At the urn, I hear of people’s pasts and hopes, of craftivism and care home sessions, of mental health drop-ins and neurodiverse safe spaces.
I talk to Bill, who encourages art in schools and brings music to people with dementia. He tells me of the woman who joined in all the songs with gusto. The words were all wrong but that didn’t matter, it was the energy of the participation and the joy that came with it that matter.
At night, Rachel and I play a space in the local theatre.
I bump into Gary who I regularly see when performing in south Wales and beyond. He often gives me solid badges of historical resistance and Marxist endeavour. When he was a young man, he and his pal were going to join the [Nicaraguan revolutionary] Sandinistas, but then he realised that his wife would, quite rightly, need him for things around the home. I see in his spirit the passion of those I’ve read about who went into the Spanish Civil War. He takes me to the corner of the foyer where tin-plated sculptures remember the once-thriving tin plating industry of the town.
I think of the passion of so many in this area who fought for their rights as workers while industry was destroyed and a world of zero-hours contracts and perpetual dole became a new reality. So many people still have fight in them, but the mainstream political parties seem scared of anything that smacks of socialism.
On the day of Trump’s inauguration, I reread Kurt Vonnegut’s final book, his collection of essays, A Man Without a Country.
“‘Socialism’ is no more an evil word than ‘Christianity’. Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society that all men, women and children are created and shall not starve.”
Seventy people turn up that night for our show. After the show, I hear further tales and a man has brought his banjolele to show me. He is learning to play the theme tune to the radio show I co-present, The Infinite Monkey Cage.
We all go to the pub and walk in as the band burst into [The Specials’] Too Much Too Young.
There is life here. We must not dismiss it. The next night, we play a heaving scout hut in Narberth.
I have written it before, but I will type it again: Build it… and they might not come, but you’ve still
built something.
Robin Ince is a comedian, broadcaster and poet.
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