Even the most magical fairy tale has, in some parallel universe, a twist in its tail. This is the surreality of life: it seems nothing is as good as it seems. Even heaven in all its celestial glory most probably has a leaking roof, a creaking gate or an out-of-tune harpist.
Take Pinocchio. I’m sure that, behind the famous story, there lies a sinister one. In a chapter not yet written, Pinocchio managed to dupe everyone. He eventually learnt to lie with no nasal consequences.
He discovered the perfect ploy to beat his nose betraying him every time he fibbed. He took the sharpest knife in Geppetto’s kitchen, cut off his nose and lost some blood. What does that matter when, as a result, he could lie, spin any tale he wanted, rob anyone and deny it to all the world?
Now no fairy godmother, carpenter or silly cricket could know he had been naughty or bad. He lied on and on into old age and no one was any the wiser.
His nose never grew bigger – he had a hole where it once protruded. He lost his sense of smell. Even his good looks were gone. And when his eyesight diminished he rushed to an ophthalmologist who found that Pinocchio was suffering from acute short-sightedness.
“What can I do to resolve this?” he asked. “Oh easy,” said the eye-man. “Get specs! Oh, hold on. You hacked off your nose to spite all around so it’s rather difficult to keep your specs in place. And your eyes are too big to accommodate normal lenses! And this, my friend is no lie.”
Isn’t this surreally like our own world and the nano-microcosm called Malta? We chop trees, we lie, we lose sight of reality. We screw up our land and we never face up to our deeds and misdeeds.
We delude ourselves that we live in a world where all is wonderful and that we will live happily ever after in comfortable surroundings, no matter what we inflict on our environment in general.
We seem to have cut off –to spite our face or to lie with no further ado or consequence – our nose and ears too. Our soul and conscience, decency and knowledge of what good governance means have all been flushed down the loo. After all who cares about things like values –aren’t they all bullshit?
Take MUŻA as an example of our worse-than-nightmare scenarios. This is definitely one of our fairy tales gone unfairly wrong.
We spend €10 million on a stupendously – more like stupidly – state-of-the-art museum. We declare it open a couple of times, both times a half-baked opening: fake openings by fake people who have no clue about art, heritage or proper planning.
The museum was entrusted to someone who was hardly the best choice to head the project. He accepted no advice, decided on the way forward alone and made horrendous decisions.
The museum was touted as the flagship project to happen during the Valletta European Capital of Culture in 2018 but was only officially opened to the public in 2019.
This is hardly the worst part of the whole sad, sickening, tale. In the past few days it has been revealed that the museum – of the blah blah blah best in Europe – has had to have many of its artworks removed for tests and for their safety: because the museum has been so badly managed that mould has set in.
This is the gift to the nation: a surreal gift of ineptitude, mismanagement and total irresponsibility! We are living a nightmare and nobody takes responsibility. Nobody has been fired, nobody has been asked for an explanation, nobody has bitten the bullet. No investigation has been launched.
The man responsible for MUŻA was transferred – in a hush-hush manner – to another department – still connected to art. The man is now responsible for managing the President’s art. Is he going to turn our presidential art into rot as well?
Are we too rotten at the core to know the meaning of accountability? Isn’t Owen Bonnici and, ultimately his master Joseph Muscat, responsible for this mess which is a true travesty of a gift to the nation and to our patrimony and the arts?
At the very least should we not be told what is happening and where we go from here? Should the authorities involved not admit that they have mishandled the whole project? Should we not hope that some lessons are going to be learnt from this affair?
The rot is not just in the artworks and frames but in everything we have. Before MUŻA’s problems were revealed, most of the professionals from the art world to whom I spoke admitted that it was a shambles. Yet few of them spoke out.
Then just about the whole edifice came tumbling down and, yet again, the professionals contacted by the media spoke on condition of anonymity. No one dares speak up, no one wants to point fingers lest they suffer the consequences and end up in the authorities’ bad books.
The fairy tale we are living is a scary one where we have not just lost the use of our nose but also of our tongue, mind and soul. Pinocchio’s lies have taken over and now all we worship as our new god and fairy godmother is total omertà.