Words To Live By

I was watching a local chat show here last night, a wonderful show called, with tongue firmly in cheek, Enough Rope. As in, give an interviewee enough rope, and they'll hang themselves. Enough Rope is a great show, hosted by Andrew Denton who has been on Australian tv for a couple of decades now, and is known for his intelligence, erudition, ability to get people to really open up and humour. In fact he began his tv career with several incarnations of political and social satire, shows like "Blah Blah Blah" and "The Money Or The Gun".

Anyhoo, two of the guests last night were a mother and daughter pair of musicians Melinda and Mary Schneider. During the show Melinda referred to having written a song based on something a guest of Denton's had said in an interview a couple of years ago. Something that moved her so much and stuck in her mind, until she felt compelled to include it in a song. The interview from 2006 was about Living Libraries, something I had never heard of. Put simply, living libraries are designed to allow people to challenge their prejudices by 'borrowing' a person to engage in dialogue with.

Denton interviewed a borrower and borrowee, the 'borrowee' being a mature aged transvestite Sara (aka Claes Lund). I never saw the episode, but I've been reading the transcript of the interview and it's very interesting. Quite apropos to what I wrote about yesterday too, in the quote that comes from Sara and moved Melinda so much. At the end of the interview Sara gave her motto on life which I also think is wonderful. Deceptively simple but so true when you think of it, and speaks so much about our striving to want what others have, or unhappiness with ourselves, or being judged by other's standards.

"Be yourself. Everybody else is taken."

I love it.