The Shamique In The Unique
I noticed one of those bumper stickers the other day proclaiming the virtues of senseless acts of kindness. It strikes me as another way of proclaiming the virtue of that which is common and everyday. Vaudevillians, at least those whose act depended upon the story and the song, created their act out of the common and everyday. We made a virtue out of the ordinary. Like all virtues, there was a certain amount of survival instinct at play. The Houlihan's made two thousand a week at a time when someone who actually worked for a living thought they were living on easy street if they made that in a year. The survival instinct at play was the nature of the audience. Vaudeville was sort of like network TV back in the sixties: it played everywhere and for everykind of person. At any given time, and more often than not all together, there were micks, waps, polaks, yankees, kikes, negroes, huns, chinks and what not out there. (I know that collection of monikers offends the pure of heart, but that is what they called themselves as well as each other, not unlike the black man who today uses the N-word that someone not from that tribe could be shot on sight for saying). For all the nonsense about the wonders of the melting pot, that act of melting was a painful alchemy of turning tribes into a tribe.
It was the very uncomonness of each soul out there that made a strategy of commonness an imperative. They were not one from the other a different species, but rather from different cultures. With that said all cultures have wives and husbands. They all have mother-in-laws. They all have black sheeps in the family. They all want the good life. They all believe in things that do and don't deliver, and they all know who or what facilitates or stands in the way of that which is or is not delivered. Central to the act was the notion of people. If you can't make an act out of that commonality, than you should try basket weaving as they say.
Hit such an audience with the unique and they will label you a sham, and justifiably so. The unique requires sameness to flourish. It requires that everybody out there starts on the same page to know what changes as you turn the page. In a world of differences, the unique is neither saught nor welcome should it dane to show up. It is not a lack of immagination that causes people to seek the common when the common is what is unique. My father always said, Frankie, the unique is always at the edges of the routine, never the main affair. Put the audience at the edge of boredom with their own self assurance of what they already know, and then you can slam them both sides of the head with the unique and they will love you for it.
What do most people say if they hear music that is wholely unique, or look at a painting that is wholely unique? They will tell you it all sounds or looks the same. That's because the sham in the truly unique is its inability to tell a story. A well told story starts with the everyday and arrives at the uncommon. That's why the difference between Vaudevillians was not so much a difference in what we did, but in how well we did it. A thing done well will never be called a sham.
RSS Links
