As long as I'm citing verse these days (see previous post), I want to remind you all of a particular song and its lyric line. I was "runnin' to the oldies" the other day, listening to 105.7 FM while I trudged down 70th Street in Richfield, when up came that classic tune, "Muskrat Love." I'm thinking, the Captain and Toni Tennille got pretty lucky with this one--it's not exactly Art for the Ages. But after the song plays, what does the DJ add? That this tune was first recorded by the guy in Texas who wrote it--he called it "Muskrat Candlelight," but it didn't catch on, and then the band "America" released it as "Muskrat Love," and it didn't catch on for them either. How in the world could such failure be possible, given the profound lyrics of this piece? I include them herewith:
Muskrat, muskrat candlelight
Doin the town and doin it right
In the evenin
Its pretty pleasin
Muskrat susie, muskrat sam
Do the jitterbug out in muskrat land
And they shimmy
And sammys so skinny
And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed
Singin and jingin the jango
Floatin like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love
Nibbling on bacon, chewin on cheese
Sammy says to susie honey, would be please by my missus?
And she says yes
With her kisses
And now he's ticklin her fancy
Rubbin her toes
Muzzle to muzzle, now anything goes
As they wriggle, and sue starts to giggle
And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed
Singin and jingin the jango
Floatin like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love
La da da da da ....
Meanwhile, yours truly, the Contentious Introvert (who wanted to be the Howling Wolf, only that name was taken) writes his share of stuff, including a textbook that's within weeks of being published. Yet, HE SOMEHOW WONDERS IF HIS WRITING WILL EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH! Hey--if "nibbling on bacon, chewin on cheese" is sufficiently profound for three different artists to record it, and to make money off of it, then dammit, I'm good enough, too. (Aren't I? Maybe?) Anyway, here's another shake of the head along with a little muttering and eye-rolling; the world is certifiably bizarre. But I will keep jingin the jango! (if I ever figure out what in the hell that means!)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Different and separate realities
Hard as I may try not to think this way, I am continually aware of the many realities that make up "reality." As I am keyboarding this sentence, some woman in Malaysia is giving birth; some guy in Belgium may be falling to his death on a construction project; and a whole lotta people are simply sleeping in Eugene, Oregon.
I'm reading the Star Tribune yesterday--a piece on the OpEd page by Michael Gerson of the Washington Post. He's talking about Joseph Kony, "a barbarian who threatens regional stability in Africa." Here's the lead paragraph:
"WASHINGTON - A friend, the head of a major aid organization, tells of how his workers in eastern Congo a few years ago chanced upon a group of shell-shocked women and children in the bush. A militia had kidnapped a number of families and forced the women to kill their husbands with machetes, under the threat that their sons and daughters would be murdered if they refused. Afterward the women were raped by more than 100 soldiers; the children were spectators at their own, private genocide."
I try to take all of this in as I drink coffee and eat my raisin bran. And I do not wonder in the least why I resonate to the word "absurd" as a way to conceive of human existence. These different realities also explain why my all-time favorite poem is "Musee de Beaux Arts" by Auden; it's on the wall in my office, and it captures the same bizarre juxtaposition of multiple realities:
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
-- W. H. Auden
I try to be thankful for what I have, and where I am. And all the while, I am keenly aware that other people are in other places and have other realities. And some of those realities are simply so gruesome that one is left feeling quite powerless.
I'm reading the Star Tribune yesterday--a piece on the OpEd page by Michael Gerson of the Washington Post. He's talking about Joseph Kony, "a barbarian who threatens regional stability in Africa." Here's the lead paragraph:
"WASHINGTON - A friend, the head of a major aid organization, tells of how his workers in eastern Congo a few years ago chanced upon a group of shell-shocked women and children in the bush. A militia had kidnapped a number of families and forced the women to kill their husbands with machetes, under the threat that their sons and daughters would be murdered if they refused. Afterward the women were raped by more than 100 soldiers; the children were spectators at their own, private genocide."
I try to take all of this in as I drink coffee and eat my raisin bran. And I do not wonder in the least why I resonate to the word "absurd" as a way to conceive of human existence. These different realities also explain why my all-time favorite poem is "Musee de Beaux Arts" by Auden; it's on the wall in my office, and it captures the same bizarre juxtaposition of multiple realities:
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
-- W. H. Auden
I try to be thankful for what I have, and where I am. And all the while, I am keenly aware that other people are in other places and have other realities. And some of those realities are simply so gruesome that one is left feeling quite powerless.
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