SALOME …GET YOUR KNICKERS ON! by Harry McAvinchey

Salome , Salome….!!Salome isn’t going to keep her  clothes on and the public  in  Norneverland have had to be warned. Of course this has started all the dogs barking, the cats howling  and has brought  out all the crazies again .Next thing you know they’ll be out with their placards prancing about outside the hall where the performance is to be held .The Reverend David McElveen has once again  been released from his state of  suspended animation, being only periodically revived  and wheeled out for special slots on radio programmes .He’s a man obviously  more at home living in a different century entirely…He is back   complaining about nakedness.This brings in a whole  radio discussion with  Malachi O’Doherty about the rights and wrongs of people without clothes  on.

Richard Strauss’s “Salome” is to be to played at the Grand Opera House  and letters of warning has been sent out to the effect that there will be scenes of nudity  in this operatic performance.Mr  McElveen has the notion that we are all naturally depraved  already and explained in his passive-aggressive  way how nothing should be shown, read or heard  that might encourage this incipient depravity.Naked people ! Nudity ! Too much skin! Real , ordinary human beings! Worlds might crumble and die!

They’ve  issued this warning nowhere else, of course .  In Norneverland  we need this protection from ourselves..We’re a very special case here, in that we are apparently very sensitive to this kind of corruption.It is possibly a genetic trait…an aberration  caused by generations of inbreeding and incest in  the tight communities of Norneverland .You see, before the invention of the beloved bicycle, no one went any further than the village or their street to find a marriageable partner.They  “couldn’t walk the length of themselves” was the phrase bandied about, so the  family and community gene -pool was fairly insular. Like I said , the bicycle changed all of that , but the genetic damage had already been done and may take several generations  or more to rectify.

There were consequences though…

  If exposed to the eroticism of something  like the Dance of the Seven Veils , some of the population will emerge from the theatre in a mood for ravaging and ravishing .They will become werewolves of desire and begin roaming the streets , hunting for prey.The rest of the population must be protected at all costs .Well maybe  not at all costs, but by printing a leaflet or two.Leaflet distribution is a very popular form of communication , much in use in Norneverland .It is used by some political parties with some success and is a great way of stirring up the emotional native tribes.It can create quite superb publicity too, of course.Mr McElveen should really attempt to enrol in an art college sometime soon, so that he could study the human form in all its glory and discover that without light hitting those curves and planes  there would be nothing to see at all .Those  colours, tones and shades of skin would cease to exist. They are as nothing without a little bit of light.All that other stuff he’s worrying about is all in the mind ….

Personally there are many human beings whom I would rather not see unclothed at all, for purely aesthetic reasons .That would probably include ninety per cent of the people on the planet. Most of them would be on safer ground , hiding their lumps and bumps behind a veil of decorum ,but I remember watching Ken Russell’s  take on Oscar Wilde’s “Salome’s Last Dance” which is worth a peek.Of course Oscar’s play was banned in its day too.

There’s always someone around waiting patiently to be  offended for being only  human.