Sunday, March 11, 2007

"THE FLAGS OF NATIONS"

John “Jocular” Johnson considered himself to be the last of the Strolling Players, the last in line of a noble tradition of jesters from centuries past and his job was to reveal the truth to the fools who could otherwise accept no criticism.

In fact, he revelled in rubbing their noses in it and, more often than not, got away with his cutting commentaries because those criticized were indeed truly fools of the highest caliber and hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

He managed to take the words right out of their mouths, and turn them round to gag their users, and never once did he suffer for his deeds.

His victims felt stupefied faced with the people they had considered loyal subjects and true believers. Their loyal subjects and true believers had seen a little truth for a change. He was a teacher.

He influenced a lot of people, he left a mark, especially on the kids, because there was no being impartial for John. Laying out choices meant leaving room for the worst abuses of the powerful. There was no respect, but a lot of provocation, he was right out there, right in everyone’s faces, a cruising shark, demonstrating how to question what was taken for granted. John was a true artisan of ideas who lived in a world of words and images all of his own.

He was not comfortable to be with, but always interesting, a man of few friends.

Said he, “React!”

John was an artist of the word but words were ceasing to be enough, for words were easily manipulated and emptied of meaning. So John came up with an idea which he thought of as pure theatre, but theatre that, by its nature, included the audience as an active part of the performance, such an active part that they could never be the same again after a show.

“The Flags of Nations” was the accumulation of ideas that had been swimming around in his head like sharks for years, at least since sailing on a lend-lease ship in the Pacific in nineteen forty three, though, as a younger teenager, he had written to a girl he was rather taken with talking about his early schooldays. A beautiful girl who had lived in another country, a handful of tickets and endless document applications away.

He wrote, with reference to some international crisis trumped up by the brigades of the dark suited,-

“Now they’re toying with patriotic tunes again. Then, as children, we used to colour flags with wax crayons. Wax crayons smelled sweet. Back then it didn’t take very much of a decision to color flags.”

John had had flags on his mind for a very long time. And sharks. Since the Pacific. He identified with them. Sharks spat cold electric fire. Like John.



This is John’s script, discovered in his room in nineteen sixty six.-


“The Flags of Nations.”

In each country where a performance is to be staged twenty large national flags need to be employed. The flags should be ordered in such a way that the first is a flag that belongs to a nation that is relatively friendly and popular to the audience and each successive flag should be of a nation less popular until the nineteenth, which should be the flag of the worst rival or enemy of the nation the performance is held in. The last flag in order should be the flag of the host country.

The performance consists of running up, in silence, each flag in flames, successively until the twentieth flag is burnt high on the flagpole.

The audience reaction should also be filmed and the resulting collage of images distributed to cinemas throughout the host country.

The performance will be a salutary experience for those present, who, in fact, are the true protagonists of the piece.

John Johnson, BMC production line worker, England, 1954.


John “Jocular” Johnson never put his performance on before a public, not enough contacts, did not know how. John had no connections, couldn’t have told you what Fluxus was, or who Joseph Beuys was. Or Samuel Beckett. John was a true artisan of ideas who lived in a world of words and images all of his own, a world he used to influence everyone he could, but, when he brought the flags idea up in conversation, it tended to end in a stony silence. It was way too far ahead of its time. It still is.

He was way ahead of the times, lighting beacons. He was still in love.

John “Jocular” Johnson took his own life in the Lake District of England in the year nineteen sixty six, at the age of forty two, in the same week in May The Velvet Underground went into the studio in Los Angeles to record their first album. They probably saw the same ocean John had fought on over twenty years earlier thinking of a beautiful girl who lived in another country, a conscription document and a war away.

He went out with dignity. His suicide note read,-


Go and light bonfires, I will light bonfires. Do not go and light pyres. No more pyres, I will not light pyres, I will only light beacons.

John Johnson, BMC production line worker, England, 1966.


He was way ahead of the times. He still is. I carry his beacon.