For years now, I have been unable to write. With many of the older posts on here, I was communicating the ideas of others. I was a young man coming to understand politics when I met the crew in London that guided me towards an anti-imperialist understanding of the world. With their help, I developed a cannon to fire. What I fired was loaded with their knowledge and understanding, I merely filtered their words and pegged on theoretical and philosophical overtones.

The arsenal I developed meant I felt I had made worthy interventions, but as particular issues manifested – particularly the ‘Arab spring’ – divisions emerged within my political group and I departed from the position I held. I dissolved Frank and withdrew from politics. I completely disengaged and threw myself instead at community work.

After two years, I had extinguished myself there. I ran into issues I had not even contemplated. I applied my theory, only for it to be taken as naïve. My kindness and will to understand was a weakness in the eyes of those I was helping and I was a perpetual outsider, easily manipulated and forever guilty. My conception of human-nature brutalized, the remnants of my idealism were trampled over.

So, I have now re-engaged with the political world and am once again feeling the need to communicate my ideas. What motivates me to write is lacking in so much of what I read.

At a time of universal deceit and co-option, the greatest act is that of refusal. All we have is refusal, the ability to negate. We must maintain the lens that shows us that what we are being sold is a product; a projection and not a reality. In the words of Theodor Adorno “wrong life cannot be lived rightly” – we must embody that negation and hold out for something better. If our generation are not going to be trail-blazers, we can at least be a ratchet that prevents power from enveloping us all.

We must slowly start to push back. For that, we need those with the ability to write, to intervene and to argue to play their role. So, Frank is back – with a slightly new angle. I have no consistency and am writing through a form of muzzle.  But, these are the early stages of re-engagement. In time, there will be growth from this. A more refined web-domain, run by myself and other minds that think alike is in the pipeline, as with a few greater projects that will emerge if I am disciplined enough.

The challenge of being a writer in our age is to learn and apply the lessons of history to our discourse. Being aware of the modern realities and historical legacies of prejudice and discrimination. Living and writing by a code that stops age-old privileges from emerging and asserting dominance within spheres of influence. The most important thing being a self-drawn boundary, which shows awareness of what is and is not my struggle.

Like Martin Luther King and Karl Liebknect, I recognize that the war is at home and not abroad. My beef is with Britain and the global system it operates within.  My cannon shall never point at any other than power of our time; the multi-nationals, the military industrial complex, NATO and the rest of the new global empire, run by the United States – but maintained by Europe and its settler colonies.

Whilst this moment of history predominates, the role of a writer is to deconstruct this. In the amazing words of Arundhati Roy: “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”