Little Things still bring ultimate joy
Mentioned in Despatches:
Thought Provoking:
Over the past few months this writer has, on occasion, lazily used the internet version of Roget’s monumental Thesaurus to check his own writing.
He has been somewhat disconcerted to find that word groups from his paper thesaurus have been subtly shifted to suit evolving usage/meanings for United States users and to exclude writers and speakers whose form of English is closer to what linguists term RP, or received pronunication, and its associated semantic fields.
The writer noted a couple of weeks ago that ‘‘peer’’, in US ‘English’, meant work place equals, with no mention of its English House of Lords associations.
This week he attempted to use the internet to find OED etymological listings for several terms, including the word ‘cartoon’.
His internet source recognised only the Concise Oxford, and would not supply English dictionary references.
The local Anglican Cathedral uses a US edition of the NRSV Bible, and the textual changes refer us to a culture defined by the US.
We forget so easily that words are the vehicles of our culture, and the route to our past.
Altering text, no matter how significant its essential meaning, to reflect the belief systems and values of a proselytising and dominant culture is one of the subtlest and most effective roads to cultural conversion. And this writer’s experiences are not those which lead him to say ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
‘They bloody well do! And we do not’. If we value our rich and varied culture we need more than ever to be aware of the consequences of our laissez faire acceptance of inflicted word meaning change.
Those consequences are not pretty, and for the arts, and for critical thought, are significantly damaging.
How can we thank them:
When that I was a little, tiny child, my father would read to me from a leather bound Bible.
We had two in our house. One was a Bible written by King James.
The other, which was the one he read from, because he had been a Methodist, and wasn’t any more, was thicker, and had more words, and was by a Mr Shakespeare, whose bust sat on my father’s bookcase.
My father read the wondrous poetry, the tales of daggers drawn and used, and naughty Bottom with an ass’s head, and kings in armour on their rearing steeds Crying ‘‘God for Harry! England!
And Saint George!’’ And then, some few years later, along came the edifice that Miles built, filled with magic and wonder, and took we mortals into an immortal realm. He (Miles) said:
‘‘When I founded Pop-up Globe in 2015, inspired by my daughter’s interest in a pop-up storybook, my dream was to give my fellow New Zealanders and others the chance to see Shakespeare’s work alive and kicking in a space which he and his colleagues built and in which many of his plays were performed: the second Globe.’’
Dr Miles Gregory, Founder and Artistic Director, Pop-up Globe, continued, ‘‘Spectacular fight sequences, blood spattering the crowd. Laugh out loud comedies, and breath-taking dance sequences.
Expert storytelling. Above all, the experience is a collective one. Our actors make the story with our audience, rather than performing it to them.’’ And he did, and we saw Shakespeare as true as never before, and had such a time as denigrators dare not dream of.
As an audience we truly ‘‘. . . stood like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start.
The game’s afoot!’’ and so it was. The Pop-up Globe became bliss unbound. We thank you all. And like young Twist, we would like some more so now, dear Mr Gregory, unforgettable Mr Gregory, will you tell us where you’ve gone?
It is now a decade on from the first line drawings which provided a chuckle a day across New Zealand and have now spread to newspapers across Oz and the embattled old UK.
Few of us who become parents have any preparation for one of the the most formidable, most joyous, most mysterious of responsibilities.
We do what our parents did, we read books by experts promoted by publishers, and we follow self help columns in our dailies and in women’s magazines, but nothing really prepared us to see, and understand what is coming – until two blokes got together in Nelson. They found that one had ideas which the other could make visible and began producing cartoons which, in their words, they hope will ‘‘remind people that while being a mum or dad can often be really tough, it’s also a great ride, and occasionally downright hilarious.’’ . . . and tender, and dangerous, and frustrating, and rewarding, and every other emotion one could want (or not) to experience in every situation from the most private to the most revealingly public. The remarkable thing is that the images are the very essence of the idea, quite stripped of irrelevancies and diversions which diminish the potency of the poignantly comic narrative. In front of me are twenty cunningly drawn lines, a couple of dots and circles, and five chunks of filler shading.
They morph in my imagination to a father holding a smiling, wide eyed, fully focused, nappy wearing baby perhaps as old as three months. Father is saying ‘‘OK, here are the rules: no drugs, no gangs, always wear a seatbelt, brush at least twice a day and no tattoos before you’re 30. Blink if you agree.’’ Flat white coffee chatters would have a ball, and much laughter, and everyone with a heart will create their own stories to live by.
Lawrey and Lole have been doing this every day for ten years and in their exquisitely intimate cartoons provide an ongoing, and infallible guide to families wanting to live the ultimate good life.
The Pop-Up Globe life guide entertainer may have left, but in Lawrey and Lole we still have the essence of Shakespeare, and ultimate enjoyment, in The Little Things.
‘‘OK, here are the rules: no drugs, no gangs, always wear a seatbelt . . .’’