Baby Elephant Walk

This afternoon I waited an hour and twenty minutes in Trafalgar Square in the pouring rain for The Sultan's Elephant (and his attendant Little Girl) to animate. The audience was already restive when I arrived and even more so by the time the Little Girl awoke -- bratty seven year olds were shouting "You're six and a half minutes late, this is totally unacceptable!" while others tunelessly sang "Why are we waiting?" When the red-frock-coated puppeteers swarmed out and the music struck up, there was almost no way it could be anything other than a disappointment -- but it was.

The Little Girl's waking and walking around with Lilliputian attendants on all sides was an exercise in joy, really deeply thrilling and magical. Likewise the Sultan and his entourage climbing aboard and the elephant getting to its preposterously mechanical feet and setting out across Westminster. Admittedly I was a little the worse for wear from the night before, but I could have wept right there in the street from the sheer wonder of it all.

The Elephant is nothing other than a piece of beauty. It serves no purpose except to touch the world with delight.

Can you think of a better purpose?

Is it really theatre? I have no idea. It certainly doesn't have much to say, but it's the best carnival float you've ever seen and it just makes you love life. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

It's also an astonishing piece of engineering, chock full of mechanical wizardry, that requires a ridiculous number of skilled operators to make work. One of the most blissful things about it is that so much ingenuity and wizardry should be dedicated to something so fantastically unnecessary. Nobody needs this elephant... and yet everyone does.

Would we ever have noticed if it hadn't come to town? Of course not. But it has come to town, and we are miraculously enriched by it.

In the midst of an overwhelmingly positive audience reaction, I heard one woman saying:

"It's complete rubbish! I can't believe we're spending money on this!"

(Referring, presumably, to the Arts Council and the GLA, or more generally to public funding of such events; the spectacle itself was free.)

I wanted to slap her. I wanted to say: "Shut up you soulless shrew! Fuck off back to Essex and the Daily Mail and leave this city to the people who love it and understand its potency. Leave it to those who recognise the value of imagination and pleasure and excitement, those who still have a sense of wonder. Go count hateful pennies in your suburban blandorama while the rest of us experience that thing called 'fun' here in town."

I wanted to say: "Look around you. Everyone else is smiling. Why aren't you?"

I didn't say any of that, of course. Just buzzed by with my eye on the olyphaunt. I had a (gay) wedding reception to get to, somewhere in the back of beyond, so reluctantly dragged myself away from the proceedings.

It wasn't easy. Happiness is addictive.

But the elephant is here until tomorrow. I'll see it again.

If you're in the neighbourhood, you should too.
Posted by matt at May 6, 2006 11:01 PM