For whom the Melbourne bell tolls

www.mahala.co.za - http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/for-whom-the-melbourne-bell-tolls/

TELFORD VICE, Melbourne

TRAMS were not around in 1624, when John Donne published “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall (sic) steps in my Sickness”. Neither was Melbourne.

But it is impossible not to think of Donne as you tramp the streets of this eminently trampable city. Good luck, too, with keeping Ernest Hemingway out of your head for long.

It was Donne who first came up with, “Hee for whome this Bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knowes not it tolls for him.” Quite.

Then, 316 years later, Hemingway put “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on the title page of the finest book about war - the Spanish Civl War, in this case - yet written.

And there is nothing so poignant as the toll of a Melbourne tram’s bell as it click-clack-clock-clucks along the undulations of these storied streets like some giant, wheeled, electrified caterpillar. It is the sound of Mona Lisa’s smile, or a Ladysmith Black Mambazo song distilled to a single, sad note.

This mournful noise seems to stop the city in its tracks for a moment, makes it think about a Victorian past painted boldly gauche, a present that hustles and bustles with youth and food and music, and a future that is obviously Asian. But Melbourne does not like to think too hard, too long or too much. It would far rather party.

Those cultures will clash this weekend, or might they melt into one? White Night Melbourne, which sells itself as “Australia’s most celebrated cultural event” will own Saturday night. From 7pm until 7am on Sunday morning, the city will be alive with art - from sound and light installations to an exhibition celebrating “Bohemian Melbourne”, to a showing of a 1903 film version of “Alice in Wonderland”, all of which will be presided over brilliantly by the spectacularly lit glass cone atop Melbourne Central. The place will live and breath and create and just plain jol until dawn.

Then, at 10am the next day, Melbourne’s Chinatown will explode with colours, sounds, smells and tastes in a festival to celebrate the Chinese New Year. What with 70% of the people in the city centre estimated to be Asian, it’s not difficult to work out which event is more keenly anticipated.

Getting the party started won’t be hard. But how the hell might it stop? And then a tram bell tolls, and you know how.

Of course, if you are one of the people selling “Fuck Tony Abbott” T-shirts on Collins Street, life is anything but a party. The same goes for whoever tagged a sculpture on Swanstson Street with a bright pink scrawl that says: “Death to police”.

Australia calls itself “the lucky country” and it likes to think it is heaven on earth, a place where any good thing is more probable than possible.

But, of course, the marketing is fiction. What with Aboriginals all but removed from urban society, a brooding unease over the continuing Asianisation of the Australia’s cities, and a prime minister - that man Abbott - who was witless enough to bestow an ersatz knighthood on someone as undeserving as the husband of the so-called “queen” of England, Australia is a crackle of contending tensions.

“Australians have a real problem being patriotic without being racist,” an Aussie told me once. At the time she said this, we were on a boat on the Zambezi River. Nearby, a hippo lurked in the shadowy shallows. Further away, the unimaginably powerful Victoria Falls roared with ominous beauty. Both reminded us that there are bigger things in the world than us, or Australianess.

There are also bigger things than cricket, and it seems crass that South Africans and Indians should be obsessed with what will happen over the course of 100 overs at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday rather than with the events of White Night Melbourne or the Chinese New Year festival or indeed what people do to each other in the name of patriotism or culture or religion.

But that is the reality of life in a world city, and of the players and supporters of teams who both harbour ambitions to return to Melbourne to contest the World Cup final on March 29.

That is a long way and, after Sunday’s game, another six matches away. India have been there and done that as recently as 2011, when they were crowned champions at home and in celebration tossed a South African who looks not a little like Elmer Fudd into the air in celebration. His name was Gary Kirsten, their coach.

South Africa should have won the World Cup several times. They never have. This time, they have signed up Kirsten as a consultant. Alongside him in a South African shirt is the man Aussies call “Mr Cricket”, Michael Hussey, another hired gun.

There is a sense in South Africa’s camp that, this time, they may do it. Hang on - didn’t we feel that way in 1996, 1999, 2003 2007 and 2011? Yes, we did. But, like Australians and their history, we have forgotten the messy bits.

Sunday’s match will not tell us whether South Africa or India will win the World Cup. But it will tell us which of them is the better team. Actually, we know that already: the better team is South Africa. What Sunday will tell is which of these teams has the bigger balls.

All aboard, then, for a crazy weekend of culture and cricket. Many bells will toll, but for whom?