Serious Bonfire People

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino says: ‘Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful and everything conceals something else.’ … A young woman I knew slightly had invited me to a barbecue. Potentially, I’d know some of the other people who’d be there. It was late summer and the weather was mild, although it would be getting dark fairly early. Well before time I arrive at the venue – a local park. This place is of interest to me as there is a suspicion that it is officially ‘common good land’, which means that, under Scots law, it should hold a special status within the city. What strikes me first are the cherry trees that line the walkways criss-crossing the park. They’re loaded with fruit, and clearly no-one seems to be interested in eating it. I cautiously try a cherry, thinking it might be bitter or otherwise unpleasant. But no – soft and sweet! I collect cherries for a while. The host of the barbecue arrives and we get to talking a bit about common land in Scotland. Then the subject moves on to rental accommodation and private landlords. Others arrive. The food is good. Darkness falls. Most folk head off home, but a few of us stay, gathered around the dim light of the mobile barbecue. A change comes over the place as soon as it’s dark. This is Friday night and people are now arriving from every direction. They carry logs and tree branches, plus bags of food and drink. Serious bonfire people! Before long, substantial fires have been lit in several locations across the park. The people are quiet – waiting for fires to burn down enough so that food can be placed for cooking amongst the hot embers. I walk around, watching these new arrivals from a distance. I’m probably only accepted in that I have a ‘home base’ in the form of the barbecue. Thus, I’m one of the participants, not just a bystander. Has the city become a commons tonight? When we think of commons, land is what usually comes to mind – and with that the idea of enclosure. There’s a temptation to think – commons, good, enclosure, bad. But that’s a simplification. Sometimes, for sure, we would be better served if land were back in common hands – whatever that might mean in a modern society. But sometimes enclosure is actually beneficial. The whole idea of a commons though takes on a wider remit today. There’s the barbecue host and all the injustices facing a tenant of a private landlord. There are the people at the bonfires who no doubt spend the week working for companies that pay them a meagre wage and keep profits for themselves and their shareholders. How do you even begin to think of a commons in these terms – in terms of property, resources, labour, wages and finance? There’s a tendency to tackle these questions at a very local level. And the appeal of this is obvious. Small groups of people can meet face-to-face. Decision-making is easier. With a bit of empowerment, neighbourhoods could do a lot by themselves. Looking around at the serious bonfire people, there seems to be a latent power here, just waiting to be tapped. It’s something in their attitude. If anyone could make a neighbourhood work, it would be these folk. But – if we were to take up this idea of local governance – it has to be said that for every successful neighbourhood there would be failed ones, or ones that were just not interested either way. So, the inevitable conclusion – people would need to change before we would be able to successfully take up that kind of small-scale local democracy. But change HOW? That starts to get a very awkward question, as it inevitably sounds patronising. Another point comes to mind though – if the CITY were a commons? The CITY! The city’s not just a collection of neighbourhoods, it’s something different. City-thinking is a different way of thinking. Could city-living be a different way to live? Think global, act local – so the saying goes. But maybe we skim over the ‘think global’ a bit too quickly and focus in on the local. And maybe it’s cities, especially, that are in touch with the global. There’s a lot that’s truly global in today’s world. We might therefore identify a further type of commons, beyond the land, property, capital, labour, finance sort – where we’re failing – and into the field of information and entertainment. All this has seen a ‘disruption’ in recent years – the old ways of exchanging information, sharing music, art and literature, have been turned upside-down. And a lot of this, so far, is a commons. But look out! Enclosures are a-coming! This time though, the would-be enclosers of the digital commons face a global audience. Perhaps we need to think a lot more about the ‘communities of interest’ that span continents, rather than just focusing in on the local. Perhaps this is where the true power lies. And perhaps that whole mindset – a global mindset – is changing us. Someone has said – it’s the parody of our time that whilst we seek individuality, we must do it in the company of others. So we are not community in the old sense – some have called this individualistic togetherness ‘the multitude’. So it’s the multitude rather than the community or the commons that should interest us. The multitude is a collection of individuals who think independently and maintain only those communities of interest that I’ve alluded to, and not communities of place. Identity is the start of the multitude beginning to realise itself and its potential – and especially identity around gender, race, ethnicity and sex. Put all that together and we could ask – is the change we’d need to make in order to have a fairer world actually taking place right in front of us? Are we actually being changed by the ‘global commons’ of shared information and entertainment? Two other things factor into this and give me some hope. First of all, nature’s commons are global commons. I’m thinking about the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere. Concerns over climate change, pollution and loss of bio-diversity already have us thinking globally. And cities are a major part of the possible solutions. And the second big change and sign of hope? I’d describe it perhaps as ‘embracing diversity’. Not ‘tolerating’, or even ‘accepting’, but positively embracing. Likewise, we seem better able to embrace ambiguities of all types – not insisting any more on one definition of truth. Granted, there’s still a lot more to do, but my point is that this is very much a global phenomenon. News is part of the global commons and when we hear news of prejudice against people anywhere in the world now, we feel solidarity with them. Physical distance no longer matters. So a city is much more than being a physical place – it’s about being plugged into all of these global changes that are happening around us. Back at the bonfires, I’m thinking: what would I say to these people, if I sat down beside one of the fires and we got into conversation? Perhaps I’d say: fight any move to close off that new commons – the digital commons. Of course, like the land, there are times when ‘enclosures’ of some sort are beneficial. But suffice to say, the digital commons is where change is happening. And that change is going to feed back to the local levels – it will transform place, work, possessions, interests, friendships and families, as well as transform our attitudes. Most of all, it will transform the cities. We don’t know what the future will look like, but don’t let it be stolen from us. We have a new commons now, and it’s ours. Would they be up for that, the bonfire people? I don’t know, but I think this way lies hope.