The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110424   Message #2488694
Posted By: mandotim
08-Nov-08 - 05:47 PM
Thread Name: England's National Musical-Instrument?
Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
Culturally, WAV, you are not English. You try to be; but as evidenced by the people on this board who actually are English, and from their standpoint don't seem to recognise your professed culture as one they share, then culturally speaking you must logically be something other than English.
Your formative years were spent absorbing Australian culture. Your attempts at verse, your accented singing and your lack of command of English idiom all show that your efforts to assimilate into English culture are failing miserably, and you remain definitively Australian.
If you really want to be English, why not spend some time finding out what English culture actually is, rather than banging on about what you (an Australian) think it ought to be? Most indigenous people don't like being told how they should practise their own culture by those perceived as 'foreign'. You profess to be against this kind of 'cultural imperialism' (your phrase), yet that is precisely what you are doing to the English people here; attempting to persuade English people to adopt a culture that is not and never has been their own. (Don't come back with that twaddle about being a repatriate, either; it's completely irrelevant to this point, as I'm not talking about nationality, I'm talking about the culture you absorbed and lived in for the important, formative years of your life.)
Please understand; I am not remotely bothered if you want to become English or not; but at least try to become a part of real English culture, rather than living in your fantasy world of an English culture that demonstrably never actually existed. Stop hectoring the kind and generous people on this board with your half-baked ideas about how their world should be, and try listening to the ideas and advice that are provided to you. Stop being rude to truly eminent people like Don Firth and Eliza Carthy (among others), who have tried to help you. If you do that, the many people who know them and love their work will automatically regard your ideas as being without merit.
There are even role models here; Ruth Archer is an American, who over the years has worked tirelessly to gain a deep and wide ranging understanding of English culture, and indeed helps to shape and strengthen that culture in many important ways. You could do much worse than following her example, rather than ignoring her advice. Stop spouting racist slogans whenever the subject of immigration comes up. Listen to and research the arguments and then decide, rather than adopting a position and then slagging off opponents as 'extreme pro-immigrationists'. They aren't anything of the sort, they are anti-racists.
I've said this to you before, and I don't suppose that you will listen this time either; grow up; listen; learn to argue, rather than pontificate; work hard to become good at something, preferably something you enjoy; get a job; get a life.
Tim