Guerilla Midgie Press
Review by Bill
Kirton
When you read Jock Tamson's Bairns, be prepared to think; not in any heavy, academic, pretentious way, just
gently, quietly, reasonably. Be prepared, too, to re-examine how you use words
and how you look at (and judge) other people. That doesn’t mean it’s some
worthy, ‘improving’ tome, couched in arcane philosophical or psychological
terms. On the contrary, it’s a careful, uncomplicated invitation for us to take
a wee step back from our assumptions, the everyday attitudes we carry, the
loose way we use language. It challenges the way we create compartments, chop
reality into manageable chunks, box them up and label them, even though some
chunks shouldn’t be in the same box and most labels are at best inadequate and
at worst wrong.
And the problem
inherent in such an approach is exacerbated when what we’re dealing with is not
abstract ‘chunks of reality’ but people. Cally Philips has worked a lot with
people with ‘learning difficulties’. (The need to use quotation marks around
apparently familiar, ‘normal’ terms is obvious from the early pages of the
book.) The expression ‘learning difficulties’ has (thankfully) evolved from
‘mental retardation’ and worse because nowadays we try to be careful of the
terms we use. There’s certainly been progress, but there’s still an underlying
assumption that, because most of us ‘feel normal’, those who are different must
be ‘abnormal’. But, as the author points out, the people who’ve decided what
‘normal’ means are – yes, you’ve guessed it – the ‘normal’ ones. ‘Normal’ isn’t
a hard scientific fact; it’s a consensus.
So, we assess
‘disadvantaged’ individuals, judge them, stick labels on them so that we can
accommodate them in a specially designated bit of our reality. They are
‘other’. And now we’ve dealt with them, so we can ignore them. But that doesn’t
work for the author here. She doesn't keep quiet, doesn't look away, doesn't
hide behind the labels and attitudes provided by others. She’s honest and says
what she sees. And she chooses to use a very clearly fact-based fiction to show
that the category ‘abnormal’ is as rich, varied and human as its ‘normal’
counterpart and that, however we refine the labels we stick on people, they’re
still restrictive and misleading.
But everything
I’ve said is outlined much more simply and accessibly in the introduction. Her
style is friendly, conversational and honest and, when we move to what she
describes as ‘fictional stories based on factual experience’, she continues to
draw us into her revelations by creating characters and situations which, yes,
underline the message but are also moving, funny and entertaining. In her own
words, she’s ‘respect[ing] the real-life experience of the people whose lives [she’s]
fictionalised’ in order to ‘teach insight for those of us who so badly need it’.
The first story is
called Gary gets to be God and there’s
a beautiful irony in the title.
Gary is blind,
doesn't talk, can’t hear very well, so communication is limited. He also shuffles
along on his bottom. He drools, squeaks when he's happy and screams when he’s
unhappy. For us ‘normal’ people his behaviour is ‘challenging’, there are ‘incidents’,
‘reports’. It all fits a convenient pattern doesn’t it? Why can’t he be more
like us? Why can’t he be ‘normal’? Cally Philips answers that with her own
question, one which acknowledges that Gary’s ‘normality’ is different. ‘Can you
imagine having to move around shuffling through the dark on your bum,’ she
asks, ‘without the ability to tell someone what you want or know what's round
the corner?’
But, in a group
improvisation, with the theme of ‘where do you want to go?’, poor, powerless Gary
gets to be God. It’s a beautifully orchestrated story with a poignant ending.
The other three
stories work in similar ways. In Jonjo
Can't Sit Still, Jonjo has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (which we
all glibly shorten to ADHD and assume that the label ‘explains’ things). The
impact of this story comes from the fact that Jonjo tells it himself and so we
get access to his normality, which turns out to be as legitimate as ours.
Philips lets him ‘explain himself’ by using a combination of his own impulses
and the language other people use about him. The writing is very clever as we
see the logic, the ‘normality’ of how his mind works, of how he
interprets/understands expressions. He loves to run and he’s ‘an accident
waiting to happen’, so he runs, a car hits him and the accident has happened.
Why did it happen? ‘There is no reason to an accident’ he says. His father uses
the expression ‘you’ve hit the nail on the head’ so when he tells a doctor ‘I
have low self-esteem’ and sees from her facial expression that he’s surprised
her, he says ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit the nail on the head’.
Philips helps us
to share the world as he sees it. He’s sensitive to clichés, to what others say
and think. And he loves to run. So the ‘normal’ people give him Ritalin to slow
him down. Then comes his first accident and he’s on crutches for a while, which
allows him to share another insight. ‘Crutches slowed me down a bit,’ he says,
‘but Ritalin slows me down on the inside too and crutches only slowed me down
on the outside’.
I’m doing too much
story-telling, but it’s simply to illustrate how the fictions are so carefully
tailored to enhance the central message with regard to the tyranny of labels.
The central figures of the other two stories, Heather and Angus, have different
problems again and give more examples of how badly they’re served by our
preconceptions and how the differences between us and them blind us to the
similarities. We are, indeed, all Jock Tamson’s Bairns – not equal, no, not by
a long way, but all the same, all individuals with our idiosyncrasies and
gifts, flaws and beauties. In the last part of the book, we see the fictional
‘No Labels’ drama group improvising again, interacting. All its members have ‘difficulties’,
but the improvisations impose no restrictions. They can be who they are and the
results show that who they are is valid. In fact, the improvisations sound like
much more positive ways to pass the time than watching TV or indulging in all
the other herd activities that constitute normality for the majority of ‘normals’.
These are lives being lived, individuals with their own precious selves, all
different, all valuable.
Labels are
supposed to identify; in fact, they obscure.
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