Synchronicity |Tonto and The Hobbit
Well, here I am back in SynchroniCity again. What has that to do with Tonto and The Hobbit? Read on! Yesterday, for no good reason that I can think of, the 1950s TV series, The Lone Ranger, popped into my head. But it wasn't Clayton Moore in the title role that I was thinking of; it was Tonto played by Canadian actor Jay Silverheels, a Mohawk of the Six Nations from the Brantford, Ontario region. I confess to having had a massive crush on Jay Silverheels when I was a kid! And maybe even after that. I loved his voice. No, truly. I fall in love with voices and the voice of Tonto is one I still remember from before the "pc" era when it became obligatory to use the term Tonto (no longer a name) disparagingly. However, I never saw Tonto as playing "second banana" to the Lone Ranger. Quite the contrary. Tonto was far more interesting to me and I always longed for the stories to be more about him than the LR. So, anyway, I was fondly remembering and lamenting the loss of Jay Silverheels yesterday hoping that he has long since been in the arms of The Great Spirit. Then today, as is the way with human consciousness, I was thinking along entirely different lines when a note from a friend reminded me that it is Mabon, the Autumn Equinox in the northern hemisphere. And voila! I had the topic for my blog today.Synchronicity | Tonto and The Hobbit
The first order of business was to find an arresting visual for my post and I discovered a beautiful version of the Wheel of the Year kept in the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle. Somehow that graphic led me to an article about the Mabon celebration in Thornborough and as I scrolled down the page a magnificent image unfolded before my eyes. It was a poster for the movie version of The Hobbit based on the book by J R R Tolkien first published 75 years ago. My introduction to the book was as a student-teacher when I was expected to 'teach' the book to a group of rambunctious and disaffected grade 9 students, more than a few of whom were repeating the grade! Much to my relief, most of the students got interested in the characters, especially Gandalf the Wizard, so I didn't have to resort to either bribes or threats to get them to read it! And now, decades later, the long awaited film version of The Hobbit was about to be released.
I suffered through the first Lord of the Rings film and I have been looking forward to the Hobbit film for 20 years! Why they didn't begin with The Hobbit I will never understand, especially since Scottish actor Ian Holm, a perfect Bilbo Baggins, could have played the role! From my perspective, it's way past time the Hobbit comes to the big screen so I clicked on a link to a news article about the film's release date and got a bit of a shock when I read:
"Lone Ranger' Crew Member Drowns!What? I was looking for more information on The Hobbit movie but somehow landed on this story. My first thought was that someone who worked on the original TV series had drowned. I clicked on the story link and discovered that there was a film version of The Lone Ranger in production and due for release in the New Year. Now, the presence of Jay "Tonto" Silverheels in my mind yesterday made sense. Well, sort of. I don't know how Tonto happened to come into my mind the day before a crew member on the set of the new Lone Ranger film died. Nor do I know why the Thornborough Mabon site featured the poster ad for The Hobbit movie. This seems to be an example of a Synchronicity, the acausal connection of two or more events that strike us as related. So, how are the two events connected? And why did they happen at all? Let's look at the chain of events:If I hadn't begun to look for a suitable graphic for an article on Mabon I wouldn't have stumbled upon the page about the Mabon celebration at Thornborough and if I hadn't scrolled down that page I wouldn't have seen the poster ad for The Hobbit movie. If I hadn't clicked on the link for the movie I wouldn't have seen the item about the death on the Lone Ranger film set. And I would not have known that the 'new' Tonto was going to be played by guess who? Johnny Depp. Given his height, age and general colouring he's a good candidate for the part. No doubt the "pc" purists, however, will object to that casting and I must admit I, too, would like to see an actor like Adam Beach, an Anishinaabe First Nations Manitoban, in the role of Tonto but it appears that he had committed to several other projects during the same period that the Lone Ranger would be in production. I hope that Johnny Depp's fame around the world will bring a whole new generation to the saga of Tonto and his uh…sidekick...some guy called The Lone Ranger. Maybe I wasn't supposed to write about Mabon today...
"Lone Ranger' Crew Member Drowns!What? I was looking for more information on The Hobbit movie but somehow landed on this story. My first thought was that someone who worked on the original TV series had drowned. I clicked on the story link and discovered that there was a film version of The Lone Ranger in production and due for release in the New Year. Now, the presence of Jay "Tonto" Silverheels in my mind yesterday made sense. Well, sort of. I don't know how Tonto happened to come into my mind the day before a crew member on the set of the new Lone Ranger film died. Nor do I know why the Thornborough Mabon site featured the poster ad for The Hobbit movie. This seems to be an example of a Synchronicity, the acausal connection of two or more events that strike us as related. So, how are the two events connected? And why did they happen at all? Let's look at the chain of events:If I hadn't begun to look for a suitable graphic for an article on Mabon I wouldn't have stumbled upon the page about the Mabon celebration at Thornborough and if I hadn't scrolled down that page I wouldn't have seen the poster ad for The Hobbit movie. If I hadn't clicked on the link for the movie I wouldn't have seen the item about the death on the Lone Ranger film set. And I would not have known that the 'new' Tonto was going to be played by guess who? Johnny Depp. Given his height, age and general colouring he's a good candidate for the part. No doubt the "pc" purists, however, will object to that casting and I must admit I, too, would like to see an actor like Adam Beach, an Anishinaabe First Nations Manitoban, in the role of Tonto but it appears that he had committed to several other projects during the same period that the Lone Ranger would be in production. I hope that Johnny Depp's fame around the world will bring a whole new generation to the saga of Tonto and his uh…sidekick...some guy called The Lone Ranger. Maybe I wasn't supposed to write about Mabon today...
© Delia O' Riordan 2012
www.psychic-delia.com
