Hippies

It's probably fair to say I am a child of the 60s. Born then, obviously, but also carrying the legacy of all that hippy bollocks in endless small ways that others find surprising. That I call my parents by name, for example, rather than "mum" and "dad", never ceases to amuse Ian, even though his first boyfriend, to whose son Ian is now godfather, does the same -- for that matter so does the son, to some extent at least.

I grew up in a commune, or more a rolling succession of communes, I suppose. The households in which I lived gradually mutated away from tie-dyed muesli and lentils, but a collectivist spirit remained until well into the 1980s. I was surrounded by intellectuals and radicals and deviants of all kinds. I was singing along to Tom Robinson's "Glad to be gay" at Rock Against Racism concerts long before I had any real sense that I actually was gay myself, or even had a clue what that might feel like.

By some bizarre circumstance, my pinko commie faggot father (the best role model a boy could ever have) taught philosophy for an American university -- at US military bases. I love that. I wonder if it could still happen, or would some sort of ideological screening intervene? Are you now, or have you ever been? One of the bases was in Naples, so we spent a lot of time in Italy. I can still understand the language a bit, though I don't have enough vocabulary within easy reach to actually make conversation. (My sister, by contrast, built on this foundation and can readily pass for a native.)

In Salford, in the mid 70s, The Buzzcocks practiced in our basement -- to the dismay of the next door neighbours. Howard Devoto lived in the house at the time. Punk is often presented as the antithesis of hippy, but it all mixed together quite happily for me as a child in the embrace of the counterculture.

Many of the people around me were foreigners. My parents are Australian, and plenty of other expat Aussies were in their circle. Americans and Canadians were there too, and Italians also became a regular part of the mix. Though officially British, I had a rather jaundiced view of what seemed, in comparison, a cold and hidebound and joyless country, and would always side against it in international sporting events -- to the extent that I was interested in such events at all, which was very little. Even now, I find nationalistic fervour incomprehensible, and am baffled by the identification so many people feel for their national sports teams -- or their national armies. When they say "we won" or "we lost" I think: no, the people playing or fighting won or lost; you just watched. There are things worth playing and fighting and dying for, but a flag isn't one of them. Over the years I've lost my outright anti-patriotism -- now when my country's athletes win medals, I'm happy for them -- but I still don't see how it reflects in any way on me.

This is who I am. Not the whole of it, but little fragments of my accreted self. Things I don't ever think about unless prompted. Things I've forgotten. There are so many.

I've been thinking about what this blog is for, and to be honest I still don't know. At some level, there's no point in worrying about it. Either it takes shape on its own, or it falls by the wayside. But I don't think I'm interested in jotting down the minutiae of my days, and right now I'm not going through life-changing experiences that need to be documented. I'm not planning to dig over my coming out, for example, because it's ancient history and there's little to be learned from it now. And besides, the wench is dead.

So perhaps instead, if there is a point to doing this, it is to tell some of my stories. To remind myself of who I am, where I came from. To celebrate the struggles and decisions of the people who made me, some of whom I'm certain harbour doubts as to whether they did the right thing. To revel in all the anecdotal evidence I can find.

Or perhaps that's just a lot of self-aggrandizing bollocks and the truth is I'll just blather on in the same old way I always have.
Posted by matt at August 2, 2003 11:39 PM