’5′-5,6,7 plus wheel

Menagerie Theatre Company’s season of short plays at The Junction, Cambridge.

Feedback to the Artistic Director – an open letter.

Dear Paul,

Good to put a friendly, gangly, bespectacled body and face to the name. I was greatly impressed when, last week, you responded so quickly to my e-mail proposing a Menagerie revival of Apart from George, given how busy you must have been with putting this season of new plays together at The Cambridge Junction. Timely too, as far as I am concerned, as I had decided that Menagerie would be the last door I knocked on regarding commercial applications of my theatre practice. Mind you I always say that and just keep on knocking – as if it’s a dedicated life-choice or something equally devotional.

Yesterday was my first time inside the Junction’s main theatre space and foyer. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with either, although the foyer feels disconnected – and the coffee prices ranged from £1.00 to £1.40 depending in the discretion of individual bar-staff. How ‘disconnected’? Unnecessarily uncomfortable! Sofas and revamped wall displays (‘exhibitions’) and a live music element (for certain hours) would help the atmosphere and cost very little. The Junction Foyer is potentially a great live music space – and would be especially suited to the kinds of accoustic grooves you were alluding last Wednesday in Norfolk Street coffee-bar queue (had to look up ‘queue’ in the Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus – a classic problem word for a dyslexic, like ‘psychedelic’. Why? I wonder.)

The theatre itself feels like its inbuilt flexibility has been frozen into the end-on shape – possibly as a result of The Junction being primarily a live music gigging, CD-flogging, stop-over for bands with recording contracts– or is it just laziness? The shopping and restaurant rectangle in which The Junction sits hard against the Cambridge railway junction is a prime example of urban planning blight. The stage is shaken by the London-bound trains as often as they run their savagely overpriced service. In a nutshell an appalling location for a theatre valuing the power of silence and meditation – inner life. Can the inner life of a deeply realised character (or storyteller) be made visible to an audience, or to the individual witnesses of which the audience is comprised? Of course it can, I will be arguing in my campaign to establish an overdue Department of Drama at Cambridge University. In my mind the voice of the great Professor George Brandt echoes down the years. Cinema-lovingGeorge was the German-Jewish founding-father of the pioneering Drama Department at Bristol University – my teacher in my post-graduate certificate course in Radio, Film and Television in 1985 – the year in which Sir David Puttnam was offering weekly lectures on his ongoing experiences in Hollywood. Just before the Super Agents kicked him out.

The Junction cyclorama needs stretching. The entire black box needs painting. The catering, where is the catering? High value soups, sandwiches, organically grown fruit and veg salads, are missing. Personally, I was dying for an all day breakfast, making do with a tuna-salad bagette and bottle of fizzy fanta for £4.60 from the rake-awayacross the quad and consumed with relish in the chilly north wind on The Junction bench. Books to browse would be a welcome addition at The Junction too – as I argue that live theatre venues should be internet-free zones – unless they are sending out a broadband message, of course. Theatre-to-cinema is the future of cinema – but not done the way the National Theatre has been doing it, in denial of the realities of the event itself, ie, by compromising the actual audience-artist exchange in the process of exporting the live event as cinema. Big subject. Theatre-to-cinema is the future of cinema (at least in one of its forms); it is not the future of theatre, it simply helps with the funding. My play The Wheel (2000), a period piece set in the Fens in 1989, predicted this trend with video ‘devices’ written in by the playwright. What is poetic action? Can it be ‘acted’ or is ‘inhabited’ more apposite?

Enter Jaques Lecoq saying: every theatre action is poetic, particularly, the ‘failed’ action as long as it is not ‘acted’ as opposed to ‘lived’.

I apologise for only staying for the first play – and for not picking up a leaflet as you advised in your on-stage preamable. I’d half-promised to attend a folk-psychedelic gig (Naomi’s) at the Portland Arms – also I prefer not to see more than one event at a time – I’m like that with paintings too. I’m often in and out of art galleries and museums – the work of one painter (or sculpter for that matter), one artifact even, at a time, per viewing session, is the best way to stimulate a long-burning response, in my experience. I dislike ‘seasons’ of plays, on the whole, for similar reasons – although I understand that the reason unhelpful groupings are made by artisticdirectors is to molify funding bodies and save on the costs of marketing – to look busy, in other words. The result is too often a labelling mentality which does no favours to the individual artists (playwrights, for instance) who in turn get labelled as a result of the grouping. For a playwright to be labelled in any way, even as ‘young’, is a one-way ticket to frustration and obscurity. Sarah Cane raged against that form of power-broking (Stephen Daldry was a master of of the psuedo-marxist collectivising of ‘new’ playwrights at the Royal Court in 1993 – and he annexed the National Theatre Studio in the process, very smart operator who commissioned The Present workshop production at the Royal Court, with John Simm in the role of Danny, then the title-role in Danny Rule (1993)…hence Cane’s ‘Blasted’ in 1995 and inducement on the part of go-getting playwrights to shake every taboo under the sun, whatever the moral-aesthetic cost. I am perplexed by the censorship debate – and long may I remain that way: it is fuel to a playwright-director as humanist.

The first play tells the story of a woman who has been brutally attacked, raped, abducted and tortured by a man who has been imprisoned for his appalling crime. In a state of extreme anxiety she has been taken to a remote beach (with a steep cliff path the only access) by her sister (and her sister’s boyfriend, whose idea it was) as ‘therapy’. There she attacks a trampy philosopher in a paranoid fit and decides to stay for the weekend rather than return to kill her rapist-attacker in the guise of ‘meeting’ him in an experimental restorative justice programme (I assume). Given you had ten days to rehearse this demanding play (with outward references to Edward Bond: a broken deck chair is in the process of being mended) and that, quite obviously, the good actors (part of an ensemble of 12) are in the process of going deeper with these voluably inarticulate characters (three in their 20s, the tramp, maybe mid 40). Given these built-in limitations of the Menagerie new playwrights project, I am wondering how it might be possible to avoid exposing a playwright’s work before it is ready – within the product-over-process ‘targets’ imposed by the increasingly illiberal mindsets of the arts-funding box-tickers within the Coalition Government – an arms-trading, oil-obsessed, anti-green minority with Prime Minister Cameron proving himself worryingly censorship-prone. . How does our excellent green-liberal MP, Julian Huppert, feel about that statement?

The actors acted ‘cold’ when they told us they were cold rather than simply being cold when they are cold in the story (ie most of the time and getting colder as the play moves on). The highly physical relationship between the sister of the traumatised sexual attack victim and her boyfriend was not believable. The inherent poetic surrealism of the playwright, one of his most promising qualities, was undermined by the crinkles on the cyclorama. Perhaps the playwright might benefit from examining those moments when the actors are speaking beyond the reality, the physical reality, of the setting – and beyond their own ability to articulate. Do they have a tent? To have been as cold as they tell us they are at the beginning of the play it would logically follow that they would all be in a state of extreme hypothermia by the end – and the tramp-philosopher would be deep within his sleeping bag would be my induction.

The physical life of theatre is a given.

I used to get around the problem by developing the physical life of the actors (pre-character) in a story-telling environment prior to (or simultaneously with) the writing of the play – something I tended to do outside the rehearsal space. Hence Apart from George was admired by my Lecoq-devotee friends, Simon McBurney’s troupe Complicite and by Mark Rylance.

The musical life of theatre is not a given.

There is simply no better way of creating a ‘theatre world’ (as distinct from a ‘cinema world’, always a retrospective art form) than with a live and visible music element. However it is impossible to do this with total integrity (ie aesthetically) without developing the musical element from day 1 of the rehearsal process.

I hope these brief insights are helpful. By the way I never made it Naomi’s psychedelic folk gig at the Portland because the play got me to thinking about the themes it engaged with. That means it was worthwhile. I was sexually molested age 14-16 by a close friend of my mother. She was a qualified nurse and I have never spoken about it – partly because she used to dope me (to semi-comatose states) and partly because I have no idea how deeply these ‘medicinal’ episodes effected me. Memory and time are the ultimate theatre subjects. Judgements and finger-pointing are almost always best withheld in the realm of art, of poetry, of music, of painting, etc: of theatre – but not always – for without the potential to finger-point we would lose the ultimate danger of the live theatre event – and in that context the playwright’s ultimate power is reserved and absolute. To quote Hamlet: ‘The plays the thing in which to catch the conscience of the king’.

I look forward to our next meeting.

How do we increase rehearsal-time within existing budgets in the semi-subsidised theatre? – a question much on my mind these days as I continue to formulate an ideal benefits top-up system – the path of minimal subsidy.

Warm regards,

Nick Ward

George Devine Award 1988 (for Apart from George (1987) and The Strangeness of Others (1988).

Apologies for not naming the play and participants – I’ll pick up a leaflet later today and amend this note accordingly. Break legs for the rst of sson. You have a good strong energy.

latest pics:

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…’5′-7 (2012) detail

’5′-7  (2012) in progress

’5′-7 (2012) detail

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’5′-7 (2012), detail

Started this blog 26 Jan 2012 – (work in progress)

3am-6am finished painting ‘5’ – 7 (2012) 6xA4: acrylic, chalk on card and Kleenex… this one was started on the floor of the Judith E. Wilson Studio Theatre, housed by the English Department, Cambridge University, on Monday evening for a very switched on dynamic Israeli teacher (whose name escapes me right now) teaching Lecoq and asking the question ‘Can we make paintngs in the thatre? – feels like a breakthrough, this series.

Documentation – Ecole Jacques Lecoq

This page gives you access to the memory of the school and is an opportunity to
go deeper into the knowledge of the pedagogical basis of Jacques Lecoq.

www.ecole-jacqueslecoq.com/en/biographies_en-000004_t9.html Cached

I agreed with everything Richard Branson had to say (on canabis) BBC R4 1pm news. However I am surpised, these days, that the ‘occupational’ (or devotional) advantages of the sacred weed are not more easily expressed – Bob Dylan used it, so did John Lennon and Bob Marley.

The Shakespeare Princple employed it with superb effects. I used it when I was marathon sculling. It as a banned substance in the World and Olympic 2000m Rowing scene…but I was outside all that – and West Australian rowing coach, Laurie Anderson, was interested in the four stroke cycle (and yoga applications) – and ended up giving me a four-year apprenticeship, effectively, at the West Australian Sculling Academy, on the Canning River – the site of the Commonweath Games Regatta in 1962. This experience took me into professional coaching. A lovely way to make a few quid.

I don’t know much about shale but if Nigel Lawson reckons there’s ‘a bridge’ between himself and Green Peace – that’s something: my advice is legally bind shale-extracted gas revenue with experimental investment in the kinds of schemes (tidal) that I have been arguing  for with the Thames. Protypes in the Green Economy. A transitional time – a time to prove that the vision Caroline Lucas has been proposing, so diligently – and with such infectious good cheer in such a dull and (sometimes visciously dramatic) cockpit, the House of Commons – that Green Economies work – on all levels.

Painting today after the wonderful first Lecoq session last night in which we all became elastic bands (I overdid the double-lotus backflip) – with a slight ache in the shoulder-neck – now gone after a day of painting and listening to Radio 4. I love the drama. It was John Bechervaise, my Antarctic explorer grandfather who first told me the story of Joseph Conrad’s An Outpost of Progress. It was a brilliant performance – it took us half way up Styhead Tarn where I was going fishing while he climbed a few peaks. He loved to climb and he loved to walk. We once found a platypus in the wild – quite near Geelong, my birth place in the Year of the Ox.

Exercise.  Take T.S.Eliot’s The Wasteland and without changing a word perform it on stage – perhaps with the ‘characters’ just performing it in whatever surrounding they chose, or find themeselves,  and it will ‘work’  in a theatre. On the other side of the pond role of the playwright-director became Bob Dylan on the one hand and a whole host of others on the other… I could go on. It’s what the great Jewish intellectual, Erich Heller wrote to me about – and its what Michael Tanner is alluding to in the Spectator with a very rare ! ref the great Samuel Johnson’s total lack of music.

The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page: Quotes on Poverty

Samuel Johnson quotes on poverty. … What signifies, says some one, giving
halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. “And why should they …

www.samueljohnson.com/poverty.html Cached

Can it be true? For he certainly laid claim to the dramatic impulse of the (18th – how could the ‘professional’ stage keep up? It couldn’t but that didn’t mean the profoundest connection that is possible in the field of art – the umbrella-art of theatre – disappeared. It just went underground – and it still does, when it can get away with it.

Michael argues that it next emerges with Wagner – and in many ways he’s right. Plenty to pin down.

Beckett counts.

So does Dickens who had the total dramatic impulse of the age at his fingertips – and he proved it with the one-man shows.

I love his American tour diary.

The moment he discovers two  black men playing fiddle and dancing with a tambourine in devastating poverty in New York with wild pigs running the street.

In recent times the split between body-truth and ‘learned lines’ has been pretty total. ‘Dirctor’s Theatre’ directors when they are any good come back to power of the word and do their best to integrate it into the ‘total theatre’ thing – unless they’re latent  fascists – then they just take the power and manipulate the event. Great playwrights like Arthur Miller and Anton Checkov don’t do that…and from what I’ve gathered over the years neither did Lecoc.

Peter Brook is a profound humanist – as Ted Hughes was – as Salmon Rushdie is. The pathways to mystical Islam exist – they do not need to be found – Sufi wisdom, for example, teaches that the next person you meet will be the teacher you have been looking for. (Thanks to David Lan for that – it was part of a Peter Brook story, Notting Hill, mid nineties.) Where is the past?

Jester: Why do you want to know?

You say: Is that all you have to say?

Jester: Why do you want to know? Here’s my breakdown of the ‘Can we make paintings in the theatre’ session at the Judith E. Wilson Theatre, beneath the Cambridge University English Department, 9, West Road – just along from the Stephen Hawking Building. A lovely space – couldn’t be more perfect.

If Bertrand Russell concluded that the end of mathematics is abstraction and poetry then I am inclined to believe him.

Did you know that the great David Bowie shares a birthday with Elvis? Today I start working with Robin Gillen as Banjo Nick and Robin Hood. Bill Gates on Radio 4 right now , build up…quote of the day from Andy Murray, in Melbourne: do things ‘a little bit different’ Who knows how far you can go, Andy?  Thought-shift to the end of a an unwritten poem

Nick Ward Scenarios search-term of the week:

‘andy pandy loves plum cake’

World Economic Forum. ‘India is the toughest country of all’, says Gates: 2-4 years to eradicate certain diseases. Agriculture – give farmers better seeds. Investment in farming is paying. The Green Revolution of the 70s was right. On Gm? Creating seeds involves GM. Why I’m optimistic: the impact of these pounds everyone in the UK should be proud of. Everyone who is very rich has been asked ‘will you give your money away?’ I’m having such fun. The rich are going to have to do a greater share. Capitalism is a phenominal system because it creates innovation. Other systems don’t allow that to happen. How do we put up taxation? I look at my son browsing and tooling. I don’t talk about who I’m going to vote for. Do they maintain a generosity? I am hoping both candidates will back that generosity’.

Well spoken. I liked Caroline Lucas on Iran. ‘Israel is the most problamatic place in the planet’ is how I put it to my charming and inspiring Israeli Lecoq teacher – and she agreed. Israel is changing and it has to. Iran is changing and it has to.

Live Music Bill passed through House of Commons

Rest in Peace Eta James

I have never heard such a unanimous ‘YES’ as that greeted by the ‘Live Music’ Bill in the House of Commons the day before yesterday. This will be a great boost to small venues up and down the land – and to musicians.

Live Music Bill returns to Commons todayUNLIMITED CMU

Live music red tape likely to be relaxedBBC News

 

and the amazing story of Laura Dekker caught my eye:

The Spectacle Blog

16-Year Old Laura Dekker Completes Solo Sail Around the World

By Aaron Goldstein on 1.22.12 @ 3:52AM

Yesterday, 16-year old Laura Dekker became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe by sailboat when she completed her solo journey which she began a year ago.

 

 

Nick Ward Top Posts (the past week)

“Without meaning to imply that the impulse is essentially to get away from oneself, I think it is about losing yourself in time… I suppose it’s like when painters talk about when they begin to make marks on a canvas and then 24 hours later they’re still working and there’s no sense of the ticking clock and no sense of the self. The self takes care of itself through the work, through the impulse. And I find that intoxicating.” Daniel Day-Lewis on acting.

marathon sculling body types

If I was in charge of MGM 

Happy to Fly (2005)

A dedication (to a Tibetan ‘lamrim’ practice designed to subdue your enemies)

Here goes. Imagine your ‘enemy’. Imagine you are in the same room facing each other. I am imagining  her sitting in a comfortable position with her legs crossed. She is sitting on a cushion which has been embroidered with white lilies with which she identifies.

She is looking straight into my eyes and she is concentrating all her energy in a vindictive way. The hatred begins to manifest physically. She feels a congealing around her heart – emanating from her heart – it becomes liquid-air – a ball of sticky black smoke.

I smile at her – seeing her not as my enemy but as my mother in a different life. The smile provokes a greater intensity of hatred and she opens her mouth. At first nothing comes out. She opens her mouth wide. The glob of foulness removes itself from her heart chakra and begins to rise up through her throat – leaving no trace. It emerges through her mouth and leaves her body. From this point on she  is no longer able to maintain her animosity – it has left her body for ever– but she can still see it! Floating just in front of her nose – and she can smell it. Imagine rotting lilies smelling far worse than weeds (that’s it…) at least she has got it out!

Next comes the dangerous stage. Very gently I use my mind to draw the foul floating gunge towards my own mouth. I open my mouth wide and with the softest of in-breaths I draw the venemous mass into my own mouth… and down my throat. It is heading for my heart. I visualise the cause and effect of this whole damned business as it is about to congeal on my heart. Then an extraordinary thing happens – if the practice has gone according to plan (and if it hasn’t you’re in big trouble) – as it touches my heart it explodes in a puff of pure white light and is no more. It just disappears.

I might try it on Pauline Neville-Jones.

Heart to Heart (lamrim)

Jester: What are your likes and dislikes?

What do you look like?

In the autumn of 2008 I started doing ‘coffee’ paintings: I’d pour the dregs of the Arabian gound coffee and paint into and around the result, often in semi-darkness. That was how ‘Election Day’ came about.  Intention sublimated by process, if you like.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/election-day/

Tantric Rasta is my first ‘instant coffee’ painting. With Tantric Rasta I was put in the mood to paint with my 2 weekly ‘occupational’ cannabis use and having enjoyed a prolonged jam on the Inn on the Green balcony with, amongst others, Bob Marley’s childhood mate, Louis (who would have joined the Wailers but thought there was more of a chance to break free of a life of dynamic (sometimes listless) poverty by becoming a professional sprinter).

Louis became my friend over many months in 2007 when I’d earn my money coaching from a sculling boat in the early mornings and head up to The Inn on the Green to jam and write songs and improve.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/banjo-nicks-open-mic-at-the-inn-on-the-green-ladbrooke-grove-london-saturday-25th-april-and-every-second-saturday-bring-an-instrument-bring-a-tune/

That’s why I have so many songs from that ‘boatman’ time. Louis knew how much I love Bob Marley but didn’t mention the friendship until we’d been hanging out togther for about a year.

Some men are born cool. Hats off to Louis, a true man of ‘do it if it feels right’.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/gordon-brown-versus-scientific-truth/

Louis (self-portrait) 2010

Louis, self-portait, Inn on the Green (3/7/2010)

 Tantric Rasta

Boris…

In deference to the The Daily Telegraph the top story on this morning’s BBC Radio Four flagship Today programme was the estimated £50 BILLION Boris Island Airport folly. The Lord Mayor was accorded the prime 8.10am interview slot to substantiate claims that ‘George and Dave’ (the Chancellor and his Prime Minister) now ‘understand the logic’ and that international ‘sovereign wealth funds’ would stump up the cash at the drop of a hat and this will mean that London will be able to ‘supply the flights’ necessary to ensure that it remains a ‘key financial hub’ and will be able to compete with ‘growth centres’ like France and Germany. All that needs to be done is to ‘scope the idea out’ and crack on with it despite Greenies whinging on about ‘bird life and that kind of thing’.

It took Boris Johnson less than ten minutes to deliver this delusional and environmentally catastrophic piece of hyperbole – and in that time he also delivered a metaphorical karate chop to the ‘Heathrow recidivists’ (arguing for an unnecessary third runway at Heathrow) and found time to casually admit that the entire story was a fabrication and that Dave and George had not, in fact, ‘rung’ him on the matter and that those who argue it will take many, many, years to build are short-sighted idiots who are cannot see beyond their own life times.

Where to start?

I believe it is safe (and logical) to predict that in the years it will take to build Boris Island (or Peninsula) there will be a steep reduction in air traffic globally; the Euro will have disappeared; and there will be a footnote in London Mayoral history recording that the unsustainable vision that Boris is hard-wired to enact was one of the reasons he was beaten in the 2012 contest by Ken Livingston (or will there be a new face in the race?).  

I also like to think that my proposal for the harnessing of the Thames via turbines linked to a revamped Battersea Power Station will also be quietly spinning out of harms way.

Boris Johnson is a great Etonian fool and a dangerous one too. My suggestion to the Today programme is that they invite their old Green Etonian friend Jonathan Porrit and Boris Johnson back on to the show as soon as possible for a real humdinger of a debate in which Mr Porrit knocks the blond haystack out in less than 5 minutes. Caroline Lucas and Steve Trent in the green corner – Dave and George in the blue.

How embarrassing is this whole time and money-wasting episode to passionate and scientifically-minded green-liberals like my local MP, Julian Huppert? More to the point: when will this anti-green Coalition break?

On yer bike, Borrie!

Here are two responses to  blog I posted here on this subject in October 2009:

Turning River Current into Electricity « Interesting Things

23 Mar 2010 … nickwardscenarios | May 12, 2010 at 9:28 am. Boris…Message for Boris Johnson
regarding harnessing the tidal Thames for energy…

thewere42.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/turning-river-current-int… Cached

A Daily’s crusade to save our rivers « Reflections

20 Sep 2009 … Nick Ward, River Environmentalist. Be fearless. Polluters are the scum of the
earth. http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/boris/ …

bdoza.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/a-dailys-crusade-to-save-our-… Cached

Posted by: nickwardscenarios | October 21, 2009

Message for Boris Johnson regarding harnessing the tidal Thames for energy…

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/4698383.NORTH_KENT__Boris_Johnson_says_he_does_not_want_to_build_Thames_Estuary_airport/

Thanks for looking in. The idea of harnessing the Tidal Thames for energy came to me when I was working as a boatman at Furnival Sculling Club in 2007.

Even as far upstream as Hammersmith the tidal range and power of the water strikes you – and the channel is deep, though narrow (as racing rowers know as they battle for the ‘stream’). So a pilot scheme should be tried further downstream. It would work something like this.

The turbine wheels would be anchored and framed within concrete blocks and the tide would turn the wheels. There would be a stopping point, obviously, as the tide changes direction (imagine the Stefano Tartarotti model with flat, reversible, blades, to get a picture of my design concept). The height of the wheel would be calculated to lie safely below the hulls of boats, again, for obvious reasons. There might be a funnelling effect caused by the turbines’ housings – to increase the volume of water moving through. Why not?

Website for this image: thames.me.uk

The flow of the river would not be noticably impeded, even if there were turbines stretching from the mouth of the river up as far as, say, Battersea Power Station.

Everything, including the power cables, would be out of sight. Hard to calculate just how much electricty could be generated until pilot prototype has been tested, but the potential is enormous. Having lived and worked so close to the river it often strikes me how little we use it. What does that tell you?

I worship it! Now, there’s a confession. Also looking forward to having a chat about my proposed marathon sculling race for male and female scullers to chime in with the Thames-friendly Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012, which I blogged about separately on this site. http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/marathon-sculling-log-1/It’s going to require careful management of Sir Steve Redgrave’s diary because he can’t be in two places at the same time.

An early start coupled with some late night festivities could be the way to go with Steve’s official duties in the Olympic Arena as the meat in the sandwich. All good.

 Happy Birthday Ali aka Clay: we love you

Open letter to Kirsten Lavers, Creative Director, FLACK, Cambridge

Dear Kirsten,

This is an example of that strange hybrid, the open letter, in which I will briefly outline my ideological concerns following the good news that the £65,000 required to keep FLACK in operation (in the short term) has been raised, thanks in great part to the online fundraising efforts of Tom Hardy and the support of our highly responsive green-liberal MP, Julian Huppert, a scientist by training, a humanist by inclination.

First a brief history of our working relationship. You first spotted me painting at Winter Comfort in late 2008 and reckoned my efforts were worthy of publication in FLACK’s predecessor, Willowwalker, the resulting visual-art/interview was published in the final edition in Spring 2009 at which time English Church Housing (my landlord at 222, Victoria Road) withdrew their support for you as salaried editor sparking the campaign for a replacement publication. I was very active via Nick Ward Scenarios (and privately) in this campaign to keep you in paid employment, as you know – and the online record is still available.

Here’s an example :

Hats off to Kirsten Lavers and FLACK

 

You invited me to become a Board Member of the then unnamed initiative only for me to resign (to make way for Toby Peters) when I felt that there was no real provision being predicted for commercial relationships with contributors. Toby’s progress as a film-maker is proof that I was right.

I would say that your most attractive quality is your empathy for those in trauma on the frontline of homelessness (and in recovery from it). It is a rare quality requiring enormous patience and determination. You have a profound belief that by giving the dispossessed a voice all kinds of positive outcomes can come about – most importantly, self-determination.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/debate-is-raging-in-cambridge/

Our second collaboration was the ‘Sweet Shop’ artshow which you curated in Summer 2009. I was pleased with this exhibition of prints until I realised that there was no attempt being made to sell the work and that your curatorial authority was so easily undermined by Cambridge City Council officials who shifted the artworks around to make space for their promotional logos and did so with zero regard for the ethics and aesthetics of art exhibition – and for the fact that the show had been ‘signed off’ by me after the very pleasant experience of putting it together with you. In order to protect your relationship with Cambridge City Council I did not kick up a fuss on the Nick Ward Scenarios blog to mark the occasion.

Our third collaboration was the FLACK ‘Round the Bend with Banjo Nick’ column which resulted in my resigning as a FLACK contributor when objections were raised to my piece on the Islamist ‘fatwa’ against Yoga. The Lahiri Mayasaya blog from which this rejected piece was extracted was my attempt to define ‘a language of peace’ in the frontline tribal borderlands of Afghanistan at a time when Western political military strategists were proving incapable of doing so.

On returning to FLACK in response to the recent funding crisis I set aside my reservations about your methodology and was pleased that you had argued the case for giving me blogging-space (and painting space) at FLACK and the hope that we might be able to form a creative and commercial partnership as I gain confidence as a visual artist and singer-songwriter (Banjo Nick), write poetry (‘Where Have All The Sparrows Gone?’ is in  the current edition of FLACK) and, above all, to continue to formulate production-models for a Cambridge-based theatre company – a revolutionary benefits top-up model which might prove to have national and international significance – and avoid the pitfalls of exploitation and copyright infringement.

FLACK ‘More than a magazine’ – was coined by me, I am very proud to say. ‘Flack is the new black’ was not written by me – I find it glib and racist – as I write this on ‘old’ black Muhammed Ali’s 70th birthday. My suggestion that the badge-making at FLACK should be individualised and that the profits should be split 50/50 with the makers-sellers was in response to my observation that there is a dangerous tendency to create revenue via a mechanised slave-labour mentality in the ‘homeless sector’. It is almost impossible to make a self-painted badge which does not have artistic merit – that this possibility has been sacrificed for such an offensively ‘trendy’ catch-phrase is beyond me. You told me that you agreed with me on this point but the ‘FLACK is the new black’ poster remains on the front basket of your bike and above the door of the FLACK HQ. How many ‘FLACK is the new black’ badges have been sold? Not many would be my guess. The FLACK beer can pin-hole camera industry is another example. A wonderful product for which the makers are rewarded with coffee and biscuits and the middle-men are rewarded with money and ideologically dodgy homelessness-associated street-cred. The wicker-work coffins which effectively squeezed out the daily ‘art school’ at Winter Comfort is a far more insidious example. I am not a supporter of the Coalition, I do not support the Labour Party. I am not on the Left, I am very definitely not on the Right, however, I am extremely sensitive to the general drift towards ‘disguised’ fascist models of production in which the ‘homeless community’ are simply seen as a work-force policed by a wage-earning elite. It would take a great deal more space and time than I can justify this morning to expand on this statement – and deep down I have to wonder if you would bother to read it if I did. In brief summary, I continue to argue the case for a two-tier approach.

1. Frontline trauma relief achieved through self-expression and the discipline of publication in the market place.

2. Commercial relationships with selected artists like Toby Peters and Julian R, to name but two. Julian is an excellent example of an artist whose visual artwork, particularly his paintings, could sell with the right curatorial expertise, as I have argued for some time. What part did FLACK staff members play in Julian’s recent sectioning under the Mental Health Act? Surely both FLACK and Julian would benefit from a concerted effort to sell his work and celebrate his uniqueness. The standard model is a 60/40 split in favour of the artist. I would argue the case for 70/30 in favour of the FLACK artist – with total self-sufficiency being the ultimate goal.

Warm regards,

Nick

Note added 18/19 Jan 2011

I also dislike the tag-line ‘Homelessness is destructive, FLACK is creative’ which disfigures all the sales points for the magazine. Why? Because homelessness is not necessarily destructive.  There would be no walkabout in Aboriginal Australia, there would have been no Buddha; no Mary and Joseph; no Jean Froisart; no Prophet Muhammed; no Gypsy fortune-tellers; no Atisha; no Lama Ole; no Bob Dylan; no Jongleurs; travelling acrobats; medicine men; hawkers; hobos; no Robert Johnson; no Moses; no Banjo Nick, no human race, etc, etc, if this were true. And is FLACK ‘creative’ per se? Clumsy and wrong! Who is writing this nonsense?

Stephen Hawking: a life in science – Google Books Result

 

simulaneity (:=~) Post Einstein (October 1-3)

 

I was lucky – as a result of Professor ‘philosophy is dead’ Hawking’s regretable hospitalisation VIP tickets for this free lecture were left uncollected in considerable numbers, so I excitedly gained entry to Lady Mitchell Hall, the first time since my undergraduate days (Corpus Christi College, 1981-1984). Cambridge University’s largest lecture theatre has not changed – and the unimaginatively designed ‘hall’ as opposed to ‘semi-circular’ shape was not helped by the SGI and Intel-sponsored wrap-around banners which resulted in restricted event horizons for those, like myself, seated on the edge of the left-hand side of the auditorium.

 

Lord Rees of Ludlow (formerly Professor Sir Martin Rees), Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (a major investor in the Arms Trade).

 

 

books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=0309084105…Michael White, John R. Gribbin – 2002 – Biography & Autobiography – 348 pages
The form of the bet was that, if it were ever proved that the source is a black hole, Hawking would give Thorne a year’s subscription to Penthouse…

 

 

 

 

The sight-line problem was a major disadvantage given the continuous use of illustrative slide and film shows employed by the speakers – 2pm: Introduction by Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor; 2.10pm: Lord Rees, ‘From Planets to Universe’;

 

 

www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/…/perlmutter.htm…

2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

“for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae” with one half to Saul Perlmutter and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess.

3pm: Prodessor Saul Perlmutter, ‘Supernova, Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe. 2.45pm Afternoon Tea Break. 4.25pm: Introduction by Dr Nathan Myhrvold, CEO, Intellectual Ventures; 4.30: Professor Kip Thorne, ‘Black Holes: A New Golden Age’; 5.15pm: Introduction by Justin Rattner, Chief technology Officer, Intel Corporation; 5.25: Professor Stephen Hawking ‘A Brief History of Mine’. 6pm End of Symposium.

 

Sir Richard Branson, representing Virgin Galactic – offering space joy rides to the massively wealthy from December 2012 – a self-confessed Hawking groupie.

Did you know that Stephen Hawking first realised there ‘was something wrong’ with him when he could no longer row a sculling boat in Spring 1962, in Oxford. There can be no greater inspiration for a lapsed marathon single sculler to get back into a boat – for the sheer joy of it.

 

Professor Kip Thorne was a student of the late John Wheeler, the Princeton physicist who coined the term ‘black hole’. On 1 September 1939 Wheeler (with Neils Bohr (1885-1962) published a paper explaining the mechanism for nuclear fission-fusion used in the atom bomb. The same issue of the Physical Review also published an article by J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) and Hartland Snyder describing the gravitational collapse of a star. Princeton was the death-place of the father of modern Cosmology, Albert Einstein (d 18 April 1955). Wheeler spent many years ‘perfecting’ the hydrogen bomb and represented the opposite political extreme to Oppenheimer who later renounced physics and devoted himself to Eastern Mystical systems and meditation (The Bhagavad Gita).

 

Wheeler came to acknowledge that ‘Computer simulation shows that the collapse of a burnt-out star is remarkably similar to the highly idealised one computed by Oppenheimer and Snyder’.  Someone should write a play or make a film Wheeler versus Oppenheimer.

 

(This blog quotes and paraphrases ‘Introducing Stephen Hawking’ by J.P. McEvoy and Oscar Zarate, Icon Books Uk/Totem Books USA, 1996)

 

 

Yes, I am the first to admit that despite my consternation at Hawking’s headline-grabbing ‘Philosophy is dead’ declaration (made, I assume, to draw attention to his 2010 book ‘The Grand Design’) he remains a great inspiration to me and has been for many years. As an undergraduate I would often pass him on the shortcut through King’s College to the English Faculty on the Sidgwick Site. It was a troubling and confusing time for me, at least on the academic side. I’d come up to read Geography, changed to English in my second term – and was struggling to reconcile the unmanageable reading demands of the English Tripos (I’m dyslexic) with my mission to become a theatre-maker. Theatre-making won. Without fail Professor Hawking would give me a warm smile as he trundled himself around the town and University in his customised wheel chair.

 

 

‘M 21′ painting by Nick Ward (January 2012) – part of a set of 52 divination cards – work in process.

 

He still gives off an encouraging vibe to serious and off-beat types caught up in the sometimes restrictive and reactionary Cambridge University scene – it can be an intimidating place on account of the incredible people who have made their mark here. Think of John Dee, a Founder of Trinity College, who as an undergraduate translated Euclid into English and directed a production of Pax by Aristophenes in which a scarab beetle was seen to magically fly. It was smoke and mirrors but he was accused of witchcraft – a tag which stuck with him all his life, even as Elizabeth I’s official ‘magician’ (a term synonymous in Elizabethan England with ‘mathematician’). Or think of one of Hawking’s heroes, in the generation following John Dee, Sir Isaac Newton, who introduced the idea of a gravitational force of attraction – and that the mutual attraction between two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The applications of Newton’s gravitational law (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, July 5th, 1686) required no modification by NASA programming engineers at Cape Kennedy in the late sixties. Or think of James Clerk Maxwell, Cambridge University, whose Electro-Magnetic Theory of 1867 predicted the existence of Quasars and pulsars in (and?) the cosmic background radiation – now known as ‘Hawking Radiation’.

 

 

‘M22′ painting by Nick Ward (from the ‘M Series’ – 52 imprint-paintings inspired by cosmological genius encrypted in the Mayan Calandar in which the 260-day ‘tzolkin’ (Olmic origin) coencides with the 365-day ‘Haab’ system. The dual calandar system comes back into step every 52 Haabs. Mayan cosmology spans breathtaking time-spans and is thought to have enjoyed a Golden Age around 800 BC. The Calandar starts 13 August 3114 BC and ends 22 December 2012. This does not mean the world is going to end, it simply means that we move from the Fifth Age to the unknown zone – The Sixth Age. Exciting, Mr Branson. Professor Hawking: Philosophy is Dead

Lahiri Mayasaya

Hawking remains an enormously inspiring figure – I was so energised (and troubled) by yesterday’s fascinating series of talks that I hardly slept last night for the following reasons. 1, With hoping that Professor Hawking is ok as he inches towards his unavoidable death. 2, With visualising the colliding black holes, singularities (beyond mathematical rationalisation), imaginary time, warped space, etc, etc. 3. Above all I was kept awake by the impications of Hawking’s highly publicised siren-call for massive increases in funding in US-European investment in space exploration – and the total lack of an ethical perspective in yesterday’s proceedings with respect of the linkage between ‘space exploration’ and the arms trade – war.

 

Not a mumour of ethical responsibility: nothing of the Wheeler and Oppenheimer Princeton drama of the late 30s onwards, for instance.

 

My fears were heightened when an item came on the BBC World Service at 2.50am in which China has announced fullscale entry into the new space-race. What the hell is Russia up to?

 

Sir Richard Branson was at the seminar giving his Virgin Galactic a plug and claiming he’ll have Hawking in space for a joy ride before next Christmas. Virgin Galactic will be the downfall of Richard Branson is my prediction. If only the ruthless and likeable old business hippy were to invest in schemes to protect earth-bound wisdom systems our fragile planet would be a safer place and (with the spin-offs) his worldly wealth would increase exponentially… such is Hawking’s power. He’s honest about it too. He told us in his pre-recorded lecture (spanning childhood to the inevitable collapse of the Euro) that his main reason for wanting to understand the Universe (No Boundary Proposal)  was to become master of it.

 

(ammended 10/1/2012)

 

 

 

In this December 2011 photo made available by the Science Museum, Professor  Stephen Hawking sits in his office at University of Cambridge, in Cambridge,  England. The University of Cambridge says renowned physicist Hawking isn’t well  enough to attend a conference held to celebrate his 70th birthday. Hawking’s remarkable career is being honored Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012, as part of a daylong  conference on cosmology being hosted at the university. (AP Photo/Science  Museum, Sarah Lee)
Read more: http://thetandd.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/stephen-hawking-turns-defies-disease/article_c3532be6-3b09-11e1-9387-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1j4UcrD9P

 

 

 

 

Elvis 75 (2010) painting by Nick Ward

pic below of Cambridge Evening News banner added here 9 January 2012

There was a knock on the front door on Elvis 76 Day and I guessed who it might be, yes, Sir, my old country music partner Mr Pete ‘Jedediah’ Sands. Pete is older than he looks and was playing professionally before Elvis hit the scene – yup, he’s right up there in his eighties – and guess what? He’s come round to see if I was up a few days busking in France next week. ‘Just jump in the motor, boy – and I’ll cover the fuel’. Not possible unfortunately – production meeting with impressario-actor Peter Tate in London on Thursday – a revival of my 1986/1999 ‘Kurtz’ play Splendid Isolation (after Joseph Conrad)  – and then to the balcony jamming gig at the Inn on the Green, Ladbroke Grove, on Saturday), but, Hell, Pete, nice to be asked.

My place – Pete playing Johnny Cash’s ‘Delia’s Gone’ on my banjo-tuned Da Vinci

How does Pete stay so young? – always learning new songs – always working up new material – and he’s slowing down just enough to be digging into the blues. Doesn’t smoke too much – makes a packet of Golden Virginia go for a two or three days – lays off the booze these days – but reckons it nearly killed him in his hell-raising phase.

He was a boxer and snooker hustler – sold oil to farms – and sold songs to Nashville – he’s been ripped off and he’s made a few quid. He can build you a shed; he can fix your motor or your fence. Missed the big break but he’s philosophical about that. He can bullshit too.

He’s getting into Dylan at last – but prefers Don McClean – I played him Nashville Skyline – and he’ll have Lay Lady Lay down by next week.

Pete ‘Jedediah’ Sands and Banjo Nick 

‘Country Kings’ on tour 2006  (pic: H Ward – Dad)

(Mistley, Essex – Church in background is where Mum is laid to rest)

These days Pete earns his money playing clubs and cafes on the French Riviera – for a few hundred quid a night – and he can go for 3 hours. Has a woman down there so that saves on the rent. She’s faithful too and Pete believes her. Pete gave me a place to stay when I was living in a tent by the river in Fen Ditton and busking in Cambridge in 2005 (with the Summer just gone) and we played a lot together – one of my most vital teachers. Never gets sick of the banjo and never got  used to calling it Country… its ‘Country and Western’ to Pete… you should hear his Frankie and Johnny – he can take that song to the  full 28 verses… old busking trick – and now for the banjo break – and now for the banjo break, etc. cheers, mate.

‘Love me Tender’ - Vera Matson/Elvis Presley(?) - a great country song

 Forever young

The name Jedediah comes from Yididyahu, a Hebrew name meaning “Friend of God” or “beloved of God”. In the Bible, Jedidiah was the “blessing” name given by God through prophet Nathan, in infancy to Solomon, King David‘s second son by Bathsheba.

 

 

 

 

‘big new painting part 4′  by Nick Ward (acrylic, glitter, lemon juice), photo, Kirsten Lavers

 

 

 

Pleased to start and complete ‘big new painting part 4′  between 5am and 8am in time for a photo session with FLACK Creative Director, Kirsten Lavers – as I listened intently to BBC Radio 4. On the Today Programme (6am-9am) the results of a survey of Whitehall Civil Servants seems to be suggesting that Whitehall Civil Servants demonstrate that certain kinds of mental activity are in decline by the time said civil servants enter their mid-forties. Hardly a surprise! These penpushing beaurocrats are hard-wired to neglect the kinds of activities which in a healthy sample of the population can lead to great wisdom in the old.  Right brain activities like painting, poetry, music, to name but three. The greatest impression left on me by my time spent with Aboriginal elders (on and off between 1997-2005) was the extraordinary intellectual powers which appear to become enhanced with age: telepathic and divinatory powers, in particular.

 

 

 

 

 my radio, photo Kirsten

 

 

 

Fear of aging (and the moral questions surrounding involuntary euthenasia) was one of the themes of the day. Obviously if old people are treated as expensive ‘problems’ by neglectful families who never think of engaging with the old in wisdom-terms then two results are likely. 1. The encumbered family will ‘quietly’ encourage the euthenasia route (call it assisted suicide, call it murder). 2. The neglected and expensively maintained senior will more likely succumb to vegetable mental states.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ’big new painting’ parts 1,2,3

 

big new painting part 3 (2012) by Nick Ward (6xA4 card – acrylic, glitter)

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