Read a great piece on BBC by Mehretab Mekonnen Belay. In case its deleted, I'll paste the most interesting bit below:
"I have created my own country...It lies between the heart and the mind with no territorial claim and I feel the whole planet is my home." "...the clothes I wear are my national flag; the song I sing in the shower is my national anthem..."
This is almost exactly what I feel like. Growing up in Sri Lanka, you develop a healthy fear of group identity, and nationalism in general. Because it tends to blow people up, bomb their villages, torture their brothers and make others starve. So I like it when people steer clear of pigeonholing themselves. This doesn’t mean abandoning everything. It means wanting to pick and choose life-options and making your own life. If you want, it means you can be a hybrid.
You can listen to We Go Make Am, Danfo Driver, random Jamaican riddims, grunge mixed with Irish jigs, watch films by Von Trier, Vithanage, Kurosawa, wear Ugandan clothing, speak Sinhalese, English, mebbe a bit of Yoruba, dance meringue, bachata, read Chinua Achebe, Gunasekere, Uzodinma Iweala…and synthesize books and songs and movements and freedom struggles, economies and constitutions out of this variety of experience…
…and perhaps end up killing less people because they have funny sounding surnames or pray to some other random deity.
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4 comments:
Reminds me of John Lennon's "Imagine" & Nutopia
Nutopia is a conceptual country created by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on April Fool's Day 1973. This country (or nation) was supposed to live up to the standards set by the song "Imagine".
In the official declaration of Nutopia, it is stated that it
"has no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. Nutopia has no laws other than cosmic. All people of Nutopia are ambassadors of the country. Citizenship of the country can be obtained by declaration of your awareness of Nutopia."
The flag of Nutopia has only one colour: white. The seal of Nutopia is a picture of the marine animal called a seal. The "Nutopian International Anthem" was included on John Lennon's album Mind Games, and consisted of a few seconds of silence.
ah. excellent. and on personal grounds, agreed. however for the pure sake of debate, what price john donne's meditation that 'no man is an island, entire of itself'?
I know it's a really irrelavant thought, but wonder why the "N" in Nutopia?? Hmmm
not sure man.. possibly to sound "new utopia", new paradise..
one for Yoko to explain..
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