LivinginPeace Testimonial by Brian Heagney

History and Literature are strewn with the shrapnel of self-detonatedUtopias, from Paradise Lost to Dravidian Waco. Whether failed throughpride, impracticality, internecine power struggles, the delusionarymonomania of the founder or a simple incompatibility between the idealsand actualizations of postlapsarian man, we rarely seem able to bringthe thing off.

Living In Peace may well prove to be an exception. It is far from being Utopian in the degraded sense we have come to imagine since the early 20th Century- exclusive, airy-fairy, laughably premised on the ultimate perfectibility of the human spirit- but this is a visionary and inspirational project. A self-sustaining, environmentally-responsible business, existing within and coexisting with a larger rural community, driven by the talents and belief of volunteer workers, any profit from which to go towards the final goal of setting up an artists' retreat. I've stayed at Rongo twice in the last year- spend any amount of time there and you cannot fail to get it.

The sense of purpose and conviction amongst workers, local people, even travellers passing through is so palpable that to find oneself knelt before one's inner altar listening to the crackle of empty static would require a minor miracle. As a good friend for over a decade, I've watched Paul fashion the pith of his world into shapes of his own imagining time and again, successfully and de novo inventing himself as jackeroo, salesman, teacher, journalist, photographer, consistent throughout to his essential and intuitive self. This is the culmination- not so much a retreat as an engagement, exciting, even revolutionary, but to a jaded Tokyo urbanite like myself, less Utopia than life as it should be lived. I look forward to continuing to be part of it.