Mojo, Will, & Me

What country, friends, is this?

-Viola   

Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will            Act I, scene ii        Line 1

And yes, today we certainly have ventured into new country. And this country is Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will. We’ve not been here before in any of our posts, and I can also say that I’ve not been here before in any of my reading. That is to say, I’m quite unfamiliar with this play. I say that a lot, don’t I? I think it’s about time that I add a new play to my repertoire. I’ve completed the borrow and burn project so I now have the Arkangel audio copy of all thirty-six plays from the First Folio, plus Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen on my PC. So I can read and listen to anything I want. I was going to work my way through the histories, but perhaps I’ll start with one of the comedies. We’ll see. But for now, the line…

Well apparently this is a comedy and it involves a lot of shenanigans. And this play opens with the famous line (only a few inches away from today’s Totally Random line) ‘If music be the food of love, play on;’  I didn’t even realize that line was Shakespeare! But we can’t spend our time on that one because it’s not today’s Totally Random line. Almost, but not quite. And I’m also not going to spend time on much context, since I don’t know it and also since not much has happened yet to make up much context (It’s the first line of Act I, Scene ii).

So what does the line tell us? It’s precluded in the text by Scene II, The sea-cost and Enter Viola, Captain, and Sailors, and followed by the Captain’s reply ‘This is Illyria, lady’. There, that’s all I’m giving you for context.  So she’s standing on a ship’s deck, or perhaps on the beach or a dock, and she doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t seem too agitated or distressed based on how she’s asking the question. It’s not like ‘Where the hell are we?!?’ Though I don’t think Will ever used that much punctuation in one sentence. But she seems pretty calm, addressing those around her as ‘friends’.  And yet, that’s got to be a strange (disconcerting?) feeling. What country is this? Where the heck am I? Have you ever been in that position? Usually when you’re somewhere completely new you at least know where you are because you planned to be there. But did you ever end up somewhere and have no idea whatsoever where you are? I’ve been around a bit, and I’ve been in places that were new and strange to me. But I’ve always known where I was going. I can’t ever remember ending up somewhere and saying to the people around me, where the heck am I? What is this place? That’s got to be strange. Perhaps she was saying ‘friends’ because she was so unsettled by the experience that she needed to convince the captain and the sailors, and certainly herself, that she was among friends.

What country, friends, is this? Hey, how about this for an idea: The next time you walk into a conference room and find yourself in a meeting full of people and charts that you weren’t expecting, and perhaps the entire meeting just wasn't what you were expecting it to be (and this is a situation that I actually have been in) look around and say out loud, ‘What meeting, friends, is this?’ I think the 'friends' part of that sentence will go a long way towards getting a friendly answer. Try it out and let me know.

My friend was a little out of place here. We were in the city of X’ian, at the Wild Goose Pagoda when all of a sudden he found himself being recruited for some pictures with the locals, some guys he’d never seen before. He should have said ‘What group picture, friends, is this?’