabel Valley and writers

19:39

Ferb Boyd and Madeleine Stack to

19:41

offer up their insight into this piece

19:44

called Interjections on the Future.

19:50

It really appears to me maybe this is not what I would

19:52

see at that age. I

19:56

feel very Yes. From the current reality, theusschi, a moment

19:58

in which we all play and are can even

20:02

start to comprehend what is

20:04

going to be the magnitude

20:06

of the mental health crisis

20:08

that the people in Gaza,

20:10

both children and adults, are

20:12

going to experience, considering

20:14

the level of violence they've

20:16

been exposed to. But

20:19

I think there's something very

20:21

important to be acknowledged and

20:23

to learn. People in Palestine,

20:25

whoever they're experiencing, very high

20:28

levels of mental health difficulties.

20:30

And I'm saying this based

20:33

mainly on the work of

20:35

Sama Jabra. She's a psychiatrist

20:37

facing East Jerusalem. She's the

20:40

chair for mental health services

20:42

for the Palestinian Ministry of

20:44

Health. And she

20:47

was talking about post-traumatic stress

20:49

disorder. This is a

20:51

condition that most people will know being

20:53

associated with the exposure to severe

20:56

trauma. And

20:58

it's a condition that has been mainly

21:00

studied in veterans of war. You know,

21:03

like people who return to

21:05

the safety of their folks,

21:08

they experience a

21:10

number of symptoms such as, you

21:12

know, like nightmares and flashbacks of

21:14

violence that they might have witnessed

21:16

or perpetrated. But there

21:19

were also a number of

21:21

physical symptoms, you know, symptoms

21:23

that signal a bodily response

21:25

to danger. Let's say

21:27

you hear loud noise and you jump

21:30

or you're heart racing or freezing or

21:32

running away. But this

21:35

would be in response to something

21:38

that is neutral. Let's say you

21:40

hear fireworks. Your body responds as

21:42

if you're in a war zone. What

21:46

Sama Jabra was saying is that

21:48

this does not apply to Palestinians,

21:50

because if someone, let's say, a

21:53

man that has been detained

21:55

in Israeli prisons or a

21:57

child was witnessed by a nurse, responds

22:00

with this physical reaction to

22:03

annoyance or if they run away

22:06

when they see an idea of

22:08

soldiers. This might not be a

22:10

maladaptive response to a neutral stimulus.

22:12

It might be actually something very

22:14

functional or something that even saves

22:17

their lives. So

22:20

what she proposed was a different

22:22

definition. I think she called it

22:24

continuous trauma disorder. So instead of

22:27

post-traumatic, she thought it was a

22:30

continuous exposure and

22:32

response to trauma. So

22:36

I think that thinking of the

22:38

future, I agree with what she

22:41

says and I would ask that it

22:43

can't be post-traumatic as long

22:45

as it's not post-glo. I

23:20

often think about the language

23:23

and the rhetoric

23:26

that those in power who want

23:28

to stay in power at any

23:30

cost want to utilise and

23:32

how that functions. And

23:34

I think often about how

23:37

they use languages of

23:39

inevitability to bring themselves

23:41

into being and they're like

23:43

this will continue for five years, five

23:46

more years. And there was

23:48

this very definitive affirmative rhetoric being

23:50

used and that is used across

23:53

all press. And I

23:55

think that

24:00

we also, we as in

24:02

like people who do not want this

24:04

horrendous situation to continue for

24:07

a minute longer, also need

24:09

to look at

24:11

the tools that they're using and

24:14

learn to kind of re-weaponise this

24:16

sense of inevitability, like the

24:18

world that we also want to bring

24:20

into being also needs to feel inevitable

24:22

in the way that we talk about

24:24

it. And I think in

24:26

terms of these poles of like pessimism

24:29

and optimism, I think it's my role

24:31

as a writer,

24:34

as an artist to like not

24:38

give anything to their

24:41

rhetoric of doom or to help them

24:43

bring their story into being. And therefore

24:46

I would always necessarily speak in terms

24:49

of like what I want to see

24:51

will happen. Because one

24:53

of their greatest tools I think is

24:55

like imagination and corrupting people's imagination. And

24:58

when you think about how politics works

25:01

in an individual human body from day

25:03

to day, our rudder

25:06

as an individual human is

25:08

our imagination in terms of the future

25:10

and what could come next. And

25:13

so they are using

25:16

rhetoric to corrupt that that is something that

25:18

we need to focus

25:20

on. Thank

25:26

you. I

26:03

think that being a realist is

26:05

being honest about how quickly things

26:07

can change historically and

26:09

also that we never know what

26:12

will be the decisive act. You know, none of

26:14

this is over. And

26:17

if we do use history as

26:20

a pattern, it's pretty clear that

26:22

like the people involved

26:24

in the greatest upheavals of like the

26:27

20th and early 21st century did

26:29

not know that they were enacting.

26:32

The decisive moment of

26:34

a certain struggle. And none

26:36

of us know what that moment will

26:38

be, in which case it's

26:40

best to act as though everything

26:42

is still at the grubs. The

26:46

one thing that is possible is

26:49

world making in your art and

26:52

also living as though

26:54

the future that you're describing is

26:56

already here with total certainty. And

27:00

most of the people I know who are

27:02

artists, if not everybody, are people who had

27:04

their lives saved by art. And

27:07

so I think it's our responsibility to kind

27:09

of keep the rest of the

27:11

freaks alive to make this kind of scenes

27:13

of fulfillment and scenes of

27:16

communality, scenes of pleasure a

27:18

reality and to really like sort

27:21

of prop that door open, like wedge that

27:23

door open with as many bodies as possible.

27:26

And again, kind of similar to how I said before,

27:28

you never know what's going to touch another person. You

27:30

never know what of your work will

27:33

tentacle out into the world and mean

27:35

something to someone or create a kind

27:37

of effect in the world. think

28:00

about giving us a five-star review on your

28:02

podcast platform. It would be very good because

28:04

we would love people who love the show

28:07

and listen to it to talk about it.

28:09

Thank you so much. Bye. On

28:12

this cultural life from BBC Radio 4,

28:14

leading artists and performers revealed their creative

28:17

inspirations. I saw something that was so

28:19

beyond what I was being taught at

28:21

school. Discuss their best-known work. I do

28:23

get messages all the time saying, this

28:26

is our life. The Handmaid's Tale is

28:28

already here. And reflect on their

28:30

own cultural lives. Rock stars need

28:32

to be simply drawn. They can't

28:34

be too complex. Join me, John

28:36

Wilson, and my guests including Nick

28:38

Cave, Stephen Fry, Margaret Atwood, Florence

28:40

Pugh, Paul McCartney, and Whoopi Goldberg.

28:42

I always knew I was going

28:44

to be a character actor. I

28:47

never thought I was going to

28:49

be a famous movie person. This

28:51

cultural life. Listen on BBC Sounds.