Monday 16 May 2011

WE NEED EDUCATION, JUST A DIFFERENT ONE...

I was privileged to see The Wall perform at the O2 last night.   Overwhelmingly powerful images and a blistering guitar solo that blew everyone in the space away, including the guy playing it.     He was, it was, awesome.  There was so much to see, hear, tell that others do it far more eloquently than I, especially those who know and have played The Wall since their teenage years.  There were an awful lot of forty something men crying in the audience during and at the end of the show who had all I suspect in their time, knocked or tried to knock the walls of their own education and limiting beliefs built up by their father, their mother, their teachers, society, politicians, no one went untouched in this show which rocked the wall down and the audience to it's foundations.   It applied as much to the women in the audience too but I think women, or most more readily cry in life so not so many tears.   And all of the messages were as relevant today as they were forty years ago, and probably will be in forty years time, which is not a good thing. We do need education, just not the sort we're getting. 

At one stage of the show there was a video image shown on the 'wall' of children who were visited by their fathers who had returned from war and had gone into the classroom to surprise them.   The camera captured the faces as they each saw their dads walk in. There was one image I will never forget.   The camera went to a girl's face who was sitting at the back of the class.  She looked about eight.   She looked up, initially shocked at seeing her dad, then a gradual wave of realisation crept over her face that her father had just walked in.   She smiled broadly, almost laughing, eyes sparkling, and then her face crumbled, slowly collapsing into overwhelming uncontrollable emotion that there was her daddy, her daddy and she hadn't seen him for so, for far too long.  He had to physically pick her up as she literally collapsed, hugging him so tight, tears blistering down her little face.    

Walking back the conversations in the car park were not I imagine the same that you would hear having heard Take That or West Life.  Could be wrong. 

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