Willard Wigan spent his time in utter obscurity and penury creating these amazing works until he and some of his miniature masterpieces appeared on the net. Now his works command an enormous price. Is he anomalous, eccentric, a little crazy? Of course he is. You surely wouldn’t expect someone who’s caught in the world’s agenda to be so completely “out there” as to eschew the confining of his daily life to the struggle to find work in the marketplace to make a buck, or in his case a quid, doing something prosaic and mundane. No, it takes crazies to produce this sort of thing. Thank God for the wonderful crazy creative people among us who lift our lives out of the focus on the ordinary.
There are very terrible things happening in the world, and unless you just crawled out from under a rock you’d be aware of some of it. In desperation to somehow block it out most people naturally turn to entertainment of some kind, and some people think entertainment is all there is. They’re not terribly discriminating; so long as it’s packaged, whether irritatingly or seductively, it’ll do to pass the time. There seems to be an increasing fascination in the minutae of other people’s lives, regardless of how dull, perhaps as a reassurance that yes, everybody else is just as bored and really quite tedious, irrespective of position or fortune.
I have always marveled that the kind of parlour games which would bore most people were they themselves involved, become to them of enormous entertainment value when broadcast on their television screens. Witnessing “celebrities” being just as dull witted and unentertaining as they themselves would be in someone’s aunt’s living room on a wet weekend appears to rate surprisingly highly in television land.
But some people choose to live their lives differently. When they appear on the scene almost no one can comprehend them. Their context is alien to the world, and the world to them. Here is the extraordinary Salvador Dali on a popular television show of the kind mentioned – a first class example of a person who cannot see himself confined to a category and therefore confounds the world. Having said that though, there is one person on the panel who momentarily and astonishingly abandons reason and leaps to the truth…
And now Andy Warhol, perfectly demonstrating the fascination of the mundane for the banal…
Of all the people who made a strong impact on my sensibilities throughout the agonising years of my growing up, Pete Seeger was chief. His voice resonates in my soul, his goodness and courage stirs my spirit, and his longevity testifies of the divine necessity of his remaining among us to remind us of what is truly good and noble. Pete is still active despite his advanced years, still singing, still showing up at important political demonstrations, a bulwark against encroaching inhumanity and a champion of civil rights.
I anticipate his passing from this world with dread, believing in my heart that the moment he leaves us the pressing darkness, kept at bay by the light of his presence here, will overwhelm and consume us, and the resistance to injustice of which he was the vanguard will collapse under the weight of burgeoning global hostility and selfishness. I know there are others committed to the cause, and would not be so ignorant as to dismiss their contribution and effort, their sacrifices, but none has the power to impart with gentleness of manner and strength of conviction such a cohesive and inclusive unity of purpose and universal brotherhood as Pete Seeger.
Being members of the Sydney Push, about which I shall write at a later time, my parents had access to a great number of political activists, writers, musicians, and artists, all of whom turned up to a party I recall they threw to raise money to mount a defence for Pete’s trial for contempt of Congress, each guest paying to enter with a yellow ribbon pinned to the clothes as proof of participation. Hundreds turned up. Here is a quote from Wikipaedia relating to the trial:
“On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self incriminating) and instead (as the Hollywood Ten had done) refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.”[54] Seeger’s refusal to testify led to a March 26, 1957, indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to 10 years in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.[55][56]“
Anyone who doesn’t know of Pete Seeger must educate himself immediately. Seek out his YouTube appearances and listen to his songs, read everything there is to find about his life, and then, and only then, will something of great value be grafted in to the soul. Here he is with Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo…
And here in this video you’ll see at the end what kind of man he is…
Pete formed a group in his university days called the Almanac Singers, and later, to worldwide acclaim, The Weavers. Here they are at their reunion concert, and you can see that the chance of seeing them together again created a rush on tickets…
Here’s Pete with Arlo’s old man Woody when the two of them were young men.
Well, it’s just another picture of Pete.
Here, in advanced years, appearing on the David Letterman show, Pete articulates his basic tenet that the world’s issues can and should be addressed through song, the unifying medium…
If one is a reader there are many books in one’s lifetime which have an impact on one’s psyche, which have the power to change one’s thinking. One such book for me was Strange Life Of Ivan Osokin by Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, a Russian writer, mathematician and philosopher.
He had been a pupil of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a spiritual teacher whose “Fourth Way” or “the method” concerned itself with overcoming the “waking sleep” he claimed limited our lives and potential, and his ideas made a very big impression on the first part of the 20th century.
Anyway, Ivan regrets the mistakes he’s made in his life, having clutzed everything up pretty significantly, and has an opportunity to live his life all over again. As he remembers the errors of his past and tries to correct them he finds he’s bound by a power to do nothing but what he did the first time round, despite all his efforts to do things differently.
I can’t adequately explain the spell this book casts on one, but only know it has had the same effect on others. I fear it’s very difficult to get now, but discovered a site where one may download it gratis. I thoroughly recommend that you do…
I learned from a very early age that I could escape into books, which was just as well, since I had a childhood marked by trauma and misery. One of my favourite books was Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs, English born who moved as a young child with her family to Australia. Her charming drawings, inspired by her fascination with the Australian flora and fauna, captured my imagination and transported me to another world where I myself could be a bush baby and lose my connection for a while with the stark realities of my life.
My first copy looked a little like this…
And there were others like these…
Later, colour copies could be had like these…
Many of the drawings had no colour, but some pages were colour plates.
It’s all wrong. I refer to those frigging ads which exhort people to use disinfectants which they claim “kill 99.9% of household germs”.
It seems incredible to me that people diligently clean and disinfect their “surfaces”, believing that the point one percent of bacteria which aren’t killed by the product, made increasingly strong by surviving each assault, couldn’t possibly harm them. Made paranoid about germs by advertisers hawking ever more “protections” from the things which kept the immune system strong in previous generations, people slather them everywhere.
But hygiene principles once acknowledged as important in the restriction of contagion are all but ignored now; people blithely and thoughtlessly cough and sneeze without bothering to cover their mouths whenever they catch the flu, and then “bravely soldier on” spreading infection in shops and offices, and public transport.
Must one wear a mask everywhere, for crying out loud.
Back in the 1950′s the plague of polio inspired a rush on vaccines made available by drug companies which reaped embarrassing profits, but it turned out that if people had simply washed their hands after using the toilet the plague would have been avoided. It should be a matter of common sense, I’m sure you’ll agree….
Two friends, boyhood cohorts who’d spent many happy hours as children pulling pranks around their neighbourhood, reunite after one of them returns from a job overseas.
They talk of their experiences whilst apart over dinner, and reminisce about the good old days, recalling the many stunts which gave them so much pleasure in their youth. Finally, having sunk four bottles of wine and a few Cognacs, they agree that the occasion calls for further forays into Bacchanalia, and repair to the closest bar.
“Hey Joe,” says one to the other while they wait for their drink order, “Watch this…” and urging his friend to pay attention he says to the bartender “Tickle your arse with a feather.” The young woman, outraged, says “I beg your pardon!”
“Particularly nasty weather,” his friend quickly returns to her.
“Oh, uh yes, it is,” the bartender replies, clearly not certain whether she’d heard him right the first time.
The two friends splutter laughing as they move away from the bar, and Joe determines to try the stunt at their next port of call, to which they stumble following several more little drinks.
Joe sidles up to the bar and tries to focus on the lovely young face of the bartender, being a great deal more affected by his liberal libations than he might have anticipated, and has to steady himself before he can open his mouth to utter “Tickle your arse with a feather.”
Despite the gross slurring of his words the bartender appears to have immediately understood him and after a long shift serving increasingly drunken patrons is not in the mood for jokes. “I beg your pardon!” she screams at him.
Flustered by what he considers an over the top reaction Joe forgets his line, though recalling the general thrust, and blurts “Fuck of a day.”
