Ne me quitte pas!

The 20th Century produced many great characters...from the warriors, such as Rommell and Eisenhower, to the Politicians Stalin, Hitler, Churchill and Thatcher. But also very importantly in the arts... and none more so than Jacques Brel.

My first personal introduction to Jacques Brel came some 8 years after his death, but to me at that time he was alive as any singer. Brel was a one and only... he still lives on in his records and even in translation his works (I nearly typed words there) have a power that most modern writers would die to achieve. When I realised that he was dead long beofre I knew of him my sorrow was real...this was a man who had made French a real language to me and as a 16 year old his ideas were somewhat beyond me...

BBC carried a profile of him a couple of nights ago, and thanks to the marvels of the Internet I am listening to the end of that documentary as I type...


His music is as alive now as it was when he was alive... and he still ranks among the top artists of all time in my opinion... True he lacks the mass appeal of the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams, ad the artificiality of the winners of Pop Idol, but Brel has a reality that will transcend all these, and his songs will be sung (in French as well as in translation) long after the modern "stars" have left the stage for good.

Jacques, tu ne me quittes pas, et je suis fier de dire que tu m'as toucher pandant ma jeunesse. J'espere bien que les jeunes de demain comprennent aussi bien que moi ce que tu as essayé de dire. Je te salute!

Not such a drone after all!

Interesting experience tonight. I was at the Linen Hall Library for a rehearsed reading of "The Drone" by Rutherford Mayne. Now here I have to declare an interest... Rutherford Mayne (real name Sam Waddell) was my Great-Great Uncle (mind you I never met him- he died before I was born). The play was written c.1908 and set round about 1901/2, so a part of me expected it to be dated, but, boy, was I wrong! The play was very funny!

The basic premise is about 2 brothers: one of whom (the drone) is kidding himself and his brother that he is an inventor about to make it big (he has been about to do this for 20 years while living off his brother); and the other gets himself involved in a breach of promise lawsuit. With the family facing very real problems, the drone sorts it out!

The laughter tonight was real, and clearly this play from 100 years ago was as relevant today as it was then...

Now my problem is... can I convince our group to put it on next year.... watch this space!

Show's over for a while now...and Ihave been hideously bad at posting to this blog... Reading for Summer Theatre is next week, and I have the horrid task of choosing which of my friends in the group will be part of the cast. I know that some of them will be very disappointed, but also that they will all accept it in the best spirit, and hopefully I can use them behind the scenes. There are only six characters - 3 male, 3 female.. so...

Had a good chat with my dad the other day about the American Elections. They look like they might be shaping up to be one of the most interesting contests in years. In the previous ones there was a real sense of inevitability about who would be the candidate etc, but on both sides this time the races seem to be all too real.

OK, the Republican one is a Hare and Tortoise event... Can Mick Huckabee's tortoise catch John McCain's hare before the finish line of 1191, or is he just too far behind? Should McCain ignore him and coast along while building up a national campaign machine or should he get out there and tackle him head on, thus also giving him the credibility he lacks?

But the Democratic race is much more equal... Most commentators seem to agree that Hillary is bound to lose heavily in the next couple of primaries, But she is a political heavyweight, and Obama cannot afford to get too confident. At this point this race is definitely too close to call, and much though any true lover of democracy hates them, the smokey backrooms will no doubt soon be buzzing with negotiations about the discarded votes of Michigan and Florida, and about the 'John Edwards' delegates.

CNN and Fox News have been talking a wee bit about the Superdelegates - To my mind this is not the undemocratic problem that they think. The Superdelegates are there to give a safety valve... Only when the public cannot decide will their votes become important(witness the fact that only the democratic ones are really being discussed- not the RNC votes in that race), so they should rather be regarded as a "kind of" casting votes... If the democratic voters cannot decide effectively then there has to be some kind of mechanism, so why complain when it is put into operation? The only question is... are there too many of them, and will they prove to be as split as the rest of America?