Simple Writings

I have decided to revive my anti-war play first performed on the London fringe thirty years ago - ‘Simple Writings’.* Michael Walling of Border Crossings who directed it recently told me that it , “remains very powerful storytelling.” The play was inspired by reading a Grimmelshuasen novel, set in the 17th century German 30 Years War. Bertolt Brecht based 'Mother Courage' on another Grimmelshausen novel.
"Witty, bawdy, and as profound as anyone cares to consider it”. Financial Times
"David Wilson unfurls a sprawling, vibrant, bustling canvas of seventeenth-century German peasant life in the Thirty Years war”. Time Out
One of my favourite films is Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Set in the 1820s, a young man is discovered at night in Nuremberg’s town square, hardly able to stand. He is dumb and has been kept in a cellar, without human contact, since birth. Adopted by a local doctor, he learns to talk and proves to be wiser than those around him.
When I first saw the film, the friend I’d gone with told me the story reminded him of a character in a Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen novel. He said Simplex Simplicissimus was set in seventeenth century Germany at the time of the Thirty Years’
I discovered that the novel had been translated into English in the 1930s. Even though the language was archaic, I loved Grimmelshausen’s story of a peasant boy who’d been cruelly treated by his father and was hardly able to talk. As a mute, he was sent into the hills to watch over the family’s flock of sheep.
When soldiers attack his family’s farm, Simplex watches from the hillside as his parents are killed and his sister raped. He runs into the forest where he is befriended by a hermit who slowly and patiently educates him.
When the hermit dies, Simplex makes his way out of the forest and is found by marauding soldiers. Although he can discuss Plato’s philosophy and Euclid’s mathematics, he has no social skills. Thinking him a fool, Simplex is dressed as a goat and made a figure of fun. Since playing the idiot is infinitely better than killing, he willingly performs this role. He is eventually forced into one of the armies where he proves to be an invaluable military strategist.
I loved the book because its message was that humanity is basically good and is corrupted by social constructs and the institutions of power. What’s more, the powerful are very often very stupid. I jettisoned much of the original story, such as the absurd account of Simplex’s return from Japan to Germany, but kept the essence of the narrative: a journey towards wisdom.
I felt Simplex had a resonance for my own time, an antidote to the next three decades – our own Thirty Years War. This is one of the first scenes I wrote:
MAJOR: (to SIMPLEX) You’re in the army now, laddie, although your beard needs to grow a little if you’re to be a soldier.
SIMPLEX: I’m a match for any old man, Major. It’s not the beard that marks the man, else billy goats would stand in high esteem.
MAJOR: If your courage is as forward as your tongue, perhaps you’ll be useful. (To SOLDIERS) Now men, we’re going to seek out our enemy in that village. (He points) They have to be disarmed as we have information they have a cache of weapons.
SIMPLEX: How do you know that, sir?
MAJOR: (Laughing and winking at SOLDIERS) Because we sold the blunderbusses to them, you fool.
SIMPLEX: This is a poor village, sir. We should travel further south. The peasants there are richer.
MAJOR: Who asked your advice?
SIMPLEX: If we raid this village, we will find little and there will be nothing left afterwards, then we will be forced south anyway. Travel to those villages now and there will still be something to return to. It’s better than scraping at an empty barrel, even if that barrel is standing beside you.
SOLDIER: He talks sense.
MAJOR” Shut your mouth. Prepare to fire.
SIMPLEX: With respect, sir, wait—
MAJOR: Troop advance.
SIMPLEX: Sir, they know we are here. It would pay us to wait and watch where they hide their weapons, or whatever it is you are seeking. If we note their movements, it will save us time and blood. Here, sir. Take this pen and paper and please accept this as respectful advice.
MAJOR: (Waves quill about, as he is illiterate) You do it. I’m no clerk.
* Originally performed as 'Simple Writings' the play's title was changed to 'War Child' when I tried to stage the play to benefit the charity I had co-founded. The full story is in my memoir, 'Left Field'

Broken relationship memories

Everywhere I go in Zagreb I find echoes from 'Left Field'. My work for the naive artist Ivan Rabuzin, the drinking stein I gave to the Museum of Broken Relationships, the funicular we used for the BBC Arena film I produced and where Nada prayed and lit a candle. 

Left Field - more comments

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MANUELA BESTE: "I found Left Field intriguing, moving, thought-provoking and instructive."

  
BECCA BLAND: (Founder of Stand Alone) “This guy has a no bulls*** approach to life and has the strength to live by his beliefs!”

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MATHEW CLAYTON (Head of Publishing at Unbound) “Powerful reading for David's ability to distill character and dramatic moments from his own past.”

EILEEN DAVIES: Wilson's memoir takes us on adventures through the decades and across borders. We share his sadnesss and happiness ...expressed with directness and honesty.

STEVE DAY: “History, celebrity, scandal, war and humour - Left Field is a personal report worth reading.”

  

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ALASTAIR HATCHET: “David Wilson is obviously a lifelong incorrigible optimist.”

DAVID HENCKE: (Investigative journalist) “The work of a determined guy who is prepared to expose fraud and injustice wherever he finds it.”



   

TAWNEE HILL: “Left Field is about humanity; everything he writes is from his heart. People like David need to be recognised and paid attention to. He has an incredible sense of justice, peace and hope, and that is a message the world needs today.”

 

RICHARD HORTON: (Editor of The Lancet) “You write absolutely beautifully. Thank you for your wonderful book.”

"Raw and compelling; a story well told of a vital and varied life."

 
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SHADE MAJEKODUNMI: "Fantastic. Love it. The early childhood stories remind me so much of my own childhood … and of course I too became an activist."

ORHAN MASLO (OHA): “David steered me to who I am and what I do today. Thank you David."

 

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ELVEDIN NEZIROVIC: (Director Pavarotti Music Centre) “Thank you for everything you've done for my city and for my generation of people here.”

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HEKATE PAPADAKI: “They say life is stranger than fiction and when it comes to David Wilson's life, that's definitely the case.”

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REALTA FILMS: "A very personal account of an amazing life, and an insider perspective on the big political issues of the modern era. Enjoyed it very much indeed."

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EUGENE SKEEF: “I am so elated to have read Left Field. I feel like a child at the fountain of narratives.”

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: "The memoirs of War Child whistleblower David Wilson are a quiet triumph."

TABITHA TROUGHTON: “Fascinating, heart-breaking, inspirational and memorably warm and kind.”

MICHAEL WALLING: (Artistic Director of Border Crossings) “Left Field is fantastic. So much I don’t know about someone I know well and so much vivid colour around the bits I did know well.”

ALEXANDER WATT: "David Wilson's memoirs are out of the ordinary, to say the least … his endeavours are at once inspiring and fantastic … Furthermore - it's a WONDERFUL read!"

PRESS articles by David on Left Field

The Guardian

Counterpunch

Kentishtowner


Buy 'Left Field' here

The Fool is for the Many

Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere. —William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
In theatre the fool or jester is central to truth-telling. He / she is the conduit through which the dramatist can deal with essential and often politically subversive issues.
In Europe this tradition goes back to the Romans with the currae, mimi and histriones.
In 16th century England Shakespeare had his clown in Othello, The fool in King Lear, Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream.
In France there was the jongleur, originally applied to a monk, thrown out of his monastery for 'nun frolics'. In Collins Dictionary he is described as one 'who turns things topsy-turvy and makes a hash of all conventions.'
Beyond Europe, In China there are at least six words to describe this character in dramas. My favourite being changyou, who combines story-telling with music.
For the Navajo and Zuni in southwestern USA the coyote takes the place of the fool; deceiver, perceptive, survivor and trickster. Sometimes the Coyote is so involved in his own trickery that he tricks himself which is why there are so many mistakes in the way things are in the world.
In Germany there was Till Eulenspiegel, a folkloric hero dating back to medieval times and ruling each year over Fashing or carnival time, mocking politicians and public figures of power and authority with political satire.
Of course fools, real or invented for theatre, had humble origins. Claus Hinsse, the 16th century jester to Duke Johann Friedrich of Pomerania, began his working life as a cowherd. My favourite German 'fool' is the shepherd Simplex created by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen in his novel Simplicius Simplicissimus.
After reading a translation of this book I based my first play Simple Writings, later changed to War Child, on Grimmelhausen's Simplex. I was drawn to the wisdom of foolery, not only as a clever means to wisdom, but as a wise and strategic method for truth-telling.
So it was a delight to see a dramatic interpretation of Jaroslav Hašek's novel The Good Soldier Schwejk at Sands Films in Rotherhithe. Written and directed by Christine Edzard and performed in Sands bijou theatre. Strikingly inventive sets, a vibrant cast and wonderful live music. The original story updated with Schwejk quoting from Tony Blair, Alasdair Campbell and George Bush
We joined with Schwejk's bumbling attempts to survive the First World War by becoming a nuisance to all those around him. He uses the 'fool's cunning to deal with army officers, police and judges who are urging him into battle. This is the story of the 'little man' caught in a vast bureaucratic machine hurling the world into war. When he arrives at the gates of heaven he is sent back into life because St Peter makes it clear that the world needs more little men to organise against the powerful.
Schwejk leaves us with these words: 'Shouldn't we start at the end and stop wars before they start?'
Yes, the world needs more fools.
The Sand's production runs for two more performances. Details here
http://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/good-soldier-schwejk.html
(If you want to learn more about the fool in this world check out this link: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/640914.html )

Read more about my plays in Left Field

Music of the Spheres

Adapted from THE BIG SONG,a play by Heathcote Williams and based on an original idea by Roy Hutchins

“Instead of the Big Bang, there could have been a Big Song”

When a Tibetan singing bowl is filled with water and it’s struck with a mallet, the water droplets rise up into the air and dance and they make sweet, susurrating sounds as they tumble back down onto the surface.

When certain sounds resonate, material objects as well as spirits can rise. A glass goblet can vibrate sympathetically with a singer’s voice, as can un-dampened piano strings. The glass goblet can shatter. The metal piano strings sing.

Trees sing in the breeze. Strange singing sounds can cross the oceans with their harmonic tremors tracked by seismometers as they travel from Antarctica to Tahiti.

The sounds are like that of laughing monkeys or of barking dogs. But no, they’re icebergs. Singing. The earth is alive with singing.

Sand dunes can behave like tuning forks with their shifting silica grains emitting strange coherent sounds. From the music of the spheres to the four thousand five hundred species of animals which sing.

The Gelada monkeys of Ethiopia sing in choral call-and-response sessions in order to bond with each other.

The monogamous Siamang gibbons of South East Asia perform hour-long duets and they sound like sopranos.

The Indonesian Gibbons sing at sunrise and their songs were so beautiful that ancient Dayak myths speak of the Sun rising in reply. 

Mice produce ultrasonic songs when stimulated by the scent of a female mouse.

Insects sing. Crickets sing in the long grass. Katydids sing. Cicadas sing. Toadfish sing. Male Mexican free-tailed bats sing supersonically as they warn other bats to stay away. 

Gorillas hum while they’re eating to convey their enjoyment. 

Babies hum. They hum to excite themselves with sound. Humming is their first attempt at using sounds to socialize.  

There are comets that sing.The oscillations in the magnetic field around the comet sound like singing.

And as for the music of the spheres, the six visible planets with their elliptical orbits form a six-part harmony motet, while the outer three planets add the rhythm section, with Pluto – the most distant – beating a bass drum.

Back on the ground: the earth itself rings like a bell.

Solar winds interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, causing it to vibrate in sympathy.

Every eleven and a half days, the earth emits a tone some twelve octaves below the lowest detectable note.The Earth is a gigantic, floating, therapeutic, singing pill.

When two black holes collide they produce gravitational waves – these waves can be heard on Earth. The sound has been described as chirping. It sounds like birdsong.

Instead of the Big Bang, there could have been a Big Song.

It’s been said that the poet in all of us is the part that gets most carried away when we listen to birds. No one can know for certain, of course, what it is that birds think.

To the Kaluli people in New Guinea birds aren’t birds but they’re “voices in the forest”. Voices which tell them when certain crops are ready for harvesting.

It’s known that a bird sings for love and that the more complex is its song the more mating success it has. It sings to invite someone to share its home. It sings to defend its territory from predators, but it also sings simply for its own pleasure.

The marsh warbler join together for periods of peaceful singing when they were off-duty, when not bringing food back to the babies.The birds are jamming.They’re sharing new found musical riffs.

Instead of a larynx every bird has got a syrinx which is named after the instrument used by the Greek god Pan who could enchant with his music by playing several sounds at once.

A bird’s syrinx has two sides instead of one. It enables a bird to sing two notes at once; to sing chords and even to sing two songs at once, which can sound even more joyful.

The sublimity of a nightingale had our ancestors attempting to imitate birds’ courtship rituals and their territorial markers because they could see that their songs bore them fruit. 

The Wren produces successive perfect octaves, fifths, and fourths so that their songs sound musical to human listeners. And the notes of its song appear as the opening melody of the second movement of Haydn‘s Symphony number 103, and in the opening of Bach’s fugue in A minor.

Birds are the dinosaurs that survived. We’ve been taught to sing by dinosaurs.

Pre-historic singing began with a wordless chorusing designed to scare away demons.

We sang in echoing caves chosen for their acoustic properties.

Singing synchronized movement in manual labour.

The pyramids and Stonehenge and the beginnings of civilization itself have been sung into place by pre-historic songlines. 

An Amazonian tribe – the Suya people of the Mato Grosso in Brazil – were asked why they sang and they answered: “The Suya sing because they are happy; singing makes us happy. Then they added: “When we stop singing, we will really be finished.”

The Latin word cantare is usually translated “to sing” but its original meaning was “to work magic, to produce magic.”

Hopi legends speak of the Spider Woman who sang the song of creation over the inanimate forms on the earth and brought them to life. 

The Tibetan Om, went half way round the world to morph into the transcendental Amen – the chant which always rounds off an appeal to a higher consciousness.  

In a single vocal chord Edith Piaf could express the sound of suffering humanity.
 

To Ella Fitzgerald: “The only thing better than singing is more singing.”

Singing together out of a sense of defiance has helped people in the most extreme situations.

 

After the words ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ had been sung all over the world, the steel door of his jail cell on Robbin Island was finally prised open and he was released.

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When people sing in a choir their heart beats are synchronized, so that the pulse of choir members tends to increase and decrease in unison.

Choirs have a chemistry. In fact they generate one particular chemical, a neuropeptide called oxytocin.It’s generated in the hippocampus and it acts as a neurotransmitter. It’s been present in vertebrates and invertebrates for 700 million years.

The pentatonic scale in music ancient and modern is a direct steal from nature. The South American potoo bird uses it and its pentatonic song was reproduced in that South American instrument, the ocarina. When Cortez, the Spanish conqueror of Peru, heard it he brought it back to Spain for the scale to become the bedrock of modern music. 

When Woody Allen once remarked that Mozart’s 41^st Symphony in C Major, K551, “proved the existence of God” he could most happily and most accurately be referring to a nature spirit rather than to a God confined to a Church or a Temple.

(The text of The Big Song was sent to me by a friend who watched the Julie Etchingham film about the Pavarotti Music Centre and then read the 'Music and War' chapter from Left Field

20th anniversary of the Pavarotti Music Centre

 

September 2017 will be the 20th anniversary of the setting up of the Pavarotti Music Centre. It will also mark the 10th anniversary of Pavarotti's death. As first director of the PMC, I am hoping that we will mark the date with an affirmation of his words when he said:

' If music is central to a person’s life, it can be something very special and life-affirming. The Music Centre was built for the children – I can only hope that making music helps in the healing process and that it will bring joy to the children of Mostar for many, many years to come.’ 

Watch this space 

Kentish Towner and Left Field

My article about War Child now online at Kentish Towner And the audio version of Left Field is now available as audio version on Amazon, iTunes and Audible