[Although Ball is considered a pop singer, he's not a total stranger to Gilbert and Sullivan, having played Frederick in the West End mounting of Joe Papp's memorable production of The Pirates of Penzance . But Patience is a different kind of work--much of its humor is highly topical, poking fun at the short-lived Aesthetic movement that flourished among British dilettantes 125 years ago. Will that humor translate to a New York audience in the year 2005?] I think there's absolutely no difference to how we regarded things then and how we regard things now, ... There are still those performers and artists who strike on a new art form or mode that attracts their fans, while the majority of us may be saying, 'I'm sorry, but isn't that The Emperor's New Clothes?' There will always be charlatans who do things just to get acclaim and adulation. So I think it'll speak to an audience as clearly today as it did then.
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Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would.
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A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a mise...
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