3. W.I.H.E. Festival: Dis-Member - Helmut Seifert - Berlin, Germany

Oh Theo, what a theme.

My intension to have a one week journey throughout the English country was meant to be a  „Good by UK“ trip before Halloween 2019 to meet friends in Nottingham and Plumpton. 

Just six hours before departure I received Theos email asking me for a favour to bring four things with me. 

A couple of booklets with the title Why I hate / ate England, which I found finally in his apartment in Berlin. 

Balloons, which I haven’t at home, only in my toy store, 

a used spare Toilet brush from his apartment, because Carol hasn’t got one in the house 

and, the worst task, to write an Essay of three pages. The theme is:  „dis - member“. 

I should participate on this  annual literary Festival in Plumpton.  I haven’t  been in Plumpton before. I wished I was here two years ago that I could write about what I hate or ate on/of England. 

Travelling through the english country with the railway for the last four days offered so much material to write on this. Although  I wondered why picking those themes. 

I do love the English people with their incredible sense of humour and even the different circumstances I run into as a German, not able to understand the way of organisation. This makes me to enjoy this country. Checking into a hotel without reception was a challenge as well as loading my phone with english electricity or having  a shower with bath facilities I never have seen before in my entire life.

But this year the theme: dis - member.

I admit that I have many gaps and leaks in English vocabulary so I did not know this word at all. My first thought was „member“, like a Member of Parliament, but with this „dis“ in front. Maybe a fired member of the government? So a very current theme to the political situation here?

Then I did a translation research on Google and my first thought was Kashoggi…Queen Mary, this Austrian Mother who buried her 6 babies dismembered on her balcony.  Why dismember as a theme? 

For the last four days I was tracked by this word. It was no pleasure to think about dead and bloody parts of human bodies. Not on this vacation in England please.  

I wanted to believe me that everybody and everything can be dismembered. 

Vegetables, countries, societies. Even diamonds or atoms. Maybe not the new english 10 pound note. But there are exchange rates and scissors. Yes, everything can be torn into pieces …until? 

How big is the smallest part after continuous dismemberment? And does exist something undismemberable?

To find this out I asked Google. The first two answers were:

-Do not divide the tablets with the knife and

-The ethical problems of euthanasia: a critical analysis

By typing in „undismemberable“  I landed at Plato on philosophic sites 2500 years ago like:

-Participation ontology and interfaith dialogue in Platonism 

 or

-Comment to the Platonic Parmenides

Parmenides held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms and motion, are but an appearance of a single eternal reality (“Being”), thus giving rise to the Parmenidean principle that “all is one”  - undismemberable. From this concept of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of non-Being are illogical.

I also found some religious thoughts from the 12th century like:

Flames and God are not dismemberable.

Thanks Google.

I have learned, there is no other way, everything will definitely fall into its pieces.

I cut up to make you shut up

we fritter being on twitter

we hew to get a stew

and dismember till surrender.

Helmut Seifert reading his essay 

28. September 2019

Stable Cottage, Novington Manor - Plumpton