|
Maybe
it’s just me but sometimes it just seems as if the entire world
had gone completely mad. I mean this week there is some guy in the
news who has a stage name of “Magnet” and is the winner of this
years “Air Guitar” contest in Finland. Now, I like to think of
myself as a person who manages to stay up with current events and
all that, but I need some explanation on this one. As I understand
it, the art of ‘playing’ an air guitar involves someone acting out
the moves of someone as if they were actually making music. I
think they pipe in the actual music….so it seems to be something
akin to lip-syncing only without the singing or lip-syncing….or
maybe they lip-synch….I don’t really know …..I’m not really clear
on the finer points of these performances, since I’ve never
actually seen one for myself. Nowhere in the pictures I’ve seen of
the people performing at these events is a real guitar visible.
So I think what we have here is
basically a contest where a few thousand people get together and
watch various other people strum their way through songs of their
choice without using a real physical instrument while canned music
is pushed out through the speakers into the concert hall. Then I
am supposing the panel of judges decides who was the best
performer and the winner walks away with a big chunk of cash. No
music lessons are required and no musical talent is demonstrated.
Thus, I suppose any person on this planet would be eligible to
compete providing they can do a fair imitation of what someone
looks like simulating guitar playing without an actual guitar. For
this event you must travel to Finland, which is I’m sure one of
the easiest places to get to on this planet. I mean haven’t you
noticed travel posters with captions reading……”Attend The 45th
Air Guitar Festival in Skordenbergunflatz, Finland” all the time.
Right. So what I can’t figure out is who’s out of step here….me or
them? I can’t see the sense in this and wouldn’t go see someone
play an air guitar if it was being held down the block from me,
mush less half way around the world.
Do people from our country even attend
something like this or is it just a local event that might be
popular in Finland, where there isn’t much to do for just about 11
½ months out of the year? Not that there’s anything wrong with
that. I’m not really in a position to make these kinds of
observations since I’ve never been there. It might be a really
nice place to visit, but how would we know? It’s just that for the
life of me, I can’t think of any major cultural event that has
ever occurred that would attract me to this place. I’m certain the
Finns are nice folks but they need to do some serious public
relations to show the rest of the world what goes on up there.
About the only thing I’ve ever seen the Finlanders do is sweat in
saunas and beat themselves silly with sticks and weeds of some
sort. If you doubt what I’m saying, then quick…name some famous
person you’ve ever heard of that came from Finland. Name the
capital of Finland.
What do they make in Finland? Do they
have a football team in Finland? Who’s your favorite Finish (?)
author, singer, artist, poet…..or anything? What kind of food
would you eat if you were there? I know, you’d say…well, we’d eat
whatever they eat…..so what is that? We know and are able to eat
at restaurants that serve us Mexican, Italian, German, French and
Chinese food, but I’ve never seen a restaurant in this country
that specializes in food from Finland, have you? Of course, I
haven’t seen one that sells food from Libya either and I suppose
there are some nice folks living there as well. I must make a
reminder to myself to learn more about the Finns and what’s going
on there….surely there must be something else more intellectually
stimulating that watching some fool pretend to play an imaginary
guitar. Maybe they have the ‘air piano’ festival…..I could get
into that….Comments go to
www.pearyperry.com. Unless you are from Finland.
|
