“The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.”
- George Orwell
Many years ago, I remember seeing Judd Apatow on Rodney Dangerfield's Young Comedians Special. That show was a TV forum to help promote promising stand up comics. Apatow eventually gave up on his stand up dreams and went on to become a hugely successful movie writer, director, producer. (The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, The Hangover, et al). From what I saw in his five-minutes back then, I thought he was pretty funny. One bit he did I've never forgotten.
He was telling how sometimes things came along to remind him how little he'd accomplished in his life. For example, he saw a spot on TV about a kid who played the guitar. However, the kid didn't have any arms so he played it with his feet. As Apatow described:
He didn't just play it with his feet, he played it incredibly well with his feet! And I thought to myself…I can't play the guitar with my hands…If I didn't have any arms, I couldn't kick a guitar down the stairs…I SUCK!
I was reminded of that sentiment recently when I read the story of Irving Berlin. Berlin, was the writer of over 1,500 songs, many that set the tone and tempo of the twentieth century.
His family arrived penniless from Russia in 1893 when Irving was five years old. Three years later his father died. He began selling newspapers to support the family and that's where his formal education ended, two years worth. He married his wife Dorothy when he was 24 and six months later she died of typhoid fever. To deal with his grief he wrote When I Lost You which sold over a million copies. From there, songs flooded out of him, God Bless America, Blue Skies, Puttin' on the Ritz, There's No Business Like Show Business and White Christmas.
Being illiterate he couldn't read or write music so he left it to arrangers to transcribe his melodies. He also never learned to play in any key but F-sharp. He eventually used a piano designed especially for him that could change keys with a hand clutch. It now resides in the Smithsonian. Berlin died in his sleep in 1989 at the age of 101.
Having written the above just now, well, I can read and write and I do have two working arms so here's hoping I go out and accomplish something worthwhile today.
Irving Berlin was of the opinion that only six different types of tunes existed in the world. All others were just variations of them.
I'd almost argue that there are really only two types: love found and love lost.
Here's one of each: