Owain Glyndŵr, The Imaginary Prince of Wales, Part 4
Let’s turn our attention, for a moment, to the ‘real’ Prince of Wales.
For a start, he’s not Welsh. Can’t hold that against him. Neither are some other people I could mention!
What he is is a fairly dull, balding, middle aged man whose wife has fallen out with his sister-in-law. A not particularly unusual condition, dull, balding etc.
On top of that, he’s a prince. A prince is, let’s face it, a character from a fairy tale. A heavy burden to bear. And, to pile insult on injury, his sister-in-law is an actress, or erstwhile actress. So, the ‘Prince of Wales’ has to carry off playing a fairy tale character in real situations while not speaking to a relative who has, on numerous occasions, played, in real life, imaginary characters in imaginary situations.
This must surely present an existential crisis that would challenge the cordial relations in the most generously instituted of families. (You get my drift.) One person’s career is in fundamental conflict with another’s, a career which can never be escaped or mitigated.
Ok, we’ve had our fun. Time to get back to something serious; our Prince of Wales and his new currency.
We left him (Owain Glyndŵr) last time, if you remember, wondering what kind of currency would best suit young people. This sounded a bit pompous, fatuous even. Young people, who is that, precisely?
Anyway, now he’s been put right by his many advisers, the programme is back on track.
A new currency. Here we go…
Owain Glyndŵr is thinking along these radical lines (a new currency isn’t going to be much use if it’s exactly the same as the old currency, just with a different name):
The real versus the imaginary; the foundation of an existential crisis which, as we’ve seen, has fractured the House of Windsor, among many, many other houses, over many generations, too numerous to mention.
The real versus the imaginary. This most fundamental of confrontations can be seen in another, very familiar arena, the arts, artistic endeavour, whatever you might call it.
And magic; a mysterious (imaginary let’s say) power able to affect reality. Something anti-scientific. Or quasi-scientific. Not to be believed in. Fundamentally made up. And yet…
Art is a kind of magic power. The power to create in physical terms, an abstraction, an abstract concept.
What does that remind you of? Currency. Money. Moola. The hard stuff.
Money, currency that is, could be considered an abstraction expressed in physical terms. Or, let’s say, an art form (just like poetry, or dance or sculpture) expressing in physical form, an abstraction.
So, Owain Glyndŵr, a god and magician (have I mentioned that before) is thinking that money (as created by him, a minor deity) will be defined, from its inception, as an art form.
Quite amazing really, I can’t think, off hand, of any other minor deity ambitious enough to create an entirely new currency. Plenty of ordinary humans have attempted it, of course. Currencies, two a penny throughout history.
Could this idea work? Money as art form? I guess it comes down to how you think about art. If you think about it at all.
There is a problem, of course, immediately. If money is just another art form, like all the other art forms, where does that leave art? After all, what is art without money? Money sanctions art, gives art its imprimatur, its stamp of authenticity, doesn’t it? No point art approving itself.
What does this tell us? Either we are defining art wrongly, or this idea (money as art) won’t fly.
I guess what this means is if money is art and vice versa, we’ll have to think differently about both, art and money.
We’re back to the age-old problem, those who do versus those who have. Action versus asset. Activity versus artefact. Is the making what is valuable or is the result the thing? Or both? Or none?
Minor deities can’t be expected to solve all these problems.
What he can be certain of, amidst all the uncertainty, is that, as an imaginary character, whatever currency he makes up is going to be imaginary. Utterly.
Tune in next week for all the ramifications and repercussions. It’s certain to be amusing.