(a short essay about national identity)

See that?
That's the Cornish flag, flying at 750 metres above sea-level in the freezing snow!
(that's about 2000 km too far southeast, 700 metres too high and about 20 degrees centigrade too cold)

Those of you who have been following OMNIA and our musick for a while, will know that we are living on our own land called TERRA OMNIA in Slovenia now...

But, if they know our discography well, they might be thinking:

"Ermmmm?.......shouldn't that be in Cornwall?"

"Didn't Steve write an "exile- song" called "Cornwall"?
 about the land in which he grew up a long time ago?

The place he said he would settle down and die in?"

Well, yes... It's true I spent quite a few years of my youth growing up in Cornwall and I kind of thought that I would one day buy a small property on the gnarly, wonderfull North cliffs and settle down there with my darling Jenny ... well, that was the plan ... many many years ago...

The land of Cornwall lies on the southwest corner of the British isles and is amazingly rough and beautifull!

The mighty all powerfull sea all around three sides,
The high rocky cliffs,
The wild moors covered in heather and gorse,
The tough and abundant, amazing, wildlife,
A land of ancient customs and of very independant people
The amazing natural structures of stone, soil and water that make this place look like a magical fantasy land..

Or should I say "Looked like"? ... past tense...

The cliffs and the heather and Nature are still mostly there

But the rest...?

Sadly the land of my youth "Cornwall" does not exist anymore...not as I remember it

If it ever existed at all... or was it only a dream?

You see, the land I grew up in was different to what it pretends to be now.

Apart from all the massive changes made to the land itself
I don't remember it being what is now called "Cornwall" or "Kernow"

First of all, the land I grew up in was a county of England...
A very beautifull and secluded one, but still... we were supposed to be English.

Me and all my schoolmates lived in a 100% English speaking country.
We were considered "English".
Some of my mates actually referred to themselves as "Cornish" though,
because their families had lived in this area a very long time
and because they all had a west country accent so thick, you could lean up against it.

(by the way, If you ever want to know what a Cornish accent sounds like, just watch every Hollywood Pirate movie ever made...
THAT "talk like a pirate" bullshit that they put on?
THAT is actually a west country, Cornish accent...
Because the coastal Cornish always used to be the best sailors of the British Empire... but sorry, I digress...)

That distinction "pure Cornish" made them look extra hard in front of the rest of us kids, it was a badge of honour and toughness, because real Cornishmen were supposedly tougher than mere Englishmen.

So there was that.

But...

there were NO black and white Cornish flags anywhere as I remember.....?
We didn't even know there was seperate Cornish flag!

All of us Cornish lads and lasses just had the bloody Royal family's "union jack" flag to worship...

Just like all the other slaves of the so called "British Empire"

There were no proud "Celtic History" lessons in school about our "proud and ancient land"...

We were told we were an old country whose historical natives were just a bunch of superstitious yokels, desperate criminal smugglers, murderous wreckers, pirates, gypsies and other scumbags, who only got "civilised" after modern society was introduced in the form of English painters and poets farting around with watercolours and whatnot on the pleasant south coast, and they started calling it the "English Riviera"...

When I was at school there was NO Cornish language
(It had apparently died a very long time ago)

There certainly weren't any Cornish language lessons!
Everyone would have laughed themselves sick at the thought!

Cornish-language street signs and the so called ancient name "Kernow" that you see everywhere in Cornwall now, was never mentioned to us.

BUT

What we DID have, was an independant and strong bunch of people who were proud of their old worn-out and mine-scarred peninsula and who had a real sense of community.

Most People were very poor,
but there were still a few jobs to be had in the fisheries
or the fish packing business,
or down a few remaining mines,
or on the farms
a few factories
or in the slowly expanding tourist business...

But that country I grew up in (and most of the rest of England actually) has gone for good.

It has been replaced by an illusion
a made-up Celtic country,
like a movie-set,  
full of quaint half empty "summer" villages for rich Londeners
and crowded together parks of holiday homes
and way too much plastic and cheap tech.

The kids now get pointless "Cornish language lessons"
(as if that will ever give them their community back)

The land is covered in made-up tacky Celtic sentimentality and plastic "made in China" souvenirs which have destroyed the core of the land and turned it into a giant ridiculous theme park.

A country of massive traffic jams on formerly quiet country lanes where yuppy tourists fill the roads with their expensive giant cars far far beyond capacity in summer and where everything turns into a barren ghost country in winter.

All the jobs have gone, the fisheries are fucked, the mines lie dead and cold, most independant shops and businesses have been murdered and replaced by giant shopping malls of junk by order of the parasites who rule.

The few bits of land and the handfull of real houses that are still for sale are far too expensive for any born and bred Cornishman or woman to afford...  
(they are actually too expensive for most normal people to afford without selling their soul to the Devil for a loan... if they can even get a loan).

So, the actual Cornish people have to move to different regions and cities to be able to live
(a bit like the youth in Iceland and actually like the youth in any country or region that has been sold to the soul sucking and country-destroying "international tourist industry")

The jobs are all gone except low paid ones in the tourist and "catering for the rich outsiders" business

Actually, now I come to think of it... this is happening all over the world...right?

Everything is changing as we speak, as we stand around open-mouthed and look at the ridiculous world that THEY have made

(not us...THEM... stop feeling guilty about the state of the world, it's not YOUR fault! It was made like this by the parasites for a reason ... but that is a story for another blog).

Anyway...
I would have truly wished to settle down in Cornwall... the country where I grew up...
the country I loved

Dear old Cornwall.

But that country is gone for ever...

And even if I could have gotten used to the "new rules"
and the "new image" of Cornwall,
and the "New England"
and the "New world order" there

Then we still couldn't live there...

Jenny and me are just independant musicians and we would only have had enough money to be able to buy a small parking space for our OMNIA-van there...at most!

That is one of the reasons why we do NOT live on the sadly misused Cornish coast.

For anyone living in Cornwall who still remembers that land... you have my heart felt sympathy

For anyone not from Cornwall, but who still recognises this story, because this probably also happened in YOUR country...

Know this:

The land of our youth is no more

It is up to us to build a new land, wherever the spirits leads us,
A land and a culture which looks to the future while honouring what came before...

It is up to us to re-build our own cultures,
without the parasites telling us WHAT to be, or WHO we are supposed to be...

History is a lie, it's made up

You have no idea what your real "cultural background" is anymore

YOU have to make your own...

YOUR culture, starts with YOU...

YOU are the birth of YOUR own Culture

Think about it.

OUR culture (Stenny/TERRA OMNIA) lives here in the mountains,
because we choose it to be so...
OUR culture has it's own customs and we have our own "traditional" way of life

We have our own national dress (home made mostly)
We have our own national cuisine (also home made)
We have own code of honour (yep...home made)
We have own worldview on reality (based on observation, so mostly home made...again)
We have our own national musick (You should know this one...it's played a lot by a band called OMNIA )

We have the possibility of adding cool or wise bits from other cultures that we have experienced along our long and winding life path... because basically, we ...you know...make it all up....

We make up our own culture and we then proceed to live it for 100% every day.

We have no nation,
but we do have a Clan somewhere out there...

We have no religion that YOU would easily recognise (because we made this one up ourselves),
but we do try to project a certain energetic feeling as well as a set of principles out into the world through our musick and the weird shit I write here..

So we can do as we like, as long as we respect our own principles.

That is why we can fly the Cornish Flag high on a Slovenian mountain...

Even though I know I am neither Cornish nor Slovenian

I'm a "Terra Omnian" I suppose?... hmmm?

What am I, if not spiritually bound to a recognised Nation anymore?
Because I have no faith in the new world order?

I am part of a bastard race of displaced people ... lost orphans... like YOU...
who are being given the chance to remake the world according to what is good and decent and filled with enough love to let positive energy flow.

By using common sense, willpower and the all powerfull guiding hand of Nature in which we are all immersed and are a part of...

Together we can build new cultures...

Teeny tiny independant cultures!

Think about it...

:-)

Greenthingz
Shaman Steve Sic