Why on earth would prison pop into my mind. Quite often it’s the novels I read that send my thoughts off into various thoughts and memories. Each year one of the Christmas gifts I receive is the Booker prize shortlist and I love it. I have just finished reading “The Mars Room” by Rachel Kushner. It’s set in an Amercian women’s prison and gives quite an insight into how some of the individuals in the novel have ended up where they are and what life is like for them inside and out.
So it sent my mind tumbling back to the times I have been in prison. My first experience of jail was in Spilsby Court House Art Centre. It was in the old Blowzabella days where we pretty much slept anywhere to save money and someone always slept in the van to protect the gear. So the only accomodation offered that night was in the old cells under the building. What was immediatley obvious was the weight of the doors. Huge metal weighty doors that would have crushed you if they had fallen off. I hated the doors and the cells so much that I had to prop mine open as I had an immediate claustrophic experience and was scared that the door would swing shut and I wouldn’t be able to get out.
My next experence was in the old transportation cells in Nottingham. I have no idea why but there was an East Midlands today thing that involved me singing something appropriate by the gallows in the back yard. I can’t remember if this was something to do with a project I was working on or what. This has since become The National Justice Museum but when I was there it wasn’t. The court room was still intact and so were the cells. Into the walls of the cells people had carved their names and occasionally what they were being transported or executed for. I presume you can see all that now. It was chilling to see people being transported for stealing a loaf of bread and other terrible crimes against humanity!…or the ‘have nots’ daring to take from the ‘haves’. Little changes in some ways. As Ray Fisher once said, ‘Times may change but the human condition remains the same”. That’s why we can relate to old folk songs. It may have been a project that John Tams and Micheal Eaton were working on…hard to remember as it involved a long lunch and copious amounts of wine…I certainly couldn’t keep up with them.
Then I ended up in Nottingham mens prison. I haven’t actually ever been in a women’s prison. The Russian blogs talked about the type of training I used to do. Well I was asked to go into Nottingham prison to teach a group of men how to be Assertive. I can hear some of you laughing from here but the fact is most of them knew how to be aggressive but had no idea what assertivness is. Nottigham prison is a catgory B prison. That’s one down from the most secure. As people move through the system and serve their sentances they often get moved to different categories as they pose less of a risk etc. Not everyone of course. Well, many of the men in my group had murdered, or man slaughtered. It was interesting being with them. It made me realise that murder/manslaughter for some is just one step up from the everyday goings on of some peoples lives. If you live in an environment that’s often aggressive, where fights break out constantly and punches or more are thrown it’s not hard to see how one step further can result in a death or greivous injury. Sometimes it’s a case of kill or be killed. I am fortunate. Raised voices or swear words are the strongest form of violence in my life and even those are reasoned and understandable and not generally offensive or designed to wind me up or hurt me. Of course I have experienced that. We may talk about that another time but at this point in my life I don’t have people like that in my innr circle. In general public yes but even then I have been mostly lucky.
There were two individulas who fascinated me the most and who are the only ones who stayed in my memory. The scariest was the guy who was about to be released. Who wouldn’t engage seriously with any of the expercises but tended to respond with comments like…I know how I’d deal with someone in that situation. I’d get a chord, get some gunpowder or whatever, place it up their exhaust on their car and wait for it to explode. There was also something to do with light bulbs, electrical charges and explosions. The thing that scared me wasn’t that he was obviously trying to freak me out but that he was really really intelligent and had a cold calculating air about him. If I’m being honest he felt like someone who had few boundaries, wasn’t interested in creating them and knew exactly what he was doing and the consequences of his actions. If he broke the law again it would be deliberate and not just a ‘one step further’ move. It struck me that he didn’t care about anyone other than himself. God knows what made him that way..
The other guy was called Taff. He had that tattoed on his hands i.e. one letter per knuckle apart from the thumbs.. Not quite sure for whose benefit..himself if he woke up hung over and disorientated somewhere, his oponent as he smashed his fist into their face or what! But you know what, I liked him. He’d killed someone and he seemed genuinely interested in stopping it happening again. He recognised he had an anger problem and he was the one who explained to me that if you are given a life sentance and you are let out if you over step the mark in any way at all they can just put you back inside to serve out your sentance. He wanted to try and learn how to walk away. He’d lived in a block of flats where a neighbour was keeping him awake all hours with loud noise and music. He had asked/told him to stop more than once and then it all spilled over and the guy ended up dead. Sleep depravation alone can make you violent and if you have a short fuse anyway then a situation like that is explosive. I don’t understand people who live their lives without caring one jot how their behaviour impacts on others around them but there are plenty like that out there. He shouldn’t have done it. Absolutley no doubt about it but if he got parole he hoped he could walk away from conflict or avoid it altogether and wanted some tools in his armoury (inappropriate but deliberateuse of words) to help him come out the other side unscathed, not to have hurt anyone and remain a free man. Of course I could have just been taken in but I like to think not as my general modus operendi is to think the best of people not the worst. I hope I stay like that.
As the novel I eas reading points out, education in prisons is often seen as a way to aleviate the tedium of a non stop predicatble routine. That aside there were plenty I met there and at Ranby priosn who were studying hard for GCSE’s and more. I liked Ranby less. In Nottingham you had to go through all the security at the gate and then you were taken across to the education unit. In Ranby I waa given my own set of keys which I hated. This was so once inside, no-one had to escort me but I could lock and unlock gates myself. I really didn’t like it. Most of the young men I met there were in for drug related crimes. The other reason Ranby didnt suit me was it was over an hours drive and you had to be there for something like 7.30 in the morning. Not good for a musician.
I didn’t do any music with them. I’d would have liked to have done that. It was all assertiveness and life skills type thing and I’m glad I did it but I wouldn’t want to do it again.
My last time in the cells was as part of our trio Moria’s research for our show ‘Framed – The Alice Wheeldon Story’ We visited the court rooms where she was chrged but also the bits the public don’t get to see…the very creepy cells underneath.
Jo Freya’s Musings 