Chapter 32

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

"I used to be with it but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it and what it is scares and confuses me."

Abraham Simpson

So this Then is the Age of Bush and Blair and Osama and Saddam   ( at one end of the spectrum ) and Aung San Suu Khi and The Dalai Lama ( at the other ).

This is the Age of Globalisation – a euphemism for the ever harder sell of the G8’s Corporate Giants - you WILL buy our dumbed down culture, our weapons and our genetically modified foods, or else.....

It’s also the Age of Terror - as a Tool to keep the People Full of Fear and in their Places. This is the end of the Age of Oil - We are witnessing the last gasping emphysemic breaths of the fossil fuel economy.

The Age of the Greenhouse is upon us. The Sea is lapping at the end of the Street. Maybe it's time to Head for the Hills?

Ronald Reagan has shuffled off stage left, and Margaret Thatcher has already joined him in her idyllic dementia. There she is, falling back into his arms just like in the mocked-up poster for "Gone with the Wind" which Rani sent me in the early Eighties. "She promised to follow him to the end of the earth...He promised to organise it !"... and the mushroom cloud.

The Berlin Wall - so prominent, so seemingly permanent a symbol of the "divide and rule" Evil Empire propaganda of the mid-nineteen eighties - is no more, except as highly collectible slabs of concrete dotted all over the world. The Cold War stand off of Mutually Assured Destruction ended when Mikhail Gorbachev foresaw the imminent bankruptcy of his nation - or the imminent destruction of the whole Earth - and chose to blink first. The people of the Eastern Bloc soon chose to leave the impoverished Soviet Socialist fold and head West towards long dreamt of material riches.

Such changes could never have been predicted at the height of the Nuclear Madness when Xero was blowing his Selmer saxophone in Dortmund Square on the Headrow in Leeds.

In December 1984, three months before "Shove It!" was recorded, in the middle of a Europe bristling with primed nuclear weaponry, I went with my Hungarian friend Ildiko to see the movie Ghandi at the Uranus Cinema in Budapest. I had heard of Citizen Diplomacy and thought it sounded like a grand idea, so I had embarked on my own personal diplomatic mission behind the Iron Curtain. The bonus for me was that Ildiko and her family and friends were so welcoming and such a joy to visit.

Towards the end of the film Ghandi is sitting on a wall by the sea chatting with Walker, the American reporter. “One should feel another’s woes as one’s own” he says. I looked around in the dark and tried to truly understand the intense sadness etched into the faces of people who were anything but free, and who could hardly dare to dream of being so. The last time they had tried to stand up to their oppressors, in 1956, they had been brutally crushed, like so many insects. Their resistance had had to become infinitely more subtle, saved for private moments among true friends.

But the proud Magyar people sat around me in the cinema may well have been given some hope by the Mahatma's words at the very end of the movie. As his ashes are being scattered on the River Ganges, his words ring out, loud and clear: "Tyrants and murderers will always fall". Words which echoed, I am sure, in many of our minds as we filed silently out into the drizzly December evening in downtown Pest. I remember stopping and contemplating the Orwellian “Freedom Monument”, floodlit on Gellert Hill high above the city and wondering how the situation could ever possibly change.

But change it did. I have returned once more since then, soon after the fall of the Wall and on that occasion saw advertising already beginning to spread like the most virulent virus alive. BMWs Mercs and Volvos had replaced Ladas and Trabbies as status symbols. Satellite dishes were sprouting on rooftops where Red Stars once were, and fast food chains were replicating like the most malignant of cancerous growths. I saw people dressed in clothes with a snappier cut and shops selling Western designer labels but I don’t recall seeing happier faces.

..............

"Somewhere over the rainbow

Skies are blue,

And the dreams that you dare to dream

Really do come true.

Someday I'll wish upon a star

And wake up where the clouds are far

Behind me.

Where troubles melt like lemon drops

Away above the chimney tops

That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Bluebirds fly.

Birds fly over the rainbow.

Why then, oh why can't I?"

"Somewhere Over The Rainbow"

Music by Harold Arlen; Lyrics by E.Y.Harburg

Development here would be a curse. You can feel it coming though - the suburbs are slowly but surely taking over the old potato farms, cow pastures and banana plantations. Even the wetlands are being drained and populated.

There are more timber and mud-brick homes around here, but the brick veneereal plague is still rampant. Around town you see more and more faces you don't recognise as all of these people cotton on to the fact that they can have their cake and eat it. They are able to live here in this rural idyll, far from the tall buildings and leaden air of the big city and still make a decent living in this town with no traffic lights.

This is no longer a Backwater. With the Information Age, you can as easily live here and work as in some inner city rabbit hutch. Even when telecommuting isn’t an option, many are choosing to trade economic wealth for health and happiness. A strange demographic has resulted. A lot of the original settlers' families are still around. They know only too well when they're on to a good thing. But now they've been joined by a younger, more cosmopolitan mob - people who have arrived here from all points of the compass, from all over the globe, drawn by some common vision of Eden Revisited. They call this "the Rainbow Region". Yet there is a sadness, a grief somehow permeating this landscape.

When I first arrived in town, I made the comment to my mate Bill that it was so green and fertile around here, and that it felt reassuringly similar to parts of the UK. Now Bill is a Deep Ecologist. My throwaway remark caused him to bite my head off – and, looking back, quite rightly so! He explained that before the arrival of the white settlers, all of this land had been sub-tropical rainforest: the "Big Scrub" - cared for diligently by the Gumbayngirr people and home to mind bogglingly diverse flora and fauna. Bill is a man who proudly wears a feral cat skin hat like Davey Crocket and, over a few schooners down at The Federal, argues vociferously for the eradication of the wild horses from the nearby National Park.

GO FERAL! http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/ferals/ WHERE ISSUES AREN"T SO CUT AND DRIED...

Once a year, the annual Global Carnival turns this little village into a rainbow coloured tent city. This happens just as the warm spring air moistens and as thunder begins to rumble around the valley in the late arvo. It starts to feel like summer is already in the air. The night time frogs and cicadas build to ever more deafening crescendos as a multicultural tidal wave swamps the place and we enjoy a long Labour Day weekend of world music and dance.

VISIT THE GLOBAL CARNIVAL ?

The Global is the cultural highlight of our year - A time to chill, to wander around the leafy Showground enjoying a smorgasbord of sensory delights on our very doorstep.

West Papuan tribal performers, Lantern parades, massive papier mache insects on stilts, wild high wire and trapeze acts, Cuban dance bands, Jewish Klezmer groups, Hungarian Gypsy dance troupes, a tent bazaar full of colourful clothing, hand-made jewellery and other crafts, herbal highs and delicious gourmet delights from all over the planet.

In the afternoon sun, the atmosphere is relaxed. The higher energy acts are on in the evening. Now is a good time for “snacking” and wandering around the marquees, sampling the musical deli on offer. You may like to check out the tent of the Gyuto Monks from Tibet to see where they are up to with the Sand Mandala that they've been making all weekend. They're about two-thirds of the way to creating their disposable masterpiece.

CALL IN AT THE GYUTO MONASTERY

Call in on a recording session of the Gyuto Monks

VISIT TIBET.COM TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MANDALAS http://www.tibet.com./Buddhism/kala1.html

A bit of a buzz has built up about some guy doing a one man show called "Knocking On Kevin's Door" and crowds of eager people are making their way to the Bazaar Stage to get a good seat. I arrive at the marquee to join an audience that resembles a bunch of kids waiting for the Christmas Panto to start. I am glad of a breather, soaking up the atmosphere. My mind is wandering. I gaze into space and am aware of an ocean of friendly faces. Rani is over there chatting with friends, Ella and Will are off wandering around with their respective teenage mates - occasionally gravitating towards their parents when money, food and/or a hug are needed.

I realise that I have tears rolling down my cheeks, tears that come from somewhere beyond grief and joy. I am simultaneously feeling both emotions and it feels as if a dam might be about to burst. Suddenly conscious of the swelling numbers around me, I surreptitiously wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my hemp shirt. The guy with the shaven head, black T-shirt and black jeans setting up on stage looks somehow familiar.

A year after I emigrated I got a letter from Xero. Every now and then I come across it amongst my papers and I always feel this sense of Gladness - a thankfulness for having had the pleasure of knowing him....of having been inspired by him.

"17 Thornville Road
etc etc etc etc
etc ETC

Dear L.Sid,
See....... A letter! Haven’t been able to write for a while because the old problem came back. Had to have another operation, this time in London. I’m now a reformed character, no meat, fish, dairy produce, eggs, alcohol, smoking, keep fit, the whole works.
Talking of whom, they’re fit and we’ve just started rehearsing again after a month’s lay-off.
Things sound nice in Australia, send us the money, we’d love to visit.....it’s grey skies, nothing but grey skies here. Sally is well and gets more beautiful by the hour. She’s become vegan as well, and is responsible for saving my life (really - it was as bad as that.) Paul and Celia are getting married on the 23rd of May. We’re playing at it. We seem to have started a fashion. It’ll be kids next. Hope all is well with you and yours.
Love Xero
X
P.S. I’ve finally got a bass clarinet and it’s wonderful.”

Right now, I wish I could hear him play it, just once.

   global carnival    Photograph ©Tim Page - used with kind permission

Sitting here at the Global Carnival, waiting for Kevin, I am feeling a tad vulnerable. I have just, in the last few days, received my first MOT or Pink Slip from the doctor since my own scare a year before. Rani had been wondering for a while why I had been behaving so oddly, going off the handle for the slightest of reasons. Feeling that my health was falling apart at the seams, I had gone to see our family doctor. Within twenty-four hours I was lying back at the Radiologist's watching, with rising dread, an ultra-sound of my scrotum. There was a round object inside my testicle which definitely should not have been there. I'd had a check up seven years before but at the time I was assured that what I had was a benign cyst.

" What you need to keep an eye out for is a hard marble-like lump inside your testicle" the radiologist had informed me back then. And now here I was...with a hard marble-like lump deep inside my testicle. It had been sore, and for weeks, months even, I'd had this dragging sensation in my groin. But I'd put it down to a football-related strain and had done what most men do - tried to put it out of my mind.

Ultimately, as the discomfort turned to an ache and then to an acute pain, there was no avoiding this one. Within two hours I was sitting - with Rani beside me, my own absolute Rock - hearing the doctor tell us that a CT scan was necessary the next day, but that a prognosis of testicular cancer was almost certain, and that the only way to deal with it was to have a “radical orchiectomy”. I'd never heard of one before, but I had a pretty good idea what one was.

WANT TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT TESTICULAR CANCER ?

A few weeks of hanging around hospitals ensued, with the mainly elderly and worryingly infirm. The radical orchiectomy went as planned - they only took one of my testes, and they did it with such a tiny incision in my abdomen that I was back at home within twenty four hours of the op. The Doctors all advised me just how fortunate I was. After telling me the Bad News, each and every one of them reassured me and passed on the Good News - if I was to have cancer, this was definitely the one to have. And if I was to have testicular cancer, this was the least metastatic one to have. My Inner Homer was doing an internal jig and going "WOO HOO!".

They reassured me that testicular cancer is emminently treatable and that 95% of men survive. Still, that does leave the 5% who don't - and while the odds were encouraging, this was still straying much closer to Misadventure than I ever normally did.  My G.P., my Consultant Urologist, my Oncologist and my Radiologist  (and you know it's fairly serious when you've got one of each of them) all advised me to go to Sydney for a dose of preventive radiotherapy. They told me that they knew from empirical data that my percentage chances of survival were greatly increased if I did so as this particular type of tumour was very responsive to such a blast.

At the Royal North Shore, as my "initiation" I had a pinprick tattoo on my solar plexus to show the radiologists where to aim each time. It reminded me of the indelible lines, dots and crosses that Xero had marked on his cranium for his doses of radio. As I was being tattooed, I enjoyed a little chuckle when I recalled him sitting there shaking his head to see if he could feel or hear the brain fluid that he had been assured was sloshing around inside.

I remembered him telling me that he found it somewhat disconcerting when all of the nurses and technicians scurried out of the room and hid behind thick lead doors as he was about to be zapped. I suddenly felt that self-same unease. In the early Eighties, I had marched in London with a million other peaceniks to demonstrate against things Nuclear and here I now was - relying on the stuff to save my life - or at least to provide me with “belt and braces” as our family doctor put it.

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT CANCER?

WANT TO PAY LESS TAX AND CONTRIBUTE SOME MUCH NEEDED CASH?

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/

or CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO CANCER COUNCIL, AUSTRALIA

There is an underground aquifer of Relief at having a Life back again (for however long it might be - none of us can know). It is finding its way through subterranean cracks and fissures and is causing the tears to flow as I sit at the Global Carnival. I am eagerly soaking up the atmosphere and waiting for "Kevin" to get started. The crowd is by now quite large and expectant. A raucous mob of Black Cockatoos is wheeling around over the showground, cawing maniacally and primaevally. Some Celtic melodies drift on the breeze from a far marquee.

Extremely enticing food smells waft across from the Bazaar, but before I can even think about scurrying over there for a little mid-afternoon snack-ette (that Global Carnival meal between lunch and afternoon tea) I realise that something is happening on the stage. A roadie, the guy with the black jeans and T-shirt and shaven head is wandering around the set, testing mikes with the perennial
"one-two testing two-one-two".

Listen to "Check 1, 2, 3" by Linsey Pollak

He has a solid chin and is wearing shades. As he tinkers with the instruments on the stage, he occasionally laughs to himself and when he laughs he has a way of baring his teeth that is Xero all over.

Have a meander through the extraordinary world of Linsey Pollak

Watch a Video of Knocking on Kevin's Door

He plays a succession of percussion instruments left lying around and with each one he uses digital delays to create repeating patterns. The rhythms he thus creates build, layer upon layer, until they sound like a Balinese Gamelan orchestra. He then picks up a mike stand and proceeds to blow down it. Everyone within earshot is gob-smacked when the sound it creates is that of the most hauntingly beautiful clarinet.

Subsequent tunes have him playing a variety of wind instruments over his own textured rhythms: drink bottles, jawharp, ocarina and perspex clarinet. These are without doubt the most sublime sounds to have graced the showgrounds in the five years of Global Carnivals thus far - at times jarring, at times wistful music that echoes around the valley. The sun is now disappearing, the eye of the day blinking shut. A palette of pinks and purples, peaches and oranges stretches across a very big sky. The flying foxes are performing their staggered take-offs and the fullest of full moons is beginning to rise from the Pacific Ocean.

photograph ©daniel rawson

Listen to "Wail Song" by Linsey Pollak

We are almost at the end of the set, and I am feeling as confused as a person can be. The games he plays, the music he makes could so easily be Xero. The way he laughs to himself, the sly grins, the mischief. If this man is not Xero Slingsby, then he is his long lost twin brother, separated at birth. Or - a multitude of totally insane possibilities race through my mind - did Xero not die after all?  Did he in fact get well and emigrate to Australia under an assumed identity, ending up in Kin Kin - which, according to the programme notes, is where this particular performer hales from? Then I remember the imagination enhancing cookie I ate with my coffee a while back, and come to my senses.

I remember hearing tell of a benefit gig for Xero at The Astoria in Leeds. I was told that it was attended by hundreds of friends and admirers, everyone immensely saddened by the sight of Xero in a wheel chair. He was by then living in a hospice and in a bad way, by all accounts. The night at The Astoria sounds to have been very special, the sadness transformed into an unforgettable celebration of his life. Being part of that was an experience that deeply touched those of my old friends who were there. I guess that if I had been there myself and seen Xero in his final days then I would not have dreamt up such patently ridiculous flights of fantasy.

Still, Kevin's resemblance to Xero is quite uncanny. Another of his tunes involves the use of gaffer tape and digital wizardry to create a bass line, an extraordinary feat which I could easily imagine Xero performing. Xero is without doubt somewhere there in the ether. Kevin holds the black tape taut between his teeth and his thumb and plucks it to create a woody double bass. With some added percussion he creates his own rhythm section. For his final number he once again picks up his clarinet, and using the delays, he creates more interwoven, silken sounds. This bass clarinet echoes around the valley, summoning up ancient spirits, reverberating deep into the black volcanic soil and wafting away into the cyan sky.

Listen to "Hillpipes" by Linsey Pollak

Then, silence.

The audience, at first awe struck, takes a second to respond before erupting into wild applause and much screaming for more. The figure centre stage sticks one piece of black tape to either side of his bald head, looking for all the world like a play on Xero's twin scars. He winks, humbly thanks everyone, and disappears - to the accompaniment of digitally repeating fart noises. The pressing festival schedule precludes any encores, but he is on in the festival cafe tomorrow night, and I will make sure I am there nice and early. I've got a funny feeling that someone else will be there too....unseen.

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"If you are everywhere, you are nowhere. If you are somewhere, you are everywhere"

Sufi Poet, Rumi