Warning: I'm in a slightly strange mood
It is Easter and I'm all alone (with the daughter being asleep upstairs after subsisting on chocolate almost all day) and I am in a strange and only slightly beer fueled mood.
The 1973 Norman Jewison directed film of Jesus Christ Superstar was screened this afternoon on TV and I had to watch. There are a small number of songs that have withstood the ravages of time but there was a more important reason. Back in the first half of the 1970s JCS was a huge cultural event and challenge in the same way Monty Python's Life of Christ would be almost two whole decades later (and how the two connect with me in a kind of sub-adult angsty kind of way is some kind of miracle in itself). Following the release of the album and an amateur production the musical was staged on Broadway to mixed reviews before moving to the West End (London) and film.
The Australian stage production got the kind of reception and made the same sort of impact as the London version... it ran and ran and every body saw it - including my younger sister but not me. I can't remember the circumstances under which Bobby saw the stage production which had John White as Jesus and Jon English as Judas but I was not so much jealous as distraught. And typically of me I let that fester away inside until it assumed unmanageable proportions. My mother took me to the cinema to see the film but I couldn't enjoy it because it wasn't the stage production, it was a subsitute.
Now I know that there was a more fundamental 'couldn't' at work. JCS might work as a stage production but it was not a good film, perhaps a noble attempt to put the production on film but a failure nevertheless. I have a recording of JCS on my hard-drive. Somewhere along the line I lost the case and the insert so I've no idea about the cast, and right now I can't be bothered trying to look it up but I'm as sure that the guy in the role of Jesus is the same guy in the film as I am sure the guy in the role of Judas is not. And actually the guy in the role of Jesus is far better than memory and undercurrents had allowed me to remember.
Anyway the real point of this is that it brings family to the forefront including mum and Bobby and her daughter, mum's mum who will be having her 91st birthday later this month, sundry aunts cousins and so forth but particularly mum and Bobby.
From the time dad became ill when I was six until I left home there were the three of us. We had a choice between pulling together and helping one another through or fighting like three cats in a bag. Guess which option we chose. This manifested itself in a game of two against one in which the only variable was which of us made up the 'two' and who was the odd person out at any given time.
Bobby flunked school and ran off to shack up with a succession of more or less undesirable blokes before landing herself a good, decent man who only wanted to be able to spend his Saturday afternoon's running the boundary at football games. Bobby's inner demon got the better of her and their marriage collapsed under the weight of her intolerance for an absence of drama. Now she's raising a daughter on her own back home and with considerable help from mum who gives what time isn't demanded of her by her daughter to her increasingly dependent mother.
There was a time a couple of years back when I was in pretty constant contact with the pair of them, but from a hell of a long way away. Always one of them whispering in one ear while the other nibbled at the other. WTF!Sort out your own problems. I got tired, frankly, of listening to the pair of them and being made to feel less and less able to share even a hint of what I'm enduring here.
I'm still not sure I was cutting of my nose to spite my face. After all if I'd said 'hang on a moment and listen to me for a change' I'd probably have been accused of being selfish and self-centred.
I don't think I'm any more alone for being in contact with them on a very occasional basis than I would be if I was listening to their drivel 24/7.
I cleaned the oven out and got onto my knees to scrub the kitchen floor. For my trouble the Fat Bastard has tramped muddy footprints into the previously pristine stone, left debris from the meal on one bench, relicts of his domestic drinking on the other and gone to the pub - which is why I have the time to be here.
Oh and I have a belated new year's resolution, one I need to fulfill effectively by September - to do an OU course next year if I am still here rather than safely back home.
The 1973 Norman Jewison directed film of Jesus Christ Superstar was screened this afternoon on TV and I had to watch. There are a small number of songs that have withstood the ravages of time but there was a more important reason. Back in the first half of the 1970s JCS was a huge cultural event and challenge in the same way Monty Python's Life of Christ would be almost two whole decades later (and how the two connect with me in a kind of sub-adult angsty kind of way is some kind of miracle in itself). Following the release of the album and an amateur production the musical was staged on Broadway to mixed reviews before moving to the West End (London) and film.
The Australian stage production got the kind of reception and made the same sort of impact as the London version... it ran and ran and every body saw it - including my younger sister but not me. I can't remember the circumstances under which Bobby saw the stage production which had John White as Jesus and Jon English as Judas but I was not so much jealous as distraught. And typically of me I let that fester away inside until it assumed unmanageable proportions. My mother took me to the cinema to see the film but I couldn't enjoy it because it wasn't the stage production, it was a subsitute.
Now I know that there was a more fundamental 'couldn't' at work. JCS might work as a stage production but it was not a good film, perhaps a noble attempt to put the production on film but a failure nevertheless. I have a recording of JCS on my hard-drive. Somewhere along the line I lost the case and the insert so I've no idea about the cast, and right now I can't be bothered trying to look it up but I'm as sure that the guy in the role of Jesus is the same guy in the film as I am sure the guy in the role of Judas is not. And actually the guy in the role of Jesus is far better than memory and undercurrents had allowed me to remember.
Anyway the real point of this is that it brings family to the forefront including mum and Bobby and her daughter, mum's mum who will be having her 91st birthday later this month, sundry aunts cousins and so forth but particularly mum and Bobby.
From the time dad became ill when I was six until I left home there were the three of us. We had a choice between pulling together and helping one another through or fighting like three cats in a bag. Guess which option we chose. This manifested itself in a game of two against one in which the only variable was which of us made up the 'two' and who was the odd person out at any given time.
Bobby flunked school and ran off to shack up with a succession of more or less undesirable blokes before landing herself a good, decent man who only wanted to be able to spend his Saturday afternoon's running the boundary at football games. Bobby's inner demon got the better of her and their marriage collapsed under the weight of her intolerance for an absence of drama. Now she's raising a daughter on her own back home and with considerable help from mum who gives what time isn't demanded of her by her daughter to her increasingly dependent mother.
There was a time a couple of years back when I was in pretty constant contact with the pair of them, but from a hell of a long way away. Always one of them whispering in one ear while the other nibbled at the other. WTF!Sort out your own problems. I got tired, frankly, of listening to the pair of them and being made to feel less and less able to share even a hint of what I'm enduring here.
I'm still not sure I was cutting of my nose to spite my face. After all if I'd said 'hang on a moment and listen to me for a change' I'd probably have been accused of being selfish and self-centred.
I don't think I'm any more alone for being in contact with them on a very occasional basis than I would be if I was listening to their drivel 24/7.
I cleaned the oven out and got onto my knees to scrub the kitchen floor. For my trouble the Fat Bastard has tramped muddy footprints into the previously pristine stone, left debris from the meal on one bench, relicts of his domestic drinking on the other and gone to the pub - which is why I have the time to be here.
Oh and I have a belated new year's resolution, one I need to fulfill effectively by September - to do an OU course next year if I am still here rather than safely back home.
posted by Enyo @ 10:42 pm
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