Of wit and love

One thing I miss about the old country is our famous sense of humour. I don't mean the knockabout antics of our football fanatics abroad. I mean the dry wit of our mockers, best exemplified by Simon Hoggart, whose sketch in the Guardian (which I get to see in the weekly edition) pricks some overinflated balloons nicely.

The quip is king in the UK, but Aussies think it is a small bird, and if they see it they shoot it. Their conversation is often dry, but it is almost never witty. TV humour involves shouting and jokes about bottoms and wanking (if you are thinking a less madcap Bottom, you are right there). Commentators tend to the serious (those who write columns, I mean, the sports commentator is the exception -- some of the Aussie Rules guys are studies in understatement) -- you know when they are trying to be funny because they drive it in in a bus.

Something else I won't get to share in is this showcase for Brian Wilson's renaissance. I didn't make it to this or to the Smile concert, and I'm kicking myself.

Pet Sounds is one of the great records. If you question that, not only do you and I differ beyond any hope of reconciliation on the subject of music, but I wonder about your sanity. It is a marvel of songwriting, an expression of genius that has few parallels in any genre, let alone pop music.

These are simple songs, of course, gentle statements of eternal verities: God only knows, for example, encapsulates for me how I would explain how I feel about Mrs Zen if I were clever enough with words to find words that could do the job. But they are a lesson to those who feel that art must be ornate to be worthy. Doing the simple excellently is the hardest thing in any art: it is in the execution of the simple that the worker of the ornate often fails themselves.

Not that the ornate cannot make great art, too. I remember looking at the carving on the walls and pillars of the Taj Mahal and thinking to myself, this, this is how you express love on the grand scale. It is like the boundless spirit of love in stone -- it is pure, but it is wild, simple, but it is intricate.

Would I build Taj Mahal for Mrs Zen? Perhaps not. I doubt that I have ever quite touched the soaring affection Shah Jehan had for Mumtaz Mahal. I wonder if many of us ever do. But I would have written God only knows if Wilson and Asher hadn't beaten me to it. For me, the Taj Mahal is the ultimate expression of what love is, and God only knows the clearest expression of what it means.

Whichever way, love finds a way to express itself. All we need is our own empress (or emperor, of course) to inspire it.

posted by Dr Zen @ 6:21 pm