Clown Crown Memory & Murder

Ophelia Vi: Erin Fleetwood literally all of it. I just can't follow starting with the clown bs. I am a super literal person and the fact that it starts off all weird and fantastical vs reading like a very dry straight to the point book has got me totally spun. And then the 2nd part the words/terms are suddenly all crazy huge and literally every other word and I just can't make much of it. It all runs together and jumbles up and (besides not understanding some of the words) my brain really can't break it apart. I can't stand this type of writing its so INCONSISTENT !! (Basically I wish it was just a very dry, simple but smart breakdown vs all that "batshittery")

Ophelia Vi i'll give it a shot 

First is a story to make the Irish experience with British monarchy personal. Ireland is not a person, it is a nation full of people, but just as people have memories and traumatic experiences, a whole nation full of people experience many things together and share those memories and traumas as part of their culture. Memories like knowing your country has been conquered and ruled by another country, traumas like the massacres and oppression and injustices that happen when a powerful country (England) dominates a weaker, poorer country (Ireland).

But it takes years and years to really understand another people's history, to learn the things people there learned from family and school and media, from traveling around their country and seeing places where things happened, art that memorializes events and important people, hearing family stories of events in living memory, meeting other people from around their country you know of from stories and seeing them in the news, but they're real people who bring it all together, or reinforce your prejudices about what people are like in that different, weird part of your country: the rich part, the poor part, the place where people are mean, the place where they talk funny. 

I, in my culture and with my understanding of what it means to be an American, can't learn about being Irish like that in an hour or a decade. But sometimes we can get a very simple understanding of another culture through a story. Stories happen to people, so Eccleston asks the reader to  imagine you are a person who has this peculiar neighbor. A *neighbor*, because this person is not a friend, not a coworker or boss, not a relative or rival, just someone you live near and have to interact with sometimes. So you and your family are the Irish people, and the big loud house with unavoidable neighbors are the British, specifically the English, since the Welsh and Scots are also peoples with complicated and sad relationships with the English and their government.

Most people have had a neighbor with some quality that stands out: they're always angry and shouting, they have 18 dogs, they're always working on their house.

You know things about them even without talking because you see their house when you leave yours and when you come home, you see it out the window, you hear their music. 

So imagine you have a neighbor who is obsessed with clowns the way that some sports fans are obsessed with displaying their favorite teams: on their hat, on their shirt, on their kids, decals and art on their car, banners in their yard. But many people are sports nuts; not many people are into clowns, much less this demonstrative about it. You can't ignore it: You see their clown decorations every time you look out your window, any time you talk to them you know they'll bring up clowns, they send you links to clown art and clowns in the news. This is more than tedious for you, it constantly triggers traumatic memories for you, because a clown murdered your grandfather.

Remember, you are Ireland, your neighbor is the United Kingdom. The UK is not currently invading you and committing massacres, but there were British soldiers in Northern Ireland in "the Troubles" of the 1960s to 1990s, with massacres and war crimes and terrorism and assassinations; the rest of the Republic of Ireland had full-on war with the UK after WWI and into the 20s, and did not get full independence until 1949. 

This is because for centuries, the numerous and warlike English invaded and conquered Ireland, often by taking sides in disputes between the very divided and warlike Irish. This continued under the United Kingdom, which used to be called "the three kingdoms" because the british crown controlled all three countries, but Ireland was a place wealthy or scheming English and Scots ran as a colony, using its people as cheap labor and exploiting its agricultural and mineral wealth, using its harbors for the Royal Navy to dominate the Atlantic, and so on. 

The royal family has not ruled as "off with her head," hands-on monarchs since the 17th century, when the legislature and bureaucracy and professional military became more modern institutions that worked like a modern government and its administration, professionals and experts and politicians and careerists; but the monarchy remained involved, just less and less directly involved as anything except the SYMBOL of the whole powerful nation, constantly invoked and mentioned as part of its rule and its military: God save the Queen; take the Queen's shilling; Her Majesty's government.

—{10 september, 2022; two days after the death of elizabeth windsor }—

[[ [We said to our collegium: ]

 I ended up replying to someone whose brain could not deal with the scenario. "I'm somebody with a hyper-coulrophiliac neighbor, but i also had a grandfather murdered? By a clown?? And i'm IRISH? WHAT IS THIS BULLSHITTERY"

They said they wanted it broken down into literal language, i thought Hey i can do this; i'm bilingual in Literary Phant'sy and High Precision Autist! Let's help some irritated literal-minded reader understand the clown thing. It's my duty as a scholar, an anti-imperialist, a humorist, and a hyperverbal-type autist.

Exactly 777 words later i was close to exegetical sufficiency, and rather than spend another hour toying with closing words or one more important point, i called it good enough for the first paragraph, the allegory of Crown, Clown, Memory and Murder.

If they don't get that, there's no point in Ewok exegesis or further digests of irish-british historiography that are available to all 5 billion people with internet access and one (1) rat's ass to give.

Thank you. 

Godspeed, you who pod into cosmos.]]

*—_-—^\_/^——oOo__+___________/

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