FROM THE EDITOR
So sorry for the lateness, he emails. Thanks for the greatness, I reply. Greg Bruce is filing his cover story right on deadline. I could say our ridiculous, rhyming email exchanges are a way to subvert the relentless pressure of deadlines, but they are like an essential mineral that forms the bedrock of my relationships with my colleagues.
Keeping a firm hold on the ridiculous is not a terrible idea when confronted with the chaos of our struggles — the momentary, the daily, the perennial. The personal, the global.
For a band of men who materialised in the early 90s, dressed in primary colours (which, if I’m being honest, as I may as well be, I found an affront at the time), being ridiculous and entertaining to children may have seemed, to the cynical adult mind (ie, mine), simplistic or unsophisticated.
But the story of The Wiggles — or specifically the last OG Wiggle Anthony Field (the blue one) — is a story around the human heart. Field’s story is also a reminder of the fragility of the human condition and the folly of prejudice.
And by that, I mean my prejudice. Because The Wiggles were never on my radar. Partly timing, partly choice. We somehow bypassed that era of children’s entertainment and even if it had been a thing then, I’m not sure I would have steered my kids into that bright carnival.
Field’s story is one of heroic vulnerability, painted in colours outside the spectrum of The Wiggles.
We are all travelling through life and we crash into things. Yet we return to each other. We have to, as we hurtle through disruption and change; the seismic tragedies played out on the screen, or whatever the medium of choice, in real time.
Even if we feel there’s nothing we can do. Even if we are absent and there exists only memory. Even in the deeply quiet times when the room is empty. No one ever really leaves. Wearehere.
Still Here, like our story of Pacific communities, also in this issue.
Noho ora mai