NML some thoughts for John Mac

I think I finally ‘got’ the event after reading John Mac’s essay explaining it more ; a lovingly produced pointless event about a not so lovely pointless war.

No Mans Land according to my understanding of the concept was something that needed just so much arranging. This didn’t stop me, as a Cabinet member, trying to organize it a degree, or two, more than it perhaps wanted to be. Quite often the calculated chaos really rankled with my own ways of thinking about things. Funny because I’m not the most organized person so maybe I just like boundaries and structure to be disorganized within. My difficulty I think was trying to identify the point(s) at which control needed to stop and freewill start. Fortunately the more artistic members of the Cabinet struggled with this less.

I loved that the pointlessness of the event was obscured from and ignored by the stakeholders, the parallels with the subject matter is obvious, or was that me just not quite getting it?

Some other observations;

I think John’s vision was the overriding influence in the Cabinet meetings, and I’m still not sure those evenings shaped the event anymore than if he and Lenka had sliced and diced it how they saw fit. But I do think we challenged the thinking.

The beer in that Charing Cross pub is shocking; I’ve met some lovely people and hopefully made some friends along the way. See you all on Sunday.

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