[Music]
hi-yah hey hey eating so it’s a it’s an
absolute pleasure to be here at what you
know as TEDx Brum and what I know as yet
another stop on my never-ending quest to
show you there is more than one way to
come over here and steal your jobs
ya know see so you laugh because you’re
familiar with with the kind of
overarching narrative about about the
role of Polish immigrants here and
that’s not why I came of course what I
came is to create children who will
speak Polish with Brummie accent okay
have the overload of glamour but you you
you familiar with the narrative and and
and this is what we use right to talk
about people whether they’re the
negative like this one and you laugh at
it it’s easy to mock because you are
what we technically refer to as nice
people but there are narratives that
come from within communities that are
harmful to and I’ve been you know
reading news from home and Poland is
really good at telling stories about
itself and mostly there are stories
because of our history about mart ism
and you’ll hear poland being referred to
as the christ of nations you know the
tide to be reborn and and then I guess
ascend who knows to Britain so that
would make Britain heaven but I see you
know people going you know we fought the
Nazis we can’t be wrong we fought the
Nazis they’ve you know put on their
their black hoodies and then red and
white armbands and then this is what the
news from home look like these days and
in these grand narratives was forgotten
I think in what makes it so easy to
repeat mistakes from the past are they
individual stories and these people only
make me remember my my grandmother who
was eight years younger than I am now
when she died and in the Warsaw Uprising
and I wrote this poem for her to
remember the individual stories that add
up to the grand narrative
that often means something completely
different it’s called almost certainly
it goes exactly like this it’s almost
certainly impossible to appreciate the
beauty of an explosion but I like to
think of it as a game of pinball with a
single atom propelled forward and
hurtling through the gaps in what we see
is a solid thing a unit like a grain of
gunpowder say until suddenly multi-ball
with a flash of many colored lights all
the others come alive and then things
become much too fast to follow when they
all turn nervous and frantic and twitchy
and as they twist and tumble together
they leave behind them trails of searing
light and weaved them into a flower you
can only see bloom once it’s almost
certainly unbearable to try and hear the
music and the noise of an explosion but
I like to think of it as that moment in
a song when the bassline finally kicks
in after the introductory clicks and
clacks of the drumsticks mark the edge
of the snare and the closed hi-hat and
yeah we’ve heard too many songs not to
know what’s coming but still when the
muffled chord explodes detonated by the
kick drum it reaches 3o throat and down
to your stomach you can never be ready
for this and it’s almost certainly
immaterial what the weather was like at
the time of an explosion but in my mind
I see a sepia snapshot of a perfect
summer afternoon with the weather all
the better because you have to provide
your own blue for the sky come up with
your own white for the clouds your own
faded red for the bricks your own brown
for those strange stains and the
pavement and there are no people in the
picture because the exposure was too
long so just here and there a hand that
lingered on a doorknob a hesitating foot
a hint of presence
and it’s almost certainly irrelevant
just one life lost in an explosion but I
like to believe that someone somewhere
refuses to acknowledge numbers like
200,000 or 85% and instead they
Chronicle meticulously the pattern of
displaced cobblestones the frantic
flight of startled Birds the words still
legible and letters spilling from a
leather bag and the balletic grace of a
body flying slowly through the air and
trailing blood like an afterthought on
this perfect summer afternoon and they
will know that she was 29 that she
hadn’t seen her two sons for a week that
she had written a love letter in the
morning believing against all evidence
that this time things will just work
themselves out and I like to believe
that just before the shrapnel hit she
stopped for a moment to hand on the
doorknob balancing on one foot thinking
she had just heard the beginning of a
song
[Applause]
hi-yah hey hey eating so it’s a it’s an
absolute pleasure to be here at what you
know as TEDx Brum and what I know as yet
another stop on my never-ending quest to
show you there is more than one way to
come over here and steal your jobs
ya know see so you laugh because you’re
familiar with with the kind of
overarching narrative about about the
role of Polish immigrants here and
that’s not why I came of course what I
came is to create children who will
speak Polish with Brummie accent okay
have the overload of glamour but you you
you familiar with the narrative and and
and this is what we use right to talk
about people whether they’re the
negative like this one and you laugh at
it it’s easy to mock because you are
what we technically refer to as nice
people but there are narratives that
come from within communities that are
harmful to and I’ve been you know
reading news from home and Poland is
really good at telling stories about
itself and mostly there are stories
because of our history about mart ism
and you’ll hear poland being referred to
as the christ of nations you know the
tide to be reborn and and then I guess
ascend who knows to Britain so that
would make Britain heaven but I see you
know people going you know we fought the
Nazis we can’t be wrong we fought the
Nazis they’ve you know put on their
their black hoodies and then red and
white armbands and then this is what the
news from home look like these days and
in these grand narratives was forgotten
I think in what makes it so easy to
repeat mistakes from the past are they
individual stories and these people only
make me remember my my grandmother who
was eight years younger than I am now
when she died and in the Warsaw Uprising
and I wrote this poem for her to
remember the individual stories that add
up to the grand narrative
that often means something completely
different it’s called almost certainly
it goes exactly like this it’s almost
certainly impossible to appreciate the
beauty of an explosion but I like to
think of it as a game of pinball with a
single atom propelled forward and
hurtling through the gaps in what we see
is a solid thing a unit like a grain of
gunpowder say until suddenly multi-ball
with a flash of many colored lights all
the others come alive and then things
become much too fast to follow when they
all turn nervous and frantic and twitchy
and as they twist and tumble together
they leave behind them trails of searing
light and weaved them into a flower you
can only see bloom once it’s almost
certainly unbearable to try and hear the
music and the noise of an explosion but
I like to think of it as that moment in
a song when the bassline finally kicks
in after the introductory clicks and
clacks of the drumsticks mark the edge
of the snare and the closed hi-hat and
yeah we’ve heard too many songs not to
know what’s coming but still when the
muffled chord explodes detonated by the
kick drum it reaches 3o throat and down
to your stomach you can never be ready
for this and it’s almost certainly
immaterial what the weather was like at
the time of an explosion but in my mind
I see a sepia snapshot of a perfect
summer afternoon with the weather all
the better because you have to provide
your own blue for the sky come up with
your own white for the clouds your own
faded red for the bricks your own brown
for those strange stains and the
pavement and there are no people in the
picture because the exposure was too
long so just here and there a hand that
lingered on a doorknob a hesitating foot
a hint of presence
and it’s almost certainly irrelevant
just one life lost in an explosion but I
like to believe that someone somewhere
refuses to acknowledge numbers like
200,000 or 85% and instead they
Chronicle meticulously the pattern of
displaced cobblestones the frantic
flight of startled Birds the words still
legible and letters spilling from a
leather bag and the balletic grace of a
body flying slowly through the air and
trailing blood like an afterthought on
this perfect summer afternoon and they
will know that she was 29 that she
hadn’t seen her two sons for a week that
she had written a love letter in the
morning believing against all evidence
that this time things will just work
themselves out and I like to believe
that just before the shrapnel hit she
stopped for a moment to hand on the
doorknob balancing on one foot thinking
she had just heard the beginning of a
song
[Applause]
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