Nostalgic Musings

In a fit of nostalgia, I spent a good hour yesterday watching clips of "My Fair Lady" on YouTube. (The nostalgia had to do with the fact that I had watched it as a child.) This time around, I understood a lot of the social commentary that had eluded me as an 11 year old. I had always expected this. What took me by pleasant surprise were the lyrics. They had struck me as awfully clever back then, but I had assumed that as an adult, with a more sophisticated understanding of language and its nuances and hidden meanings,I would have found them somewhat less impressive. Not a bit. They were even more charming and clever. What is more, having attempted writing - admittedly casually - in the meantime, I was able to appreciate not just the elegance and intelligence of the words, but also the sheer effort that must have gone in their crafting. Combined with a good plot and a poignant social message, they make the film a true accomplishment.

On a side note, a friend of mine recently became an Irish citizen. By recently, I mean yesterday. The news, coming as it did during my nostalgia based YouTubing, reminded me that Shaw was Irish. And that got me thinking of the huge literary contribution of the Irish to English literature. Swift, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw - all pretty much the Shakespeares of their day and age - all Irish. (I'm certainly not the first to make that connection - in one of the episodes of Yes Prime Minister, the prime minister, asked to name English playwrights other than Shakespeare, proudly reels off, "Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw" and is promptly told that they were Irish. Note to self - next nostalgic indulgence: Yes Prime Minister.) I have always been an unabashed Anglophile and have always marvelled at how such a small island of so few people has managed to accomplish so much. It seems that, at least where the written word is concerned, the Irish are even more remarkable. Maybe there is something to that Blarney Stone after all.