Spicy Souls

Let’s keep it light today. They say variety is the spice of life. I love spice. They also say laughter heals the soul. I also love laughter. How about some varied laughter then? Sounds like a good combination to me. Varied laughter turns people into “spicy souls”.  

Where’s the problem? Trying to keep things light is not easy these days. Just ask anyone writing/commenting through the media, one eye on the global-vibe, the other witnessing it seemingly-spiralling towards disaster. As Obama said yesterday  - if nothing else, the world will remember this man and thank his poetically mesmerising speeches made at a time where so little inspiration surrounded us - standing in front of another admiring crowd, unveiling an impressive memorial to Martin Luther King, he declared that our current global issues are nothing compared to what the world faced during the days MLK Jr. preached for a realisation of his “dream”. Sobering stuff.

Generation after generation always looks back and considers itself lucky. Considers itself progressed compared to past relations, enriched relative to their parents and providing “happier” lives for their offspring than their own childhoods remembered. Are you listening out there? With one speech, Obama belittled those moaners comfortably sat-behind mahogany desks, driving to secure, mod-con equipped homes in luxury cars, even chastising those that don’t get ring-side seats, forgetting how lucky they are just to be living in a time of relative peace and basic prosperity across most of the developed world.

Wooah, what happened to keeping it light.. Ok, comedy can help us through the hardest times. Every joke is embedded with 90% truth they say. Maybe we are better suited at dealing with reality through laughter. Satirical, dark, all-out…it’s all laughter. “Laughter therapy benefits the body by increasing circulation, improving the flow of nutrients and oxygen to cells, and strengthening the heart muscle. Laughing also boosts immunity and is good for the lungs.” There you have it. You may gave guessed that previous sentence was lifted out of a medical journal. Laughter has been medically proven! We all trust what we find on WebMD, don’t’ we?  Not sure who said it, but as soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul. Does that mean those without a sense of humour are filthy people? Hmmmm…

Let’s ignore the usual weekly-review then, take a break from the attempts to advise leaders on how to actually leeeeaad and get straight into the smile-inducing stuff. Comedy shows, books and movies are in high-demand. We noticed a trend of escapism when Hollywood turned to comics and superheroes, providing 90 minutes of respite to thankful cinema-goers back in late 2008. A number of larger-than-life characters, capable of great feats, flew in to rescue us from dark days. These heroes ensured the world  felt safe while Osama Bin Laden still had a head, banks tried their best to burn cash, Facebook postings took over as a fun-night-out and three-for-one-deals on toilet paper dominated dinner party conversations – held over Skype, naturally. Those were fun times weren’t they?

Now we have a welcome trend towards comedy TV series. Any quick flick through the channel line-up (Virgin Media...you suck compared to Sky TV by the way, and Du and Etisalat in Dubai...sort out your remote controls) provides a veritable feast of comic genius. Fans of shows such as Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (you smart ones you), 30 Rock (sharp), Modern Family (good fun), Outsourced, The Office, Big Bang Theory, Family Guy etc. are probably healthier for all the laughing they do. There’s a reason Fox is thinking of launching an entire channel dedicated to The Simpsons, and why episodes of Friends hit chart-topping numbers week after week, 10 years after the gang stopped being so.

We want to laugh. We should laugh. Comedy really is a modern release valve for creativity, providing a great conduit for silly-political-correctness destruction that surrounds us. The Brits do this political-comedy exceptionally well. “Have I Got News For You” exemplifies the best that laughter can offer. “The Daily Show” in the US is good for that part of the world. Dealing with life is often too serious to see through the ridiculousness. Exposing it with wit can bring clarity and revive a sense of logic. Hence the enduring and powerful effect of comic sarcasm and satire. A noticeable sharpness and realistic touch now threads through the more successful recent shows. The crowd-pleasers (eliciting sharp, easy laughs – hey..still good to laugh) complete an offering acceptable across a wide-palette. True genius (Blackadder) is worth re-watching over and over, if only to steal classic lines from.  

Or how about a couple of recent cinema releases. Seems laughter and the meaning of life are in demand. Outside of Hollywood, French comedies and a great Lebanese one (Nadine Labaki’s “Where Do We Go Now”) have been thoroughly entrenched in comic use of addressing otherwise depressing and humanly-dark issues, such as war. There’s a reason these movies are winning awards. Another epic offering by the controversial director Lars Von Trier (Melancholia – watch it) attempts to address the question of existence. Not quite a comedy but certainly laced with enough satire to alleviate the seriousness of the subject. How about books? A top-seller has been the new financial-thriller from Robert Harris, where a hedge-fund manager gets involved in an algorithm that essentially trades on Fear. Maybe those taking time to read books prefer to be rooted in fictional yarns and markets where people actually make money..thanks for ruining our theme here bookworms.

So we agree it’s good to laugh. Good. Depends where you live of course. In Dubai at the moment - a strange bubble-wrapped place of serious (surrounding) cash combined with those chasing it (not really a pretty sight…in either case) - you’d be mistaken for thinking we were living amongst a thousand Carlos Slim Helus, laughing their backsides-off, remembering how much interest their bank deposits are generating per minute. Other cities express a more balanced nuance towards the “haves” and “have-nots”. Inhabitants of more “normal” cities are probably laughing more at home than generating large smiles in public. Either way, protests across major capital cities remind us how profound a time we are passing through. Any excuse to lighten the mood must be welcomed.

How about music? Simple actually. If laugher is as good as we’ve agreed it is, music must be the food that feeds the soul. Shakespeare once said, "If music be the food of love; play on” Enough said. Could you imagine life without music? Not even worth thinking about it.

History records music’s origin as a story-telling tool. Well, how’s this for a story….two people sit across a table and talk. It’s quiet, far too quiet. Not because BBM has overloaded and blown-Blackberry-up (Obi Jobs Kenobi – the force is strong with that one), but because the cacophony of global issues has reached such a point that, what may have once sounded like an orchestral-strong-set of deafening dangers, has morphed into a constant, irritating din of despair and negativity. The conclusion to the conversation will have repercussions felt for years to come, affecting possibly billions. Happiness hangs in the balance. Lifestyles will revolve around the agreement about to be made. Stories will be written about this very story. The dinner couple? The lawyer holding Steve Job’s final will and testament containing his “future vision” and Sony Entertainment’s CEO ready to negotiate film-rights to the biography. Let’s hope it will be a comedy.  

Laughter heals the soul. Music feeds it. Love can apparently make the world go round. Someone spice it up and make it spin faster please.

Hani