This Flesh is Mine

'To Agamemnon, Honour is nothing more than
a bone that he drops in the yard
when he gets a whiff of something
with more flesh to gorge on.'

'Through most cultures, through most of history, the arts – music, dance, painting, theatre – have not been done for the living at all, but for the dead. Indigenous performances, African performances, Asian performances are dances for the spirits of the dead- ways to commemorate, to atone and to heal. Their purpose is to say that love continues, and that any pain or sorrow around the death needs to be purged. That the lives of those remaining will only return to a position of balance when the enduring pain has been expunged.' Michael Walling

Border Crossings' two plays, This Flesh is Mine and When Nobody Returns come to London in October 2016.

For the Palestinians home is an absence, so in its absence, with its theft,language and poetry become all important to the preservation of their country. In The Cloud in My Hand the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, wrote;

The place was prepared for his birth:
His grandfather's hill of sweet basil
With views to the east and the west.
God's olive trees rising with the language.

When first visiting Palestine, Michael Walling, artistic director of Border Crossings, was struck by this importance of culture in Palestinian life. 'Palestine is probably the most vibrant space I have ever encountered. Everyone is deeply informed about history and culture.' In April 2014 Michael worked with actors from the Ramallah-based Ashtar Theatre on a production of This Flesh is Mine by Brian Woolland. Using The Iliad as a starting point the play was set partly in the classical and partly in the modern world. In Almond Blossoms and Beyond Darwish drew a parallel between Ramallah and Homeric Troy and Walling has been happy to follow Darwish since, 'mythology allows you to address the present without apportioning blame … it permits a purer, more emotional identification with the experience of prolonged warfare.'

In the upcoming London production This Flesh is Mine will be joined by Brian Woolland's new play, When Nobody Returns. After The Illiad there has to be The Odyssey, after war displacement. The two plays will be performed under Westway near Ladbroke Grove, London, 20 October – 6 November. The cast will include Palestinian actors Iman Aoun and Bayan Shbib. Music by Dave Carey. Director: Michael Walling

'It is as if the people living here are themselves determined not to let it become in any real sense a home. For them, home sits beyond the wall, behind the checkpoint, in the lands from which they are now excluded, towns which most of them have never even seen. Many carry the keys to their ancestral dwellings with them wherever they go, as a reminder of their displacement and their aspiration to return.' (Michael Walling)
 

Michael directed my first play, Simple Writings, and was a major contributor to Spitting Into the Sky, a play about Dylan Thomas. You can read more about his influence on my playwrighting in 'Left Field'. Now that my memoir has been published I have offered to help Border Crossings with the promotion of these plays and with the upcoming London production.

www.davidwilson.org.uk 

Support Jeremy Corbyn

In 'Left Field' I wrote this: "Ambrose Bierce, the American wit, said that politics is ‘a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.’ This 'Politics' takes place in a box with shared rules of engagement. If, like me, you believe there is nothing ‘shared’ about our world, the only place for politics is on the streets, not in a debating chamber full of Right Honourables who barrack and ridicule each other, then go off to have cosy lunches together ... Despite my aversion to the ‘parliamentary road’ I supported Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party leadership campaign. I helped work the phones and databased the media. I have now joined the Labour Party. Perhaps this is because Jeremy offers an alternative to austerity and war, an alternative to the estate agents of New Labour. I have consistently voted for him as my constituency MP for these reasons and not because he belongs to the Labour Party. I write this on a Sunday afternoon in October after bumping into him on the street as he was cycling to visit his grandchild. He stopped to talk and asked me for permission to continue his journey! The next day he was addressing 7,000 people in Liverpool."

Report on Chilcot Report is the 'pick'

My report on Chilcot Report is TLE pick of the day 

James & The Giant Peach

“I crave the tasty tentacles of octopi for tea/I like hot dogs, but I love hot frogs, and surely you'll agree/A plate of soil with engine oil is a super recipe. I hardy need to mention that it's practically free!”
I watched 'The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl' on BBC TV and remembered that 'James and the Giant Peach', which he wrote as a bedtime story for his children was a favourite with mine. There were other links. When Dahl and his wife Patricia's son Theo was four months old a NYC cab hit his pram. He suffered brain damage and developed hydrocephalus. Without effective treatment, severe, damage to the brain will occur. His early treatment in the US had been with the type of valve developed by John Holter, a ventricle-to-atrium shunt system But it kept blocking, and every time it did so, the pressure of water inside his head rose to dangerously high levels. In 1961 the Dahl's returned to England and Theo's care was taken over by neuro-surgeon Kenneth Till at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. He, Dahl and Stanley Wade, a hydraulic engineer friend of Dahl's, set about designing a new valve. The WDT valve was popular for a while in the UK, but it offered too little resistance to flow and patients could experience overdrainage of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Today there are more than 40 different valve systems available, including variations on the original Holter valve - and the name itself is still in everyday use. Kenneth Till operated twice on my son Ben at Great Ormond street after he developed post-meningitic hydrocephalus and needed a shunt. I still remember staff there telling my wife and I that we must not worry, that Ben was in safe hands. He was and today, in his 40s, is living an active and happy life. You can read more about all this in 'Left Field'.

We are Many

Amir Amirani's "We Are Many' has been acquired by Universal Pictures for worldwide distribution, (excluding USA!), and it will be available on iTunes from July 18th and DVD from August 1st. Selected cinemas across the UK are bringing it back in time for the release of the Chilcot Report on July 6th. I am delighted that I will be with Amir on a panel at the South Bank Centre on 2 July as part of their "Protest in the Digital Age' event. Joining us are Gillian Slovo and Haifa Zangana He and I will also be at the Global Voices session at the WOMAD music festival on 31 July. Buy Left Field here

Protest in the Digital Age

100,000 Signatures: Protest in the Digital Age
Royal Festival Hall, Saturday 2^nd July 2016 
12.30 – 13.30
Panel Discussion. Speakers include Amir Amirani; Gillian Slovo; David Wilson and Haifa Zangana.

More details     Huffington Post        Buy Left Field

Wired

If you ever wondered what an activist is or does, then read Left Field and you could be forgiven for thinking that Wilson was wired from a very early age for adventure and rebellion, from his mothers exacerbated remarks to the cobbler in Bromley, ’I don’t know what he gets up to’ as she handed over his battered Clark’s shoes, to his impulsive decision to set sail for Argentina when he was 16 years old. But along the way, this impulse towards action was leavened and combined into a burning commitment to the underdog across a host of groups and contexts at both a national and international level.

'Left Field' takes us through his rejection of the hypocrisy and elitism of the public school system, to which he was subjected, to his CND involvement, the Vietnam conflict, anti-apartheid protests, the miners strike and importantly the Bosnian war, which was a major and lengthy engagement for him through the role he played as founder and director of both the charity, War Child, and the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar. Alongside these political engagements, the creative and adventurous side of his life finds expression in his play writing and the sometimes dodgy deals in the art world of the newly emerging eastern European nations. This latter is thriller stuff!

Interlaced with humour, anecdotes and with a sense of irony, even in the most destructive of situations, the book is intelligently and engagingly written and gives a vivid and honest, blow by blow account of an exceptional life at both a personal and a political level. The many digressions from the political to the personal, from the moving last days of his fathers life, his home in Bromley, the many domestic challenges he faced and the extraordinary achievements of the Pavarotti Music Centre in a theatre of war, all work to weave together a mosaic of a life lived to the full.

What is refreshing about this book is the absence of ideological preaching. It is just Wilson, sharing his life experience but with a host of rather depressing implications for the reader to draw, significantly, how power elites at all levels, even charities, work to maintain the status quo, how ethnicity is used to divide and rule and the necessity for activists to stay close to the grass roots. It’s an absorbing read.

Maureen Larkin

12 June 2016