My day begins at 10am
at The Riverside Rooms where there’s an artist in residence get together:
artists such as Oliver Coates, Gauri Tripathi David
Buckland and David Dunkley .
We get together with Jude Kelly the artistic director and discuss art. It’s an open space and a
great start to the week. What did I
learn? Lots but Oliver Coates spoke
about how great pieces of art were often beings
in themselves and their creation an act
of celebration and rebellion.
Noon approaches. What
was to be a 2pm visit to Royal Society
is now a 3pm visit. So I’m on my bike
skipping across the Thames to Pall Mall to meet Becky Shaw the artist in
resident liason and David Dunkley
at The Royal
Society: an incredible place. It’s a privelige to be given a tour of this
place established by King Charles 2nd the Royal Society records the
making of history from Isaac Newton to Damien Hirst and the Beagle.
But time passes and as we finish it is
clear that I won’t get back to the Southbank to see more history in the making.
A series of actors and musicians are working
through a script in development written by the Kwame Kwei Armah and directed by Jude Kelly at The Southbank centre. It’s all about Bob. Bob Marley. I’m a diehard fan of Marley: His quote graces my book Rebel Without
Applause. I had read two Marley autobiographies by the
time I was eighteen.
I was flabbergasted when at twenty nine years of age I found my late father in Ethiopia whom I had
been searching for him since finding my mother at twenty one and there in the photograph (dated early
seventies/late sixties upon the finger
of his right hand the exact same ring Bob Marley wore upon his: The Lion of Judah in gold set in black
Onyx.