Meditations upon Londo Mollari and the kitchen sink

[unixronin]

No, I haven't gone barking mad.  (It's debatable whether that would represent an actual state change anyway.)

I was in the kitchen, washing pots and pans to get the sink clear, and cymrullewes let one of the cats out.  The Dread Pirate Bignum chose to comment aloud on this.  "Mom, I saw you let the cat in!"  next thing you know, my brain was emitting something like this:

You let the big cat in
You let the big cat out
In, out, in, out, running all about...

And from there, my brain jumped to Londo Mollari, talking to his aide Vir Cotto about his studies of humans and human culture.  He was completely baffled that the "Hokey-Cokey" song that seemed so deeply rooted in human culture was absolutely and totally meaningless, and could not comprehend how anything so meaningless could be significant.

"How can anybody possibly understand such a people?"

What Londo Mollari missed was this:  The meaning of the Hokey Cokey is intimately tied into its meaningless.  In a way, the heart of its meaning is that it is meaningless.

Consider the time and place in which it arose:  Although centuries old in its roots, it exploded into sudden popularity in post-World War II Britain, in working-class dance halls and holiday resorts.  There were very few people who had not lost a friend, relative or family member in the war.  Many people's homes, even entire neighborhoods, had been leveled or completely obliterated.  Many goods were in short supply, some still rationed.  Bomb sites were everywhere, some of them still home to unexploded bombs.

But there was one vital thing -- the war was over.  There was time, now, for grieving, time for rebuilding, time for clearing away the debris, time for gathering together scattered families and shattered lives.  There was no blackout any more.  There were no more ARP wardens patrolling the neighborhood for stray chinks of light.  Loose lips no longer sank ships.

Most importantly, there was time to simply be.  There were still plenty of very important and very hard work to do, but there was no longer a continuing and imminent threat to the future of people's entire way of life.  There was no longer a war effort to support.  There was time to breathe, to stop and think, to relax.  The economy was starting to return to normal, the cities were being rebuilt, the boys had (mostly) come home or were coming home; and the odds were now very good that the boys coming home were coming home alive, not in coffins slated for a military funeral, or simply represented by a telegram that began "Her Majesty deeply regrets to inform you...."

For the first time in six years, there was time to DO things that were completely unimportant.  It was finally OK again to spend time on things that were trivial and inconsequential.  But the scars were still fresh, and it wasn't good to casually pull them open.  People just didn't want to talk about it, or have to think about it, any more than they had to for a while.  So what better than something light-hearted and fun, a silly song and a novelty dance that fifty of a hundred or five hundred people could join in with, but that didn't actually mean a thing?

This is what Londo Mollari didn't understand.  The meaning of the Hokey Cokey is not found in its meaning, but in its meaninglessness -- or, more accurately, in the fact that at long last, it was OK to spend time doing something completely meaningless.

Comments

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

Is the Hokey Cokey the same as the Hokey Pokey?

You put your left leg in
You take your left leg out
You put your left leg in
And you shake it all about

You do the Hokey Pokey
And you turn yourself about
That's what it's All About!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Same thing, yes. The Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokey-Pokey) actually discusses that slight cross-Atlantic variation, as well as the history of its entry into US popular culture, but despite getting the "when", somehow misses the "why".

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Draal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draal): I rather liked the song.
Delenn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delenn): Don't tell him!

I'd always known it as the Hokey-Pokey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokey_Pokey), but I see now that it's one of those "two nations divided by a common language" things.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

You would not believe how many of those there are and where/when most are discovered.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, I've spent enough time in London over the last 15 years that I'm not too thrown by the ones I've run into - it's just a matter of noting and remembering the terminology differences (e.g. boot, bonnet, chips, crisps, loo, bollocks, S vs. Z in spellings). My only trouble is that sometimes it takes a day or so to reset for the London locale in my brain.

Of course, there are regional dialect differences within the USA, too, e.g. soda vs. pop; milkshake vs. frappé; sandwich vs. grinder, and so on. I'm grateful for mass media which has lessened a lot of this type of division.

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
- Willy Wonka, probably quoting someone else.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

"Never mind the bollocks, we're the Sex Pistols!"

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I'm not thrown by them. It's the sheer number and when/where I discover them. Poor Goose had a problem when her grandparents came to visit. She used her English accent for a week at school and they couldn't figure out why.

A lot of them I use myself because that is the regional dialect where I grew up in Eastern NC.

I joke that we both speak the Queen's English. I speak Queen Elizabeth I's and he speaks Queen Elizabeth II's.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Heh. Years ago, when I was dating an interesting/intelligent Canadian from Toronto, I picked up (mimiced) some of his word choices and accent/inflection. People around me at work started asking if I was Canadian.

"Huh? What are you talking about? I was born in San Francisco!"

Wanna know something worse?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

My mom was a damned yankee from south New Jersey. (Was because she's moved from NC to MD.)

I grew up on a small 2 year college campus with a LOT of foreign students. I picked up everybody's accent. Didn't pick up their habits of speech though. They tended to pick up mine though.

So depending on what I want to say and how I'm feeling it's almost impossible for anyone to guess which accent I'm going to use.

I did find out in college that when I am very angry that I pull out a Scottish brogue that I didn't realize I had. When I hear it coming out of my mouth I know to shut up and walk away and calm down. I sound incredibly calm when I use that accent but it's a cold rage calm.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

well, ya know them brits mangle the english language somethin fierce!

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

:)