The punk band rocks
on the back of the lorry. Then Zambian tumblers and English fire-eaters roll
by.
Are teenage
dreams so hard to beat?
A bevy of
shirt-factory workers, in blue dungarees and head scarves, sashay
along the road to a rhythm and blues beat. They carry radiant blue
flax flowers. It is a parade and a pageant on a summer's evening.
Earlier, the punk
band play to a sun-drenched crowd on a reclaimed gasometer site. A
woman, aged 94, taps her foot. A woman, aged 70, jigs about and waves
her hands high, in front of the stage. A man and a woman, almost 60,
shake, bob, weave and shimmy.
Get teenage kicks
right through the night.
At night-fall, a
monster on a barge comes up the river, spewing flames and light.
Fireworks blaze from the banks to repel it.
Spectacles of
conflict are more stunning (produceable?) than spectacles of peace.
It is storied in the
city that a foreign garrison took it over. A wolf, carrying a
firebrand, entered the city from the surrounding forest and tossed
the firebrand into the garrison's magazine and blew it up.
Fire works.
Soldiers from the
garrison ran amok, crying out that a great god had delivered death
upon them, in retribution for the deaths delivered by their deeds.
I need excitement
and I need it bad. And it's the best I've ever had
.
A
saint, in a curragh,
is
pitted against the monster on the barge. Ireland pitted against
Scotland? Good against Evil?
Father
do not allow thunder and lightning,
Lest
we be shattered by its fear and its fire.
The
monster transforms into three swans, echoing the Children of Lir story,
in a feat
of
theatrical engineering on a grand scale.
As simple as that?
As simple as that?
Stories, old and
post-modern. Undertones and overtones. Myths overlaying and
reverberating.
Great pyrotechnics.
Wonderful lights and sound. A choir sings uplifting choruses on The
Peace Bridge, as the battle ceases. A rock song blasts marvellously
from sound systems along the quayside where citizens throng, craning
their necks, raising cameras, phones and ipads above their heads to
capture images their eyes can't reach.
The boys are back
in town.
It is a galvanising
spectacle. Families and friends huddle close. Smile. Teenagers kick
for joy. Babies grin. People stay close.
Then go home.
Older ones know, from their experience, that war is not a spectacle. That it is a grim tragedy. Younger ones are wary, even as they kick in exultation.
Then go home.
Older ones know, from their experience, that war is not a spectacle. That it is a grim tragedy. Younger ones are wary, even as they kick in exultation.
I wanna hold you,
wanna hold you tight.
Alright.
And the sun shines
the next day.
It is the
business of mythology proper, and the fairy tale, to reveal the
specific dangers and techniques of the dark interior way from tragedy
to comedy.
Even when the
legend is of an actual historical personage, the deeds of victory are
rendered not in lifelike, but in dreamlike figurations.
The Hero with a
Thousand Faces: Joseph Campbell; book; New World Library; California;
2008
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