Photos Of The Day

Nettle Cave, Jenolan, NSW

The Grand Arch at Jenolan Caves, NSW

Nettle Cave, Jenolan, NSW

Umberto Eco - How to Be a TV Host

This is a short essay from Umberto Eco's collection of essays "How to travel with a Salmon' that I have been reading and found it interesting. This story focusses on the writer's experience in the Svalbard Islands where he was invited to spend several years studying the fictional Bonga nation and their society. This fictional story is very similar in its literary devices and treatment to Borges's work - "Tiön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". The one thing unique about Bonga nation was their unusual insistence on the explicit, the declarative. They ignore the art of the implicit, the taken-for-granted.

For example, if we begin to talk, obviously we use words; but we feel no need to say so. A Bonga, on the contrary, in speaking to another Bonga, begins by saying: Pay attention. I am now speaking and I will use some words. We build houses and then (with the exception of the Japanese) we indicate to possible visitors the street, the number, the name of the occupant. The Bongas write “house” on every house, and “door” beside the door. If you ring a Bonga gentleman’s bell, he will open the door, saying, “Now I am opening the door,” and then introduce himself. If he invites you to dinner, he will show you to a chair with the words: “This is the table, and these are the chairs!” Then, in a triumphant tone, he announces, “And now the maid! Here is Rosina. She will ask you what you want and will serve you your favourite dish!” The procedure is the same in restaurants.  

It is strange to observe the Bongas when they go to the theatre. As the house lights go down, an actor appears and says, “Here is the curtain!” Then the curtain parts and other actors enter, to perform, say, Hamlet. But each actor is introduced to the audience, first with his real first and last names, then with the name of the character he is to play. When an actor has finished speaking, he announces: “Now, a moment of silence!” Some seconds go by, and then the next actor starts speaking. Needless to say, at the end of the first act, one of the players comes to the footlights to inform everyone that “there will now be an intermission.” 

The writer was unable to reason as to what drove them to this obsessive clarification. Perhaps they are slow-witted and need to be told what is being implied or the Bongas are perhaps performance-worshippers, and therefore they have to transform everything—even the implicit—into performance. During his stay, he also investigated the history of applause in this culture.

When television shows were first broadcast in Bonga, the producers lured relatives of the organizers into the studio and, thanks to a flashing light (invisible to viewers at home), alerted them when they were to applaud. In no time the viewers discovered the trick, but, while in our country such applause would have immediately been discredited, it was not so for the Bongas. The home audience began to want to join in the applause too, and hordes of Bonga citizens turned up of their own free will in the country’s TV studios, ready to pay for the privilege of clapping. Some of these enthusiasts enrolled in special applause classes. And since at this point everything was in the open, it was the host himself who said, in a loud voice at the appropriate moments, “And now let’s hear a good round of applause.” But soon the studio audience began applauding without any urging from the host. He had simply to question someone in the crowd, asking him, for example, what he did for a living, and when he replied, “I'm in charge of the gas chamber at the city dog pound,” his words were greeted by a resounding ovation.  

Applause became so indispensable that even during the commercials, when the salesman would say, “Buy PIP slimming tablets,” oceanic applause would be heard. The viewers knew very well that there was no one in the studio with the salesman, but the applause was necessary; otherwise the program would have seemed contrived, and the viewers would switch channels. The Bongas want television to show them real life, as it is lived, without pretence. The applause comes from the audience (which is like us), not from the actor (who is pretending), and it is therefore the only guarantee that television is a window open on the world. 

I cannot say that the Bongas are our inferiors. Indeed, one of them told me that they plan to conquer the world. That evening I turned on the TV and I saw a host introducing the girls who assisted him, then announcing that he would do a cosmic monologue, and concluding with: "And now our ballet!" A distinguished gentleman, debating grave political problems with another distinguished gentleman, at a certain point broke off to say, "And now, a break for the commercials." Some entertainers even introduced the audience. Others the camera that was filming them, Everyone applauded.
Distressed,  I left the house and went to a restaurant famous for its nouvelle cuisine. The waiter arrived bringing me three leaves of lettuce. And he said, "This is our macedoine of laitue lombarde, dotted with rughetta from Piedmont, finely chopped and dressed with sea salt, marinated in the balsamic vinegar of the house, anointed with first-pressing virgin olive oil from Umbria."

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLVII

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in--Yes--
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be--Nothing--Thou shalt not be less.

This is the forty-seventh quatrain of the FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. The poet says that - If the wine you drink, and the lips of the beloved you press,  if these pleasures end in Nothing, then everything of us, everything we do, everything we part of or in midst of, all amounts to nothing in the end. Then fancy this my friend while you are here, you are nothing and you shall be in future no less, where you shall be Nothing. You shall be no less, no more from your current state of play and so do not be over joyed or over dismayed by these and live as it comes!

Poems Of India - VI

When they see a serpent carved in stone,

They say: Pour, pour the milk!

If a real serpent comes their way,

they cry "Kill, Kill!"

To the servant of the god who could

eat if served they say: "Go away! Go away!"

But to the image of the god which cannot eat,

they offer dishes of food.

-- BASAVAŅŅA

Borges - The Chess

                           I
Set in their studious corners, the players
move the gradual pieces. Until dawn
the chessboard keeps them in it’s strict confinement
with its two colors set at daggers drawn.

Within the game itself the forms give off
their magic rules: Homeric castle, knight
swift to attack, queen warlike, king decisive,
slanted bishop, and attacking pawns.

Eventually, when the players have withdrawn,
when time itself has finally consumed them,
the ritual will certainly not be done.

It was in the East this war took fire.
Today the whole earth is its theater.
Like the game of love, this game goes on forever.

                           II
Faint-hearted king, sly bishop, ruthless queen,
straight forward castle, and deceitful pawn -
over the checkered black and white terrain
they seek out and begin their armed campaign.

They do not know it is the players hand
that dominates and guides their destiny.
They do not know an adamantine fate
controls their will and the battle plan.

The player too is captive of caprice
(the words are Omar’s) on another ground
where black nights alternate with whiter days.

God moves the player, he in turn the piece.
But what god beyond God begins the round
of dust and time and sleep and agonies?

--Jorge Luis Borges – Selected Poems

Taking the previous quatrain from FitzGerald's Rubaiyat, where the poet talks about Gods playing a game with this world of ours as an instrument/dice for their own caprice & amusement, this poem by Borges takes that idea forward. Here king, queen and countless other pawns fight it out with all their plots and their honor and valor to outdo the other on the checkered battlefield unaware that hand of the player guides their destiny. Likewise the player plays out his life and actions on the checkered arena we call night and day. Like the pawns unaware, the player play out their moves as played out by the Gods who moves the pieces around on this chess board (as fate has willed it). Borges in his true self, puts a infinite regression into this by suggesting "what God beyond God" start the opening move. Who moves the Gods in the cosmic chessboard. Maybe Gods are itself some pieces on this game worked around by some other higher power. How do we know that God is up there commanding us to do this and do that and having all the answers. Maybe He/She is up there as confused as we are or worse, not being in control!

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLVI

For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

This is the forty-sixth quatrain of the FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. The poet relates the reality all around to a magic shadow show where images are not real but part of a show put on by the all powerful. We are nobody but phantom figurines that come to live there life in the game the creator put on. Like a square box with a candle in the center and shapes cut out on the box sides, when the hot air slowly rotates the box, the candle puts on a show of shadows. Its the same with the universe, we are just small pawns devised for entertainment by the Showman. Like that magic box show where candle is the center, in this magic show the sun is the candle and we are that shapes that rotate in the night sky for someone's amusement!