Sean Davison’s idea of Freemasonry was that everyone was recruited from the professions. He didn’t think he ever stood a chance of becoming one. And anyway, his ‘day job’ as a TV film and video editor (or ‘cutter’) was hardly the doctor/civil-servant/lawyer scenario he envisaged to be a requirement of the Craft. He was happy to be proven wrong and is now looking forward, later this year, to being raised to the Third Degree, readily admitting that being a member of Kirby Lodge No 2818 is a pleasure he could not have anticipated.
    Freemasonry holds an enchantment for him. However, he believes the Craft does not do enough to rid itself of the old image. Images are what he knows about, and he knows that whatever the truth of Masonry’s universal appeal may be, if people simply don’t see it in that light, then it is vital to make the effort to project the true image in ways that all people will see. Power belongs to the makers of images.
    Sean also loves the use of biblical allegory in Masonry and has a healthy interest in Gnosticism and spiritual matters “and what makes me and my soul tick”. He feels Freemasonry “appears to hint towards parts of all this. It does not provide all the answers, but gives a means of examining yourself which would suggest it would help to get the answers.”
    Sean works as a freelance film editor in and around London and is at the forefront of the rapidly changing technical innovations the TV industry is experiencing. “Keeping pace with the rapidly evolving technology is a great challenge - one I really enjoy. I’d been using computers to write music on both for TV and with my band for about eight years, so to be able to use one to edit films on was a real bonus.” Today he is not only involved with the editing of programmes, but also with the graphics and special-effects side as well. There is a documentary series for BBC2 on air in October that boasts his graphics and some of his music. He has also worked on programmes like Watchdog, Paleoworld and Time Team - he was one of the editors working on the live weekend Time Team programmes shown on Channel 4 at the end of August. “People tend to ring me now” he says, “which is nice. I had to ring them at first.”
    Sean relaxes by making music. He is a member of Go Ask Alice, a band named after a Jefferson Airplane song based on Alice in Wonderland, and they gig in and about London, playing venues like The King’s Head, Fulham and Flying Standard, Hackney, but appearances, he muses, are “regularly determined by the day job, which is a great shame.”
    If all that is not enough, Sean is now looking towards the ultimate challenge: to boldly go where no man has gone before. He takes up the story: “In terms of doing things on this planet there is very little left. Travelling from pole to pole, circumnavigating and suchlike, they have all been done. There is only one challenge left - to drive from America to England - so we have decided to do it. A team has tried to go from London to New York and has failed. They got as far as the Bering Straits. So we have decided to go the other way. We are a group of nine people using Hummer American army all-terrain vehicles. We will leave New York in February 2000 and drive north through the States and Canada, up through Alaska to Wales (the closest spot to the Soviet Union), across the Bering Strait, over to Siberia via the Diomede Islands.” He says that to actually cross the dangerous shifting pack-ice that forms the ice bridge, the team will be using a ‘secret weapon’, still under development. There are also two other attempts being planned at present - so it’s a real race.
    “This will be the first great trip of the new Millennium. The sheer scale of the journey is mind-boggling. Treacherous ice conditions, fatigue, boredom, temperatures of minus 70, mechanical problems, logistical problems, local wild-life. It should be an interesting four months!” Interesting? Understatement and ebullience - that’s Sean Davison.