Why I rewrote Kipling's "If" in 2020...

In 1980 my Mum was working many jobs, including cleaning for the “Lady of the Manor” in my home village of Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire, Mrs. Heygate.

The Heygate family has owned the flour mill in Bugbrooke for centuries, and I loved going round to Mrs Heygate’s grand house after school to meet my Mum after her genetically inherited cleaning duties, which actually extended to a far more “care-giver” role the appreciation for which was extended to me 40 years later by Mrs Heygate’s daughter Diane at my Great Uncle Derek’s funeral.

Margaret Thatcher in a Heygates smock in 1980, the year I saw the people of my village throw eggs at her Jaguar

Mrs Heygate took a shine to me for some reason and taught me many things that were foreign to a council house kid, such as why there were multiple knives, forks and spoons laid on the table and what they were all for. I thought this amount of silverware excessive for beans on toast, but listened in bewildered amusement whilst also admiring photos of her in silver frames in the 1920s stood next to bi-planes and fantastic automobiles.

One day I arrived, red-faced from chasing Carol Johnson for a kiss again, and she handed me a piece of A4 paper with a plastic sheet made to hold it in a foolscap folder.

Within that plastic lay a poem that was to change and save my life many times over the coming years: “If” by Rudyard Kipling.

Fast-forward to August 2020 and I am stood in my kitchen wondering what to do next in the battle to save humanity from the New World Order. Yes, I realise that’s a grandiose statement, but I always felt in my heart I was to contribute towards something huge in my future, and that future had arrived.

Rudyard’s extraordinary work, which supposedly was written privately to console his friend over the loss of his son, had graduated into a framed piece of calligraphy purchased from a London market 15 years earlier. The words were glowing a golden hue and speaking to me across the room…I didn’t hesitate to start typing a new version to fit the times we were in.

Within a day, I was visited by a young and local filmmaking talent called Ciaran Casey, along with his sound engineer brother Joe Blain. I urged him to grab his camera and whisk me off to the local forest to film my new poem.

Bewildered, but happy to oblige (he just loves the challenge of filming anything), we found ourselves in Lough Key forest park with me dressed in what I can only describe as my “poet outfit” complete with a white hat I had bought only weeks before in Majorca.

Ciaran and Joe were amused that I had not yet learned every line of the poem (they were using to filming Irish rap videos where the artist had rehearsed everything to death before committing to film). We filmed it one line at a time, with Joe improvising the sound recording by holding my phone just out of shot beneath me.

They managed to turn this film around within days because I was in such an urgent hurry to get it up and online. I was most definitely a “pain in the ass” and Ciaran was definitely reluctant to put his name to this work fearing the repercussions from all the COVID-heads in his social circles.

Neither he, nor I, realised then this would be the beginning of a life-changing creative collaboration over the next few years which would see us touring America together. His awakening is still a work-in-progress but his talent as a film-maker was never in doubt.

If…2020

By Mark Attwood (with great reverence to Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are wearing masks and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when your neighbours doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait for the lockdown to be over,

Or, stop believing government lies, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated for posting truth on Facebook,

And use your intuition to get wise;

If you can dream the Golden Age to come here faster;

If you can think for yourself - and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Trump and avoid Disaster

And treat those two just the same:

If you can bear to be called a conspiracy theorist

A CIA term to make a trap for fools,

Or watch long-held beliefs become absurdist,

And rebuild them with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap from all your Crypto

And get some Gold then not give a toss,

And lose your debt and start a new beginning,

And never breathe a word about it to your boss:

If you can force your nerves and courage

To speak your voice when it seems they’re gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the strength to face the dawn

If you can talk on YouTube and keep your virtue,

Or speak your truth without losing the common touch,

If neither trolls nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all followers count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of meditation in 5D,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a multi-dimensional being, you’ll see.