THE COMPANY OF FOOLS

I discovered Great Big Sea late. I don’t listen to much music—I am easily distractable, and highly susceptible to earworm songs. I have a lasting love of The Chieftains, though, and some other Celtic groups. Great Big Sea is a Newfoundland group that is part of this tradition, fusing the Irish-descended Newfoundland style with rock and pop and probably lots more I know nothing about. I just know it’s good stuff, with moving tunes and lyrics that are thoughtful and relevant to contemporary life.

I can’t classify all of GBS’s work as Spiritually Refreshing. Group leader Alan Doyle, a religious studies grad, throws a lot of criticism, cynicism and borderline blasphemy our way at times; and yet many songs, like "Walk on the Moon" and "Ordinary Day" use positive religious imagery and are definitely classed as inspirational.

GBS’s latest album, Fortune’s Favour, showcases a literary theme that is dear to my heart in the number “Company of Fools”. “The Fool” is an archetype with many variants and incarnations, such as the court jester, the Joker in the card deck (and most recently in Batman: The Dark Knight); the trickster character like Brer Rabbit and other rabbit heroes like Watership Down’s El-Ahrairah; and the Holy Fool or Fool for Christ. The Fool is important because, strange and laughable as he is, he can get away with Telling the Truth.

Perhaps one of the most famous stories about the Fool is Hans Christian Andersen’s "The Emperor’s New Clothes". You know it, I’m sure—two tailors dupe a vain emperor by pretending only really clever people can see the invisible cloth they use to make his new clothes. But of course they have only been sewing air, and when the Emperor parades himself in the streets wearing these imaginary garments, it is a small boy (whom critics identify with Andersen himself) who laughs and points, crying “The Emperor has no clothes!” The boy plays the part of a jester, but the Emperor turns out to be the really foolish one...

This is what Great Big Sea is celebrating in this collaboration between Alan Doyle and Russell Crowe (yes, THAT Russell Crowe…):

Many a truest word
has been spoken by the Jester

Standing against the tide

Is the noblest of gestures

It’s the little pearls of wisdom

That tumble from the light

That makes us laugh until we cry

Because we know that they are right

Within the strangest people

Truth can find the strangest home
So meet me in the village

where all we idiots go.....

(complete lyrics here)

Truth. Sometimes it's dark and nasty, and sometimes the Fool puts it crudely for the shock value-- to shock the audience awake. But without Truth, there is no spiritual refreshment.

That's why -I- would 'rather spend a lifetime in the Company of Fools."