The Re word

Resurrection. No, that’s not the word. Reconstruction. No, not that either. I was only half-listening when the Dean of Coventry Cathedral mentioned the ‘re’ word while introducing the Robert Fripp/Theo Travis concert, an unlikely part of the Coventry Jazz Festival the other Saturday afternoon. Restoration. No, not that. Resolution. Again, no. Not even when the Frippertron himself interrupted his own performance, to introduce his concert himself and mentioned the same ‘re’ word, did I consider retaining it in the anteroom of my memory. Restitution. Resonance. Reconnection. No. No. No. At half-time, I wandered into this modern cathedral’s colourful corners, which reminded me less of church than the atrium of a giant theatre. Rejuvenation. Reformation. Not even close. In an annexe to the left of the entrance, my eye was caught by what appeared to be a kaleidoscopic sculpture made entirely of coloured strips of paper. Something drew me closer. Parts of my mind rushed me towards recognition. When and where had I seen this before? Nearer, I made out the shapes of paper birds. Then, it hit me. It was a smaller version of the paper crane exhibit created by the Japanese schoolgirl, Sadako Sasasi, who died from leukaemia in 1955, having been exposed to the atom bomb in Hiroshima at the age of 2. Knowing she was terminally ill, Sadako was trying to complete the folding of 1,000 paper cranes, following the belief that this goal would see her granted a wish. The story says she reached 644. I’d visited the real exhibit only a month before at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. I don’t really remember making my way back to my chair for the second half of the concert. All I know is that I enjoyed the music as if hearing Robert Fripp play for the first time. He finished the set with the beautiful and rarely played Threnody For Souls In Torment. But I found myself unable to recall the ‘re’ word. I just knew that it was a combination of all. Resurrection. Reconstruction. Restoration. Resolution. Restitution. Resonance. Reconnection. Rejuvenation. Reformation. Reggie Perrin. Later, much later, I turned to the world wide wonder and found Robert Fripp’s diary with his photo-journalistic review of the day, cathedrals old and new (www.dgmlive.com/diaries.htm?member=3). Before I went in, I’d walked the same steps, absorbed the same views. I wondered if I’d thought the same thoughts as Fripp. You see, there’s a collective view of Coventry that’s apt here. The city gets such a bad press. Concrete monstrosity. Well, people too easily forget the awful price the city and its people had to pay one night in November 1940, when Winston Churchill sacrificed it for the price of retaining the secret of breaking the cipher of the Enigma machine. Many UK cities suffered during the war, but none quite as unexpectedly as Coventry that night. Rather than the opprobrium it receives from the ignorant today, it somehow deserves a special place in our considerations. Those who know me well will also understand the significance of Coventry in my life from a personal point of view. How difficult it is for me to return or spend any significant amount of time there. I’d thought the Fripp gig would be an appropriate opportunity for some kind of catharsis. I was thinking about this when the Dean introduced the event, when Fripp re-introduced himself and his music. Now, reading his own review of the day, it was clearly a special gig, the end of his world tour, the end of something. “The new Coventry Cathedral is a remarkable space. The sound from the guitar stool was astonishing. At one point, high notes and harmonics flew upwards and kept going, as if angels in the roofspace had picked them up and were singing.” I did not find it hard to connect the man playing guitar before me with the man whose wizardry lay behind King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man back in the early 70s. A man whose diary notes continued: “The first set was introduced by the Dean, who referred to the Cathedral’s mission of reconciliation.” And there it was, my ‘re’ word. As I left the concert, still unable to recall this word, I remember thinking how it was the most magical of days. That morning, I’d woken to a blinding headache and felt too weak to complete my lawnmowing. Yet, I’d sensed this was an important day. After Fripp, I drove back along empty roads under a startling blue late afternoon sky to see Julius Caesar at Stratford – the first time I’d seen this performance, having studied it for O Level English Literature 35 years earlier. Greg Hicks was a better Caesar than he had been Leontes, King of Sicilia, in A Winter’s Tale. But it didn’t stop him dying with all the others. Something came to an end. I may spend some time yet wondering why I had to go to Hiroshima to settle my own personal conscience with what went on in Coventry, collectively before I was born, and personally, during my youth. Reconciliation surely implies some kind of acceptance. After reconciliation comes the time to get on with life. And that seems a suitably transcendent place to surrender my forty-something self, after eighteen thousand two hundred and sixty three days on this planet, and take up the mantle of quinquagenarianism. Something has ended. Something is beginning.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

No to negative politicians

One of the first jobs I applied for on graduating was as political researcher to the Labour MEP for West Yorkshire’s Bradford and surrounding region. I didn’t get the job. I didn’t even get an interview, despite graduating in politics from the city’s university with a 2.1 (quite something in those days). Perhaps he intuited that I had voted Conservative in the recent 1979 General Election and was personally responsible for the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in our midst. Instead, I signed up for chartered accountancy, underwent a very bad 80s, unlike the party I elected. And the rest is mystory. One in which I have voted for all three major political parties and one or two smaller ones. You may have noticed it’s local election time again. Shirstleeved candidates are knocking on our doors and dropping unspeakably bad leaflets through our letterboxes. My friend, Craig Dearden-Phillips, is on the stump himself, campaigning to break the Tory stranglehold of a local council seat in Norfolk on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Chief Executive of the advocacy charity for people with learning disabilities, Speaking Up, Craig is examining his future lifelines as he approaches the tremendous age of 40 this summer. A couple of weeks back he asked me for some advice on the messages in his campaigning ‘literature’. Already an accomplished author, with a book and regular national newspaper columns to his name, Craig needn’t have worried. But others should. As I write, I’m staring with incredulity at the A4 folded leaflet from the UKIP party. In a bright dayglo pink and yellow combination (first pioneered by The Sex Pistols in 1977), I am invited to ‘Say No to the EU’. And the visual they use on their front cover is none other than Winston Churchill flicking one of his famous ‘V for Victory’ signs. Now, Churchill died in 1965, some 44 years ago, 8 years before the UK even entered the EU. The photo in question clearly dates from the last days of the Second World War. So, I question the wisdom, never mind the legality, of using the image of a politician totally unconnected to the party and its current proposition. The ongoing expenses scandal makes people wonder about the motivations of politicians, who jostle to expiate their sins by humiliating themselves in more and more irrational ways by the day. But, as far as most politicians are concerned, my wonder has always been around this point: what on earth is it about them that they think they have something to offer people in the first place? And there’s the rub. In politics, as in journalism and all the more venal professions, you just can’t get the staff these days. So, the ghosts of our distant past come to remind us how great we once were, in wartime, on rations. In the meantime, if Europe didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it. So, sorry UKIP, people have had enough of the negative message in politics. I’m following Obama when it comes to political inspiration. ‘Yes, we can!’

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/