On Monday of this week, I found myself at the bottom of a river. It was dark down there in a room under the Lagan Weir, but I was having a good time because I was in the presence of a powerful piece of art. In case you didn't catch the media coverage, Joe Walsh's sculpture is called Origins and Elements. It consists of four wire-mesh walls covered in dried clay. From inside each wall a light shines through the cracks like a kind of golden honeycomb. The walls are arranged in a rectangle, inside which you can just glimpse – never reach – an empty earthen bowl. The whole thing aims to convey a sense of life starting from the mud, with the inaccessible bowl of desire at life's centre, driving forward all human endeavour. If you haven't seen it, get down to the Lagan Weir as quick as you can, because it's a wonder-filling creation and on Saturday night Joe Walsh will destroy the lot and return the elements to their original source.
At the same time as I stood entranced under the Lagan, less than a mile away in Belfast City Hall politicians were gathered to elect a new mayor. It was a sullen, bad-tempered affair, by all accounts. DUP voices rang out, denouncing first Alex Maskey and then his successor Martin Morgan. If you wanted to be optimistic, you could say that at least the opposing sides met and at least the election happened. Some miles away up at Stormont, another grand building stood empty, – no meeting, no election, no lights. Nothing.
Joe Walsh's sculpture cheered me up with its truth. At the centre of humanity there is a desire to move forward, a longing for something better. In art that means tapping into the elemental. In politics it means growing up, shouldering responsibility, having the strength of mind and will to be what the Quebecois call 'maitres chez nous' – masters in our own house. Five years ago the people of Ireland, north and south, laid the foundation stone for that new, adult political structure in the north. This was to be a joint construction, nationalists and republicans and unionists working together. Through the mud of the past, the light of the future had started to shine.
But then, some people lost their nerve. This new light and this drive to build new institutions – where might it all end? Fearful, they began to cast around for reasons to quit the job. Bury this desire for new beginnings, they told each other. Get back to where you once belonged.
And so, when you look at the political landscape today, darkness seems to be descending. The DUP from the beginning has called for the Good Friday house to be levelled. Destroy it, they say, and we – unionists – will build a new one that keeps out the people we don't like. The UUP, five years ago, made a courageous beginning, but now they're standing by as plans are made to pull down all that has been achieved.
Wrecker-in-chief will be Jeffrey Donaldson. Have you noticed how much he has begun to both look and sound like his mentor Jim Molyneaux – the prim mouth, the blank gaze, the monotone voice? Molyneaux embodied all that the modernised UUP was supposed to leave behind. Yet here we are in 2003, with Donaldson/Molyneaux demanding that the party dance to his tune – reject the Joint Declaration or he'll quit and take half the party with him. If Donaldson prevails, the UUP will soon to be reduced to Molyneaux-style primitivism.
Art and politics. Joe Walsh spent weeks deep in the guts of the River Lagan, building, creating, producing a sculpture that speaks of the god-like possibilities of humanity. Five years ago, high on a hill over Belfast, politicians spent weeks finalising plans for a political house that would warm all citizens and send a light of hope throughout the island. When he destroys his construction on Saturday, Joe Walsh says he'll have no regrets: it'll have completed its work on the hearts and minds of those who saw it.
By the time Donaldson and his glum chum Burnside have finished with the UUP, it'll be a fit home for nobody except political neanderthals.
The tragedy is, there are quite a few people in the Ulster Unionist party who would prefer to press on with the rest of us. Let's pray they may yet find the courage to leave Jeffrey D and David B by the cave fire, scratching their backsides and chewing old bones.
