ALAN HUMAN

Remembering Alan Human

For around a year I worked in a psychiatric ward, 'a loony bin', in Oxford. I met a number of lovely people there- people in distress, people coping (or sometimes not) with unimaginable pain and trauma. One of the loveliest and most genuine people I met was Alan.

We spent several evenings in long conversation. I remember him as a kind humane person (he had actually changed his name to 'Human' by deed poll)- he opposed compulsory medication as a breach of human rights: he valued the voices he heard, including the children from outer space, perhaps as yet unborn ; he had a vision of society based on kindness. He was a true socialist - a real Christian.

One evening we played Scrabble. I said something to him that seemed to give him hope.

We often had long intellectual discussions about hope, smoking into the night. I believed then, as now, that there is always hope: that life, the universe, existence, whatever is, is not a zero sum game finite program, a machine where power and brutality win, a panopticon with a machine gun- but rather an infinite field of chance, variation, evolution, god in us. He pointed to the game of Scrabble- however complex it gets there are only so many tiles so many squares so many words. It is finite he said.

I disagreed and said it is actually infinite as though the combinations of tiles on squares whilst huge is finite we can have many languages potentially infinite meanings and referents. He was tremendously taken by this idea and elated said it gave him hope.

I loved him. He was a great person. His life like thousands of others was devalued by the psychiatric machine that grinds people up. Yesterday I found a piece of writing he composed sometime in 2003- it is moving and inspiring. I encourage every one to read it. I cried. I also cried when I learnt, also yesterday, he had died, suddenly, at the too young age of 61.

Please read this piece linked to. It may be the only writing he left- though he refers to an unpublished novel he wrote in 1979. I would love to read it.

Existence is endless- possibility never extinguished. I am ready to meet Alan again along perhaps with the as yet unborn children from outer space. I love you Alan. I am sorry for what was done to you and that aged 23 or 24 (you were 20 years older) I could be a temporary source of hope but not stop the destruction. We will meet again in the great scrabble of existence in another language and a love beyond words.

Remembering Alan Human.

Alan will be dearly missed and will always be my stand in dad. ****