Fires Were Started

Went to the Imperial War Museum on Sunday. I’d wanted to go there for a long time, ever since I developed a fascination with the 40s as a time of simultaneous personal misery and communal togetherness (the ideal state to be in). I didn’t want to see the guns, I just wanted to explore the Home Front, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I should point out the short-term catalyst for this visit was a new haircut. The less eagle-eyed amongst you (or those who don’t know me in the real world) may think I’m still sporting the indie fringe of yesteryear, but no, I now have codebreaking hair, with a sharp side-parting that allows me to crack codes, look stylish and fight a war on both domestic and international fronts. It’s really very exciting.

I learnt a very lot at the IWM. There was a wonderful drive to recycle and make-do-and-mend, driven along by strange little characters and wonderful posters. Everyone seemed to love homemade food and people genuinely helped each other for a greater cause - and I don’t mean the nation, I mean each other. Look at this amazing image.

Abram Games - a great utopian designer.

This day trip felt very important - my new hair might be a fancy, and of course there is no poetry in poverty and war, but there remains a sophistication in the forties which I find fascination, a defiance and an ignorance of the disgusting political atmosphere. A real time of public liberation, and of self-sufficient independence. The War gets all the headlines for its strong leaders and its big bombs, but what really wins my heart is every single story in the streets, and that crystallises in the making something out of nothing that rations made essential.

I’d always marveled at how my favourite documentary-maker, lovely wide-eyed Humphrey Jennings, had brought surrealism to the darkest political times, and it had always made total sense to me, but here at the IWM were scenes after scenes of domestic surrealism, making hats from leaflets, making toys from bins, making communication through wires and string. It was a revelation. This is the message that’s so strange and beautiful about ecology - not that we can save our climate (or not just that) but that we can fashion isolated objects into something new and meaningful, making beauty from scraps.

Cos this was a time of total and utter ambiguity and impermanence, so you just made it marvelous. I know I feel entirely detached and repulsed by the ‘big’ things on the evening news, so I feel similar - building tiny moments of wonder literally from the ground up - a revolution in miniature. A revolt through a side parting, and more more more.