Stupid Song, Cheaper by the Pound

Cold Cat-and-Dog Rain

Winter is a-coming in;
Ezra sings "Cod-damn!"
Cats drop and dogs plop
By heaven's hellish lamb!
Ezra sings "Cod-damn!"

(More under dashed line.)

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Theodore Roethke: "Night Crow"

Some of you know that I'm writing a paper on Milton and MacLeish concerning bird imagery in Genesis and in religious poetry. As I was reflecting on this sort of imagery, I suddenly recalled a poem by that oldtimer, Theodore Roethke:

Night Crow

When I saw that clumsy crow
Flap from a wasted tree,
A shape in the mind rose up:
Over the gulfs of dream
Flew a tremendous bird
Further and further away
Into a moonless black,
Deep in the brain, far back.

Something mythic in there . . .

Jaeuk Performs!

Our eldest, Jaeuk, performed last Saturday night in the Narnia Closet (should've been Narnia Cabinet? Ah, now, I've got it: Narnia Wardrobe), mostly vocals but some keyboard:

Here we stand, basking in Jaeuk's glory:

And more basking . . .

That's all folks!

Mongolia Rocks!

The Hu Band

This is astonishing music! It'll have you wishing you were Mongolian, which would be a good thing in this case since the band sings very nationalistic lyrics:

Yuve Yuve Yu


Wolf Totem

Click on them. Expand your horizons!

Speaking of the Arts: Ballet

Making that high leap in the photo above is my student Shin Yelin (신예린), who gave me this image that I might post it on my blog. She tells me that she began ballet lessons when she was eight, inspired by a performance of Giselle. Her parents didn't push her; she made the decision on her own, and continues to hold to it in her love for this style of dance despite the pain to her feet. She was photographed in this leap a year ago last July and gave me the right to post this picture here on my blog.

Ozawa and Murakami: Music!

Some publicist wrote:

"a series of conversations on their shared passion: music, [and] interspersed with ruminations [ . . . ] on the essential nature of both music and writing [ and thus. . . ] an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of two maestros."

Or so on, till the end, thought the publicist . . . who nevertheless is right.

Byrne still carries a flame . . .

Feel the Byrne

David Byrne is currently in London's O2 Arena performing many of his old numbers in new ways, and here is how one reserved British critic, Michael Hann, lightly praises the result, the question that motivated his praise being this one: Was it good?

Yes, it was good. It was better than good. It was incredible, fabulous, dazzling. It was whatever adjective you want to throw at it. I can't recall seeing a more engrossing pop production, ever.

Like most British, as we see, Mr. Hann understates his praise:

[This is w]hy David Byrne deserves every penny he makes from his tour. This was the most engrossing pop production I've ever seen.

Michael Hann is to be thanked for his understated review, "Why David Byrne deserves every penny he makes from his tour" (The Spectator, November 10, 2018), for we know how to read Hann's scant praise for these old songs.

In short, multiply Hann's praise by a factor of five to obtain the American-equivalent praise . . .

Bohemian Rhapsody

Freddie Mercury

My wife and I have just returned with our younger kid En-Uk from the film Bohemian Rhapsody, and I found it better than I had expected after reading a somewhat critical review that said the film merely played out on the surface of Mercury's flamboyance.

I don't agree with that critic, though the film didn't go to great depths in any attempt to explain Mercury . . .

Anyhow, the hour has grown late, so I will head for slumberland and leave you with encouragement to go see the film!

Shallow is Here

Probably Good
on
Male-Female
Discourse

I went to see A Star is Born this weekend and I like the theme song. Its lyrics are the words you see below, and you can click on the title to hop over to the song itself:

Shallow

Tell me somethin' girl
Are you happy in this modern world?
Or do you need more
Is there somethin' else you're searchin' for?

I'm fallin'
In all the good times
I find myself longing for change
And in the bad times I fear myself

Tell me something boy
Aren't you tired tryin' to fill that void?
Or do you need more
Ain't it hard keepin' it so hardcore?

I'm falling
In all the good times
I find myself longing for change
And in the bad times I fear myself

I'm off the deep end
Watch as I dive in
I'll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface
Where they can't hurt us
We're far from the shallow now

In the sha-ha-sha-ha-ha-low
In the sha-sha-la-la-low
In the sha-ha-sha-ha-ha-low
We're far from the shallow now

Ooooo aahaaa ooou
Ooo ouo oooo haaaa

I'm off the deep end
Watch as I dive in
I'll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface
Where they can't hurt us
We're far from the shallow now

In the sha-ha-sha-ha-ha-low
In the sha-sha-la-la-low
In the sha-ha-sha-ha-ha-low
We're far from the shallow now

One thing that strikes me in reading this song is how important music is in giving poetic force to weakly poetic words. Imagine listening to somebody recite Shallow. Wouldn't work.

If You Believe in my Make-Believe Moon

Paper Moon

This is the moon that the moo 'over-jumped' . . . and the cat has lost its fiddle!

And just for fun, here are the lyrics to "It's Only a Paper Moon":

It is only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believe in me

It is only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believe in me

Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played
In a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believe in me

Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played
In a penny arcade

Here's a link to the song sung!

Sigh . . . misheard lyrics

Linda Ronstadt

I liked Linda Ronstadt's singing, way back when, but I now find that I was an inattentive listener to "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow":

Is this a lasting treasure
Or just a moment's pleasure
Can I believe the magic of your size
Will you still love me tomorrow?

I listened to that stanza in "Will You Still Love Me Tomorow" countless times and never heard it right. But in looking up the lyrics, I find the reference was to the innocuous word "sighs" rather than to the more racy, salacious "size."

Is this a lasting treasure
Or just a moment's pleasure
Can I believe the magic of your sighs
Will you still love me tomorrow?

How tame. And how wrong of me to mishear so well.

Not Doggerel, but Caterwaul!

Bob Snider

He beat me to it . . .

Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen died about a year ago, but he lives still . . . in the Tower of Song, singing "Hallelujah" . . .

Flipped Out Christian Jurisprudence?

Google Images

"Judge not, that ye be not judged."

Not exactly Flip Wilson . . .

Jae-Uk Performing . . .

Jae-Uk Performs

My elder child is no longer a child, but a third-year student at Korea University and a gifted musician. Second from the right in the photo above, Jae-Uk is singing in a performance that lasted two hours and revealed not only a talent for singing but a mastery of the keyboard as well.

If you let them, your children will surprise you.

Fantasy: Hand Over Bush!

Wikipedia
"sweet imagination"

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush if fantasy's your forté.

If fantasy's not your forté, then drink before you think!

Norebang Night

Karaoke? No - Rebang!

Actually, the term would be divided "nore-bang" (노래방), literally "singing room," and pronounced "norae-bahng," but you have to allow me my puns! As you might expect, a norebang is the Korean equivalent of the Japanese karaoke (except, of course, better than karaoke).

The photo above shows me and my wife posing as one of our children takes the picture of us in a shadowy corner of a singing room we visited Thursday evening. There are other photos from the same evening, but this is the only one in which I'm clearly looking at the camera.

My voice generally isn't very strong, so I often can't perform so well, but I sang to everyone's satisfaction that night. I started with "Born to Be Wild" (by Stefan Wolf, according to the credits!), and I did so well that my wife praised me for getting it just right. I followed that up with a soulful rendition of "Your Cheating Heart" (Hank Williams) and a remarkably touching "Stand By Your Man" (Tammy Wynette), then finished with a competent cover of "One More Cup of Coffee for the Road" (Bob Dylan). Such were my solo performances. But when I tried to accompany my wife on "City of Stars," I botched that one good and proper.

Every good thing must end . . .

Dylan writing literature? Not really.

Cohen and Dylan
Google Images

In a short Nobel speech (read by the American Ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji), Dylan tells us that not once had he ever had the time to ask himself if his songs were literature.

That's not quite true though, for I distinctively recall Dylan stating in "I shall Be Free No. 10" some words to the effect that he was writing literature:

Yippee! I’m a poet, and I know it
Hope I don’t blow it

No, Mr. Dylan, if these lines are evidence of your poetic skills, then you've already blown it. Yes, I know you're merely being jocular and ironic. But you're still not much of a poet, as Carl Sandburg must have told you that time you dropped in on him to show him your 'poems' that weren't poetry. Leonard Cohen, on the other hand, is a poet, even without the music:

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

There! See how much better a poet Cohen is than Dylan? But I don't want to leave anyone with the wrong impression. I am a Dylan fan. He's great. He has written some great songs. His real strength, however, is not so much the words as the music. The music is what makes him great.

Justin Schmidt: I hurt myself today . . .

Justin Schmidt with Tarantula Hawk
Google Images

I recently read an article by Avi Steinberg on "The Connoisseur of Pain" (NYT, August 20-21, 2016), a title given to entomologist Justin Schmidt, for having gotten stung so many times in his work on Hymenoptera, for constructing a Pain Scale for Stinging Insects, and for talking about the pain so much, I expect:

Within minutes of our first meeting, and more or less in response to my saying good morning, Justin Schmidt began lamenting our culture's lack of insect-based rites of passage. He told me about the Sateré-Mawé people in northwestern Brazil, who hold a ceremony in which young men slip their hands into large mitts filled with bullet ants, whose stings are so agonizing they can cause temporary paralysis; when initiates pass the test, they're one step closer to becoming full members of society.

Schmidt believes we could learn something from this. By trade, he is an entomologist, an expert on the Hymenoptera order - wasps, bees and ants - but his interest in this insect ritual was not merely academic. He has two teenage boys, and, on this particular morning at least, I found him wondering whether they might benefit from a pain ritual to help introduce them to adulthood.

"I mean, it wouldn't kill them," Schmidt said. "And I think that may be the key to the whole thing: It can't kill you and yet something very real is happening."

Something very real? That sounds much like the song "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails:

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

If you care to hear the song, click here, or the cover by Johnny Cash, which is better. Anyway, I would advise against that stinging sort of initiation - it'd get you charged with child abuse! But the main point is true. More than anything else, pain teaches us what is real, and even - if we believe Dylan - what is beautiful: "Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain." By the way, the rest of Steinberg's article on Schmidt and his work is well worth reading.

Entomology, incidentally, was my 4-H project way back when I was a teenager, and I did get stung in that pursuit . . .

Miss Hurd Leer Ricks

New Love Album 2015
Allison Weiss

I spent several days humming the tune to "The Same," a song on Allison Weiss's album New Love, which had this brilliant chorus:

I'm not lonely like I used to be
I get older and I notice things
We all got feelings that we can't explain
We're all a little bit insane

That fourth line was a killer! I loved the song for that brilliant line alone! Until I looked up the lyrics:

I'm not lonely like I used to be
I get older and I notice things
We all got feelings that we can't explain
We're all a little bit the same

What a letdown! What a disappointment! Ms. Weiss ought to change that line to mine, retitle the song "Insane," and pay me royalties! At any rate, here are the full lyrics, and a link to the performance:

The Same

Is anybody never really over anyone?
Is anybody lying when they say they're having fun?
Does anybody feel like checking out and going home?
I can't be alone

Does anybody feel like kissing strangers when they're sad?
Does anybody wonder how it ever got this bad?
Does anybody wish that they could change the way they are?
It can't be that hard
It can't be that hard

I'm not lonely like I used to be
I get older and I notice things
We all got feelings that we can't explain
We're all a little bit the same

Is anybody sleeping? Is it just me wide awake?
Is anybody dreaming of the changes they would make?
Has anybody felt like they can't take it on their own
I can't be alone
I can't be alone

I'm not waiting like I used to be
I get older and I notice things
We all got feelings that we can't explain
We're all a little bit the same

When it feels like a long shot
We've been there too
When it feels like you're all talk
We felt like you

Cause we all got feelings that we can't explain
Yeah, yeah, we're all a little bit the same
A little bit the same
A little bit the same
A little bit the same
A little bit the same

Good song anyway . . . but it could have been great.