Furious Folly

As we walked over the last wooden bridge and into the playing field we were each handed a small plastic toy soldier. We didn’t know why. Mine had a leg missing. My daughter’s had an arm missing. A bit further on we were asked what colour our soldiers were. Brown: take the path to the right; green: go left. Arbitrary. We were herded up against a rope and could see the green-soldier people against another rope way across the field. Emerging from the speaker above us were disjointed passages about war, wars. Hard to follow. We waited. Two very tall men stood in front of daughter and me and we wondered how much we would see of whatever it was we had come to see. To our right a bright light glared in our eyes. Occasionally a welcome silhouette walked in front of it. Then we were ordered to move. Fast. We moved, and after a bit found ourselves behind a fence, much closer to the green-soldier people who were behind a fence opposite us. Birdsong. Between the two lines of soldier-people a woman slowly dragged a sack round one of two metal trees, each ringed by sandbags. A bugle. Round and round she walked, head down. A man knelt in front of us and pointed a gun at us. No-one was pointing a gun at the soldiers opposite us. What was happening? What was going to happen? Birdsong. Suddenly the fences were opened and we were pushed towards the trees and the soldiers opposite. The moon emerged from behind blue-grey clouds way above the trees then disappeared again and I noticed that the clouds immediately above us were not blue grey but browny-red. Who was controlling this?
 
A drumbeat, from a rough-wood tower, suddenly illuminated at one of the corners of the piece of no-man’s land we were in. Look round. Three other towers, each with a person in. Sounds, words. Where to look? What to listen to? Sudden explosions behind us, over near the river. Smoke billowing up. Or was it mist rising? In the metal tree above us were small cages, each containing birds. From time to time a pair would sing, then stop. Drums, words. Flares, whistles. More loud gunfire. A wounded man, telling us over and over again that he was wounded, where he was wounded, until he disappeared into the dark. A woman sang of loss, a rich lonely voice until she too disappeared into dark. Bright messages shot along wires from one tower to the next and back, each received with a cymbal clash. Mistimed, unpredictable. More bangs and flares, explosions and stars. Behind us, in front of us, all around us, each one reaching higher into the sky. Red drones overhead, talking. Suddenly rain, heavy rain and one of the trees burst into flames. The fire spread along the branches, reached their tips. We watched. What would happen? Small flames fell to the ground and slowly the fire receded. We watched. We listened: the pain, the folly, the madness of war. From one tower, from another tower. ‘If you want to shed blood, Mr President, go to war yourself.’ Placards at each corner in English, French, German. The pain, the folly, the madness, the waste of war.
 
Six people were walking slowly among us, silent, dignified, towards the unburnt tree. They each took a white cotton coat hanging from its branches, put it on and left. Silence.


I doubt I will ever again be able to see fireworks the way I did before this.



I've found a video of part of the performance.