A da Vinci Code
I am reminded today of the dreams of Leonardo da Vinci, one of history’s greatest theoretical aviators. “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”
Da Vinci never flew. But hundreds of years later, using different techniques, some other people did.
Never has da Vinci’s dream of flight been more apt than in Aotearoa, sacred home to the Kiwi and the Weka. But it is no longer—and never again, no matter what some wide-eyed idealist might think—home to the Moa. Our low-income citizens are clear metaphorical anthropomorphisations of our precious flightless birds. Some have already died off—for absolutely ever. The rest are in danger.
They need to fly, politically. They need a living wage, better housing, a socialised means of production, and a brighter future for their kids. Only then can they soar among our majestic, if aging and out of touch, stands of kauri and totara.
This is how to best understand the 2014 New Zealand election. It is da Vinci versus the flat-earthers, whose numerical advantage belies a dark chasm of visionary void.
I once thought David Cunliffe was a modern da Vinci, painting the painting, building the building, dreaming the dreaming.
But I now know he has met his match in another Leonardo—Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from that modern cinematic classic, Inception. A dream stealer, on contract from a dark, mysterious, higher power.
I once thought New Zealand’s dream stealers were in the National party. They are. But they have been joined by more. New Zealand’s most toxic political dream stealers are a rudimentary alphabet soup of B, C, and A from within da Vinci’s own ranks. I am not talking about the commerce graduates. Anyone with a stamp of approval in commerce hasn’t the wherewithal for dream stealing. They are just dreamers.
Labour’s dream stealers are as corrosive as they are inexorable. Their methods are many. They plot. They announce policies. They scheme. They appear to work hard. They open their mouths. And then they don’t.
I believed in da Vinci. I knew, like Emperor Commodus, that he was more than a match for the alphabet soup.
“But the Emperor knew they were up to something. He knew they were busy little bees. And one night he sat down with one of them and he looked at her and he said, ‘Tell me what you have been doing, busy little bee, or I shall strike down those dearest to you. You shall watch as I bathe in their blood.'”
For all his might, Russell Crowe never got to be the Emperor.
But I have been, once more, let down. Labour’s dream-stealers have clipped their titular leader’s wings so he cannot fly into the Beehive. Instead, and tragically, they have co-opted him, so that he too believes they want their party to win. He even asks some for advice. And worse, he goes on television proclaiming unity and vision and purpose and optimism. It is sickening. Once, he loved Julia. Now he loves Big Brother.
Maybe now he also aspires to steal dreams. He has certainly stolen mine.
But despite his newfound dreams of dream-stealing, he lies prone on the Parliamentary forecourt, wings-clipped, waiting for the bees and dream stealers to sting and dream-steal him to his final demise. Unless, of course, he can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of his own sadly foreseeable, preventable wing-clipping.
So what should Labour do now? And who should they ask to guide them?
It is now clear that my metaphors demand me to adopt the role of da Vinci. The dreamer. The architect. The polymath.
Recent events have convinced me I was right all along. David Cunliffe simply needed to change all his policies and sack his caucus, while not scaring the good menfolk of Waitakere-like places who like the existing policies and voted for the current caucus.
This was a historic task, with the plight of the Kiwi and the Weka, but not the Moa, on the line. But it was also so obvious, and so simple. He has failed me and he has betrayed me. The fact that only Bomber, whose very name implies an existing ability to fly, understands my dreaming gives it all the more strength.
We may never fly, but in hundreds of years, using different techniques, some other people just might.