In this litany of gloom that is a perusal of the state of the world today I can only find one area of light: Glee. The American series about a High School Glee Club.
I’m talking about viewing the world via magazines – topical, serious – and the web. Every page on the web, every page in these magazines is depressing. Everywhere the same bastardry. The same inexorable (apparently) march downwards.
The same erosion of civil liberties going unchallenged.
The same endless uncovering of ineptitude and total corruption amongst the ‘leaders’ and owners of the world.
One web page, one web view, opens into a world of something like lightness, beauty, happiness – for me anyway, on the web surfing I do – and that’s Glee.
Not every song. Not every routine. But some of the songs just blow me away with their power and beauty. Some of the routines I find exhilarating and even awe-inspiring. ( I refuse to say ‘awesome’, much misused word).
The voice of that (supposedly) homosexual character. The voice of that fat black woman – is it Mercedes?
The high comedy of the lines put into the mouth of Sue, the Cheerleaders boss.
It is nothing to do with the world. A fantasy high school dealing lightly with almost ridiculous situations. Far removed from the real world.
But: it has as its essence the song and dance.
And it excels in them.
And right there it joins the essence of the world. Right there it is more pertinent than the United Nations.
Song and dance is the voice and the action of the people when they are lucky enough to have the time, the freedom, the heart to do it.
How lamentable our present state. No one can sing or dance unless they have megawatts of electricity and electronics behind them. And are full of strong drink. And maybe even strong drugs.
Wage slaves, deluded masses, ignorant masses… stripped of everything, deluded into thinking they are making progress down this road of ‘materialistic’ wealth when even by that measure they are losing ground…
But that measure itself is a cheat, a lie, a wrongness.
The measure of human progress should more properly be something like that: how much song and dance in the community?
Glee is break in the clouds. A clear look through all the trash and dirt, the smokescreen that blinds us, to the shining essence of what could be: people singing and dancing with ability and heart and love….