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| THE HANDSTAND | MAY 2002 |
  his hilarious films.... On Wednesday evenings during the last two weeks
in April the Goethe Institute showed some of the
slapstick films of Karl Valentin. On the first showing
there was a negligible audience and it was amazing during
a pause to realise how few of the audience had an
unashamed relish for this amusement. Only a few members
of the audience gradually built up to uncontrollable
bursts of laughter at the "stupid" plot lines
and demonstrations of evasion of duty, dereliction of
duty, and the stubborn resistance of those employers who
disallow either contradiction or development of an idea
however obvious or essential. During the first bill, I, for one, had
been "rolling in the aisle" - as they say, but
a stint of my own past life had certainly ensured that to
survive one would not need to be hard to please. Karl Valentin possibly travels in
spirit with his films. His famous orchestral |
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After
World War 2 Karl was drilled into the studio scenarios
that demanded script, but he could not work under those
conditions and could not finance film making on his own
account. He died almost completely forgotten and ignored
but by a few film buffs, whom we must thank for
preserving these remaining reels.The second installment
of his films was dominated by A DISASTROUS VIOLIN
SOLO which symbolically defined the film
"bosses" who demand a certain performance
constrained by rules and financial proberty that he was
unable to fulfil. A sad evening that disappointed a young
boy there.
Also it
seems to me that such portrayals as listed above, evasion
or dereliction of duty etc., should be harboured within
everyone's mind to ensure that sufficient examination of
any status quo is undertaken before following orders,
confirming to social mores, or surviving as a creative
individual in a society controlled by the immoderate
worship of academic "papers" allowing one to be
published, accorded prominent gallery space, or accepted
by the leaders of orchestras as potentially gifted
musicians. In my own case a stubborn attempt to continue
working within the concept of "Community"
communications now emerges in these editions of The
Handstand on-line. However as a poet and artist I remain
unknown in Ireland, except in the glimmers of past
enterprise for several poets and artists whose work I was
putting up, people who did not have their
"papers" in many cases. There was certainly no
danger of my ever sinking into a self-regarding
depression, which is the lot of many creative people in
Ireland, as I lugged my portfolios of Treblin Times,
UPBroadsheets or The Handstand round the Dublin pubs, or
read my poems in time spaces at Rock Concerts in The
Underground, Dame Street or other basements.
broadside
on "coincidence" as to whether a conversation
about bicyclists, as one walked abroad, might provoke one
of thousands of bicyclists to pass by coincidentally or
the more absurd chance that a conversation about an
aeroplane might provoke one to fly overhead, seemed to
accompany myself and my daughter as we continued to laugh
through the rain on our way to the bus-stop. Certainly on
hearing one we looked for the other, and with a loud
burst of laughter we possibly provoked alarm for one
bicyclist as he passed by coincidentally as an aeroplane
flew overhead. At the bus-stop a man stood fighting the
wind with an umbrella that had already stripped two of
its tines; he offered to shelter me but I declined with a
joke asserting that the umbrella might likely attack me
the way it was wrestling and baring its metal....What has
happened to us in Ireland, is a casual joke, passing the
time of day, no longer appreciated?This gentleman looked at our laughing
faces with a wry and puzzled glance. Thank you Karl
Valentin. XXX