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| snapshot taken by Bill Thompson of Gareth Mitchell, Paidraig Ready and myself recording |
This week I was commissioned to write a piece about the twitter boycott
Pride
and Prejudice
This
morning I noticed the sky was a baggy story
I
reached up to pull at a flappy bit of old argument
It
was a tired and clammy cloud
It
was wallpaper from an old protest that was never resolved
Merely
brushed aside until she pulled her burnt bra on to make the tea
Before
long I had peeled it all away in strips
And
once that corner of sky was torn
Behind
the story and underneath
There
was just the opaque roof of a department store elevator
I
wanted to pull the slats apart, to climb up into the lift shaft
And
cut the ropes and watch twitter world crash.
And off-line
and off-grid
We
were all fish out of water
Slapped
onto the cold pavement
And
we stopped compulsive likelikelike button pushing
Opened
the curtains to daylight to celebrate our differences and our sameness
And
seeing the barriers all shattered we were forced to go outside
And
walk and work side by side
We
won’t remember the trolls
We'll remember the bully goat bridge that was built to shelter them
I
don’t recall the names of playground bullies
But
the classmates that took detention by my side
And
with a sinking feeling now I remember the girls
That
fingered their blonde plaits and stood by and watched
We
are plugged into a distraction
Logged
into fiction
Counting
sheep and followers
When
our dreams are so much more,
More
than we ever gave them credit for
We
are sleep-walking sleep-talking retweeting parrots
We
keep poking and fiddling with the knobs
Like
it’s the only way to sound check our speakers
And
back in twitterworld we still argue:
Because
a woman cannot choose to be silent if she had no voice
Because
the invisible women that have no votes have no choice
Because
silence is gold but it’s kept in a bank
Because
there are so many inspiring women to thank and to rank
Because
it isn’t just 140 characters, its your motive and intent
Because
twitter is real life and you tweet, threatened and sent
“One
word from you shall silence me forever”
That’s
Jane Austen
And
there's two words
‘Pride
and Prejudice’
(c) Salena Godden. 2013
I’m following @Bonn1eGreer on twitter and this tweet rang truest to me:
"@Bonn1eGreer #twittersilence is a strong choice. I respect it. But I come from a people who were forced to stay silent. For a long, long time. #nosilence”
