The practice of giving a tribute of two falcons to one’s overlord is alive and well. Only these days the tendency is to give one falcon each to two lords. Consider it a measure of practical good sense, a type of investment diversification.
I don’t suppose Gonzi and Muscat will be spending their evenings posting smiley faces on Kurt Calleja’s Facebook page- Mark-Anthony Falzon
The latest vassal to have paid his dues – or half of them, at the time of writing – is Kurt Calleja. Last Wednesday the artist made the pilgrimage all the way to Mile End, the idea being a ‘courtesy call’ on Joseph Muscat.
There were smiles all round, a hearty handshake, and a nice picture in The Times. Muscat apparently said “he was confident Calleja would be a good ambassador for Malta at the Eurovision” and “wished him success”.
No doubt Lawrence Gonzi will say much the same thing when his turn comes in a day or two. He might even enfold Calleja, and hold him to his heart.
Muscat and Gonzi have begun to plant Calleja, and will labour to make him full of growing.
Calleja doesn’t really owe it to the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition. I don’t suppose the two will be spending their evenings posting smiley faces on his Facebook page. In fact, I doubt whether they could, at gunpoint, tell Calleja from Fabrizio Faniello – or Claudia for that matter. They might just about go as far as knowing that the song contest wasn’t won by Franco Debono, boo-hoo.
None of which matters, for Calleja is simply doing what generations of singers have done before him. Just as the medieval practice didn’t mean that the king was particularly into falcons or had run out of them, his is a ritual act.
It’s a widely-shared ritual, too. Every year around November, for example, University resonates to the foghorns and whistles of graduates. Their next stops are usually Hamrun and Pietà.
It turns out that graduates too like to pay their double ‘courtesy calls’. Add to that, athletes, artists and such and you begin to understand why the two parties spend so much on dry roasted nuts.
All of which I find more than a bit intriguing. I find it puzzling that people should let themselves be patronised so, actively seek to be patronised more accurately.
On the one hand it’s a bit of classic stuff out of an anthropology undergraduate textbook. Patronage has been described as a kind of lop-sided friendship, among other things, in which both parties seek to cultivate a bond from which they will both benefit.
Given the (im)balance of power, it’s important that one side should be seen to be doing all the seeking. It would be strange if the saints prayed to us for our devotion, so to say.
Still, I think there’s more to it than patronage. What’s probably happening is that the million courtesies are a means by which people who think they deserve it align themselves to the national.
In the case of Calleja this means transforming himself from Kurt Who? into Kurt Darling, the man who will vouch for Maltese talent in Azerbaijan. Muscat could not have put it better: Malta has a new ambassador.
There are two things to say about this. First, that such transformations seem to rank high on the things-to-do index of many Maltese.
Take authors, or journalists. I never cease to be amazed at how individuals who spend most of their time fuming about ‘the establishment’ and the ways ‘it’ encroaches on the space of independent writing duly go on to keep their annual appointments with the various prize days and award circuses.
It’s ‘politician X the arch-conservative whose agents meddle with your creativity’ one day, ‘politician X who you walk up to for your slab of marble or faux bronze’ the next. All done with the straightest of faces and not the slightest scintilla of doubt or brush of taste bud in cheek. I know people whose homes drip with more marble and trophies than a maharajah’s durbar hall.
My second point touches on a bit of a paradox. If our Kurt really is so keen to embrace the national, why does he bother with party leaders? Why doesn’t he pay a courtesy call to the President (incredibly, our head of state seems to find time for these matters) and leave it at that?
The answer lies in the peculiar, and possibly endemic, architecture of our national space. The expression ‘jaħdem mat-tnejn’ (‘comfortable with both’) sums it up nicely. What Calleja and the many other pilgrims are doing is showing their ‘impartiality’ by paying their respects to both courts, equally.
The word ‘court’ could do with a little tangent. Muscat’s must be a particularly busy and happening one at the moment. As people sense the likelihood of a Labour victory, more and more of them will spend time at the court-in-waiting, making their presence felt in the hope of eventual royal favour.
That doesn’t apply to Calleja, of course. His is a genuine attempt to show everyone that he is a balanced and colour-neutral person. An ambassador of Malta, in other words, with no time for partisan trysts except the time to pay two courtesy calls.
This then is how our artists and performers navigate the duopoly and embrace the nation. I will be convinced otherwise if and when an athlete, graduate, or song contest winner pays a courtesy call to Michael Briguglio.
mafalzon@hotmail.com