BABA YAGA

“I'm so sorry, my child.”

What Doctor Who companion Bill Potts teaches viewers about foster care

The new character has the potential to shine a light on a group of children that people might not otherwise consider

Leanne Mattu

Wed 12 Jul 2017 10.12 BST 

Last modified on Tue 17 Jul 2018 11.38 BST

Fans of Doctor Who started to learn about the Time Lord’s new companion a year before her first appearance. In that time, we learned quite a bit about Bill Potts, played by Pearl Mackie, and much of the media focus rested on the fact that she is the first openly gay companion.

What no one knew until the first episode was broadcast is something that resonates with me on a professional level. I work at Celcis – the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland – an organisation that works to make positive and lasting improvements in the wellbeing of children and young people who, for a variety of reasons, are looked after by the state, for example in foster care – children like Bill Potts.

Viewers first find out about her circumstances in a low-key way in the first episode, when she tells her foster mother, Moira, about The Doctor: “You know you’re my foster mum? He’s like my foster tutor.”

Fostering a child with complex needs means being their advocate

I was keen to see how this aspect of Bill’s character would be received by viewers, given that media portrayals of foster families are sometimes problematic.

The first thing I noticed is that Bill is a working adult in her 20s, but still lives with her foster mother, Moira. 

Young people in care are often expected to become self-sufficient more quickly than their peers, but Bill’s situation is a nice example of the recent shift in policy that recommends young people have more gradual transitions to adulthood. 

Although we see Bill move out in episode four, this doesn’t work out, and by the sixth episode she is back living with Moira. 

I wonder how many viewers are aware that Bill’s experience isn’t the norm? How many would question the apparent ease with which Bill returned to live with her foster mother? 

In Scotland, less than 3% of young people eligible for support after leaving care remain with their former foster carers.

The media response to Bill’s family background was interesting. One review read:

Moffat’s decision to write Bill as someone who has failed to get into the university that The Doctor has been lecturing at is troubling. Why is such a bright young woman shovelling chips onto the plates of students, rather than learning alongside them? 

Such a storyline feels somewhat quaint and patronising today … it’s a shame that Moffat reinforces the notion that a person from a tough background ... will have a hard time pursuing higher education.

I can understand why the reviewer feels this was the wrong approach. Being looked after should be no barrier to accessing university, college or any other opportunity. 

It’s a sad reflection of reality, however, that the pursuit of higher education for young people who have been in care is still challenging. Bill herself tells us that she “never even applied”, although she’s “always wanted to come here”. 

We never find out why she didn’t, but lack of support or encouragement could have played a part. By reinforcing the notion that someone with Bill’s background might struggle to access higher education, I hope Steven Moffat has encouraged some viewers to wonder why that might be.

There were also some interesting comments about the relationship between Moira and Bill. One suggested Moira was “neither warm nor nurturing”. 

Another described her as “emotionally absent”, and a third as a “neglectful foster mother”. 

At first this was quite a leap to judgment, but episode six confirmed something hinted at in the first episode: Moira is oblivious to Bill’s sexuality. 

Their relationship isn’t as close as it perhaps first seemed. 

Although we find out that her mum died when Bill was a baby, we don’t know how long she has lived with Moira; perhaps, like many young people in care, Bill has moved several times and hasn’t lived with Moira long enough to develop a truly maternal level of closeness.

Children in foster care aren't waiting for a loving home – they are already in one

Andy Elvin

Bill does have a sense of connection with her biological mother, though. The Doctor, who learns that Bill has no photos of her, puts his time-travelling capabilities to good use by going back to get some. As social care professionals know, having photos may contribute to Bill’s understanding of her history and identity, which can be important for her wellbeing. 

Bill’s mum is only alluded to briefly a few times, but in episode eight Bill’s ability to focus her thoughts on her mother is vitally important.

In a speech at this year’s Scottish Institute of Residential Childcare conference, Lemn Sissay spoke about the long tradition of fictional characters from “substitute care” backgrounds, and suggested that “the kid in care is used in popular culture because they feel so much”. Bill has amazing potential to shine a (fictional, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey) light on a group of children that people might not otherwise consider.

Leanne Mattu is a research associate at the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland

[Level-507]

Now a charred post-apocalyptic wasteland with a few fires still burning. Cyber-Bill limps through the ashes and finds the Doctor, falls to her knees and touches him gently, weeping over him. A tear falls on his forehead. Then she stands and looks skywards as if screaming at the heavens. Rain begins to fall and a figure rises out of a very rapidly created pool of water.

BILL [memory]: 

Promise you won't go? 

HEATHER [memory]: 

Promise. 

Bill sees her Cyberman body fall backwards.

BILL: 

Am I Dead..? 

Wet Heather kisses her.

HEATHER: 

Does that feel dead to you? 

You're like me now. 

It's just a different kind of living. 

Water is pouring off Bill's hands.

 

BILL: 

How did you find me? 

HEATHER: 

I left  you my tears, remember? 

BILL [memory]: 

I don't think they're mine. 

HEATHER: 

I know when you're crying them. 

Time to go. 

BILL: 

But The Doctor, we can't just leave him. 

HEATHER: 

Of course we can't. 

And we're not going to. 

Whoosh!

[TARDIS]

The women are now both completely dry, and the Doctor is lying on the floor by the console.

 

BILL: 

I suppose this is the only place he'd rest in peace — 

If there's any place he'd do that. 

Heather operates the controls.

BILL: 

How can you fly the TARDIS?

 

HEATHER: 

I'm The Pilot. 

I can fly anything. 

Even you.

 

BILL: 

So I'm like you now. 

I'm not human anymore. 

HEATHER: 

I can make you human again. 

It's all just atoms. 

You can rearrange them any way you like. 

I can put you back home, 

you can make chips, and live your life, 

or you can come with me. 

It's up to you, Bill, but before you make up your mind — 

She opens the Tardis door to reveal a bright star shining in space.

 

HEATHER: 

Let me show you around. 

BILL: 

Back in time for tea? 

HEATHER: 

If you want. 

BILL: 

You know what, Old Man? 

I'm never going to believe you're really dead. 

Because one day everyone's just going to need you too much. Until then — 

(kisses his cheek) 

It's a big universe, but I hope I see you again. 

There is a tear on his face.

BILL :

Where there's tears, there's Hope. 

(to Heather) 

Just one thing — 

I've been through a lot since the last time we met, so I'll show you around....

They hold hands and step out into the infinite. 

The regeneration begins.... 

“Don’t get me wrong — Self-Decoration is one of the greatest joys and privileges of being  a woman, and it’s lots of fun...

....but •un•-decorating oneself takes one down to The Primitive, the level of Baba Yaga — it brings a woman down to the level where she is more able understand between 

Life and Death

   between 

Birth and Rebirth 

between 

Choices of The World and Choices of The Inner World.”

Well. Frankly, I was surprised when you left.

I thought you'd bet on shooting your way out.

“I am.”

How sentimental of you, then.

Risking your revenge while saving their lives.

Almost reminds me of the Annika of old.

“Me, too.

Picard still thinks there's a place in The Galaxy for Mercy.

I didn't want to disillusion him.

Somebody out here ought to have a little Hope.”

Like you used to have before I took it away from you.

“Something like that.

You're stalling, Jay.

Your second security wave will be here in less than five seconds.”

Annika - 

“He was a son to me, Jay.

This is for him.”

JOAN'S VOICES AND VISIONS

Joan's voices and visions have played many tricks with her reputation. 

They have been held to prove that she was mad, that she was a liar and impostor, that she was a sorceress (she was burned for this), and finally that she was a saint. 

They do not prove any of these things; but the variety of the conclusions reached shew how little our matter-of-fact historians know about other people's minds, or even about their own. 

There are people in the world whose imagination is so vivid that when they have an idea it comes to them as an audible voice, sometimes uttered by a visual figure. 

Criminal lunatic asylums are occupied largely by murderers who have obeyed voices. 

Thus a woman may hear voices telling her that she must cut her husband's throat and strangle her child as they lie asleep; and she may feel obliged to do what she is told. 

By a medico-legal superstition it is held in our courts that criminals whose temptations present themselves under these illusions are not responsible for their actions, and must be treated as insane. 

But the seers of visions and the hearers of revelations are not always criminals. The inspirations and intuitions and unconsciously reasoned conclusions of genius sometimes assume similar illusions. Socrates, Luther, Swedenborg, Blake saw visions and heard voices just as Saint Francis and Saint Joan did. If Newton's imagination had been of the same vividly dramatic kind he might have seen the ghost of Pythagoras walk into the orchard and explain why the apples were falling. Such an illusion would have invalidated neither the theory of gravitation nor Newton's general sanity. What is more, the visionary method of making the discovery would not be a whit more miraculous than the normal method. The test of sanity is not the normality of the method but the reasonableness of the discovery. If Newton had been informed by Pythagoras that the moon was made of green cheese, then Newton would have been locked up. Gravitation, being a reasoned hypothesis which fitted remarkably well into the Copernican version of the observed physical facts of the universe, established Newton's reputation for extraordinary intelligence, and would have done so no matter how fantastically he had arrived at it. Yet his theory of gravitation is not so impressive a mental feat as his astounding chronology, which establishes him as the king of mental conjurors, but a Bedlamite king whose authority no one now accepts. On the subject of the eleventh horn of the beast seen by the prophet Daniel he was more fantastic than Joan, because his imagination was not dramatic but mathematical and therefore extraordinarily susceptible to numbers: indeed if all his works were lost except his chronology we should say that he was as mad as a hatter. As it is, who dares diagnose Newton as a madman?

In the same way Joan must be judged a sane woman in spite of her voices because they never gave her any advice that might not have come to her from her mother wit exactly as gravitation came to Newton. We can all see now, especially since the late war threw so many of our women into military life, that Joan's campaigning could not have been carried on in petticoats. This was not only because she did a man's work, but because it was morally necessary that sex should be left out of the question as between her and her comrades-in-arms. She gave this reason herself when she was pressed on the subject; and the fact that this entirely reasonable necessity came to her imagination first as an order from God delivered through the mouth of Saint Catherine does not prove that she was mad. The soundness of the order proves that she was unusually sane; but its form proves that her dramatic imagination played tricks with her senses. Her policy was also quite sound: nobody disputes that the relief of Orleans, followed up by the coronation at Rheims of the Dauphin as a counterblow to the suspicions then current of his legitimacy and consequently of his title, were military and political masterstrokes that saved France. They might have been planned by Napoleon or any other illusionproof genius. They came to Joan as an instruction from her Counsel, as she called her visionary saints; but she was none the less an able leader of men for imagining her ideas in this way.

MIRACLE

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

You are not so accustomed to miracles as I am. 

It is part of my profession.

LA TRÉMOUILLE 

[fueled and a little scandalized] 

But that would not be 

a miracle at all.

THE ARCHBISHOP 

[calmly] 

Why not?

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

Well, come! what is a miracle?

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

A miracle, my friend, 

is an event which creates Faith. 

That is the purpose and nature of miracles. 

They may seem very wonderful to the people who witness them, and very simple to those who perform them, but does not matter: 

if they confirm or create faith 

they are true miracles.

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

Even when they are frauds, do you mean?

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

Frauds deceive. 

An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

LA TRÉMOUILLE 

[scratching his neck in his perplexity] 

Well, I suppose as you are an archbishop you must be right. 

It seems a bit fishy to me. 

But I am no churchman, and dont understand these matters.

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

You are not a churchman; but you are a diplomatist and a soldier. 

Could you make our citizens pay war taxes, or our soldiers sacrifice their lives, if they knew what is really happening instead of what seems to them to be happening?

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

No, by Saint Denis: the fat would be in the fire before sundown.

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

Would it not be quite easy to tell them The Truth?

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

Man alive, they wouldnt believe it.

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

Just so. 

Well, the Church has to rule men for the good of their souls as you have to rule them for the good of their bodies. 

To do that, the Church must do as you do: 

nourish their faith 

by poetry.

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

Poetry! I should call it humbug.

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

You would be wrong, my friend. 

Parables are not lies because they describe events that have never happened. 

Miracles are not frauds because they are often --I do not say always-- very simple and innocent contrivances by which the priest fortifies the faith of his flock. 

When this girl picks out The Dauphin among his courtiers, 

it will not be a miracle for me, because 

I shall know how it has been done, 

and my faith will not be increased. 

But as for the others, 

if they feel the thrill of the supernatural, 

and forget their sinful clay 

in a sudden sense 

of The Glory of God,

 it will be a miracle 

and a blessed one. 

And you will find that the girl herself will be more affected than anyone else. 

She will forget how she really picked him out. 

So, perhaps, will you.

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

Well, I wish I were clever enough to know how much of you is God's archbishop and how much the most artful fox in Touraine. 

Come on, or we shall be late for the fun; 

and I want to see it, 

miracle or no miracle.

THE ARCHBISHOP 

[detaining him a moment] 

Do not think that I am a lover of crooked ways. 

There is a new spirit rising in men: we are at the dawning of a wider epoch. 

If I were a simple monk,

 and had not to rule men, 

I should seek peace for my spirit 

with Aristotle and Pythagoras 

rather than with 

the saints and their miracles.

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

And who the deuce was Pythagoras?

THE ARCHBISHOP. 

A sage who held that the earth is round, and that it moves round the sun.

LA TRÉMOUILLE. 

What an utter fool! 

Couldnt he use his eyes?

JOAN'S VOICES AND VISIONS

Joan's voices and visions have played many tricks with her reputation. They have been held to prove that she was mad, that she was a liar and impostor, that she was a sorceress (she was burned for this), and finally that she was a saint. They do not prove any of these things; but the variety of the conclusions reached shew how little our matter-of-fact historians know about other people's minds, or even about their own. There are people in the world whose imagination is so vivid that when they have an idea it comes to them as an audible voice, sometimes uttered by a visual figure. Criminal lunatic asylums are occupied largely by murderers who have obeyed voices. Thus a woman may hear voices telling her that she must cut her husband's throat and strangle her child as they lie asleep; and she may feel obliged to do what she is told. By a medico-legal superstition it is held in our courts that criminals whose temptations present themselves under these illusions are not responsible for their actions, and must be treated as insane. But the seers of visions and the hearers of revelations are not always criminals. The inspirations and intuitions and unconsciously reasoned conclusions of genius sometimes assume similar illusions. Socrates, Luther, Swedenborg, Blake saw visions and heard voices just as Saint Francis and Saint Joan did. If Newton's imagination had been of the same vividly dramatic kind he might have seen the ghost of Pythagoras walk into the orchard and explain why the apples were falling. Such an illusion would have invalidated neither the theory of gravitation nor Newton's general sanity. What is more, the visionary method of making the discovery would not be a whit more miraculous than the normal method. The test of sanity is not the normality of the method but the reasonableness of the discovery. If Newton had been informed by Pythagoras that the moon was made of green cheese, then Newton would have been locked up. Gravitation, being a reasoned hypothesis which fitted remarkably well into the Copernican version of the observed physical facts of the universe, established Newton's reputation for extraordinary intelligence, and would have done so no matter how fantastically he had arrived at it. Yet his theory of gravitation is not so impressive a mental feat as his astounding chronology, which establishes him as the king of mental conjurors, but a Bedlamite king whose authority no one now accepts. On the subject of the eleventh horn of the beast seen by the prophet Daniel he was more fantastic than Joan, because his imagination was not dramatic but mathematical and therefore extraordinarily susceptible to numbers: indeed if all his works were lost except his chronology we should say that he was as mad as a hatter. As it is, who dares diagnose Newton as a madman?

In the same way Joan must be judged a sane woman in spite of her voices because they never gave her any advice that might not have come to her from her mother wit exactly as gravitation came to Newton. We can all see now, especially since the late war threw so many of our women into military life, that Joan's campaigning could not have been carried on in petticoats. This was not only because she did a man's work, but because it was morally necessary that sex should be left out of the question as between her and her comrades-in-arms. She gave this reason herself when she was pressed on the subject; and the fact that this entirely reasonable necessity came to her imagination first as an order from God delivered through the mouth of Saint Catherine does not prove that she was mad. The soundness of the order proves that she was unusually sane; but its form proves that her dramatic imagination played tricks with her senses. Her policy was also quite sound: nobody disputes that the relief of Orleans, followed up by the coronation at Rheims of the Dauphin as a counterblow to the suspicions then current of his legitimacy and consequently of his title, were military and political masterstrokes that saved France. They might have been planned by Napoleon or any other illusionproof genius. They came to Joan as an instruction from her Counsel, as she called her visionary saints; but she was none the less an able leader of men for imagining her ideas in this way.

him in silence]. Attention! [He restores the halberd to the man-at-arms]. The Duke of Vendôme presents Joan the Maid to his Majesty.

CHARLES 

[putting his finger on his lip] 

Ssh! 

[He hides behind the nearest courtier, peering out to see what happens].

BLUEBEARD 

[majestically] 

Let her approach the throne.

Joan, dressed as a soldier, with her hair bobbed and hanging thickly round her face, is led in by a bashful and speechless nobleman, from whom she detaches herself to stop and look around eagerly for the Dauphin.

THE DUCHESS 

[to the nearest lady in waiting] 

My dear! Her hair! 

All the ladies explode in uncontrollable laughter.

BLUEBEARD 

[trying not to laugh, and waving his hand in deprecation of their merriment] 

Ssh--ssh! Ladies! Ladies!!

JOAN 

[not at all embarrassed] 

I wear it like this because I am a soldier. Where be Dauphin?

A titter runs through the Court as she walks to the dais.

BLUEBEARD 

[condescendingly] 

You are in the presence 

of The Dauphin.

Joan looks at him sceptically for a moment, scanning him hard up and down to make sure. 

Dead silence, all watching her. 

Fun dawns in her face.

JOAN. 

Coom, Bluebeard! 

Thou canst not fool me. 

Where be Dauphin?

A roar of laughter breaks out as Gilles, with a gesture of surrender, joins in the laugh, and jumps down from the dais beside La Trémouille. Joan, also on the broad grin, turns back, searching along the row of courtiers, and presently makes a dive, and drags out Charles by the arm.

JOAN 

[releasing him and bobbing him a little curtsey] 

Gentle little Dauphin, I am sent to you to drive the English away from Orleans and from France, and to crown you king in the cathedral at Rheims, where all true kings of France are crowned.

CHARLES 

[triumphant, to the Court] 

You see, all of you: she knew the blood royal. Who dare say now that I am not my father's son? 

[To Joan] 

But if you want me to be crowned at Rheims you must talk to the Archbishop, not to me. 

There he is 

[he is standing behind her]!

JOAN 

[turning quickly, overwhelmed with emotion] 

Oh, my lord! 

[She falls on both knees before him, with bowed head, not daring to look up] My lord: I am only a poor country girl; and you are filled with the blessedness and glory of God Himself; but you will touch me with your hands, and give me your blessing, wont you?

BLUEBEARD [whispering to La Trémouille] The old fox blushes.

LA TRÉMOUILLE. Another miracle!

THE ARCHBISHOP [touched, putting his hand on her head] Child: you are in love with religion.

JOAN [startled: looking up at him] Am I? I never thought of that. Is there any harm in it?

THE ARCHBISHOP. There is no harm in it, my child. But there is danger.

JOAN [rising, with a sunflush of reckless happiness irradiating her face] There is always danger, except in heaven. Oh, my lord, you have given me such strength, such courage. It must be a most wonderful thing to be Archbishop.

The Court smiles broadly: even titters a little.

THE ARCHBISHOP [drawing himself up sensitively] Gentlemen: your levity is rebuked by this maid's faith. I am, God help me, all unworthy; but your mirth is a deadly sin.

Their faces fall. Dead silence.

BLUEBEARD. My lord: we were laughing at her, not at you.

THE ARCHBISHOP. What? Not at my unworthiness but at her faith! Gilles de Rais: this maid prophesied that the blasphemer should be drowned in his sin--

JOAN [distressed] No!

THE ARCHBISHOP [silencing her by a gesture] I prophesy now that you will be hanged in yours if you do not learn when to laugh and when to pray.

BLUEBEARD. My lord: I stand rebuked. I am sorry: I can say no more. But if you prophesy that I shall be hanged, I shall never be able to resist temptation, because I shall always be telling myself that I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

The courtiers take heart at this. There is more tittering.

JOAN [scandalized] You are an idle fellow, Bluebeard; and you have great impudence to answer the Archbishop.

LA HIRE [with a huge chuckle] Well said, lass! Well said!

JOAN [impatiently to the Archbishop] Oh, my lord, will you send all these silly folks away so that I may speak to the Dauphin alone?

LA HIRE [goodhumoredly] I can take a hint. [He salutes; turns on his heel; and goes out].

THE ARCHBISHOP. Come, gentlemen. The Maid comes with God's blessing, and must be obeyed.

The courtiers withdraw, some through the arch, others at the opposite side. The Archbishop marches across to the door, followed by the Duchess and La Trémouille. As the Archbishop passes Joan, she falls on her knees, and kisses the hem of his robe fervently. He shakes his head in instinctive remonstrance; gathers the robe from her; and goes out. She is left kneeling directly in the Duchess's way.

THE DUCHESS [coldly] Will you allow me to pass, please?

JOAN [hastily rising, and standing back] Beg pardon, maam, I am sure.

The Duchess passes on. Joan stares after her; then whispers to the Dauphin.

JOAN. Be that Queen?

CHARLES. No. She thinks she is.

JOAN [again staring after the Duchess] Oo-oo-ooh! [Her awestruck amazement at the figure cut by the magnificently dressed lady is not wholly complimentary].

LA TRÉMOUILLE [very surly] I'll trouble your Highness not to gibe at my wife. [He goes out. The others have already gone].

JOAN [to the Dauphin] Who be old Gruff-and-Grum?

CHARLES. He is the Duke de la Trémouille.

JOAN. What be his job?

CHARLES. He pretends to command the army. And whenever I find a friend I can care for, he kills him.

JOAN. Why dost let him?

CHARLES [petulantly moving to the throne side of the room to escape from her magnetic field] How can I prevent him? He bullies me. They all bully me.

JOAN. Art afraid?

CHARLES. Yes: I am afraid. It's no use preaching to me about it. It's all very well for these big men with their armor that is too heavy for me, and their swords that I can hardly lift, and their muscle and their shouting and their bad tempers. They like fighting: most of them are making fools of themselves all the time they are not fighting; but I am quiet and sensible; and I dont want to kill people: I only want to be left alone to enjoy myself in my own way. I never asked to be a king: it was pushed on me. So if you are going to say 'Son of St Louis: gird on the sword of your ancestors, and lead us to victory' you may spare your breath to cool your porridge; for I cannot do it. I am not built that way; and there is an end of it.

JOAN [trenchant and masterful] Blethers! We are all like that to begin with. I shall put courage into thee.

CHARLES. But I dont want to have courage put into me. I want to sleep in a comfortable bed, and not live in continual terror of being killed or wounded. Put courage into the others, and let them have their bellyful of fighting; but let me alone.

JOAN. It's no use, Charlie: thou must face what God puts on thee. If thou fail to make thyself king, thoult be a beggar: what else art fit for? Come! Let me see thee sitting on the throne. I have looked forward to that.

CHARLES. What is the good of sitting on the throne when the other fellows give all the orders? However! [he sits enthroned, a piteous figure] here is the king for you! Look your fill at the poor devil.

JOAN. Thourt not king yet, lad: thourt but Dauphin. Be not led away by them around thee. Dressing up dont fill empty noddle. I know the people: the real people that make thy bread for thee; and I tell thee they count no man king of France until the holy oil has been poured on his hair, and himself consecrated and crowned in Rheims Cathedral. And thou needs new clothes, Charlie. Why does not Queen look after thee properly?

CHARLES. We're too poor. She wants all the money we can spare to put on her own back. Besides, I like to see her beautifully dressed; and I dont care what I wear myself: I should look ugly anyhow.

JOAN. There is some good in thee, Charlie; but it is not yet a king's good.

CHARLES. We shall see. I am not such a fool as I look. I have my eyes open; and I can tell you that one good treaty is worth ten good fights. These fighting fellows lose all on the treaties that they gain on the fights. If we can only have a treaty, the English are sure to have the worst of it, because they are better at fighting than at thinking.

JOAN. If the English win, it is they that will make the treaty: and then God help poor France! Thou must fight, Charlie, whether thou will or no. I will go first to hearten thee. We must take our courage in both hands: aye, and pray for it with both hands too.

CHARLES [descending from his throne and again crossing the room to escape from her dominating urgency] Oh do stop talking about God and praying. I cant bear people who are always praying. Isnt it bad enough to have to do it at the proper times?

JOAN [pitying him] Thou poor child, thou hast never prayed in thy life. I must teach thee from the beginning.

CHARLES. I am not a child: I am a grown man and a father; and I will not be taught any more.

JOAN. Aye, you have a little son. He that will be Louis the Eleventh when you die. Would you not fight for him?

CHARLES. No: a horrid boy. He hates me. He hates everybody, selfish little beast! I dont want to be bothered with children. I dont want to be a father; and I dont want to be a son: especially a son of St Louis. I dont want to be any of these fine things you all have your heads full of: I want to be just what I am. Why cant you mind your own business, and let me mind mine?

JOAN [again contemptuous] Minding your own business is like minding your own body: it's the shortest way to make yourself sick. What is my business? Helping mother at home. What is thine? Petting lapdogs and sucking sugar-sticks. I call that muck. I tell thee it is God's business we are here to do: not our own. I have a message to thee from God; and thou must listen to it, though thy heart break with the terror of it.

CHARLES. I dont want a message; but can you tell me any secrets? Can you do any cures? Can you turn lead into gold, or anything of that sort?

JOAN. I can turn thee into a king, in Rheims Cathedral; and that is a miracle that will take some doing, it seems.

CHARLES. If we go to Rheims, and have a coronation, Anne will want new dresses. We cant afford them. I am all right as I am.

JOAN. As you are! And what is that? Less than my father's poorest shepherd. Thourt not lawful owner of thy own land of France till thou be consecrated.

CHARLES. But I shall not be lawful owner of my own land anyhow. Will the consecration pay off my mortgages? I have pledged my last acre to the Archbishop and that fat bully. I owe money even to Bluebeard.

JOAN [earnestly] Charlie: I come from the land, and have gotten my strength working on the land; and I tell thee that the land is thine to rule righteously and keep God's peace in, and not to pledge at the pawnshop as a drunken woman pledges her children's clothes. And I come from God to tell thee to kneel in the cathedral and solemnly give thy kingdom to Him for ever and ever, and become the greatest king in the world as His steward and His bailiff, His soldier and His servant. The very clay of France will become holy: her soldiers will be the soldiers of God: the rebel dukes will be rebels against God: the English will fall on their knees and beg thee let them return to their lawful homes in peace. Wilt be a poor little Judas, and betray me and Him that sent me?

CHARLES [tempted at last] Oh, if I only dare!

JOAN. I shall dare, dare, and dare again, in God's name! Art for or against me?

CHARLES [excited] 

I'll risk it, I warn you I shant be able to keep it up; but I'll risk it. You shall see. 

[Running to the main door and shouting] 

Hallo! Come back, everybody. [To Joan, as he runs back to the arch opposite] 

Mind you stand by and dont let me be bullied. 

[Through the arch] 

Come along, will you: the whole Court. [He sits down in the royal chair as they all hurry in to their former places, chattering and wondering]. Now I'm in for it; but no matter: here goes! [To the page] Call for silence, you little beast, will you?

THE PAGE [snatching a halberd as before and thumping with it repeatedly] Silence for His Majesty the King. The King speaks. [Peremptorily] Will you be silent there? [Silence].

CHARLES [rising] I have given the command of the army to The Maid. The Maid is to do as she likes with it. [He descends from the dais].

General amazement. La Hire, delighted, slaps his steel thigh-piece with his gauntlet.

LA TRÉMOUILLE [turning threateningly towards Charles] What is this? I command the army.

Joan quickly puts her hand on Charles's shoulder as he instinctively recoils. Charles, with a grotesque effort culminating in an extravagant gesture, snaps his fingers in the Chamberlain's face.

JOAN. Thourt answered, old Gruff-and-Grum. [Suddenly flashing out her sword as she divines that her moment has come] Who is for God and His Maid? Who is for Orleans with me?

LA HIRE [carried away, drawing also] For God and His Maid! To Orleans!

ALL THE KNIGHTS [following his lead with enthusiasm] To Orleans!

Joan, radiant, falls on her knees in thanksgiving to God. They all kneel, except the Archbishop, who gives his benediction with a sigh, and La Trémouille, who collapses, cursing.

Profiles in Mentorship : JOB

This is Your work. 

You better take care of me, Lord.

If You •don't•, You're gonna have •me• on Your hands.

William Blake did a series of engravings based on the Book of Job, rendering in immaculate tableaux Job’s trials and suffering. It is as if Blake through his art and the Bible through the means of prose refer to the same subliminal truth, as if this story, the Book of Job, contains essential truths that we can only behold fleetingly and through the lens of image or language. 

In one tableau, Yaweh, or God, from on high shows Job ‘the behemoth and the leviathan that I made, as I made thee’. These creatures as rendered by Blake are dreadful and uncanny. The dumb, muscular, skinless beast, all sinew and mouth. The deep-dwelling sea serpent ever present but invisible in its awful depths. 

When regarding these silently screaming images the horror of God’s power is awesome, more terrifying though is the suggestion of ambivalence and that implicitly God The Creator is Not Only Good. 

In these images Job and Yaweh look the same, as if both the man made of flesh and the divine father are enshrined within a single form. 

These hypnotic tableaux induce a visionary state where we confront that God is within us and our own moral choices determine God’s values. That the capacity for Darkness and unconsciousness is as much part of the individual’s psychological make-up as the inclination to love and kindness. 

That we HAVEto be Good, because if We are not Good, then God is not Good, that God’s Grace is realized through us and if we do not realize it then it does not exist.

Like a terrible quantum equation where our intentions create all that is manifest. Do not be lost in the leviathan deep. Do not be trapped in the dumb carnality of form, transcend; transcend that God may imbue The World with His Grace through you. 

GET PAST IT

Cordelia:

Buffy. You're really campaigning for bitch-of-the-year, aren't you?

 

Buffy:

As defending champion, you nervous?

 

Cordelia:

Whatever is causing the Joan Collins 'tude, deal with it. 

 

Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it. 

 

'Cause pretty soon you're not even gonna have the loser friends you've got now.

 

“Gary tells me one day about his sister, how her son, his nephew, died at eighteen from overdosing on a bad batch of MDMA. ‘Would you talk to her?’ he asks.

 

I see him every day over the course of the production and it is, all in all, a fairly typical experience. 

 

I return to my trailer, content to be wrapping a film without having caused any unnecessary aggravation. Aside from the ice creams. 

 

Gary taps on the door. 

When I open it he already has his sister on the line.

 

I take the phone and close the door and the always slightly absurd ambience of the on-set trailer, in spite of my daft costume, immediately becomes calm and sacred. 

 

Kerry tells me that she is in Brent Cross shopping centre. 

 

‘Excuse me,’ she says, and moves somewhere quiet. 

I sit down and picture her there. 

I breathe and prepare for her story. 

She is tentative and tearful for a few syllables, but propelled by tremulous certainty. 

 

‘James was a beautiful boy. 

More than my son he was my friend. 

So clever and sensitive. 

Not a druggy kid. 

He didn’t do drugs a lot, I know he didn’t. 

I didn’t want him to go out that night. 

I wanted him to stay in. 

I wish I’d stopped him. I couldn’t sleep, I kept looking at my phone. 

I had a bad feeling. 

 

At one fifty-eight I got a text, “I’m all right, Mum”, at two fifty-eight I got another one from his phone saying “James is dead.”’ 

 

At this point the frequency, the intensity, the sharpness of tone changes, the grief is piercing and I try to fall backwards into purpose. 

 

‘My boy died on the street, Russell, on a pavement with three hundred people watching. Outside a club. He was dead by the time he got to the hospital.’ 

 

I try to breathe and reach beyond my own lack of experience, my own inability to know something so profound and painful and source something useful. 

 

‘I’m getting grief counselling and they say I have to let go because the grief is going into my body and making me ill but I don’t want to let go because I deserve it.’ 

 

Then the terrible sound of a mother’s pain.

 

I am not qualified to handle a mother’s grief. 

I have no training in counselling or experience of this poignant and unanswerable despair. 

In this moment, though, I am on the phone to a grieving mother and the practical and rational limitations simply cannot be allowed to prevent me giving her the comfort and love her situation demands. 

 

William Blake did a series of engravings based on the Book of Job, rendering in immaculate tableaux Job’s trials and suffering. It is as if Blake through his art and the Bible through the means of prose refer to the same subliminal truth, as if this story, the Book of Job, contains essential truths that we can only behold fleetingly and through the lens of image or language. 

 

In one tableau, Yaweh, or God, from on high shows Job ‘the behemoth and the leviathan that I made, as I made thee’. These creatures as rendered by Blake are dreadful and uncanny. The dumb, muscular, skinless beast, all sinew and mouth. The deep-dwelling sea serpent ever present but invisible in its awful depths. 

 

When regarding these silently screaming images the horror of God’s power is awesome, more terrifying though is the suggestion of ambivalence and that implicitly God The Creator is Not Only Good. 

 

In these images Job and Yaweh look the same, as if both the man made of flesh and the divine father are enshrined within a single form. 

 

These hypnotic tableaux induce a visionary state where we confront that God is within us and our own moral choices determine God’s values. That the capacity for Darkness and unconsciousness is as much part of the individual’s psychological make-up as the inclination to love and kindness. 

 

That we HAVE to be Good, because if WE are not Good, then God is not Good, that God’s Grace is realized through us and if we do not realize it then it does not exist.

 

Like a terrible quantum equation where our intentions create all that is manifest. Do not be lost in the leviathan deep. Do not be trapped in the dumb carnality of form, transcend; transcend that God may imbue The World with His Grace through you. 

 

Knowing my own limitations I do not answer from myself. 

Knowing the hopelessness of such pitiless despair I do not attempt to placate with platitudes. 

I offer Love. 

 

I offer this stranger, this woman that I am confronted with, The Best of Me, such as it is, in the hope that within me, within her, within us all, is the capacity to heal and be healed. 

 

There is no code in language, no silver bullet that can undo this pain but beyond language, beyond form, beyond death there is, there must be, connection. 

 

We cannot allow the universe to be unconsciousness and carnality, because we have the choice, because the possibility, the potentiality for love exists in all of us. Its existence as potential is also its demand for realization.

 

Aside from the love, comfort and forgiveness that anyone would offer a grieving mother I suggest that Kerry meets two of the mentors in this book, Manya and Meredith – healers, mothers, strong women who will be able to hold her pain for her until she is able to.”

 

Excerpt From

“Mentors,” by Russell Brand, 

 

 

 

Hot Wisdom

PROVERBS OF HELL

(Plate 7 )

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.

All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body, revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Prides cloke.

PROVERBS OF HELL

(Plate 8 )

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool, shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once, only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit: watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.
One thought, fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

PROVERBS OF HELL

(Plate 9)

The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight, can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius, lift up thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!

PROVERBS OF HELL

(Plate 10)

The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird of the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or Too much!

(Plate 11)
The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity.

Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood.

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And a length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.