Putting it straight out there

With a theme such as Statement Pieces, this edition of HouseFinder steps up onto the stage to make statements in all its regular columns. Can you sense the dramatic moment? The curtain opening and … Ta-Da!

Whatever happens next will have to be quite something to intrigue audiences out there. Ask any actress, and she will tell you about the necessity of making an entrance with flair, in a statement piece made to turn heads. As they say, you have 10 seconds to make a favourable impression. Or not.

A cynical realist once commented about the Lord’s second coming on the cloud, saying that it would have to be a spectacular, techno-colour affair to get everybody to look up and take notice. Or perhaps He will return on the digital cloud because everyone’s noses are attached to screens these days. No matter how or when, the King will make a stunning announcement.

“Dumbed down,” said John Taylor Gatto in 1992, of people worldwide. The term is explained on Wikipedia as “the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content in education, literature, cinema, news, video games, and culture.”

How to reach dumbed down audiences? Motivational speakers are surely acutely aware of the blasé culture of the day. Their role is to transform, rather than inform, but they need to go all out in an attempt to have something fresh to offer their audiences. Sadly, every meme on social media these days has been forwarded many times – resulting in a jaded audience who has been there, read that, got the T-shirt. How sad that bored indifference has become second nature to many people. Our civilization has had it too easy, too long.

And along came Covid: Wake-up call for a woke generation?

In 1859, Charles Dickens commenced The Tale of Two Cities like this:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way …”

Our era is no different – that paragraph could have been written about us, now.

Ursula K. Le Guin, the late American author, once said: “First sentences are doors to worlds.” Novelists make clear statements by the very act of penning down that first sentence. George Orwell, in his ominous novel 1984, started with “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”. Eerie statement, like the novel itself.
Despite the prevailing pessimism, who would not agree with actor Will Rogers: “Don’t wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait.”

Christine Stoman