In the fourth year of Secondary School, Form 4b of Alsop Comp for Boys Only were due a lesson in Godknowswhat. A couple of pals and I arrived early, dunno know why, but for some reason I boldly chalked,
..on the squeaky owl blackboard. When the bell went off, we bundled out of the room to queue up with the rest of our mates in the corridor and wait for the Master to show. I don’t remember who he was, fifty-odd years hence, but what has stuck in my mind all this time was that he taught without erasing my words. Whatever he was supposed to be on about, what I’d written on the board was the real subject. Needless to say, I struggled not to laugh and give myself away as the author, and I wasn’t alone, it being one of the few occasions in the five years we were together I earned the title of Class Wag – quite a honour... (another time involved a pair of sliding blackboards with a sausage wedged between). All I can say about the lesson was that the Master ended up teaching - in no uncertain terms - that Mumbo-Jumbo Definitely Was Not Gibberish, even if none of us at the time could tell quite how he had pulled this off, and he musta been blissfully unaware, or maybe superaware as teaching folk sometimes slyly are.
As to the meaning, I wouldn’t mind having a stab at it now, should the Reader
permit...
Note that the Leftovers - for whom I was a prominent left back - had the most
extreme knockabout games that have ever taken place in or out of Liverpool, far
from the watchful gaze of sadistic sport’n’science Masters. Sorry, am I getting
sidetracked down the jigger behind Memory’s Cul-de-sac? A-hem! Or, “A-homme!”,
as some might cough when a Master entered stage right...
You see, to us school was not a place to learn very much beyond when to duck or
dive, if to lie and how not to tell the truth. Oh, you might – if you paid
extreme attention – have stuffed some trigonometry or Shakespeare up your
sleeve. You may have been versed in the causes of the First World War and the
effects of light
& humidity on
the behaviour
of woodlice; you might have parroted a bit of French or Spanish; and if you
were exceptionally bright, you could also have shone in the revelation that
electricity came in both AC and DC, long before Australia had music that didn’t
come in only Rock’n’Rolf. Apart from all that, just the lads who were good at
sports excelled in anything that seemed to matter. For sports read football,
soccer and togger.
So let us examine this Mumbo-Jumbo - incidentally the title of a surrealist
novel by Ishmael Reed, first published in 1972 (2 years after the events
related here, see below for link). The term itself suggests mumbled, jumbled-up
utterance; not entirely nonsensical, but neither penetrable by much analysis.
It is often deployed against pointlessly technical jargon or the bogus dogma of
a dubious cult. Hence I think Winston Churchill used it in an early memoir to
refer to the creed of the established church. Or maybe that was “rigmarole” –
so what? The same difference will apply. Of course, to the initiated (if not
the inebriated), Mumbo-Jumbo is not gibberish at all; but to those not in on
the lark, this fact might still need pointing out.
The so-called lower primates gibber incorrigibly, and though the sounds thus
produced probably make perfect sense to themselves and each other, to most of
us Gibberish appears a poor approximation of language as we know it. Human
Gibberish is also somewhat imbecilic, and may be punctuated with such
delicacies as spittle and drool. Gibbering, then, is not Mumbo-Jumbo in the
sense that whatever it expresses, there is little or no meaningful exchange of
information.
So, what the hell you may say, chalk sure ain’t cheese, either. But I would say
the distinction to a spotty fourteen year old was in itself a revelation on a
par with Empson’s Seven
Types of Ambiguity, which I was about to
attempt reading... (and to give up on at page 3). The first of many trite
remarks, crass impertinences and half-witticisms. Read on, MacDuff...
*
Click here for Ishmael Reed's Mumbo-Jumbo
*
shallow truths
fe’ral judge in document
case has ruled themselves a joint
stick it up your jumper ban
that’s how it works
Mr President your right
hand should never know what’s left
wave & smile we’re passing thru
Washington State
all the way to Florida
keep a beedy eye out for
somewhere on this road now turn
round one more shot
gee it’s hot I mean to say
she but pronouns tend to lie
down just when you need their Please
Please me or Help
oh another thing I tried
opening the window but
quite a lot of paperwork
blew the hell out
*
In a note from our spinsters,
“Pardon me, Nuestros Amigos Naughtyamericarnos, but God, Satan & that big feller with the axe will punish you for voting Shyster & Co. back in. (Also, your membership of The Owl Civilisation Mob royally flushed.)”
*
Tolpuddle revisited
for a thousand years or so
everything was black & white
rich folks ran the bloody show
god & their right
then the colour bar was raised
Winston Churchill voted out
slowly things began to change
still there was doubt
agriculture industry’d
pulled the rug from under us
common land which had been free
flogged to the boss
common folk with many skills
driven from ancestral homes
put to work in gaslit mills
giants to gnomes
little better off than slaves
few retained their heritage
time we started making waves
under the bridge
(verses Excerpted from the forthcoming chapbook, "Dismal Stories")
No Bull Obliged! |