All the world’s a stage
December 16, 2018
You wonder if you’re losing your travel chops when the highlight of your visit to ethnic London is Disney’s The Lion King.
Don’t get me wrong. The show was spectacular, a joyous celebration of life. The costumes, props, sets, music were a great spectacle, and the coming of age story of Simba the lion cub/king was heartwarming. I was pleased to see the people, culture, and animals of Africa portrayed in such a positive light.
But I was looking for something more in my explorations of multicultural London, ideally some heart to heart dialogues with people from cultures or religions very different from my own. I suppose it was unrealistic to expect too much in-depth conversation during a busy three week sightseeing trip to London’s museums, theaters, and historical landmarks. But I did have some limited success.
I didn’t make it to Brixton, a Caribbean/African neighborhood in South London, but did go exploring in the East End. Brick Lane is the commercial center of a Bangladeshi/Indian neighborhood, with outdoor and indoor markets and lots of ethnic food stalls. The nearby Petticoat Lane outdoor market attracted almost entirely African and Muslim shoppers when I was there.
London is an expensive place for lodgings, so I reluctantly stayed in two different youth hostels in north London. An advantage of hostels is that the staff and clientele are quite diverse, and I had roommates from India, China, Europe, Africa, and Argentina. But only polite, superficial chats with my fellow transients.
The second hostel was a five minute walk from the London center of SGI (Soka Gakkai International), a Japanese Buddhist sect to which I belonged in my youth. I still do their Buddhist chanting, so I went there every night after my tourist activities to join the locals in their prayers. But the locals are as diverse as the rest of London. SGI is the most ethnically diverse Buddhist group in the world. There I met immigrants from various nations, and one of them, Omar from Senegal, told me that he came from a Muslim family but had converted to Buddhism in London. His family was outraged for years about his change of religion, but Omar said that they gradually have come to accept that he has the right as an adult to choose whatever religion works for him.
Japanese. Senegalese. Buddhist. Muslim. Londoner. Who are we, anyway?
In addition to the Lion King, I saw six other plays while in London, and was reminded of all the disguises or costumes that people wear on stage and off. We believe that we are the identities that we have chosen for our current incarnation. We believe that we are a certain gender, ethnicity, class, religion, nationality. So that makes me a white, male, working class, Celtic, Buddhist, American, tourist? Is that who I really am? Or are we all actors in a play? All the world’s a stage, as Bill Shakespeare said, and I enjoyed observing the various masks that my fellow souls have assumed during their theatrical incarnations in London. People watching, soul watching along the Thames, all of us pretending that our play is real, when in reality we’ll all be dead in a few years and getting ready to take on different disguises in other costume dramas.
I had a lot of fun sightseeing in London. But the best in-depth conversations I had were with my Self.
Disguises at the Globe
December 13, 2018
While in London in September I greatly enjoyed a Shakespeare comedy at the Globe Theatre on the River Thames. But I found the alternative casting to be confusing and mildly annoying. Maybe I need to be more open-minded.
Twelfth Night is a play I know well. I had two small parts in a local production in California in 1996, playing both the Sea Captain and the Priest. Like many of Shakespeare’s comedies, it’s a play about love and mistaken identities and illusions. As such, the fluid nature of our identities is an entirely appropriate subject for actors and directors to explore, especially since in Shakespeare’s day all the actors were male, and boys and young men played female roles.
So why shouldn’t women play men’s roles, and vice versa? And what about non-white actors playing 17th century Europeans? In theory I have no problem with it, but in this production (and in some other plays and movies) I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief. In this Twelfth Night, Count Orsino, Sebastian, and Sir Andrew were played by women, Viola was played by a man, and Olivia was played by a black woman. I just couldn’t buy it. I have this old-fashioned idea that casting should be believable; that it’s preferable to have male actors portray male roles, and that a Renaissance countess is best played by a white woman.
Interestingly, in our local version of Twelfth Night, Countess Olivia was also played by woman of African descent, and she was excellent. Maybe I found her more believable than her London counterpart because she was light skinned, or because I liked her personally, or because she was a better actress.
I do think that Shakespeare plays are so important to Western civilization that all actors should have the opportunity to be in his dramas, comedies, and histories. But Hamlet Prince of Denmark played by a Pakistani man? Othello portrayed by a white woman? King Lear as a Samoan woman? Maybe it would work if everyone in the cast were, say, Nigerian. I found the diverse cast of Hamilton to be believable even though the black and brown actors were portraying white historical characters, probably because most of the actors weren’t white, so my brain didn’t even try to believe in their ethnicity. Go figure.
It has occurred to me than by insisting on believability in casting, I may be thinking as rigidly as Malvolio, the puritanical follower of rules in Twelfth Night and the butt of a major prank in the play. As Stephen Greenblatt, one of my Shakespeare professors at Berkeley once said of this play, “Shakespeare correctly assumes that the audience will get into the spirit of the production and pretend that Sebastian and Viola are identical twins – he didn’t feel obligated to scour the countryside for twins.” I guess that I just need to pretend harder.
In the meantime, I’ll just have to learn to live with mixed feelings about alternative casting. As Viola says in Twelfth Night:
O time! Thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me to untie.
God and Country
December 8, 2018
The British seem to be losing their mojo lately. I hope they get it back soon. The world needs their leadership.
When I was in England and Wales about three months ago, Brexit was in the news every day, as it is now, and this was producing a fair amount of anxiety about the economic consequences of leaving the European Union. No one I spoke with thought that Brexit is a good idea. With any luck it won’t happen, or if it does, it will turn out better than most people expect it will.
Immigration – from eastern European countries, and especially from Muslim countries – seems to have been a major concern of the 52% of voters who voted to leave the EU. National identity is important to most people around the world, and large scale immigration represents rapid social change. Fears of terrorism and crime only exacerbate public worries about migration. This disquiet about demographic change is a worldwide phenomenon, and an understandable one. I sometimes share those concerns.
Of course, Britain has had waves of migrants and numerous invasions over the centuries. Celts, Romans, Vikings, Normans (French), and, more recently, an attempted conquest by the Germans. After World War II large numbers of people from former colonies in the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh came to live in Britain. The question seems to be, how much change can a country handle in a relatively short period of time?
The United Kingdom is a wealthy nation with great castles, magnificent cathedrals, stately palaces, a lovely countryside, superb literature, and a proud tradition of democracy. The land of the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Churchill has so much to offer the rest of the world. British civilization is a beacon of freedom and human rights, especially in comparison with authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, North Korea, ad nauseam. Yes, yes, I know – the British Empire committed many atrocities, with Ireland being Exhibit A. We Americans had to fight a war to gain our independence from an overbearing England. There is plenty of poverty and economic decline in parts of the country. But in my view the positives far outweigh the negatives in Great Britain.
Even so, the country could use a new vision, a new hope for the future. They have a great past, but Brexit or no Brexit, what will be the catalyst for the next British greatness? I don’t know. But I got a glimpse of one possible source of inspiration for that greatness.
While in Wales I met a charming couple who own a sheep farm there. I proudly trotted out the one Welsh word I learned decades ago. Hiraeth means a longing for the land or for one’s country. The woman was surprised and delighted that I knew that word in her language. We talked about the spiritual implications of yearning for land or nation. Then she taught me another, related Welsh term: Calon lan, or pure heart. It’s the title of a song about not wanting material wealth, but rather wanting the riches of an honest heart, a happy heart. A song about asking God for a strong heart.
During World War II Winston Churchill called upon the British people to summon from within themselves the courage they would need to survive the great adversity they faced from nightly bombing raids and imminent invasion. And now, in a time of worldwide economic change and great social uncertainty, a time of grim forecasts for the livability of the planet, how can Britain get its mojo back? Maybe by getting back to basics; by building a new spiritual foundation to inspire the people with something more than materialism. Calon lan.
Street Etiquette
December 7, 2018
On what side of the sidewalk should one walk when in England? After six weeks in that country recently, I still didn’t know the answer to that question. And apparently almost no one else knows the answer either, judging from the continual pedestrian dodging that I and others engaged in while walking on what they call their pavement (sidewalks).
Should you walk on the right, the way Americans and most other societies do? Or, since the British drive on the left, do they also keep to the left while walking on the sidewalk? I was willing to do it either way, if I could just discern a pattern or have someone tell me the rules. I did a great deal of walking in London during the first three weeks of my trip, and I wanted to enjoy my sightseeing without getting in anyone’s way or having them be an obstacle course for my foot travel. But at times I found it stressful having to constantly decide at the last second when to give way and when to stay the course as I made my way down the sidewalk.
I asked several locals if there is a custom regarding this matter, and to my surprise and disappointment they all said that they didn’t know. Eventually, after I had left London and joined a tour group in Bath, I asked our 62 year old English tour leader Roy for his perspective. He told me that when he was young he was taught to walk on the left side of the sidewalk, but now that custom isn’t being passed down to the next generations. In addition, he said, with so many international tourists and immigrants it’s hard to get people to observe a tradition that few British people themselves observe.
Pedestrian anarchy is hardly unique to England. Manhattan is just as bad. And in my experience, Bombay and Cairo are worse. I once asked an acquaintance from Lima, Peru what the Spanish word for jaywalking is. She laughed, and said there is no such word in Spanish, and that in Lima everyone just walks wherever the hell they want to walk. So I guess it’s mainly a big city problem, though many if not most people may not see it as a problem at all. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive. But I do prefer social harmony, and etiquette can help to avoid social conflict.
I remember an incident many years ago in San Rafael, California, where I was somewhat distractedly walking down a sidewalk when I was approached by a young man angrily glaring at me as he walked straight at me. I quickly debated in my mind whether it was worth a confrontation with him or whether I should just step aside. I chose the latter course, and he visibly relaxed and continued on his way. I then realized that he was observing the custom of walking to the right, and I was on the wrong side (his side) of the sidewalk. He was holding his ground, his territory, and I was violating the custom and in his mind challenging him. Once I respected the custom, I respected him. Confrontation avoided.
Most people are flexible about such customs. While I almost always keep to the right on sidewalks, I make exceptions for the elderly, children, dog-walkers, and people carrying anything heavy or awkward. But sometimes I can be stubborn and stick to my right-side trajectory as a matter of principle.
But much less so when traveling. As a visitor, I’m acutely aware that I’m an outsider, and it is I who need to respect the local customs, even if there aren’t any discernible rules. In Bombay five years ago I was told by a local guide that Indians have no street etiquette – people do anything they want, creating chaos with jaywalking, reckless driving, honking horns, and cutting in lines. He added that Indians enjoy defying government rules and social niceties. So I have observed.
We don’t all play by the same rules. That’s hard for someone like me who appreciates order and harmony. Maybe I’m better off pretending that I’m always a visitor wherever I go. Customs and rules may be preferable, but perhaps flexibility and kindness are the real etiquette.
David Wigginton 