An Ark in the London Canals

My assessment of the second Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference

I love the British Isles. Our ancestry goes back to at least 1583 in the Oxford area as well as Dunfermline in Scotland; my aunt is a dual Irish citizen. So I feel deeply connected to the land. But I have to say, I like London less and less every time I go (which is now too many times to count). It doesn’t help that I’m an increasingly white-knuckle flyer (my prayer beads were worn to nubs by the time I landed back at JFK last night). This time, though, we never saw anything of the city except Paddington Station.

It’s still an ennobling civic space

But Ben and I weren’t there for the sightseeing. We were invited as Arts delegates to the second conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. You could best describe ARC as a civilizational think tank. Because of its affiliation with Jordan Peterson, it could be seen as a “conservative” effort, but I don’t think that’s correct, and if it was, I wouldn’t be a part of it. I’m hyper-allergic to partisanship, and the few speakers who were overt about their desire to enact that particular project had me in internal sneezing fits.

I’d like to offer you some takeaways from my perspective as an artist in a hyper-cerebral environment, reflected in the very Jersey-City-esque surroundings of Canary Wharf in the extreme east end of London (where, despite the industrial hellscape, we had great Lebanese food, so if you’re every there for some reason, check out Al Masar).