All hail the new @dmins! But in this little corner of the plaza i have seized a sliver of power for myself - rightly held, for i won my first plaza competition and now, as we await the next competition, i have the mic in my hand and intend to use it. Here, encouraged by the curioisity of Aiks, and for your general pleasure and edification, and what i never thought i would be doing in a million years: a short autobiographical note with digressions for all you plaza folk.
Its Punk Innit!
So, here is the '
Never mind the Dwarves...' as i must first have heard it (give it 5 seconds or so and listen to the intro to the song). this band is named Conflict and my 15-year-old-self was watching them at the Brixton Academy. but wait...
i step back in time a couple of years to three friends in a big argument on the school playground. later, all 3 of us got dragon tattoos and then fell out over the same (amazing) psychiatric nurse from new zealand. i have since picked up again with one, but one does not talk to either of us to this day, and he was the ring-leader and we were arguing about D&D vs. LotR (i must underline that i have since discovered that we were not playing real D&D but some weird concoction that our friend had extracted by some strange paths and introduced us to). in the argument, our friend was insisting that D&D was better because you used your own imagination while we maintained that, while this may be so, the imagination of Tolkien was so vastly superior to our own that it was better to read LotR. the battle lines were drawn and there could be no compromise, and likely all the subsequent events begin here. but i am a person who does not let a question go, and this one still troubles me. even then i knew my friend was right even as he was wrong. this old argument has often been at the back of my mind while reading on the plaza. but i digress.
step forward a couple of years and the 3 of us and a 4th were on the tube to Brixton to see
The Damned, one of the original 1977 bands and - i was to discover - consumate performers. I did not know what to expect. when the performance began the place erupted in a wild frenzy, and i was utterly swept up by it. a chaotic anarchy of bodies within which one could release all pent up energy. it was one of those moments. for the next three years i was going to live concerts 2 or 3 times a week. the next day i went to Carnaby St, purchased the obligatory leather jacket (to be painted), a pair of tartan bondage trousers, bleached my tea shirt, and got myself a moheecan haircut. i became a punk!
the next week i headed back to Brixton with some other kids from school - the punks in another class who were ahead of us and were going to the 'now happening' punk stuff. same venue, but with Conflict and around 8 other anarcho-punk bands.
now i must pause here to fill in the picture of how i looked as a little punk - i also had NHS regulation glasses, and could in no way put them aside. but i must have put them in my pocket before the Damned began playing. I did not do so this time.
Conflict began playing, the crowd surged, and me with them, and my glasses went flying up in the air and into the mayhem. a kindly skinhead noticed what had happened and retrieved them for me, but i was crushed. my glasses were not, but the arms were broken off and i knew that i had one of those school weeks ahead were i had to hold my glasses up on my nose with one hand all the time. i retired to the seats at the back and watched the show - which gave me ample opportunity to contemplate just how truly awful the sound of the music actually was.
But the skinhead was the thing. Honestly, you see this guy on the street and you cross it. But the deal with that anarcho-punk scene was that once you were inside you were accepted
whatever, and everyone looked out for each other. That was embodied in the dancing, which looks a bit ferocious from the outside. but it was an absolutely safe space - anyone who fell down was immediately picked up by hands all around, nobody was ever hurt dancing.
The inclusivity was of course a problem. The anarchist punks split with the Clash on racisim. The Clash joined the R&R (Rock against Racisim) thing, and Crass (the great leaders of the anarchists) declared them fascists for doing so. But the other side of the coin was that these anarchist punks tolerated the National Front skinheads at their gigs - and i've since read interviews with some who said they were wrong on that.
But the inclusivity was also right, of course. And the lesson that i learned from it was that real punks would accept me whatever i looked like, and to be a real punk had nothing to do with how i looked. that was a really important lesson in this world because, ever since, whenever i meet radical zealots who look down their nose at me because i am not vegan/rainbow spectrumed/whatever you want i look back at them and chuckle in my wily black dragon heart. because i know that the mere fact of their judgment demonstrates that this one is not a real punk.
:)
Anyways, thank you for your attention. The above was of course all notes in preparation for the next Cottage Competition (and as such does not fall foul of plaza bylaws). i'll be back when i've arrived at the question.
Here is a song by the real heroes of that movement:
Crass.
There pops nothing up in my head. But if others can be inspired, I wish them pleasure with their creations. 
I always used cursive because I write poetry and often like to write my first drafts by hand, but I write it fast and messy! I think I never got the hang of writing straight on the line like you do so well Drifa. Also, I am left handed too Aiks--how on earth did you manage to write with your right hand? Or were you always ambidextrous? My right hand is useless at such tasks.
It is not strange at all that siblings influence each other. But as this was a contest thread, shall we continue this conversation in another place? 
