There is a word ...

In this post I’d like to share with you a recent commission for St Martin-in-the-Fields. Scroll to the bottom if you’d like to read it and nothing else.

Or begin here for a look at the journey towards the piece of writing and some technical bits about the writing itself.

St Martin-in-the-Fields sits in the heart of London, next to Trafalgar Square. The current building is about 300 years old but there’s been worship on the site for over 800 years. It’s the parish church for Buckingham Palace. It’s mentioned in David Copperfield, A Room with a View and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and has featured in TV episodes of Sherlock and Doctor Who.

Most beautifully though it has an astounding record of human rights work.

Pride and Extinction Rebellion began their first London marches from its famous steps. Amnesty International, Shelter and the Big Issue all found a home in its free space in their early days, and St Martin’s was deeply involved in the continuous anti-apartheid protests during the 1980s.

Beginning during the First World War vicar Dick Shepherd kept the church doors permanently open to weary soldiers and since then St Martin’s has stayed open to the homeless, displaced and in need.

I feel very lucky to be working with them.

On my first visit I was left alone in a sort of conference room. There were walls with wood panelling. London streamed by outside. Portraits of past vicars stared stern-benignly at me in the way only portraits of past vicars can. There were bookshelves and I browsed.

I expected religious tracts and yes, there were a few … but there were also books I recognised and loved from my own shelves, books I didn’t expect to find.

The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Eslin and Impro by Keith Johnstone. (I drew much research from Eslin’s book for my recent abyssy long poem Changeling.)

Impro in particular is a book everyone should read. It’s about life as much as it is about Keith Johnstone teaching actors how to improvise. Johnstone died earlier this year. Here’s an obit.

As I began working with the St Martin’s team I realised why these relatively arcane books were on the church’s shelves. Sam Wells is the current vicar, author of over forty books and regular BBC broadcaster. One of his earliest works is Improvisation – The Drama of Christian Ethics, which establishes theatrical improvisation as a model of Christians to embody their faith. It’s a radical and creative book, hugely popular since it was first published in 2004 and draws much from Johnstone’s work.

It’s funny how often some very early impression or discovery will become core to an eventual idea.

Keith Johnstone has an amazing quote. Ostensibly talking about improvisation and not blocking a partner’s ideas, really talking about everything.

‘There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’. Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.’

Just think about all those human rights causes and campaigns St Martin-in-the-Fields has given time and space and support to. All those people in need who have been invited through St Martin’s doors. It’s a history of saying ‘yes’ as much as possible to people.

St Martin-in-the-Fields. Yes.

… was the thought I began to build some work around.

Which lead me to reflect on the word yes. I think yes is a very yellow, bright word. Glittery. Sometimes translucent. Almost like glass. Or a glass bell. Tastes like sweet lemon. Fizzes like sherbet. Would feel warm and heavy in your hand if you held it, like when Frodo holds the ring. The letterforms look as if they could bud creamy flowers at any point.

(Its nemesis, no, is a blue purple bruise colour and tastes like stale liquorice. Slight dampness to it.)

Then came the commission to write a piece for Sir Simon Russell Beale to perform at St Martin-in-the-Fields’ prestigious charity gala. ‘The greatest stage actor of his generation’ says the Independent newspaper of SRB and for more of his achievements here’s the fabulous Stephen Mangan introducing him at the event – excuse my appalling camerawork.

That’s him reading my piece. I’ve never felt so much terror pressure when writing something.

I decided I had three challenges to tackle.

Challenge one – St Martin-in-the-Fields is a place of Christian workship. Yet donors to its work come from all faiths and none. Could I reference the Christian tradition but in a way which felt universal? Similarly I knew that Simon Russell Beale had been a chorister as a child, so could I include something specifically for him?

A few solutions – dimittis and magnificat are drawn from the Canticles sung daily by choirs in Evensong. The references to In The Beginning, portable star, charisma, your neighbour and a few other bits are all glints of Christian literature.

Challenge two – make an abstract notion, that of saying ‘yes’ as concrete as possible. The solution here is a sense of synesthesia. The idea of the word yes being full of light and beautiful sound.

Challenge three – to write a piece that could do justice to sharing Simon Russell Beale’s tongue with his usual Shakespeare, Yeats, Donne and the rest of the fancy pantheon. You’ll have to be the judge here of whether I succeeded in music and pace and feeling. SRB liked the work though and I got a kiss.

Here’s one mistake I made, something which could have been avoided with a little more thought.

I pronounce ‘chant’ with a short ‘a’ rather than a long one, so not ‘charnt’. I felt I had a sweet little hidden rhyme in the magnificat and ‘world cup chant’. Turns out Simon Russell Beale and I pronounce ‘chant’ differently.

Writing below. Hope you like it.

There is a word – no, not that
In The Beginning one,
though it begins much. Ends much too.
No, another. Outwardly at least.

It is a word which glitters. 
Which fizzes on the tongue.

Which twinkles in your memory
from a once when it was softly gifted to you
in a vulnerable morning of your life
and now sparks like a portable star forever moving
through the story of yourself.

It is a word with charisma.
A bright, shimmering, reflecting word. 
A word with brilliance jewelled within.

It rings with courage and joy. 
Hear it in the dimittis, the magnificat,
the Trafalgar Square World Cup chant. 

And friends, it is a word we share tonight,
when in our many-angled splendour we accepted an invitation.
Later you’ll listen to your neighbour 
and this word, I’m sure, will shine from them. 

Because in this place, this word is given freely.
Given to fellow travellers in our ever-aching need.
The simplest, smallest word as the biggest beacon
to love and hope and love and love.

So elemental there should be a square for it in the periodic table.

So fundamental to the wider kindness 
the physicists could smash all their atoms into it,
and still it would hold sinlessly together as an indivisible force.

Yes. This is the word. Yes.

So much harder to say than no. 
It opens us up to whatever may follow.
It unlatches the established door.

It is a word which catches the light of what it is to be human.