By John Knox
As I sat watching the dress rehearsal for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, I found myself wondering again – as I do each year – about the relationship between this, the world’s greatest arts festival, and the real world.
As one of the Fringe show adverts puts it: “The world has been naughtier than usual this year”. So how can we sit down to watch these 3,000 shows when there is a world recession on, financial crises in Europe and America, a war in Afghanistan, uprisings across the Middle East, famine in Africa and a recent mass shooting in Norway?
Are we turning our back on this horrible real world, or are we reflecting upon it?
The International Festival programme contains plenty of escapism. Scottish Ballet is staging Mahler’s The Song of the Earth. Chinese Ballet goes back to the ancient tale of The Peony Pavilion. There’s a Korean production of The Tempest. A Taiwanese actor gives a one-man version of King Lear. Ravi Shankar plays his sitar.
As for the 2,500 shows on the Fringe, nearly 40 per cent of them are comedies. A rising number seem to be X-rated stand-up shows with billings like “Mash-up mayhem” and “Tease, tassels and titter”. Presumably this is more of the stuff we see on TV, with bedroom and bathroom jokes from shouting Irishmen and dead-pan North Country comics. I guess it all reflects the fact we are becoming a nation of tweeters who can only communicate, and even think, in one-liners.
Down at the Festival of Politics at the Scottish parliament, they are trying to come to terms with this clever new world of social media. Happily, the Book Festival seems to be ignoring the electronic world with tentfuls of nice old-fashioned people listening to the gentle cadences of Alexander McCall Smith.
And yet, there is a more reflective side to the various festivals this year. We are looking to the East for inspiration. The rising powers of China and India are the main themes of the International Festival, and there are some thoughtful lectures and discussions being staged in the Hub Hall and at the Book Festival on what this may mean for our planet. It all reflects, perhaps, our disillusionment with the West and its financial and political scandals. Even among the comedies on the fringe, there is the promise of biting satire and radical thoughts on the way the world wags at the moment.
Towards the end of the Tattoo, there is a sudden pause in the marching, drumming, piping, bugling, cycling, dancing, re-enactments and general pageantry. The lights turn to dark purple we are asked to remember the soldiers killed and injured this year in the war in Afghanistan. You can just see the white helmets of the band as they play that old anthem, Eternal Father, Strong to Save. A lone piper, high above us on the castle walls, plays a lament. Yes, this is a moment of reflection.
I thought how lucky we are that there are others prepared to do our fighting for us. How lucky Scotland is to be at peace and living in relative prosperity. How lucky Edinburgh is to be the place where the world comes to celebrate the arts (and, incidentally, to spend £261 million). And how the arts – perhaps – can refocus our efforts on the forgotten virtues of honest dealing, compassion, care for the planet and the genuine pursuit of happiness.
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