The Importance of the Arts and Humour

Written by Dan Propp

We are all influenced by our gestalt, motivated by foundations both hereditary and environmental. I have always been a sucker for puns. That might explain why, to me, the word meshugener sounds a lot like sugar. As Jackie Gleason used to say, ‘How sweet it is’.

Music, cars, photography and puns – the lowest form of humour, have always been powerful sweeteners for this dinosaur. Nostalgia has also served to be a stirring experience. I still enjoy listening to the songs of Dinah Shore.

When it comes to photography, we can only shutter at the possibilities that can develop. As far as music is concerned, accordion to some, the sight of a squeeze box is enough to make them bellow. However, playing the accordion, banjo, and guitar makes me a happy fellow. When it comes to cars, like the Nash, it can make some of us old timers ‘ramble’ on forever…you bet your life. That last comment dictates some of us to watch old DVDs of Groucho Marx and his De Soto commercials. For some, though not all of us, who survive with the arts and laughter, we stem from a foundation that require sweeteners to exist. We rely on the arts and humour to keep on creating and rising above memories.

There was a well-known photographer in Vancouver who was a friend and we had something in common. The following song is based upon his memory.

SUNNY

He was off in a flash in his nineteen forty-seven Nash saying, “I’ve got another photo shoot to do. Got to be rambling along, singing my song. It’s sure been awfully nice talking to you”. Sunny was an old-fashioned film photographer who still developed and focused on happy occasions and with all cultures mingled and mixed. From negatives, I like to make positives, he chuckled, with a happy wink of an eye. Both had so much depth of field. No wonder life was always a sunny clear blue sky. In his studio was a picture of a huge tripod holding a tiny little camera and it made everyone stop. The reason he did it was because it’s so important to take a stand in life and you and I are that little camera on the top.

Then he was off in a flash in his nineteen forty-seven Nash saying. “I’ve got another photo shoot to do. Got to be rambling along singing my song. It’s sure been awfully nice talking to you.” From negatives he always tried to make positives, this survivor of the Holocaust. Yet to everyone he was just ‘Sunny’.

The photographer in this song also had memories. It is written with a message and perhaps an explanation why the arts and humour are still so important to many of us.