Follies
Melbourne is blessed with a ring of beautiful, orderly parks and gardens around the CBD. Given when they were established, it’s no surprise that the majority of these parks are manicured so as to achieve their aspirational goal of looking like a down under version of London’s Hyde Park.
Walking to work today I passed this erection in the Fitzroy Gardens and as you can see it is succinctly labelled Rotunda and it was built in 1873. The park has a couple of these but I hadn’t really taken much notice of them before. It’s the word rotunda that got me thinking. A rotunda makes me think of a brass band, or perhaps some American president making a rambling speech about how America is almost great again thanks to him and it would be great already if it weren’t for all you less easily deluded, and by the way I think we should own Greenland.
I thought given time and place I might step up to the said construction and launch into a quick presentation on some topic close to my heart, but what? Fortunately, the answer was coming out of my headphones. At that moment my playlist was playing Todd Rundgren’s song “Can We Still Be Friends”, something Denmark is probably asking itself over the current USA President’s unhealthy interest in their territory.
On this occasion of his latest shitfuckery, Trump reminds of a teenage boy in love with mate’s girl. The girl loves his mate, his mate loves the girl but instead of accepting that and writing a song about it Trump threatens violence if he can’t have her. But I digress.
So yes, a quick presentation on Todd Rundgren’s importance to rock music, both with his own compositions but also his production work with artists as diverse as Meatloaf [yep he’s all over Bat Out Of Hell] to XTC, The New York Dolls and Canada’s TPOH [look them up.]
I gave the gathered crowd of zero a good ten minutes worth. It says something about Melbourne that as much as no one paid me any attention neither did anyone try to stop me. I imagine the passersby, their numbers increased by tourists here for the tennis, were quite impressed. I can imagine some couple from the USA or Italy or China remembering their vacation in Melbourne years later and the husband saying, “Sure was a good trip honey, and the tennis was great but for me the highlight was that guy’s oration about Todd Rundgren. He sure knew his shit.”
His wife would nod politely, as she always did at her husband’s musings but secretly inside she would think that the speaker did indeed have a lovely speaking voice and was quite handsome but it was a pity he had been too short for public office, he would have made a great PM/President/Supreme Leader.
The only human that paid me even the vaguest interest was a passing park gardener who gave me a pitying glance. No doubt he has had to deal with many worst things than me in that rotunda.
The point is that when you name something the very name elicits some kind of behaviour. The English have another name for this oversize garden edifice; one better suited to my actions this morning. A folly is according to the Oxford dictionary - a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose, especially a tower or mock-Gothic ruin built in a large garden or park.
Folly is also defined as an act of foolishness. These definitions are linked for what could be more foolish than spending money on a construction that is useless or standing up talking about something of specialized interest to nobody?
I don’t know, how about blowing up the world order because of your greed, ignorance and arrogance.
