February O3 Newsletter

This Month I Will Mostly Be Talking About Peace.
Everyone is talking about war. I want to focus my attention on Peace.

• Let’s re-define the Peace word.
  Peace is not simply the cessation of war. Peace is something we do. We do this on a daily basis within ourselves, with our family and friends, in our workplace or school, in our communities and in our world. We do this with our thoughts, our words and with our actions. We make Peace. We make it by actively seeking common ground in situations where there is conflict and violence. Peace is not "turning the other cheek". It is not passive. There is no such thing as PASSIVE action. To be a Peace Maker is not weak or sissy. It takes incredible strength, courage and ingenuity. Instead of destroying what we don’t want, we have to create what we do want. Just as war is continuing acts of aggression and destruction so Peace is continuing acts of co-operation and creativity.

• The great Peace Maker Dr Martin Luther King said," The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral; begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. We are challenged to rise above the narrow confines of our individual concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. The new world is a world of geographical togetherness. This means that no individual or nation can live alone. We must all learn to live together, or we will be forced to die together. We are all involved in the single process. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are all links in the great chain of humanity."
  
  It is so easy to feel disempowered in these times of super powers and super weapons that can cause mass destruction. But we might remember that these super powers are all made up of ordinary individuals like you and me, and the weapons have been conceived and sanctioned by ordinary individuals like you and me. We do not have to give our personal power away. Every action we take IS significant. A beach starts as a single grain of sand that joins with other grains of sand and accumulates gradually, and sometimes very quickly if the tides are strong, into a beautiful sandy shore. (Sorry – no pun intended!)

• The historian Arnold Toynbee perceived that the way that people respond to difficulties is a measure of their civilisation. I also believe that the struggle to transcend our pain and difficulties enables us to reach a deeper level of understanding: to develop our compassion; and to experience our shared humanity. It is an opportunity to express our courage and creativity. Gandhi suggests, "Be the change you want to see."

• The great humanitarian Daisaku Ikeda explains in his amazing concept of Human Revolution how a great change in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of all humankind. Peace is something to fight for; not with weapons but with our words, minds, actions, imagination, intellect, passion and humour – to elucidate, bring together, harmonise, organise, construct and inspire. Here are three examples of people who have recently inspired me.

• The first is the internationally acclaimed novelist, John Le Carre, who has used his considerable skills to write a most perceptive and courageous article for The Times newspaper. He shows that Making Peace can be just as patriotic as making war. He writes, "I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq."
  Click here to see the entire article.

• Then there was Bianca Jagger on Newsnight, the UK heavyweight political TV programme. Yes, THE Bianca Jagger, Mick’s ex: still amazingly beautiful and speaking articulately and knowledgably about the current global crisis. It was SO right on!

• The final one is a 17 year old student, who happens to be my son, and without wishing to seem nepotistic, I really wanted to include. It represents my conviction that all young people have a voice that should be heard. They are also trying to make sense out of this madness. After all this is the world they will inherit. I was touched that he had used his mind to focus his honesty and passion, and organised and structured his thoughts and feelings into a reasoned argument for his school magazine. In it he says that he believes Bush and Blair have turned themselves into Osama Bin Laden’s best recruiters and that they have to understand that they are not fighting a state or person but instead an ideology. He thinks their proposed war will further the cause of terrorism rather than be a significant progression towards its defeat.

I am amazed that the normally apathetic British people are having a Peace March in London this Saturday. How encouraging! See you there?
There is also a Peace Making event at the London Hammersmith Apollo on Saturday 15th March, which promises to explain Human Revolution and how it works. So there’s another one for your diary!

How have you made Peace today?

And Now for Something a Bit More Fun
My family thinks that The Osbornes are a pretty tame.
Here is the evidence

Baboushka		Don One

El Sid		La Mechante

La La La Lola		El Gazpacho

Le Easy Rider

The Final Part of The Smiths TV Interview


Q: What are you up to at the moment?

I became a psychotherapist after The Smiths! (Sandie laughs, almost falls off the sofa).
After the 80’s and the "Hello Angel" album I did a series of University tours. The students always used to come back stage with questions to ask. I was interested in their questions and interested in my responses to them as well. Based on that I decided to write a book called, The World At My Feet, to chronicle what was happening and make some parallels with certain things about the Sixties and Seventies. After I did that, it opened up so many doors for me personally. During that whole time I began to discover that I had a brain and that I had things inside me that were interesting to other people. It was a possibility that hadn’t occurred to me before – it was like a creative awakening for me. So I went back to university and studied for four years. I became a psychotherapist, did counselling and eventually opened up The Arts Clinic in ‘96 to promote the well-being and creativity for all those in the entertainment and creative industries.. For the past seven years I’ve run The Arts Clinic, working with record companies, the film industry, advertising companies – in fact the whole entertainment industry - giving them what I think they want as support for the madness of this environment. Then recently someone came in to see me for some advice about her band who needed some creative development work. As she went out the door she said, "here’s a tape that the band’s producer said he’d like you to sing". She left the room and for some reason I started crying and couldn’t stop. It was so bizarre. I realised that I’d been spending all my time looking after other people and I’d forgotten that I was an artist too. So that’s what I plan to do now. I’ve acquired my entire back catalogue, for the first time it’s all in one place, which includes all The Smiths stuff, and I want to regenerate the whole thing and do a bit of singing with, how can I say? Today’s equivalent of The Smiths I suppose. – And do other creative experiments. Is that ok?

Q: That’s great. Didn’t you write a song about Morrissey?

Working with him wasn’t quite a two way process and I felt uncomfortable about that. The Smiths were giving me all these opportunities to rekindle everything. I decided I wanted to put something back because I felt so incredibly grateful, especially to Morrissey. He was very inspiring to me and really supportive, so I wrote a song called Steven (You Don’t Eat Meat) which was a bit pastiche I suppose, but it was quite fun to do. It reminded me that I could write too. It was good to perform live because everybody knew it. Whenever I performed live there would be a whole swathe of Smiths fans right at the back. As soon as I sang that song, they’d come to the front to join in.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

No, I don’t feel the need to add anything. I hope I’ve added to your Smiths mythology.

HELP!!!

If you want to help build the fans lounge area of the site and you have

a. Sandie Shaw lyrics in any language
b. Old Newsletters from the original fan club
c. Old cuttings or memorabilia
d. An idea
e. Or just want to help

Please contact Allan on bear160@fsmail.net
Allan has my full backing. He is putting together a team of people who want to be involved and would be so happy to hear from you….


Keep Making Peace!