Sleep Spots #2

It is harder to think of cool sleep spots than I thought it would be at first. :(

Here is a slightly alarming one: I once fell asleep while stopped at a stoplight in the family minivan. (It was the stoplight at the top of the Orem freeway exit that puts you on University Parkway.) I was not asleep for very long--just long enough for people to have started to pull around me to go through the light. I suppose it was their Utah politeness that no-one honked, although it would have been better if they had!

K.J. Parker

Writes amazing stories, but I think s/he (the author is deliberately, even provocatively, unforthcoming about his/her identity; if I ever have cause to mention her again, I will mix my pronouns indiscriminately just to amuse myself; you have been warned) hates the human race. Or at least his characters.

Sleep spots #1--Alberta, Canada

Just before I started elementary school (I think...it might have been the summer before I went to first grade) my immediate family vacationed with my extended family, Canadian Division--that would be my paternal grandmother's relations. My parents borrowed my maternal grandfather's camper-truck and off we went. Considering how long ago it was, I remember the trip quite distinctly...especially driving on crazy Canadian highways with, in Arlo Guthrie's words, "a mountain on one side and on the other side there was nothin'...just a cliff and some air."

So, we camped in the camper up in the beautiful Canadian woods, and I was fortunate enough to sleep in the camper! Up in the top, in the special little bedspace! I thought myself very fortunate. I liked just about everything about that camper; the whole "miniaturization/maximize the use of space" has always been attractive to me, and a "car you can live in" seemed to me to be the height of fine living.

Jerusalem redux

After posting on "Jerusalem" (which is NOT the title of Blake's poem...at least, not that poem--he has a different, longer poem with that title, but the hymn made from the poem is usually called "Jerusalem", so there you have it) I went and looked around for versions of the song on YouTube, and I came up with this.

You will notice that it is rather silly (also, Lady #2 would qualify for the "They Sing Funny" list), and yet I found it strangely moving. So I offer it for your consideration.

The secrets of pop stardom.

Yesterday I noticed, all of the Beatles had really, really good teeth. Especially for Englishmen of that generation.

I'll bet it was a factor!

The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon can no longer hear the falconer.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand--
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly is that phrase out
When an image out of Anima Mundi arises to trouble me.
A desert scene: A shape with lion body
And the head of a man
Is moving its slow thighs, its gaze
Blank and pitiless as the sun's, as around it reel
The shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
***
Again, I am a bit fuzzy on the middle. But there it is. This might be my favorite free-verse poem ever. I'm not sure I know what it means to me (Yeats intended it as a sort of prophecy of the transition out of the age of Pisces into the age of Aquarius, I think), but it's gripping.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, by John Keats

Oh, what doth ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake
And no birds sing.

Oh, what doth ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so webegone?
The squirrel's granary is full
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

"I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her step was light
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long
For sideways she would bend and sing
A fairy song.

I made her bracelets for her wrists
A girdle too, of fragrant zone,
She looked at me as she did love
And made sweet moan.

She fed me roots and fairy food
And quenched my thirst with manna dew.
And sure in language strange she said
'I love thee true'.

I took her to her elfin grot,
And there she sighed and wept full sore,
And then I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamt--ah, woe betide!--
The latest dream I e'er dreamed
On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings, pale princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all,
They cried 'La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
In horrid warning gaped wide--
And then I woke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.

And that is why I tarry here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake
And no birds sing."

***
Phew. Perdonen lo malo, as they would say in Latin America; part of the game is not to review the poem before I take my crack at it, and I am fairly sure I am missing a stanza and have done some strange things to this one.

I think this is one of the greatest poems ever written (short lyrical poems category). It manages both to be incredibly direct and intensely lyrical and ambiguous; the author implies so much so successfully that it's a little surprising to go over it and see what isn't there. It's also set at roughly this time of year, which makes it extra appropriate for present purposes.

From the preface to "Milton", William Blake

And did those feet in ancient times
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the very Lamb of God
In England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon these clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold,
Bring me my arrows of desire,
Bring me my spear--o clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I shall not stay from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

***

William Blake is one of my favorite poets, and this might be my favorite of his poems. Just to offer a little background, one of the (many, many) legends about what Jesus did between the ages of 12 and 30 is that he came to England and lived in Cornwall; that's the story Blake is referencing here. This poem has been set to music and is sung as a hymn in Anglican services, which I think is pretty cool. (Obviously, it would have much less emotional resonance outside of England, which I would suppose explains why I have never heard it sung here.) The movie Chariots of Fire takes its title from this poem (which gets it from the ascension of Elijah into heaven in Kings, of course.)

Song, by John Donne

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are
Or who cleft the devil's foot.
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
How to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
'Til age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou when thou returnst will tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet, do not; I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her
And last until you write your letter
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come,
To two or three.
***
John Donne with his inimitable skepticism of women (people generally, but women in particular). I saw his portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in London and felt immediately that he and I would have been friends if we had ever met. (I've only ever felt that way about the subject of one other painting...one of El Greco's portraits of a young priest.) The poem is titled "Song", so I invented some music for it; I can't write music well enough to write it down, but I can sing it for you if you ask me nicely. ;)

From "The Jungle Book", Rudyard Kipling

What of your hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.

Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.

What is your haste as you hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair--to die.

***
I like Disney's Jungle Book fine; when I was young we had an LP (!) of the soundtrack, and I can still sing along with King Louie and Baloo's scat singing pretty much syllable for syllable. But the real Jungle Book is about a gazillion times more awesome. I especially like "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat" (which does not have Mowgli in it at all), but there are so many good stories in it that one is spoilt for choice. The poem above prefaces "Tiger! Tiger!", in which Mowgli has his final confrontation with Sher Khan.

Next week's list!

I have received a suggestion, and it is an interesting one: Seven Places I Have Slept. Watch this space for next week's revelations on the subject!

Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire,
But I have known enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

***
I like this poem, and Robert Frost's poems generally, because he's not afraid to rhyme nor to use simple diction. He also has a gift for very striking images (Mending Wall is good for this) and clever juxtapositions. I wouldn't say this is his best poem, but I only have one other of his memorized...I think. (It's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening", and we were made to memorize it back in 5th grade; a process of engraving into the memory so laborious that its traces remain still.)

Nobody had suggestions for a list,

so I will have to decide for myself.

By the way, Real Salt Lake are the champions of Major League Soccer! Hoorah! Nick Rimando is the hero-man for the second week running!

How about...Poems I Have Memorized! I will write them out here and if I make mistakes the Gentle Reader (*cough*Val*cough*) can point them out, for the edification of all.

Boy, I hope I can come up with a full seven here.

Let's start with a classic:

"My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun", William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red.
If snow be white, why then, her breasts are dun,
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks--
And in some perfume there is more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, but well I know
That music has a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, walks on the ground.

And yet, by heav'n, I think my love as fair
As any she belied by false compare.

We cap our list with

Miss Joanna Newsom!

She swears it's not an affectation, she just sings like that. In case the harpischord is too distracting, you can try this.

Going over the list, we have one novelty act (Tiny Tim), one Beatle (hi Ringo!), and five songwriting geniuses/near-geniuses/evil geniuses (you may categorize according to your own preferences and tolerances). I guess the lesson to take from this is that if you are a genius songwriter you don't have to actually be able to sing to make your fortune as a singer.

This gets us into the question of whether the Beatles did a disservice to popular music by fixing the idea of the "singer/songwriter" in the music-listening public's consciousness. But we'll reserve that for another time.

And now,

the first of two musicians who got me thinking about this particular List of the Week...Tom Waits!

His singing is often very expressive, and this song, for example, I think is beautiful. But...yeah.

He can sing tunefully, when he has a mind to, but...he usually doesn't!


While we're on this subject, I am not the first to note that these guys talk funny. (WARNING: Tom Waits takes the name of the Lord in vain at the very end....sorta...you'll see. Or, if you would rather not see, you can close the tab when Mohammed Ali comes in.)

You knew this one was coming.

Bob Dylan! Come on down!

And, in the "Christmas" category...I cannot quite understand how this happened. It doesn't beat Bing Crosby and David Bowie, but it's up there.

No comments + no e-mails=no readers?

:-/

Very well! Though I amuse only myself, I press onward!

I was going to link to "Comfortably Numb" on YouTube, but the video is...a little freaky. Talk about Reasons Not To Be a Rock Star.

It's actually a pretty impressive video in terms of adding another dimension to the song, but, given that the first two dimensions are "I am clinically depressed" and "I am being exploited by the people close to me"...well, it's very dark!

And today we are not in for the darkness. No! We are not! Tell 'em, Israel!

I need someone who sings funny; neither Roger Waters nor Israel Kamakawiwo'ole qualifies. H'm...

Heh.

So, tell, me, what would you think if I sang out of tune?

By the way...

I have reports that there are those who wish to comment and have been unable to do so. If you read this, could you please attempt a comment and write me an e-mail if the comment fails to appear? Thanks!

What time is it, kids?

It's time for blogging! YAY!

In the continuing list of pop vocalists who sing funny, let's hit a high point (ahem). Tiny Tim! It's your turn on stage!

Just to prove he can sing strangely in more ways than one, here he is exploring the other end of his range.

Second Contestant

Pop Musicians Who Sing Funny (At Best) continues!

Everything Don Van Vliet (better known as Captain Beefheart) does is weird. His singing is no exception. Here he is singing "Ant Man Bee".

This is, at least, recognizably a song. The same cannot be said for all of his, uh, performances.

It's not fair.

All of my great punchy ideas for blog posts occur while I am not at my computer, and disappear by the time I get here. I'll have to start writing them down on 3x5 cards or something. The ephemera must be preserved!

This week's List of Seven...h'm...I am not willing to commit myself to long posts, but let's try Seven Pop Musicians Who Sing Funny (At Best).

Leading off...Neil Young, singing Hey Hey My My (Out of the Blue).

Prophetic subject line!

I missed on Friday! It was a big day...I gave a research talk in the afternoon to a (potentially) UCSF-wide audience (actually about 40-50 people, mostly Tetrad graduate students, I believe) and then went and played D&D with the D&D peeps. The talk went well and a good time was had by all.

Today I saw the Utes get devoured by a band of ravening Horned Frogs. It was very sad. Fair play to TCU, they were the better team on the night by quite a bit. However, Real Salt Lake won the Eastern Conference Finals on penalty kicks, so the evening was saved in terms of sports cheering. (Why Eastern? Because the last two spots in the Major League Soccer playoffs go to wild-card teams, and if they are both from the same conference the 8th and last seed must go into the "other conference" for its games. That would be RSL, who squeaked into the playoffs on the last day of the season, then proceeded to beat Columbus (last year's champions and the #1 seed this year) 4-2 on aggregate, then beat the Chicago Fire tonight on penalty kicks after a 0-0 draw, Nick Rimando the hero of the hour as he saved 3 of 7 penalty kicks to put RSL through.)

This has been the sports update. On to

Memory #6 My Uncle J is only about five years older than I am, so he was the universal favorite (both of my siblings and pretty much all our cousins) to play with when we were young. He put up with it pretty well, all things considered, but he did like his tricks. On one occasion he got an egg out of the fridge, closed one eye, and then came in to tell us that he had extracted his eye bone (showing us the egg).

I was pretty dubious, since, well, it looked like an egg to me! And I was pretty sure eyes did not have bones (I was probably 5 when this happened.) But he was awfully convincing. He had a pretty formidable deadpan even then. He also had a pin-swallowing trick which was impressive.

Memory #7 My grandmother has Seasonal Treats. Over and above Thanksgiving (I understand this is to be her last year as hostess, which makes me sad, since Thanksgiving at her house was one of the touchstones of the year for me until I left home), which was, of course, a cornucopia of delicious things, my favorites are the individualized sugar cookies at Christmas and the chocolate cupcakes with American flags on toothpicks for the Fourth of July.

It is hard to write a nice long blog post every day!

Memory #4: One late summer Saturday I rafted down the American River near Sacramento with some friends. About halfway through the trip we passed a huge dead tree--an oak, maybe?--with what must have been at least forty turkey buzzards sitting in it. Like this times ten, except the vultures weren't impatient. They were just...sitting. Watching us.

It was really impressively creepy.

Memory #5: This is not a one-time memory, but a composite. My family would go to see our grandparents in Utah Valley and often return fairly late at night, and somehow it became a tradition to sing folk songs as we went home. (We never sang on the way there, for reasons passing understanding...perhaps because we usually traveled there in the daytime and many of us were reading.) My parents taught us many songs which I have never heard anyone not in my mother's family sing. I have no idea who else knows them--if they can be found in books, when they were written or who wrote them...

In these days of Google I am sure I could find out, but I rather prefer the mystery.

Here is one:
Lady moon, lady moon,
Where are you going?
Over the sea, over the sea.
Lady moon, Lady moon,
Who are you loving?
All that love me, all that love me.

Fourth memory

Is going to have to wait.

Today I had dinner at a friend's house and we got to meet and talk to Hartman Rector Jr., an emeritus General Authority and a man with a gazillion interesting anecdotes. He told us, for example, all about how Harold B. Lee hated the Church Office Building, opposed its construction, and refused to use it even after its completion. He was the first convert in 86 years to become a General Authority!

A very fine evening, but it puts me back on the memories; I will do two tomorrow.

Third Memory

My mother used to play soccer in the back yard with me, with a black and yellow foam ball. I did not know of any other moms who played soccer and it was pleasing to me that mine could.

Second memory

[This was not posted last night because I went to see Ian Anderson play at the Warfield, which deserves its own post--not that it will necessarily get its own post. We have a schedule to keep, people!]

The winter of the year I was in second grade it became a fad to play kickball. Our school's blacktop playground was laid out with this game in mind, providing a large square, the corners of which served as bases. (Just in case kickball doesn't bring any organized sport to mind, the kickball we were playing was essentially baseball, except a) you kicked a large rubber ball instead of hitting a small string-and-leather ball with a stick, and b) you could put people out by throwing the ball and hitting them if they were not standing on a base.) We divided into teams, one in the field, one lined up to kick, and I somehow found my way into line.

It came to be my turn, and the "pitcher" rolled the ball to me. I think everyone there expected me to be an easy out, since I was one of the youngest, smallest players there. I rather thought so myself. But there I was, and here comes the ball...

I stepped forward and belted it, and it went up shockingly far and fast. I still can feel an echo of my astonishment as I watched it cross the leaden sky and be momentarily obscured by the pale sun. I realized that there was a fielder in position to catch it, but he looked more desperate than confident...and the ball struck him in the chest and bounced away.

Only at this point did I realize I ought to be running to first base. (I think there were people yelling at me to go for several seconds before I started running.)

I made it just in the nick of time, and there was an argument about whether or not I was safe which I was too diffident to participate in. In the end I was allowed to keep my base, and the game went on--I am fairly sure that in the end I didn't score. (I was still pretty fuzzy on the rules and might have been put out at second base, but that could have happened on another occasion.)

It was beginner's luck; after that first bold stroke and an even more successful second kick, for which I actually remembered to run, I was never much of a kickball success in second grade. That, I believe, is my first memory of the joys and perils of playing sports.

First memory

This is one of my earliest memories; I think it must be from the spring of 1982. It is more two mental images than a sequence of events.

In the first image I am in my father's arms, patting at the wall of the house with a paintbrush loaded with nice green paint. In the second, I still in my father's arms, but now we are indoors and I am being washed at the sink.

I have reconstructed or perhaps confabulated a sequence of events--asking to "help" paint the house, my father's handing me the paintbrush and lifting me to reach the appropriate place, a few daubs at the wall in my father's arms, the inevitable mess, and then inside to wash the paint off (I have a vague notion I made a pretty big mess pretty quickly, and my house-painting career was a brief one).

Other than the visual images (the green wall of the house, the paintbrush, the sink) my principle impressions are, in the first place, being surprised that the painting is not going better--a sort of non-verbal it's harder than it looks!, and, in the second, surprise verging on awe at the comparison between my father's big hands and my little ones as he cleans them at the sink.

The persistence of memory

People often remember the same event so differently as to call into question what actually happened; it's also pretty easy to get people to confabulate events that didn't happen and could not have happened (the classic example is meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland). It's an interesting problem, especially for historians and policemen. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously subject to post-hoc modification, usually without the witness even being aware of the changes in the story.

And now, for this next week I bring you the Blog Project: seven memories, ranging from the earliest of childhood in Milwaukee to last month's trip to Chicago. Remember, I'm an unreliable narrator...but so's everyone.

In search of the perfect neuron.

I like neurons. I like taking pictures of neurons. I even like analyzing pictures of neurons.

However, trying to find the perfect picture of the most-beautiful-ever neuron for publication is EXTREMELY TRYING.

That is all.

Thought of the day

There are days that change your life that you see coming a long way off: graduation, weddings (usually), retirement.

Others just appear. You wake up expecting things to go along as they have been, and they don't. One can't expect them; unexpectedness is their defining characteristic. But they are coming.

Maybe tomorrow will be one of them.

Today's snippet:

One of the coolest music videos ever. Not many music videos are a) coherent stories that are b) visually striking and c) add something to the song, but this one does.

And it's a great song, too.

This Blog Moves At The Speed of Life:

Generally a mosey verging on a dawdle; now and again with appalling swiftness.

Jazz hit sour note, hands go over ears...

Time for a True Confession!

I am a bad sports fan. It could be worse; I am not, for example, a Sports Bigamist. But when my team starts to fail (and, in the case of the Bengals, fail, and fail, and fail) I turn away pretty quickly.

It's just no fun watching your team gack away games they have no business losing (to return to the reason for the title of this post). It's no fun knowing that only one of 30-ish teams is going to win it all, only one of five teams is at all likely to win it all, and your team is not among the elect. It's even less fun having your sports heart ripped out and stamped on, knowing how hard it was to get that high and how unlikely it is for Your Team to get that chance to win it all again.

Of course, sometimes you do win it all. Or at least a sizable fraction of it all. And it feels pretty darn good.

But...losing by 17 at home to Houston? (We will not even get into Houston's injury situation.) Not-expected-to-make-the-playoffs Houston?

Someone get me a cold compress; this music is giving me a headache.

Pre-made omelette.

I got one at Subway a few minutes ago. That's the march of progress for you...scrambled egg in a plastic bag, waiting for a few microwaves to heat it up so it can form a part of this fast-food breakfast.

I was two-dimensional for Halloween.

See?


[Picture courtesy of Silvia Vargas. Thanks, Silvia!]