I know I'm frequently mean about Mainland China but every now and again I come across something that totally warms my heart, and former "sewerage" billionaire Wang Yongchao is one of those currently making my heart sing:
What happened was that "sewerage-drains billionaire" Wang was so upset by the city of Guangzhou tearing down so many Ming and Qing dynasty courtyard houses to make way for urban development that he bought 40 of them, had them dismantled and reassembled in the countryside using "temple-quality craftsmen" (Adore that description. China uses it a lot.).
It cost him so much over the years that he had to one-by-one sell all seven of his companies and today the poor fellow is now broke ... but with a new village of Ming and Qing dynasty courtyard houses outside Xi'an in the rural district of Shaanxi as the only thing still to his name.
But what to do with it? He can no longer afford to run the place. Is it now to simply be a white elephant? A sad folly?
Horse-hitching posts and Wang himself.
He also over the years rescued 33,600 "junk" objects from the Guangdong area that were being sawn up and/or thrown away and which always turned out to be interesting folk objects from thousands of years ago. And he particularly fell in love with the strange posts that were being cut up to sell as statues so he rescued 8,600 of them. And, after much study by archeologists and historians, they turned out to be horse-hitching posts from as far back as the Tang dynasty (AD 618 - 907) up to the Yuan Dynasty (AD1217-1368); relics of a collection of Guangdong horse-stud farms that, for several thousand years, bred war horses for Northern AND Southern China. And it turns out that such hitching-posts are endemic to Guangdong and found nowhere else in China. And how great is it that these horse-hitching posts are carved with records of actual historical events that could rewrite the history of China's wars.
So great kudos to Wang for saving them. And for saving the houses. And for saving everything else too. It's just a pity that things have ended up the way they have.
So that's how things stand at the moment: Wang is broke and wondering if he can put his new old township to any use. Yes, he's thought of making it over into a Folk Museum ... but he certainly hasn't thought of turning part of his town into Boutique Hotels. I know I'm longing to spend at least a fortnight exploring his world and I'd dearly love to stay in a Ming Dynasty courtyard house while doing so.
I'm also thinking about Prince Charles and how he once put together a township in England called Poundbury based on Medieval principles of urban/rural use. It was such a silly and romantic thing to do that I'm sure Wang would probably be the only other person on the planet to totally get it. Let me see if I can find anything on how Prince Charles once ended up with a town on his hands and no idea what to do next.
You know, I think if any two people should get together to talk it's Prince Charles and Wang Yongchao because they'd totally get each other. And since Prince Charles has previously been down this path himself he would probably really be helpful with the advice.
But anyway, if you have any ideas for what my new hero Wang should do with his new old town, he can undoubtedly be reached though the writer of the Daily Post article Lu Hongyan, who can be reached at zhangzixuan@chinadaily.com.cn
I know I've shown you these photos before but let me show them to you again.
Here in HK you can seldom go out into the street for a ciggie - you can no longer smoke in public buildings - without nasty spitty passersby saying things like "It's you smokers who cause HK's terrible smog."
Apart from being a truly self-righteous, self-important remark that makes me long to whack the speaker across the back of his/her pointy little head, it's so wrong and so stupid. AND I have proof:
A few years back we had a week of very heavy rain that, when it cleared, gave HK the most beautiful deep blue skies.
An actual untouched photo out my window,
the morning the rain stopped.
Just compare it with what the skies more normally look like:
Our view today.
You can see for yourself what a difference it was to wake up that morning to such lovely skies so you can hardly blame me for immediately racing up to The Peak to get shots of HK.
And here's the first one I took when I arrived that morning:
And here's the last photo I took two hours later:
And here's the actual shot of the smog arriving:
As you can see from this shot the smog is arriving from the direction of the Pearl River Delta up in Mainland China.
Satellite image.
I did not take this photo.
Naturally.
See the Pearl River Delta at the bottom left of this satellite image? See the island of HK down there right at the bottom? Now particularly notice the urban density along the banks of the Pearl River. Those are factories and THAT'S where the smog is coming from!
Smokers cause HK's terrible smog? Pshaw and bah humbug! It's those factories up there in Mainland China that pump in that foul air we breathe and we poor humble smokers who have nothing to do with it that are getting the blame.
I was told the other day that the Sand People - aka The Tusken Raiders - in the film Star Wars are armed with genuine Fijian weapons. Very "huh?" right? And definitely one of those things that require checking out.
OK, thousands of Tusken Raiders clips in there. Scary how many young boys have made their own duplicates using stop-go action figures or claymation. Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for.
But is there the real Star Wars clip?
Got it:
YES!!! Check out that: if you freeze at 1.07, 1.29 and 1.52 I think we have the definitive answer YES! The Tusken Raiders are very definitely carrying a Fijian weapon called something like totokai. We used to have one hanging among other antique Fijian weapons on the wall in our dining room. (Thinking about this, that's shocking Feng Shui. No wonder we had so many battles over dinner.)
But let me get a closer look at that. Can I locate an image?
Yup, that is very definitely a totokai. Looks like a good one too. I wonder where George Lucas found 'em? Barnum's Circus?
Actually, there was a lot of Fijian stuff in Barnum's Circus that has recently come to light and has Fiji up in arm, particularly since they include a lot of Fijians apparently bought off Blackbirders (the slave traders who used to kidnap Pacific Islanders to sell as slaves.) Photos of these poor souls have recently come to light and it's been seen as very offensive.
One of the many offending photos.
And one of those photos includes a totokai. Let me see if I can find that one:
Barnum's Fijians.
With totokai.
Gosh, just look at this. I was told something I thought was impossible, and within 10 minutes I had the answer. It's a Brave New World we're living here and I can't tell you how much I love it.
Richard was traveling through a small country town in Australia when he spotted a small fair and stopped to look around, when, at a stall selling "jumble", he saw this very old photo:
He thought it looked so much like Aussie actress Cate Blanchett ...
Jawbone, chin, cheekbones, eyes,
nose, mouth, eyebrows?
Yup, I think Richard's nailed it.
... he bought it as a joke, but since then he's become intensely interested in who she could possibly be.
Does anyone know?
Since the town in question is the small country town Cate Blanchett's mother's family comes from, he's now pretty well convinced this is a photograph of some random ancestor and he would dearly love to gift this portrait to her.
Does anyone know Cate? Can anyone show her this photo? If she too thinks this is a portrait of some random ancestor of her mother and would really like to own this photo, Richard would love to give it to her, so just ask and I can put you in touch with Richard.
I was sent a lot of gorgeous photos of kiddies sailing in Fiji ...
This, Lady R, is a P-class.
... and again, for the first time in many decades, heard that blast-from-the-past word "P-class".
In all my travels, I have never heard anyone who was NOT from Fiji refer to "kiddie's first yacht" as P-classes but I have never called them anything else.
However I am always given blank stares when I do. What does the rest of the world call little kiddies yachts?
Anyway, I saw these photos and, although very pretty and all that ...
... I thrust them away from me as quickly as possible.
And this is the photo that chilled me to the bone and had me shuddering:
The same shape, colour and size
as "Vuka".
Oh man, I hated my P-class. Like hated it with a deep and desperate passion. Mine was called "Vuka", meaning "The Flyer" but the name was painted on upside-down because I spent so much of my time capsized.
We used to race our P-classes every Saturday morning in Suva Harbour in a big competition ...
Still happening in Suva, although these photos
are taken in Savusavu Bay.
... and all the highly competitive Murphy kids aced these P-class races, winning awards and trophies and forever up there on the podium ... but not me. Never me. And I didn't even try.
All my siblings can, to this day, name each of the buoys we were supposed to sail to and around, all with names like ... nope, I can only remember "Fumigation", the name of the very first buoy and the one I was determined to never ever go near.
I could rig up Vuka without problems, single-handedly and crying all the while, and sail it alone out of the RSYC breakwater, by this time almost hysterical ... but the very moment I got around the breakwater and hit the choppy water that was me done. I'd capsize the sodding thing, climb atop it and scream hysterically until the duty boat came to get me and tow Vuka back to shore.
The Savusavu duty boat!
Ah, I was definitely the Shame of the Murphys and everyone was very cruel to me about it, but each week it was the same: rig-up, sail out, capsize, scream, get back, unrig, stow, and then free I'd go out to watch the rest of the race at the Point with my mum and all the other mothers.
And when I'd join them, my mum would always say "I'm so ashamed of you. Why don't you at least TRY."
But I couldn't try because I was just so afraid. Not of sailing itself which was easy but of sailing over dark water.
But what was it about that dark water that made me so afraid? Seeing these photos and having all this come back, I sat up late last night recalling it all and that's when I realised what had caused it: those sodding Korean fishing boats and their hideous cargo.
Suva Harbour,
with the Korean fishing boats.
Photo stolen from Jon.
Johnson's photo of Korean fishing boats.
Given my current stance on shark-finning, I'd like to say it was those thousands of shark-fins drying on those dozens of lines above the decks that broke my heart and had me weeping hysterical tears, but that wouldn't be true.
I couldn't explain it back then - and I wonder if I could have if it would have made a difference - but my dark and nameless fear came from the fact that the first buoy was right next to those Korean boats so the moment I'd come around the breakwater I'd see them and instantly I'd be determined to capsize as soon as possible so NOT to reach "Fumigation" so that I wouldn't be anywhere near them.
And the real reason? Well, I now realise that those shark-fins drying in the sun reminded me that the dark ocean was full of thousands of sharks and that if I capsized out there undoubtedly a huge shark would immediately arrive to bite off my legs. And although under normal circumstances even as a tiny child I was very good at talking myself into putting fear aside, but those fins - so many thousands of fins - would get into my face and I couldn't escape the terrifying images in my head.
So that was it for me. Avoiding "Fumigation" became my priority every week ... until mum decided I was a useless little pillock and Vuka was given to Molly instead. Yayyyy! The torture was over.
The worst days of my life!
But there's something else about seeing these photos: they remind me how I really do need to get over myself. I mean, look at those wonderful shots and imagine it for yourself: what sort of Ridiculously Spoilt Brat would dare to class this as unspeakable horror and boldly claim them as "The Very Worst Experience of My Young Life."?
Far be it from me to join in HK's current Hate-On but there is something definitely peculiar afoot.
It happened to me yesterday. I was out shopping when I stopped off at a favourite cafe for a cuppa. The place was full so I shared a table with a very nice HK lady reading a book. I'd just started my killer-sudeko when a Mainlander (obvious by that awful 1970s red bomber-jacket, bad haircut and wrong shoes) sat down with us without asking and shouted at me in the most aggressive fashion "You. Move. Go. Now."
The advantage of having high cheekbones and arched eyebrows is that I can do "rich and snooty" with great aplomb so that's what I did, accompanying it with my best angry, contemptuous glare and a slow "Pook guy!": a most useful Cantonese phrase which has the advantage of being a richly textured and vulgar insult no matter what tones you use. And I really didn't care if I was calling him "Gutter trash!" or telling him to "Drop dead." or the hoped-for "F**k you!"
The man looked shocked then flung back in his chair and stormed off in a rage, like that was the ultimate insult he could deliver in reply. Like I cared! Go me!
The very nice HK lady was as shocked as I was. "I'm so embarrassed" she said. "I've never known any Chinese to be so rude. I would like to apologise on behalf of all Chinese."
"Hey, no need." I said. "The Mainland is up to something."
"Yes." she said. "It's like 2003 all over again."
And that's when I recalled 2003. The nice lady had nailed it because that's indeed the last time a Mainlander shouted at me. Back in 2003 it was practically the norm for fellows in Mao jackets (they all wore Mao jackets back then) (definitely preferable to those 70s bomber jackets they wear now.) to approach me in the streets and shout right into my face, in flawless English, and with a rude, thrusting, prodding finger: "You British stole our flag. That's our symbol for "beautiful, rich, abundant country" and you stole it so we can't use it. We will get you for it. We will get you."
Like, say wot? Initially, the first few times it happened, I tried to argue that the Union Jack was a mixture of four different flags and nothing whatsoever to do with Chinese calligraphy, but that's when I realised that they didn't have any more English than that: that these phrases were learned verbatim, something so bizarre that the only explanation was that someone up there in Mainland China was coaching cadres with these phrases so they could come down to HK and shout them into the faces of we Foreign Devils.
But why? Actually, 2003 also was a really strange era in HK-Mainland relations when China appeared to have forgotten that they'd promised to leave HK alone for 50 years and had adopted the ugliest, stupidest, most-senseless bullying tactics in dealing with us. But then it just stopped. I do know why. However, since I only know because I was shamelessly eavesdropping in a restaurant on a conversation between two very upper-class British fellows, it probably would be very wrong of me to report what I know.
But why the hell not! Prince Charles had sent one of them up to China to find out why this bullying was happening and to request that it was stopped. I was so impressed. He really wasn't kidding in his Handover Speech when he said he'd be keeping a close eye on what was happening. Go Prince Charles.
Hey, I wonder if that speech is on youtube. Let's see exactly what he said:
"Unwavering support for HK." "Close interest in our staunch and special friends." "We shall not forget you and shall watch with the closest interest as you embark ..." Yup, you can see for yourself that he made that promise to HK and I know for a fact he's kept his word at least once.
Of course I don't think it's yet got so bad that the time has come for him to intervene again on our behalf but if Mainland China is once again teaching random cadres English phrases to shout into the faces of we Foreign Devils, maybe that time is not far off.
Hong Kong is in a strange place at the moment. AGAIN. And this time it's all the fault of Dolce and Gabbana.
What's happening is that we and Mainland China are currently at odds and it's gone beyond random fistfights in trains and on the street and has turned into a slanging match in the media, with them calling us "Dogs" and us calling them "Locusts".
"Locusts" for a reason!
This is what the typical
Mainland China's Golden Week looks like
for us in HK.
I don't intend to join the Hot-Heads in this Mass Hate-On although I am willingly taking my part in conversations about how we can always tell who the Mainlanders are. For years, I've been watching Mainlanders get off the bus at Wan Chai, and they're always so different-looking that I've long been studying them to work out HOW they manage to look so exactly like Mainlanders. And they truly do, always, and have decided that the difference is that Hong Kongers always appear sleek and chic - even the sad old ladies going through the rubbish bins for recyclables - while visitors from China appear not to understand the shape and proportions of clothing PLUS they wear haircuts that don't suit 'em PLUS ALWAYS the wrong shoes.
But the nastier conversations I'm keeping away from. Yes, they do pick their noses. Yes, they do slag great globs of phlegm onto the streets. Yes, they do encourage their kiddies to pee and poo on the floor no matter where they are, even on our sublime MTR and the shiny marble floors of our beloved shopping malls. Yes, they do never pooper-scoop after their children. Yes, they do deliberately bump into Gweilos ("foreign devils") in the streets although that's more because they love the way WE always apologise even when it's obviously their fault rather than to hurt us or see us thrown back. Yes, they do throw food-wrappers over their shoulders with absolute indifference to what or who is around them. Yes, we do have to wade through knee-deep garbage when the Golden Week is over.
And yes, they do pour over the border every Golden Week in their millions, like locusts, Hermes suitcases packed full of yuan to buy us out of our stocks of Christian Louboutin, Vacheron Contantin, Prada, Stuart Weitzman and Patek Philippe.
We know all this and were happy enough just to spit out our worse expletive "Mainlander!' whenever these "cultural misunderstandings" occurred in our vicinity until Dolce and Gabbana made all this trouble for us.
But how is this the fault of Dolce and Gabbana you ask? Well, what happened is that they set up a flagship store over in TST to take advantage of this Mainland spending power and then inexplicably announced that any Mainlander was welcome to photograph their store while Hong Kongers were forbidden. But why? To curry favour? To announce their allegiance? Whatever it was, it's just bizarre!!
Naturally, HK "got on the fiesty" and poured out in vast numbers to take photographs of the store ... but bunches of Mainlanders started attacking them for it. Like, seriously, gangs of them would beat up Hong Kongers who were taking snaps of the D&G building.
Is there any word for "somewhere way beyond bizarre"?
And then this appalling piece of Chinese media began doing the rounds. I wonder if I can find it:
It comes with a sort-of translation, but is just so unbelievably awful you do have to watch. It's a seven minute rant by some Beijing Professor - that could only have been aired with the approval of CCP - that is frighteningly and dangerously stupid, and the upshot of it, to me, seems like he's saying "Of course we're allowed to poo and pee in your MTR, and it's only because HK is a pack of British DOGS that you think you have the right to object!"
Even Beijing's lapdog - "Chip" - is so shocked for once he's sided with Hong Kong.
And if that isn't strange enough, this rant was followed up with gangs of Mainlanders attacking Hong Kongers any place and every place and it just got so stupid and nasty that one of the Universities tried to discover why it was happening so ran a survey ... and got the exact same results as the Legco survey run in 2003 and published back then in ALL the newspapers: that Hong Kongers love being Chinese, love China's longstanding civilisation, love China's beautiful material culture, love the exquisite workmanship of Chinese products, love the physical landscape of Mainland China ... but hate the Chinese Government and detest the peeing, pooing, picking Mainland visitors forever pouring into our fair city.
But then the Dean leaked these results to the media and things got even nastier and thus he had to resign in shame. I don't mind in the least that he's gone because I think this is the same Dean who ordered the police beatings of the "V for Vendetta" protestors - protesting the official visit of "a Beijing Nasty" - but I do have to ask why he should be sacked for telling people exactly the same things they were told back in 2003.
Anyway, that's how things stand at the moment. We're resenting being called Dogs and they're angry we called them Locusts ... and it's certainly not over by a long shot with many many more volleys of nastiness still to come.
However it's all so strange that it can only seem like a Beijing Beat-Up however to what end? This is probably just me being paranoid but I'm feeling most uncomfortable mainly because there's the awkward timing issue involved:
As you probably know, Our Very Own Donald's term in office is over so our Punti 900 are shortly to vote for the new Hong Kong Head Honcho. It isn't much competition since we've only got 1) Henry "I'm too stupidly rich for my own good" Tang and 2) The Other Guy who we actually know nothing about because he refuses to debate or make statements or discuss policies ...
... although I have heard rumours that he's Beijing's man ... and now Beijing has come out and ordered the Punti to vote for Henry ... but they're making us so angry with their "dang-their-hides fighting-words" that I can't help think that it's to make us so riled that we refuse Beijing's choice and vote for The Other Guy who is really Beijing Man, which is what Beijing is really after.
That it really is all a very clever double-bluff that we really should be seeing through ... unless it's a double-double bluff and we're meant to see it so we ...
AAAHHHHHHH!!!! That Wong Tai Sin fortune stick really nailed it this year, didn't it: #29: that it will be hard for Hong Kong to tell angels from demons this year. However, if we can just work out what the rest of that prophecy means - "Heaven and Earth will know the difference." - maybe ... just maybe ...
Oh Lordy, who really knows!
Thus despite HK showing its best "feisty", that can be my only choice for this week:
... I have to tell you about something in there that's entirely too strange for words. It came in the chapter about the aftermath of the Sex Pistols, when everything had collapsed around him and Malcolm was broke, depressed, condemned by all-and-sundry, reputation shot to pieces, unemployable in the music industry and hiding out in Paris where, practically on the bread-line, he found a job working as an archivist in a music library.
And here's the bit that entirely astonished me. He says that in those archives he found a record put out by a "leprosy hospital" in Fiji in the 50s - lepers performing the oratorio from Handel's "Messiah" - and laughed uproariously thinking it was so bizarre it would be a complete hoot listening to it.
But the moment he heard the voices and the total beauty of the singing, he was transported. He says that never before in his life had he ever heard music of such entire perfection, with such depths of emotion that it dragged you into the lowest and highest parts of yourself and quickly had you blubbering like a baby, entirely and simultaneously both inside and outside yourself in some new and magic unknown place ... and thus he spun off into rather foolish and unworldly thoughts of dichotomies of "savagery vs civilisation" and decided that it should be the way forward for all music ... so went off and wrote a song about it, which he then gave to a young band he put together called "Adam and the Ants" ... and the song he gave them was indeed the song "Ant Music" above.
However, apart from reducing something so profound into something else entirely - although I do think Ant Music is a great song, it's just not nearly great enough - Malcolm was wrong on so many levels. Firstly, it wasn't a record put out by "lepers in Fiji". Since no other hospital in Fiji ever put out an album, Malcolm McLaren could only have been talking about the record dad put out in 1954: "Tamavua Hospital Choir sings Handel's "Messiah". Secondly, it wasn't "lepers" singing, it was the hospital's nursing staff. And, thirdly, it wasn't even a leprosy hospital: Tamavua Hospital was all about the Tuberculosis Epidemic then sweeping through the Pacific.
And how dad came to put out this record was because he thought the world needed to hear his choir.
It started in 1953 with a concert put on for the patients at the hospital to celebrate Easter, when his nursing staff put together a version of "He Shall Purify" ...
(A version that doesn't come even close to the beauty of dad's hospital's choir, but that's because no version does)
... that, when performed, it's shocking and unexpected beauty had every single person in the hospital blubbering away, weeping silent tears of wonder.
You have to remember that these singers were the front-line workers in a dreadful epidemic. Tuberculosis only came to the Pacific during WWII so no Islanders had any immunity to the bacilli and thus, by 1950, it was spreading a juggernaut of death throughout Oceania and it got so bad that Pacific governments were finally realising something had to be done, and as a top priority too.
And thus Tamavua Hospital ...
As it is today, looking very sad indeed.
(Formerly a WWII field hospital built
by the NZ Army but commandeered
by the American Army during The Pacific War
and renamed The American Base Hospital)
... was brought on line to deal with it, but with terrible results because ALL the staff who came to work there only lived for six weeks at the most, but it kept being fully staffed so we really do have to say that the Tamavua Hospital staff in the early 50s were probably the bravest and most heroic folk who ever lived and that's something that needs to be acknowledged and rewarded rather than - as it is now - simply forgotten.
However, those deaths are the reason my mother came into this story. She was in Fiji on holiday on the first leg of her long-dreamed-for trip around the world when entirely by chance she heard on the radio about the deaths of all the nurses at Tamavua Hospital and thought "I can fix that!" and so, compelled by a force she didn't quite understand, she applied for the job as Head Nurse, got it, and, thanks to BCG vaccines, cropping nurses' hair, thorough hot-water-scrubbing of every inch of the hospital, and putting every single object out into the sun, within three months she had cut her nurses' death rates to exactly ZERO and they kept that way in all the years to come.
So, since they were now finally retaining staff, that's when the Fiji government decided that they could take it up a notch and bring someone who "knew how to be a right bastard" in to head it. Yup, they'd realised that the fight to get on top of the epidemic wasn't working because everyone who'd tried to tackle it was too compliant and NICE so what they needed most was "an arrogant bastard" to spearhead it, and so, since my dad was probably the most world-class arrogant bastard they'd ever came across, he was brought out to Fiji from Belfast to be the general in this war.
So with everything in place and mum scrubbing and cropping heads and dad being an arrogant bastard, without fear or favour, willing to stomp anyone and everyone into the ground to get his own way, finally there was the smallest glimmer of a chance the Pacific could bring this horror to its knees ...
... which brings us back to the Easter concert where, amidst this terrible epidemic and surrounded by daily death and horror, the nurses sang "He Shall Purify." with such beauty that captured something so profound listeners were quickly blubbering like babies ...
Jon's photo of a Fijian choir,
although NOT Tamavua Hospital Choir.
... and the head of Fiji's British Colonial Service - Vascass? - heard about it and rang dad to say "You need them to do the entire oratorio." and thus came about the first ever concert at the Suva Town Hall of "Tamavua Hospital Choir sings Handel's "Messiah"."
It was a HUGE success and I think that where Malcolm McLaren got it most wrong is that the dichotomy this choir captured wasn't "savagery vs civilisation" but rather it was "life vs death." - trying to drag life out of a situation where everything around you is death, death, death - and also "hope vs despair" - the belief that maybe finally, finally, finally you can beat death ... and since it is THIS that Handel's "Messiah" is ultimately about and because most choirs the world over have never been in the front-line daily dealing with death and hoping to finally conquer it, is the reason that they don't ever get it right.
And they don't you know. Truly, Handel's oratorio has the potential for sending you soaring into some very special place beyond time and space, but most usually - let's finally admit this - it doesn't and if you'd ever heard dad's choir do it, you'd know for sure that other choirs simply don't cut it.
And it's because they got it so right that dad thought the world should hear it - "Messiah" done the way it should be done - so he got in a recording company to record it, for the princely sum of 30 pounds, and thus released the record ... into a resounding void. Guess the world thought "lepers singing Messiah" was too funny to be taken seriously and so no one was particularly interested, although, over the next 30 years the hospital got exactly 17 shillings in royalties, so I guess there were a few folk out there who knew music well enough to appreciate the sheer magic of this version.
But the concert became, by popular demand, an annual event and I first heard it when I was two years old and NEVER, even to this day, have I known anything so entirely beautiful. I can still remember sitting there, that first time, transfixed by the voices and swooped up to some place so angelic I was frozen in my seat until the Alleluia Chorus brought the whole thing to a head and I started to tremble. And that's exactly what happened to me every year after. Yup, every other concert we went to as young children - even those at Covent Garden in London - it was always about the delicious nougat mum would buy us to keep us quiet, but for this concert we sat there, completely still until the trembling started, hardly able to breathe and nougat entirely forgotten.
And since this was Fiji the inevitable happened and all other Fijian choirs started saying "We can do it as well as they can." so every year there was an annual "Handel's Messiah" concert where dad was always a judge, and we always went to them as well and, yes, there were many choirs who could do the oratorio as well as dad's choir, but to me Tamavua Hospital Choir always had that hidden extra: perhaps a deeper and more profound understanding of what Handel was saying with his music.
You know, it's only now, as an adult, I realise we were spoiled rotten as children having access to the best possible version of this oratorio. And what is particularly funny is that I always thought it was the music itself, but then, back at university in Brisbane in the 80s, during my punk phase, I read there going to be an Easter performance of "Messiah" at the Queensland University auditorium and I dragged a lot of my punk friends along promising them "the best experience you'll ever have in your life." ... and sat there shocked and embarrassed by the empty, meaningless, seemingly endless crap I was having to endure; "the big nothing threatening me." as McLaren wrote in that song above.
I thought it was me. I thought I'd got it wrong. But then, during intermission, surrounded by all the Brisbane glitterati fluttering their fingers and talking about how sublime it was, a booming voice cut through the crowd; a man I didn't know saying "It's unfortunate but I can't appreciate this. I once heard a Fijian choir perform "Messiah" and ever since then when I listen to anyone else do it, all I can hear is how empty it is."
Oh yeah, way to go, strange man! That's exactly what I feel too. And now that I know it's still out there, I do wish the world would re-release dad's record so everyone else on earth can have the chance to hear "Messiah" the way it should be done, outstandingly beautiful and holding such truth and wonder, capable of transfixing even total tossers like Malcolm McLaren.
But it should also be re-released in memory of that terrible, terrible time where, in the midst of that rolling juggernaut of death, so many courageous and beautiful souls put themselves on the front-line to overcome it, and then sang songs so richly imbued with everything they'd gone through. Alleluia!
:
Posts
