'Only Connect'

It made me almost believe in the power of thought to reach out across the distance of time and death to connect people to each other. And it made me believe in art.

I dreamt I was in Rwanda, alongside Mina and yet not as a grounded form, but as a spirit. I spirited my way alongside her through her difficulties there - and in between I journeyed into some of the slums. Up a higilty pigilty staircase, the surface of which I did not seem to touch I came across a boy. He was about nine or ten and sat crosslegged on a dirty mattress in a house half open to the sky. In amongst the dust and life of Kigali he sat. and somehow I knew he had been a child solider. But he was so very much alive that I didn't look at him with pity or charity or horror, but simply some sense of solidarity - one soul to the next. It was enough just to be with him, in his presence. As I wafted my way out of there I came across piles of cardboard and dirt and rubbish, stacked high in between two concrete houses, about a metre wide and all once again in bright dusty sunlight. I understood, again without knowing how, that this was where a lot of the children slept. Mina and I spoke about how her experience might have been different, even as we watched her solid form of three months ago go about her work. It makes me wonder at the power of thought and at whether we might remain connected and present in other people's lives and spaces even once we have died, or once that time is over.

I wafted onwards to a theatre. The Sherman Theatre, the place where I had my first experience of acting, doing youth theatre here as a girl of eleven. A play was about to be performed and it was that cool darkness before something begins, where the whole place reaks of the dark clutter of anticipation. This time Vicky and I sat, alongside one another and I seemed to be more solid. Instead of being a part of the past I was now grounded and glimpsing some point in my future, just as before it had seemed I was a part of the past. Vicky and I fidgeted, waiting for the play to begin. Eventually, as there seemed no signs of the play starting any time soon I wandered over to the front desk - and there - before me - was a whole table of brochures and leaflets on Rwanda. And there underneath it was a sign saying that all the proceeds will be going to a project that Vicky is going out there to do. And I knew suddenly that the play was about that nine year old boy up those higgilty piggilty stairs, in the bright dusty sunlight.

I had come full loop. And returning to a theatre struck a chord. For years I have felt theatre was my indulgence. It was a bit of a drug that I needed my fix of in order to manage the rest of my life. Amongst friends I have seen it as something to feel a little guilty about. 'Saving the world' seemed a bigger, more important task than drama. And theatre was something that I did on the side of wanting to learn about conflict and gender issues, or travel to exciting parts of the world.

Sitting in that theatre in my dream and seeing the connection so clearly with Mina's work has struck me. Theatre is not just a self indulgent, egotistical hobby. It is not something done only for self. It is creative and inspiring in all forms. It has sparked an idea in me. Maybe not for now. Maybe only in small scale projects. But somewhere, somehow the significance of a trip or a visit can be expanded ten fold if it is used creatively to connect parts of the world to each other. Last week at the War and Peace art exhibition in Stroud brought Liberia to me in a form I have never envisioned it before. It spread the significance of John's trip beyond the agricultural skills he was teaching to those 200 child soldiers. Suddenly, in a cosy bar in a town hall in the middle of England forty people sat alongside them as they learnt to become carpenters and blacksmiths.

Maybe this dream was an answer to one of those questions we had last week; where does art come in protest?

Art (and I mean that in the broadest of possible sense) can make you look at something anew and listen not only with your academic mind, but your loving human heart to someone else's heart.