Simple plan: Head to Westfield Shopping Centre, wait at entrance to Olympic Village, take pictures of patriotically dressed Americans for blog. Complications: five year old son, could work to advantage as strangers always warm to a child with a winning smile.
On the penultimate day of the London Olympiad.
Given that I wrote ambiguously to disparagingly about how we wear our colours abroad a couple weeks ago in this blog, I thought I'd do a little photographical essay on us supporting Team USA, resplendent in all our 'Old Glory' red, white and blue.
And here we are, our true colours proudly, unashamedly displayed for all and sundry.
Above is my first victim, Ashton from California, whose cape turned out to be quite a fashion among Americans abroad in E20 (as I suppose we must call it from now on. Isn't E20 where Eastenders is set?). Ashton was a great sport seeing as how I disturbed his lunch in the food court in order to take his picture. Excuse the 'Shaky Auteur' style if it's not to your liking. I was still a tad nervous about approaching people to take pictures of them, about which I learned a lot and became more comfortable with as the afternoon wore on.
Bonnie, from the Washington DC area
Funny thing is that people can get awfully paranoid about strangers stopping them in the middle of the mall. Probably happened enough times before. Initially, they probably all thought I was after money, or trying to sell them The Big Issue, or worse, about to rob them blind of their Olympic tickets like the famed historical highwaymen of Angle-land. But once I told them what I was all about and that I wanted to take a picture of them for my blog, there was such a softening. Almost a thrill to feel the sensation of fame running at the fingertips. Bonnie here was keen, though her husband, not dressed nearly as patriotically, didn't seem to want to be snapped at all. I suspect he thought I was stalking his wife, a suspicion that I shared with my son afterwards, perhaps wrongly, because it put me in the position of explaining rather too loudly what 'stalking' meant to a five year old within earshot of many equally suspicious looking Olympic fans who looked like they might have social services on speed dial.
Mind you, some were especially hostile to being approached. We'll put those people in a category that I'll call 'the British who I mistook for Americans'. One of them was wearing an American flag t-shirt and carrying a plastic bag labeled 'NBA'. Isn't that like wearing a neon sign emblazoned with 'American as Apple Pie' on it? I think our English cousins are just a bit more closed and jaded than we are and I think the few who fall into this category were decidedly not Londoners.
Steve, from California
Steve was great. He really embodied one of the things that makes me proud to be American. I told him about my limited and sheltered northeastern existence, having never been west of the Mississippi in my life (True. All true. I know. Hard to tell with my worldliness). 'Really?' He said, 'That's a such a shame because as you go west the weather just gets better and better,' and from Steve with that wonderfully honest American smile, I believed it. Because it's true and also because there is a sincerity that goes beyond simplicity or literal-mindedness, which is what the Brits generally call us. There is an untranslatably beautiful honesty in a smile and pure delight in the sun shining every day. Steve's never had Seasonal Affective Disorder and clearly no Scandinavian homicide drama could possibly have anything to say that would relate to his experience. And because of that American sincerity, that delight in the simple pleasures, I just felt like taking a trip out west, just to visit Steve and see the weather. Alas, were there time to exchange numbers in a heaving mall, but here in London, we live by a faster pace.
Virginians Abroad (Read that carefully, will ya?)
This family taught me another one of those lessons about approaching the public, a heartwarming one this time. The teenage son in the foreground had been exchanging words in a tone of mild irritation more than matched by his mother. They seemed to be arguing about how to get where they were going, but I was desperate to get a couple more snaps of Americans so I decided to disturb them. At first the young lad had no interest in being in the shot, but I cajoled him and he looks somewhat reluctant, but a poised reluctant, as though he's turned it into a modelling pose. The mother was only too happy, as you can see, to smile for the camera, as was the cute little girl. As I walked away I could hear, just within earshot, milder tones of concordance between mother and son and a general harmony between the three. Being approached by someone asking you to pretend you're happy can have that effect. Pretend for long enough and some of it spills over into reality. You forget the bagatelle that you were annoyed with and move on. Quite a lovely, uncomplicated moment.
Fellow Expatriate Americans
I end with this adorably sweet couple because I know neither their names or where they are from. So astounded was I when they told me that they live not anywhere in America, but in Bury St. Edmunds and in such a rush were they to get to see Athletics that we didn't have time for niceties, but I was elated to find two kindred intrepid spirits, fellow expatriates abroad, supporting the home team in all their glory, as we can't help but do when we support our compatriots and separate ourselves for just a moment from the darker side of this Olympiad. Objectors will say that this act of forgetting is just what perpetuates a world run by megaconglomo-corporate entities and believe me, I'm on your side, which is why enjoyment is all the richer if you can celebrate the good in things while, with a fine sense of balance, understanding the underlying cost of all of our joy. Here's to Rio in 2016. Well done, America in London 2012.
I am on the District Line, traveling west, sitting across from a stocky young man who's just boarded at Whitechapel. This corn-fed meal with tanned skin, mirror sunglasses, loose fitting jeans and chunky sneakers wears a t-shirt with the words 'America, The Beautiful' in red, white, and blue on top of a vertical star spangled banner, behind which seems to float the diaphanous image of a woman's face that I can only assume is a feminine representation of 'America, The Beautiful.' I resist the urge to lean over to him and say, 'You know, people would have known without you announcing it on your t-shirt like that. And another thing: It's neither of the things you think it is - vaguely, subtly artistic or stylish.'
One is put in mind of the Irish poet Louis MacNiece: 'Why,/ Must a country, like a ship or a car, be always female,/ Mother or sweetheart?'
Why is it that as a nation we feel a desperate compulsion to label ourselves?
It's as though no one listened to Springsteen carefully enough to read irony into him.
Or as though we are still worried that someone might mistake us for being from somewhere else or belonging to some other cultural group.
No one will.
The minute we begin to speak, they know. Everybody knows. And it's no bad thing. What is a bad thing is trying desperately to label it and somehow make it chic or cool and pretend it's some artistic statement.
Here's what I like: on the same tube journey, an individual boards the train in jeans and plain, off-white t-shirt, sits down and starts tapping his feet to the rhythm of whatever tuneful track is playing away in on his MP3 player. It's then that I notice, his Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, faded, worn, ragged, but clearly patterned with Old Glory, stripes on each side, stars down the tongue. A cheeky treading with the flag, not on it, naturally, not flashing, not waving, but toe-tapping with a wonderfully tacit acknowledgement of nationality as a simple, softly spoken part of who you are.
On the tube back, a heaving, humid, flesh-wall-cramped train car. A short stocky man of some sort of East Asian heritage squeezes on (melting pot significance, not passively racist. Swear). He is wearing red Bermuda shorts, a plain blue top, red, white and blue star-shaped sunglasses, a soft, fuzzy looking Uncle Sam style top hat and a red and white striped draw-string bag slung over both shoulders with a little American flag poking chirpily out the back. This too strikes me as utterly and completely appropriate. It's too loud to be obnoxious. This man is America personified, wearing the country, proclaiming the preamble like a big flamboyant flamingo shouting to all and sundry, 'I am the U. S. A!' without saying a word.
Taken from the Scavenge Costumes website
I'm not given to wearing my national colo(u)rs very often, the 4th of July being an exception some years, but I think what bothered me about the first man's shirt, aside from the inherent and age-old sexism and the mixture of telltale labels, was the pretension that there was some conscious art in declaring your national heritage, as opposed to treating it as some part of you that is as natural as your shoe size, as innate as a sexual orientation. We are Americans and intensely proud of who we are, but I'd rather we all avoid standing in odious uncritical hand-on-heart reverence to the flag, not in front of the foreigners, most of whom have a bit of a sense of humo(u)r about their homelands.
So, bundle of contradictions that I am, that's what I think we all need: more pride, less reverence.
We are steeped in Olympic fever in London. Soon, the games will be nigh impossible to escape unless you are under a rock somewhere. The first thing I've noticed, being American myself, is the increase in the number of compatriots flooding this great metropolis. Even spotted Al Roker of The Today Show filming on the grounds of The Tower of London the other day when we were busy being tourists in our own city. I felt ambivalent about crowding in to get a few snaps and say hello to the man. He always seemed like such a big presence on the TV when I was growing up and yet, I never really spent a lot of time watching him, so was it the American propensity towards being star-struck within spitting distance of celebrity that kept me circling like a distant satellite hoping to get a glimpse?
It certainly seemed to be this tendency for the crowds gathered outside the green in front of William The Conqueror's original White Tower, many of whom spoke with pronounced North Atlantic twangs. I've never had many brushes with personages of high public profile. I met Michael Stipe when I was 15; stalked him half a block down South Street in Philly just to interrupt him while he was ordering coffee to tell him that I was going to see him in Veteran's Stadium and that he really inspired me. Swoon.
Al Roker doesn't have the same sort of appeal, but then neither does approaching celebrities any more. English and Irish people tend to be a bit superior to the phenomena, but then I do too and I wonder if it's just because I can see the silliness in it. I suspect most Americans do, but that there's something about a TV crew that brings out delirium in people. I tend to think it's programmes like The Today Show that cement our great picket-fenced village and make us feel like we're all having coffee together with Al and the gang, which you can see the magic in. It's almost Rockwellian.
Here's the link to the interview they filmed with a Yeoman Warder that day. It did manage to make me slightly homesick, in a scoffing superior, I kind-of-wish I was in America sort of way.
We are going to try to get to see the Opening Ceremony on the big screen tonight in Victoria Park, which is a ticketed event, a fact which raises great ire in my soul. I get more and more apprehensive about big events that, with increasing frequency, fence off public spaces. I'd like to think it doesn't just stem from the fact that I don't have a ticket, but tickets, really? To go to Victoria Park and watch something on a big screen? I'm sure there will be plenty of Heineken and McDonald's tents, and as of this morning, with no more tickets being issued, it is possible to get in, but not guaranteed, another reason to check out the apparently much more open looking Haggerston Park events, or find something else spectacular to do with your weekend.
Should you be in East London -- and if you are over for the big you know whats then you will be -- There is a fantastic little place that you could check out at 51 Chatsworth Road, just up from Homerton High Street, called Creperie du Monde. I've reviewed here for the Hackney Hive. Well worth checking out.
However it is that you choose to spend your time, do make it magnificent.
I have to admit, I like the concept of the Olympics. I like the idea of the whole world being united in a sporting contest that goes back to antiquity and encourages a striving for excellence in physical abilities as well as sportsmanship. I like the idea of sport, unmotivated by lots of corporate sponsorship and greed as it seems football is here in England (and Baseball was in the 1990s, when I stopped following my team, The Mets, because I lost faith in players during the strike). And in some weird, perverse, London way, I feel a sense of pride that we got the games. But being an adoptive Londoner, I think I've also acquired a kind of second-nature scepticism about waves of positivity sweeping over a place like a juggernaut leaving nothing but vitamin C and sunshine in its wake. It smacks of the worst of blind American optimism and as Springsteen said, blind faith in your leaders, or anything, will get you killed.
There's no smoke without fire and no scepticism without a seedy little fact lurking behind those shiny Olympic rings.Whilst I think The Games should be an enjoyable experience, here are a few uncomfortable truths to bear in mind as we are jubilantly celebrating sport.
Mowing down the Marshes
The Borough of Waltham Forest, on 7th February, 2011, greenlighted The Olympic Development Authority to build a large basketball training facility right on top of a massive amount of green space in the Porter's Field section of Leyton Marshes. You can read all about the campaign to prevent the courts from being built here. The ODA say they are obliging themselves to restore the Marshes to their former state by 15th October 2012, but as with rainforests, no matter how many trees you plant and fields you build over, there is no going back to the 'original state' of an historic green space. And I have to ask, why does London, a city with a surprisingly large amount of green spaces, need to sacrifice some of them? We host millions of commuters from the home counties every day. It's not as though we don't do big events.
Roll up, roll up, Olympic festival fans, it's Walthamstock
Exploiting green spaces for quick cash during the Olympics seems to be a real trend with Waltham Forest. A council licensing panel granted the Big Events Company (BEC) permission to sell alcohol and have dancing and recorded music between 1 and 10 pm, despite protests from local residents. According to The Waltham Forest Guardian's website:
'Last year the council secretly signed a contract to lease the land to the firm, hoping that a share of the profits from the deal would help pay the estimated £1.5million bill for its 'Big 6' series of events to celebrate the Olympics.'
A cynical person might think Waltham Forest was milking the games for all it was worth.
Branded like Cattle
We have new stadiums, we have a new shopping centre, we even have a new postcode (E20, as if we can really call Stratford a city) but could we please leave our E15 greasy spoons alone? Kamel Kichane, the owner of The Olympic Cafe in Stratford was forced to change the name of his caf or have to pay the council £3,000. The following is Mr. Kichane's low cost solution to the problem.
What it reveals though is a wrong-headedness, a blinkered vision about the Olympic Brand. What was I saying up there about a competition untainted by commercialism? Correction. The sponsors and organisers project an image that the Olympics is not motivated by commercial greed and work very hard to project that image, but the fact is, according to Adweek magazine, the Olympics has been about greed and private sponsorship since LA in 1984 when Peter Ueberroth, the president of the Los Angeles Organizing Committee of the games that year, actively gunned for private, corporate sponsoship to resurrect a moribund tradition lurching towards oblivion.
Growing up in America, the notion of purity in the Olympics was cultivated. There was a general sense that these weren't like quarterbacks and big hitters getting paid several hundred thousand dollarsper game; you expected double dealings and deviousness in sports like American football and baseball, what with their stink of greasy piles of dollar bills wafting through ballparks and stadiums acorss the country. We were taught that Olympians were different; these were hard working athletes training for seven or eight hours every day to represent their country in some noble tradition.
We grew up with names like Flo Jo, Greg Luganis, Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson ringing with heroic clarity in our heads. And even in this short but famous list, only the reputations of of Joyner and Luganis remain intact. Lewis is still dogged today with the cloud of controversy caused by his testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and still being allowed to compete. Canadian Johnson famously tested positive and was stripped of his gold medal the same year. Such was the pressure of the freshly minted money-fed sponsorship-driven games that a slew of Athletes are alleged to have taken steroids and got away with it. Is it pure coincidence that this unethical practice became popular in the wake of the games going corporate? This was an atmosphere that was capable of corrupting even Canadian athletes. Canadians, I say. Canadians! When you've got to the point where can wreck the moral compass of the good founders of The Peaceable Kingdom up north, all hope is very nearly lost.
As a result of all this branding, aside from it not being a fair representation of unenhanced human athletic ability, to paraphrase Steve Punt in last week's episode of The Now Show, the official food of the Olympics is McDonald's, drink is Coca-cola, official chocolate is Cadbury's and official disease is type 2 diabetes. Perfect Pint UK reports that there is no British beer to be represented either at the London Olympics, just Heineken. God help you if you are drinking any water except Evian anywhere within the walls of the fortified Olympic Village. The Olympic village will have a 'pop-up McDonald's' that will officially be the largest in the world. With the Olympics in London for the first time since 1948, what do we want to showcase? The sophisticated array of top-notch intelligent chefs and creative organisations and restaurants that the British food industry has grown up into, or the ode to efficiency that is the brainchild of American Ray Kroc? Actually, the former might take some effort. It's not as though there are any Olympic boroughs serving any good British food nowadays and what chefs can we really claim of any reknown, let's go with cheap and cheerful, eh?
In efforts to protect trademark rights, you are not allowed to consume anything made by anyone outside of those producers who are official Olympic sponsors. Bog standard confidence trick: advertise freemarket and freechoice, get the punters inside, eliminate the choice and jack up the price, thus annihilating any image the games ever projected of being a competition of pure, uncorrupted athletic prowess for the sake of athletic prowess.
The World's Biggest Competition to Demonstrate What Exactly?
For an event that's been advertised as a massive benefit to London in the long-run, it doesn't seem to be doing much for us in the short term. A path I have only just started enjoying along the canal between Hackney and Stratford or rather Stratford and everywhere has been closed and placed under armed guard. Yes, because of the potential threat, you are no longer able to use your own athletic abilities to get near the site at which athletes from the world over are competing to demonstrate their athletic abilities. Surely this is sending the wrong message, especially since the Games organizers had originally put money and efforts into improving the path and making sure the public knew that it was going to be an enjoyable way to get to Olympia, East London.
G4S -- The Mos Eisley of Olympic Security?
Indeed, as the list of revelations slithers out from under the carefully closed and locked doors of the Olympic media machine, I wonder if it would be possible to find a 'more wretched hive of scum and villainy' than in the offices of the firm G4S. I posted about a protest I saw at St. Paul's about the Anglo-Danish firm, not knowing much about them at the time. I've since researched and correct me if I'm wrong here, but we seem to have contracted a lawless band of unaccountable mercenaries to guard London in the summer of 2012. Were G4S a Catholic, the list of sins it might start with in the confessional booth run as follows:
The death of Angolan refugee Jimmy Mubenga whilst in the custody of G4S guards on a flight from Heathrow to Angola
Carrying out the government's deportation policy while sustaining 773 complaints of those that were within their custody
Failing to fulfill the contract to keep The Olympics safe in 2012
Hiring a director with really bad hair. I'm no one to talk, but if you had as much money as a CEO with a company like this, wouldn't you try to look like you were older than 14?
Probably best we just leave G4S and the local priest in the confessional. No telling how long either of them might be there.
When you wade through cliches, slogans and soundbites like 'take the stage', 'London prepares' and 'Take the respect', what do you have left at the centre of all the smoke and mirrors? We seem to have a London that has taken performance-enhancing security firms, regulations and cash injectiosn in order to improve its performance as a city this summer. It would probably be wise for us as Londoners to bear in mind that the Olympics committee chose London, in all its brash and savage beauty, not some sanitized, tarted up, Americanised caricature of itself.
Will we, for these and other less than savoury things about the 2012 Olympics, be like the people of Ursula LeGuin's people of Omelas, and our joy be all the richer for knowing its real costs? I'd like to think so, but I've got a feeling that we shall just close our ears, open our mouths and eyes wide and smile, asking only for bread and circuses, lights and neon.
To find out more about the efforts being made to fight the deleterious effects of the Olympics on Hackney and the East End check out http://saveleytonmarsh.wordpress.com/
To read about a very clever and creative response to all this Olympian palaver, have a look at 'The Austerity Games'.
This post has also been informed by the following two articles:
I used to be ashamed to be American. Used to hide my native colo(u)rs like a dirty secret, ape accents around me (a habit I think I still have a tendency to do) in order to blend in. Used to avoid my compatriots like the plague anywhere and everywhere they were to be found.
When I first emigrated overeas, eleven years ago, then to Dublin, I used to duck and run at the sound of the Southern twang, beat a steady retreat at the waddle of the Bermuda shorts, carefully conceal myself from conspicuous Californians, and make mild noises of disapproval at Midwesterners.
Sometimes with good reason.
'EX SCUSE ME, CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO GET TO TRIN-IT-TEE COLLEGE?' I'd often overhear, cringing on the DART line. 'YOUR LAST NAME IS O'BRIEN? DO YOU KNOW THE O'BRIENS OF CORK?' As if there's only one or even as if it could ever matter. 'WHERE ARE THE THATCHED COTTAGES? THEY MUST BE HERE SOMEWHERE!' Overheard walking down O'Connell Street, one of the busiest streets in Dublin.
The best example though of wonderfully embarassingly American behaviour was in the elevator (lift) coming down from the top of The Eiffel Tower. Having just experienced the majesty of the greatest of French cities from the zenith of that monumental edificial tribute to high modernism, I was still lost in the reverential afterglow of the moment when the over-sized t-shirt, aforementioned Bermuda short, baseball cap-clad retiree sharing the elevator with us pontificated to his similarly telltale dressed wife, 'WELL. BEEN THERE. DONE THAT. GOT THE T-SHIRT.' Which wasn't even true. He hadn't bought the t-shirt yet. Yes, for a nation of mostly passportless citizens, we sure do seem to get around.
However, just as the French Postcolonial Psychiatrist Frantz Fanon writes about the phases of development of the native intellectual, so I have seen my feelings towards my homeland evolve in different ways to reflect a sort of reconciliation. Oddly enough, it took an exchange with a couple of Irish colleagues, one of whom had said to me, 'Yeah, but there's no such thing as American culture is there? Just Disney and pop music.'
And just as I was shrugging my shoulders in shame and accepting resignation, it was another Irish colleague who sprang to my defens(c)e. 'Rubbish! The best novelists and poets are American. Jazz, The Beat Generation, The Hudson River School. Don't let Irish bedgrudgery cloud your vision of a country rich in culture.' I started not to after that. We do come from a rich and diverse cultural background that I declined to acknowledge for a large part of my life. Sometimes it just takes an outsider to help you see what has been hidden from you for a very long time.
I have since tried to correct this remission on my part, with some success. I'll never go around blindly celebrating the stars and stripes, chanting, 'U!S!A! U!S!A!' but my nuanced appreciation of America has helped me to reconcile myself to my national cultural identity. I've come around to helping confused Americans now instead of avoiding them and slipping them a few local survival tips while I'm at it (Don't say 'freakin' out loud, Avoid the black pudding if you know what's good for you, 'Mind The Gap' is a safety warning, not a sale announcement, that sort of thing).
So, to celebrate the fourth this year, here are five things (in reverse order) about/from our nation of which we can all be very proud.
5. We mind our bloody manners. Having taught in English schools now for eight years, I think I have some authority to say that Americans' politeness, our pleases, our thankyous, our general respect for decorum and for human decency is ingrained in us from the get-go. It may be puritanical and protestant of us, but common decency is important and shouldn't be underrated by our dismissive cross-Atlantic cousins. When was the last time a Londoner asked you where you were trying to get to and then gave you specific, step-by-step, diagram-aided directions? Yet, if you so much as stop on a street corner in Manhattan, your likely to start a competition between locals and soon have a plethora of directions to choose from guiding you to Starbucks on 103rd and Broad.
4. Optimism. As Henry Rollins once remarked, you wouldn't get Morrissey in America. We believe in the fact that things can always get better and that we can change, improve and be anything we want to be (all part of the American dream). It might not be true, but it keeps some people going and gives millions hope. Actually, Russell Kane sums it up pretty well in the latter half of this clip.
That's right, it's the blind confidence that enables us to keep copulating. The rest of the world might think it's sacchariney, but America is the home of that undying belief in the potential of tomorrow.
3. Mark Twain -- And the never-ending attempt to write the great American novel, or rather top the great American novel, The Adventures of Huck Finn. But let's face it, from the tall tales of Washington Irving to the intense psychological explorations of Donna Tartt, we are a nation that produces a rich belles lettres and are spoilt for choice when it comes to book club material. Let us continue to bust this myth that just because the English language came from England that English literature is innately superior to American. Some might argue we innovated on and improved it. Come back to Twain for instance. He invented a Mississippian character and took him seriously enough to painstakingly research and give him his own distinct voice and then used him to rewrite Paradise Lost set against the backdrop of the American South and issues of slavery, law and morality.
2. Woody Allen -- And David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, and Jerry Seinfeld and the much derided American sense of humour. It is a great pity that Friends became one of our most successful exports because it brought with it the idea that we are all cosy, coffee-swilling morons who can only do sarcasm through histrionic gestures and tones. Oh, Chandler Bing, what a lot you have to answer for. Go out and look up Bill Hicks or Sarah Silverman or read some Bill Bryson and then tell me we don't do understatement, self-deprecation, irony or funny with adeptness and ease.
1. Everyone wants to be us -- It's true! I've been teaching in England and Ireland for over a decade and sooner or later someone in every single one of my classes always comes around to the same question, 'Sir, (yes they say sir) why did you leave a brilliant place like America for a rubbish country like England?' Problems though I may have with the assumptions in the question, the fact remains that we have a huge influence on the rest of the world. Ordinary Britons and Irish people see Sex and The City, Entourage, 30 Rock and they want that glamour, they want that optimism, the want that American je ne sais quoi. It may be the Chinese and Indian Century, but it's the American influence that remains over both those countries and the rest of the world. It's the American sense of optimism that reigns in New China, it's American simplicity, speed, and power that fuels the drive behind 20/20 Cricket, it is American R & B that makes Leona Lewis' sound so popular and so familiar and it is American hip hop that influences so many British acts and unfortunately has provided Tim Westwood with a career. It is the culture of American college radio that enabled bands like Radiohead and Blur to break across the pond and catch on. Love it or loathe it, the influence of our country on the world is ubiquitous. When Europe disparages it, does it reveal more about the disparager than the disparagee?
I leave you with a poem that emphasises our connections to the Old World and to Britannia, Robert Burns, 'Ode For General Washingon on the Occasion of his Birthday, 1787'
No Spartan tube, no Attic shell,
No lyre Aeolian I awake; 'Tis liberty's bold note I swell, Thy harp, Columbia, let me take! See gathering thousands, while I sing, A broken chain exulting bring, And dash it in a tyrant's face, And dare him to his very beard, And tell him he no more is feared- No more the despot of Columbia's race! A tyrant's proudest insults brav'd, They shout-a People freed! They hailan Empire saved. Where is man's god-like form? Where is that brow erect and bold- That eye that can unmov'd behold The wildest rage, the loudest storm That e'er created fury dared to raise? Avaunt! thou caitiff, servile, base, That tremblest at a despot's nod, Yet, crouching under the iron rod, Canst laud the hand that struck th' insulting blow! Art thou of man's Imperial line? Dost boast that countenance divine? Each skulking feature answers, No! But come, ye sons of Liberty, Columbia's offspring, brave as free, In danger's hour still flaming in the van, Ye know, and dare maintain, the Royalty of Man!
Alfred! on thy starry throne, Surrounded by the tuneful choir, The bards that erst have struck the patriot lyre, And rous'd the freeborn Briton's soul of fire, No more thy England own! Dare injured nations form the great design, To make detested tyrants bleed? Thy England execrates the glorious deed! Beneath her hostile banners waving, Every pang of honour braving, England in thunder calls, "The tyrant's cause is mine!" That hour accurst how did the fiends rejoice And hell, thro' all her confines, raise the exulting voice, That hour which saw the generous English name Linkt with such damned deeds of everlasting shame!
Thee, Caledonia! thy wild heaths among, Fam'd for the martial deed, the heaven-taught song, To thee I turn with swimming eyes; Where is that soul of Freedom fled? Immingled with the mighty dead, Beneath that hallow'd turf where Wallace lies Hear it not, Wallace! in thy bed of death. Ye babbling winds! in silence sweep, Disturb not ye the hero's sleep, Nor give the coward secret breath! Is this the ancient Caledonian form, Firm as the rock, resistless as the storm? Show me that eye which shot immortal hate, Blasting the despot's proudest bearing; Show me that arm which, nerv'd with thundering fate, Crush'd Usurpation's boldest daring!- Dark-quench'd as yonder sinking star, No more that glance lightens afar; That palsied arm no more whirls on the waste of war.
And some advice on some cool stuff going on to celebrate Independence Day here in London.
The Ben Franklin House are having a fourth of July party. Were I not working during the day, I'd definitely check it out. Worth checking out this building dedicated to the most inventive of Americans anyway.
And in the evening, The Old Red Cow, which I have blogged about before, is celebrating with a host of American handcrafted beers. For more check out the Red Cow's website.
