The comedy writer Peter Baynham used to say that there is something special about satire. That the extremely limitied lifespan of satirical jokes made them extra glorious to write. Because they exist only briefly like a butterfly ...they are special, chimerical, ephemeral, magical ... since no one apart from a few historians is going to today be interested in what Gladstone said to Disraeli in 1880. Just as no one in a year's time will be much interested in what I am posting here today...
In a similar but better way I think there is something extra special about all the comments posted on Inside Croydon that Mr Downes choses not print.
They may have an infinitesimally small circulation and dematerialise into the ether in the moment one clicks "submit" never to be seen by the rest of humanity again... ...but one feels that for one tiny micro nanosecond one is communicating ideas on an extra special level to normal.
For in that moment one communicates not just with normal homo sapiens but actually with the mind of Downes himself.
It is a bit like prayer. One doesn't hear Downes answer in the conventional sense. One has very little evidence of Downes existence. One cannot even prove one talked to Downes oneself. Yet all the same one remains sure Downes is there somewhere.
It is a meeting of two minds especially directly and closely. Just one writer and just one reader. A kind of mind meld if you will. A very special kind of intimacy.
The comedy writer Peter Baynham used to say that there is something special about satire.
ReplyDeleteThat the extremely limitied lifespan of satirical jokes made them extra glorious to write.
Because they exist only briefly like a butterfly ...they are special, chimerical, ephemeral, magical ...
since no one apart from a few historians is going to today be interested in what Gladstone said to Disraeli in 1880.
Just as no one in a year's time will be much interested in what I am posting here today...
In a similar but better way I think there is something extra special about all the comments posted on Inside Croydon
that Mr Downes choses not print.
They may have an infinitesimally small circulation and dematerialise into the ether in the moment one clicks "submit" never to be seen by the rest of humanity again...
...but one feels that for one tiny micro nanosecond one is communicating ideas on an extra special level to normal.
For in that moment one communicates not just with normal homo sapiens but actually with the mind of Downes himself.
It is a bit like prayer. One doesn't hear Downes answer in the conventional sense.
One has very little evidence of Downes existence.
One cannot even prove one talked to Downes oneself.
Yet all the same one remains sure Downes is there somewhere.
It is a meeting of two minds especially directly and closely.
Just one writer and just one reader.
A kind of mind meld if you will.
A very special kind of intimacy.