Hello Reader,
Got human nature?
I will tell you who knew human nature: H.G. Wells. No wonder even today there is a fan club, a club that met this fall in Central London in the old war rooms to discuss Wells and his friend Sir Winston Churchill, with presentations by experts. I missed out, as I was in Canada.
In Well’s novel The New Machiavelli, he portrayed a political meeting of affluent liberals, where even though, in that age of conformity, the attendees were in their formal dress, each person wore some sort of individual, even eccentric, distinction. Yes! That is certainly true among the leftists I know, and I’m sure Wells knew why this is so, although maybe some things an artist cannot explain in words. That same novel had a scene where a lad finds someone else is meeting with a girl he fancies: Shivering butterflies—I can relate.
I can relate, as well, to a bearded man in my poem—(beards were fashionable in Well’s day, but they could hide expressions)—a man who habitually stuffs his emotions. I once said to a lady from offshore, “I’m proud to be North American, but you’ve got to admit: We don’t do emotions very well.” She moved her hand up and down against an invisible wall and said, “Yes, we say you guys are behind a pane of glass.”
As you know, “teamsters” is the name for the international union (North America) of truck drivers, from their days with a team of horses. Today I am relating to teamsters being romantic. Actually, I don’t know what the union is called in Britain, where the trucks are called lorries.
Here are two poems.
Romantic Drivers Roll Along Dubbin Street
On a far-seeing day Dubbin Street traffic flows north-northeast
with cars, bikes and lorries,
one-tons and flat beds,
carrying soap and steel pipes.
Teamsters young and old,
have short range and long range hauls.
Drivers like young Falcon and Old Bull.
An invisible airwave carries CB traffic.
“This is Falcon, you there Old Bull, come on?”
“Old Bull here, north on Dubbin.”
“Me too. Nice day.”
“Well Falcon, does your son know this was a Roman road?”
“My boy’s just found out, quite excited.”
The lorries rumble north on a two-millennia old highway.
Down the centuries the road has sunk low between flanking hills.
Old Bull shifts in his seat.
“My young buck liked the Romans,
now he draws Martian machines standing over the ridge.”
“My boy draws them too. Sometimes, Old Bull,
I imagine Black Smoke pouring down the hills.”
Silent airwaves.
The CB rasps.
“I remember… imagining that too.”
Canisters release inky vapor, coiling and pouring upward,
a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly
pouring sluggishly down the slope of the land.
Traffic rolls north on Dubbin.
Dark Machine
Strange reports from Woking inspire me to grab a train.
At the station I rent a bicycle,
pedal past town, through heather and trees
until I stop—to gape up at the Thing.
On three tall legs the Thing towers,
matte black,
devoid of emotion.
Alien metal absorbs all wavelengths of color—
It moves off in a swirl of legs on its mysterious errand.
I wildly try to warn a man in town about the Thing.
He gazes at me through black-framed glasses,
over a black bushy beard.
He listens without absorbing my words,
like a stone.
Somewhere on his life’s road
the man had clenched his feelings,
pinched his reactions,
dulled his curiosity.
Now, he would wait in town unknowing,
stiff and alone.
Sean Crawford
November
Calgary
2019
Remarks regarding television:
~Besides the BBC one, there is yet another War of the Worlds newly on TV. This I know from an online Variety (link)
I suppose fools in Hollywood will say this one is “too long for a miniseries” the way they did for Torchwood Children of Earth series, but they would be wrong—Eight episodes is normal enough for this European production of War of the Worlds, a regular series, filmed mostly in Britain and France, taking place in the 21st century. Quote: “… a new, and very loose adaptation of “War of the Worlds,” from Urban Myth, Canal Plus, Fox Networks Group Europe & Africa, AGC Television, and Studiocanal "
~Just like the British TV series Torchwood Children of Earth, European shows and Japanese anime series (as in noted in my Death of Buffy essay, archived January 2012) are not always like, say, a typical Hollywood police show, with a “murder of the week,” or a sci-fi fantasy with a “monster of the week,” where the series continues into infinity until a ratings slump. Instead these shows are a pre-planned number of dramas, made to air in-order, leading to a planned ending.
My three favorite tragic Japanese cartoon (anime) shows for young adults all have only 13 episodes.
The first ever in-order U.S. show was Babylon-5, a “five year novel” that inspired later in-order shows like Buffy and Battlestar Galactica to air with rising action, climax, and then a terminal ending. Very moving.
Needless to say, there will always be a place for conventional Hollywood shows.
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