Last week, I took a three-day time-out (Auszeit). With my bike and my significant other, I went to Würzburg by train. We spent some time looking at the residential town and then went on to the Torturmtheater Sommerhausen by bike. They played “Emma”, which fascinated us. On the next day, we rode around 90 kilometres from Sommerhausen on the river Main to Feuchtwangen (in the district of Ansbach).
After what turned out to be quite a few metres of altitude, we ended up directly at the Feuchtwangen market place and checked into the “Lamm”. Having found our rooms and enjoyed our beer, we heard that the Kreuzgangfestspiele were currently played at the local open-air stage. And that tonight the musical “Cabaret” can be seen.
As we see it, a musical such as Cabaret on an open-air stage is definitely a nice finish to a sunny day on our bikes. Tickets for good seats are also still available. Consequently, we buy them and go to see the musical at night.
And it was a beautiful evening.
Sina Schulz (Fräulein Kost), Peter Kaghanovitch (Herr Schulz), Gabriele Fischer (Fräulein Schneider)
Well, Caberet is one of those musicals that go under your skin. The songs are beautiful earworms, the story actually is on a high level and the performance was good. Consequently, we enjoyed a wonderful theatre evening under the starry sky.
And then “Herr Schulz” sang his song about the Meeskite! And this was when I felt more than a little touched at the core of my being.
In Google, I find the meaning of “meeskite”: “ugly and not good or something”.
The song moved me so much that I looked up the lyrics. I found them on songlyrics.com.
Why was I so enthusiastic?
Well, it is because I myself felt I was a “meeskite” for many years. In my estimation, this phase lasted until I was around thirty. And even after that, I sometimes was a “meeskite”. Many of my friends also felt they were a “meeskite”. Even today, I often come across young persons who have the “meeskite” syndrome.
And I am sure that none of them has even the slightest reason to feel like they were a “meeskite”. On the contrary: these are all wonderful persons. Still, they feel “small and ugly”.
To me, the reason seems simple: people from their (our) surroundings, such as parents, school and other systemic and non-systemic influences and instances made both them and us look small. Or else, they managed to make them and us feel small.
And I fail to understand why this is so and why it should always be so. I think there were definitely systems where, in ancient times, it was different. Perhaps among the savages, who were still allowed to live in their natural environments? But does our cultural world really force us to feel “small”?
Should not the “cultural world” we ourselves created do the exact opposite: help us to liberate ourselves! And make us love ourselves?
Would it not be a beautiful utopia if humans stopped making each other look small and if we then no longer needed to feel we are “meeskites”? Wouldn’t this be a nice start of the “project freedom”?
Well, this is all I wish to say.
On stage, before his recital, Mr. Schultz says you only have to know the Yiddish word “Meeskite” in order to understand the song. And again, I get the suspicion that the “meeskite” will thrive particularly well in strongly religious and moralizing societies.
And if that turns out to be the truth, then the “meeskite syndrome” is yet another consequence of the “medicine” religion. “Religious Freedom” is and will always be an obligation derived from a tolerant concept of humans and society, but it must not be more than that. The super-elevation of religion I often witness in permanently grotesque forms of governmental obeisance right up to the point where an entire population subjugates itself under religious groups sounds absolutely inconceivable to me.
Incidentally, my mentor Rupert Lay taught the exception for intolerance: the only instance where intolerance is acceptable and even demanded is where intolerance comes into the picture. In other words: intolerance cannot and must not be tolerated!
Easily said, not so easily done – but certainly a good principle.
Miscellaneous
Meeskite
HERR SCHULTZ:
[spoken]
Now the only word you have to know to understand this
little song is the Yiddish word “meeskite”.
Meeskite means: ugly, funny looking…
Meeskite means:
[singing]
Meeskite, meeskite
Once upon a time there was a
Meeskite, meeskite
Looking in the mirror
He would say
What an awful shock,
I’ve got a face
That could stop a clock.
Meeskite, meeskite
Such a pity on him
He is a
Meeskite, meeskite
God up in his Heaven left him out on a shaky limb
He put a meeskite on him!
[spoken]
Listen, he grew up. Even meeskites grow up.
[singing]
And soon in the Heder (means Hebrew School)
He sat beside this little girl
And when he asked her, her name
She replied: “I’m Pearl!”
He ran to the Zeiddah (that’s grandfather)
And said in the scratchy voice of his
You told me I was the homeliest
Well, gramps, you’re wrong, Pearl is!
Meeskite, meeskite
No one ever saw a bigger
Meeskite, meeskite
Ev’rywhere a flaw
And maybe that is the reason why
I’m going to love her, until I die!
Meeskite, meeskite
Oh, it is a pleasure, she’s a
Meeskite, meeskite
She’s the one I’ll treasure
For I thought there could never be
A bigger meeskite, than me!
[spoken]
Listen to what happened:
[singing]
And so they were married
And in a year she turned and smiled:
“I’m afraid, I am going to have a child”.
Nine months she carried
Worrying how’s that child would look
And all the cousins, well, worried too,
But what a turn fate took:
Gorgeous, gorgeous
They produced a baby that was
Gorgeous, gorgeous
Crowding ’round the cradle
All relatives awed and wooed
He ought to pose for a baby-food.
Gorgeous, gorgeous
Would I tell a lie?
He’s simply
Gorgeous, gorgeous
Who’d have ever thought
That we will see such a flawless gem,
Out of two meeskites like them?
[spoken]
Wait! Wait! This story has a moral. All my stories have morals:
[singing]
Moral, moral
Yes indeed the story has a
Moral, moral
“Thou you not a beauty
It is nevertheless quite true
There may be beautiful things in you”.
Meeskite, meeskite
Listen to a fable of the
Meeskite, meeskite
Anyone responsible for loveliness large or small
Is not a meeskite at all!
Das Bild ist von der Website “Kreuzgangspiele – Stadt Feuchtwangen”
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
For those who did not want to follow the Link: here are the lyrics.
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