Joan of Arc

What’s a memory if it is forgotten? Is it still a memory? Can it be retrieved. Unfortunately for some it can be and fortunately too there is reverie in remembering. I was from a Catholic home, but that doesn’t mean I could ever be Joan of Arc or a saint like that. I recall on the telephone to a school friend, as a little girl, laughing and saying;

“Now I know how Joan of Arc felt,” after being confronted with a playground bully but I was never in any such suit of armour really. I was gifted collections of holy cards for special rights of passage and researched the saints, out of interest and in particular Joan of Arc. I found Joan of Arc interesting, not because she died at the stake, not because she was set alight by barbarians, not in the abuse she suffered and not in her supposed religious significance. I thought she was full of something more than honourable, more than righteous and more than keeping up with the boys. I just thought she was unique and that’s all. She was from poverty, wore armour and fought for the needy. She was beautiful and she believed in free will somehow without even knowing it, even at odds with the religious doctrines and cultural markers that might have relinquished her motivation to march into battle as a woman among men. I don’t completely agree with her methods though but it’s impossible not to see that, in some ways, she did carry the flag for suffragettes and feminism to date given the patriarchy that surrounded her. That’s how I came to be in a musical group called “Joan of Arc”, many years ago. It was wiped form my memory and has come back to me in recent months. I know that it featured a song that I sung in bed to someone I loved very much called; 

“I will carry you home.” I can honestly say, the opinion of anyone else of that song is not my concern. I value the memory from where it came and the good place from where it was sung, that being my own heart. That’s actually enough for me. All of the people who sung it with me, were very unique, versatile and powerful singers and I was lucky to have had the chance to share the song. I admit that my voice was probably not up to par with them but that’s why I was so lucky to sing something I wrote. Making music, like anything in life is often a collective experience. 

A few years ago someone in my Facebook feed shared a kind of ambiguous and rude post about the café Joan of Arc which I believe closed down with reference to the singing group I was in. I’m sharing my feeling here, because at the time, it confused me and regardless of how many people read this, my story is my story. I wish to be the teller of my own story. It is a basic human right to be a storyteller and to share with others who it is you are, what it is to be unique and independent or to be needing of love, in all of our views on life that my possibly change too, in our failures and furrowed  brows  and in the success stories that shape a smile or two or many. Someone who knew the story I believe, came in to defend the group and it is only now that I can appreciate that a man stood up for a woman in a way that we need to see more of in this world. The reason I didn’t know it was about me is because I had lost my memory. An ABI  which I am actually largely healed from now, does not mean that you should keep from the individual the truth. That is what happened to me and it is a really truly disgraceful way to have handled the situation. It of course should not have mattered about the ins and outs of the band’s line up, about the stylistic choices made or about whether what came before was better or not. What should matter is that we stand up for each other and love each other when we can and support each other to know the truth and find peace in life. I stopped engaging in Facebook more recently because of that man’s post and my returning memories because I’m no Joan of Arc. I don’t want to go into battle with people or compete for a place or be a number of likes or string of comments from people I might never actually see. The viciousness of the words are a shock to me and the lack of bravery from men, bar one, to stand up against that kind of bullying was astounding and including silence from people who wanted to keep in good with all the wrong people in the music and entertainment industry. As women, we don’t need men to fight our battles, we just don’t need the battles in the first place. People try and fail at all sorts of goals. I think the historical figure, Joan of Arc, could have done a lot more than having to mop up the mess of fat, ugly noblemen swimming in their own greedy war on peace. I don’t think “Joan of Arc” the musical group was my failure. I’ve written so many songs in my life but all of them were about original memories and nobody can take away those stories from me. I am my own memory keeper. Macbeths of the world still exploit people in all sorts of ways, but mostly people are good. In every bad memory I have had, there can be at least one good person to be counted. In every good memory, there’s nobody so bad. Apparently the CD floats around in some people’s car. 

Did you know for a while, I went to musical gigs of unknown people on purpose over the big money spinners. I listen to those people’s cd’s all the time. Some of it is amazing. Some of it is rather weird, hit and miss or struggling slightly around the edges. Those frayed little bits round the edges actually can delight me for people should not be made perfect, instagrammed into a barbie doll dumbo, manufactured beyond repair with no traceable places  to the fragility of human life, to that place of vulnerability. I don’t always need to stand tall or brave. I’m not always brave. I’m definitely not tall. I’ll curl up in a ball or crouch low sometimes. I’ll cry. I’ll tell that bloke on Facebook to get fucked in a blog post because he never wrote a song in his life and then realise, nobody much reads this and I’m probably looking like a second rate version of Joan of Arc meets Bridget Jones. I’ll remember that I might feel less angry tomorrow. I’ll get up again. I’ll probably delete this blog post eventually, knowing being set on fire killed Joan of Arc but the flames of hurt that hit my body in life, leave scars but strength too. I tried again and cried again then tried again. That’s all we can do, cept put a few smiles in their two. 

“…..sedens ad opus suum totum tuom animum corrumpere mores fingere alia animalia vulnere vitam. Animalitas dignitatem habent. "