{"id":1965,"date":"2018-08-25T18:02:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T17:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timarnold.co.uk\/?p=1965"},"modified":"2018-09-01T13:28:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T12:28:24","slug":"lindsay-kemp-the-silent-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timarnold.co.uk\/lindsay-kemp-the-silent-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindsay Kemp – A Final Collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lindsay Kemp backstage at What Love Would Want, 2018. Photo by Ben Page<\/p><\/div>\n

In the hours following the news that Lindsay had died, I have never felt more loneliness in my life. It is hard to understand how only two months ago we performed on stage\u00a0to a crowd\u00a0with all the abandon of children playing to parents in a playground, without a single thought that it might not last forever.\u00a0 He was a true friend to so many of us, and I suspect like me, nobody else ever acknowledged his age.\u00a0 Like Lindsay, I\u2019ve never paid much attention to people\u2019s age or gender.\u00a0 All that mattered with Lindsay and indeed with all the souls we truly treasure in our lifetime, is their spirit.<\/em><\/h3>\n

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In the two years that we got to know each other as friends and eventually, collaborators, the impact his spirit was to have on me as a person and an artist remains one of the most valuable times of my life.\u00a0 Not only that, but his attitude towards life was one I recognised to be the same attitude everyone I grew up with in the theatre was motivated by \u2013 an ever-pulsating ability to search for the beauty in human nature and express it as much as possible, through love, life and art.\u00a0 He became a missing relative that I found just in time.<\/h3>\n

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And so now, his passing is of special poignancy to me in that so much of what Lindsay lived for and represented would appear to be the antidote to everything that is so often missing in the world today: acceptance, tolerance, study, generosity, and above all, unconditional love, for ourselves and one another.<\/h3>\n

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Only recently, my dear friend, the American poet and spoken word pioneer Paul Mills (aka Poez) remarked that the very people who originally fought for all we hold dear in our civil liberties, rights, freedom of expression, equality and peace, all seem to be dying at the very moment when we truly need them and what they stood for.\u00a0 As he says in his poem This Is Not The Time: \u201cThis is not the time to put your splintered drumsticks away\u201d.\u00a0 No, it is a time when we must bang our drum and make our humanity heard.<\/h3>\n

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In 2009, shortly before he passed away, the actor Pete Postlethwaite wrote to me about the enduring appeal of Shakespeare which he summated with the words \u201cIt is simply Shakespeare\u2019s love of us<\/em> and our humanity that keeps him alive\u201d.<\/h3>\n

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Our love for each other and our self-love as human beings is at the heart of so much of the suffering we see, and are a part of, in the world today.\u00a0 And that is where Lindsay, like a firefly in the dark clouds of our lives, mesmerised us all, awakening the inner child to remember the possibilities of how beautiful, courageous, free, imaginative and infinitely impressive we can be, just by being who we are.<\/em><\/h3>\n

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Lindsay was a portal for love.\u00a0 It hardly mattered who or what received it.\u00a0 Wherever he went and wherever he performed, love emanated from within him and I am sure anyone else who was fortunate enough to have met him or worked with him would say the same.<\/h3>\n

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He adored Picasso, and spoke of him often to me, reciting the great artist’s quote about all children being born artists and society growing the art out of us all as we get older. Lindsay surely fought this all his life, as to the very end, the openness in his art was always as free as a child.<\/h3>\n

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During rehearsals for our show \u2018What Love Would Want\u2019, he took painstaking efforts in every detail of our performance, most memorably to show me the right way to hold hands with him and the cast during our bows to the audience.\u00a0 He stopped the rehearsal, turned each of my hands around so that they were open to the auditorium and said \u201cWe aren\u2019t just holding each other dear, we\u2019re holding the audience as well.\u201d<\/h3>\n
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Loz Kaye, Lindsay Kemp, Tim Arnold and Emmanuel Vass, Bridgewater Hall, 2018. Photo by Giulia Zonza<\/p><\/div>\n

It seemed so simple, and was one of the many invaluable lessons in true performance he gave me during our time together. \u00a0These are the details only a master knows that the audience never notice, but are elevated by, without their knowledge. It\u2019s a form of genius born out of theatre that Lindsay singlehandedly taught most of British Pop culture over the last half a century, and his seeds of wisdom have taken root in everything I have created since we met, as they have done with so many other performers.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had a propensity to search for mentors all my life, from Buddhist monks and human rights activists to Hawkes of Saville Row, but I was genuinely caught out by the Socratic paradox the moment I met Lindsay: \u201cI know that I know nothing.\u201d\u00a0 Everything I thought I knew about life, love and art started again as soon as he began to unravel the ingredients of his magic spells. He was the greatest mentor I have ever had the privilege to learn from.<\/h3>\n

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In the two songs of mine we worked on together, I asked Lindsay to play the lead role both times. \u00a0The first, ‘Change’ he played the role of change<\/em>, showing only in his face how each of our emotions blur into the next, distinct and yet seamless. He showed how elation turned to regret, regret to hope, hope to doubt, doubt to acceptance and acceptance to joyous surprise.<\/h3>\n