cerberus
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M I C H A E L - B E G G
Michael Begg on You Dance The Swords Alone...
One of
the most darkly lyrical voices to have emerged from Scotland in recent years,
Michael Begg remains unimpressed with what's being touted as the current 'renaissance'
of Scottish writing.
"I see my contemporaries doing very well for themselves, and good luck to
them. We're a disenfranchised nation, and there are a lot of voices out there,
a lot of styles, that have never been heard before and of course they deserve
to be heard. It's vital, but no more vital than a baby crying for milk.
"There is still a long road to travel between your first taste of your mother's
milk and your journey into art."
"Swords was never intentionally written as an anti war statement, but that
is what it has emerged as, first and foremost. Fighting was never the thing
that troubled me most about war. I was more concerned with the way orders
were given and received. The way the plan of war was conceived in comfort,
in government
chambers, and handed to other men to carry out. The way that frightened men
were shot for not obeying some crazy order, and the way that other soldiers
would obey the order to fire and kill, even when they knew and understood
that the whole enterprise was wrong..
"Every human heart has a template of this abstract concept - the enemy. We
have to remember that it is the commanders on our own side that furnish that
template with a face. We have to learn how to question the sound of the order
coming down. After all this time, we still have to learn how to bring the
true butchers of war to task."
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