Adventitious Carols 2: O Little Town

o little town of santa's claw
how stale we see delight
thou buildeth tall
the sky-high wall
against the fall of night

still in thy dark sleep shineth
the evanescent sight
of happiness, prosperity
and progress all despite

Adventitious Carols 1: Frustrated Snowman

frustrated snowman
is a real unhappy soul
with a snowball's chance
of a life in France
and two burning eyes of coal

frustrated snowman
is a cautionary tale
if you're made of snow
but you want to know
how to be alive and fail

Kookaburra

The kookaburra is a cheerful and raucous bird, a sort of large kingfisher. When I was very young, my father taught me this song:

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree
Merry merry king of the bush is he
Laugh, kookaburra!
Sing, kookaburra!
Gay your life must be!

Poor kookaburra. Would have a tough time in Atlantis, for many reasons.

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Note: Excerpted from the Wikipedia article, "Kookaburras are best known for their unmistakable call, which is uncannily like loud, echoing human laughter — good-natured, but rather hysterical, merriment in the case of the well-known Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae); and maniacal cackling in the case of the slightly smaller Blue-winged Kookaburra (D. leachii). They are generally not closely associated with water, and can be found in habitats ranging from humid forest to arid savanna, but also in suburban and residential areas near running water and where food can be searched for easily."

Sitting Here

A former student of mine reminded me, not too long ago, that I once conducted a pastoral care session in class that was based on the songs of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Memory served him well, and my own memory tells me that the songs in question were 'I Am A Rock', 'Homeward Bound', 'The Sound of Silence', 'Scarborough Fair/Canticle', and 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'.

I think that the best songwriters in terms of longevity (and their infiltration into the memetic web of society) are those who craft songs that speak to general states of being, but in such a way that they seem to speak to specific instances, specific feelings (such as a particular kind of melancholy) and specific personae. When I was with that class (and all the other classes which I inflicted this particular kind of lesson on), I genuinely believed that given good songs, students would respond (even if these songs were first performed way before they were born).

More importantly, good songs make us examine ourselves, not just look at ourselves. When you're sitting there in a railway station, do you think about it as a stop on the journey of life? When you listen to the percussive triumph-against-the-odds mood of 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', do you feel your spirits rise as you contemplate the blessings of only-death-will-part-us-now friends? These songs won't make everyone do this; for each person there are songs, and other songs, and different songs — but there are always songs.

So I'm sitting here in an Internet station, backing up my iTunes library on a beautiful blue LaCie brick drive...

Serenity III: Firefly

Four years and four months ago, I was made very happy by Joss Whedon's Firefly. Up to this point, I think the only other TV series which made me this happy was The Lone Gunmen. I have enjoyed many other TV series, but these two have always given me the peace of mind that is marked by high good humour and a general (if sometimes slightly cynical) goodwill towards all people.

One of the many elements that makes Firefly so outstanding is the theme song, 'Serenity'. To this day, I think it is a song that speaks from my heart and to my heart about the world in which I have lived.

Serenity

take my love
take my land
take me where i cannot stand
i don't care
i'm still free
you can't take the sky from me

take me out
to the black
tell 'em i ain't coming back
burn the land
and boil the sea
you can't take the sky from me

have no place
i can be
since I found Serenity
but you can't take the sky from me

-joss whedon, 'Serenity' (theme from Firefly)

Serenity indeed.

Selective Agriculture

The interesting thing about my new lease of life is that I get to choose the crops I cultivate, and earn quite a bit more with these boutique crops. The reason that I can charge more is that I genuinely feel I am putting specific personal effort into each of these plantings, and the quality shows.

In the past, I occasionally felt like a rice farmer. In the faraway days of my youth, we used to sing this song, which I think is possible Filipino in origin:

Planting rice is never fun,
Bent from morn till set of sun:
Cannot stand and cannot sit,
Cannot rest a little bit.

Of course, being naughty little primary school boys, we used to modify the line to take into account the possible discharge of natural fertiliser and other things like that. But the key point about feeling like a rice farmer is that in rice farming, you more or less have a huge acreage with what seems like little control over quality because it is such hard work and you have little time for reflection over individual stalks or plots.

In some ways, my previous life reminds me also of Auden's infamous poem, Roman Wall Blues. In that poem, he constructs simple doggerel which bears a huge burden of existential angst, much as any soldier on duty in a distant and inimical place must feel. It's not that I am ungrateful for comrades and shared striving and the wonderful manifold fruits of our labours over the years; I am quite happy to remember all those times.

The similarity lies in the feeling that there never seemed to be an end in sight. You just served tour after tour for years until you were invalided out, invalidated out, or otherwise reduced in validity. And at the end of it, like the Roman on Hadrian's Wall, you would like down on the turf in some more summery clime and look up at heaven's eye with your own single eye.

Currently though, I feel I have caught my second wind. Like the great detective Sherlock Holmes, a retirement to bee-keeping on the Sussex Downs is only the beginning of another story. This time, it is one that is largely off the books and into the mists of legend.

The Moon In June Swoons Only On The Loon

For some reason, I got stuck into a re-run of Alan Jay Lerner's My Fair Lady, that most excellent musical based on GBS's Pygmalion. I have read both the musical and the play, thanks to my mother who was a fan of both (and my father, whose memory for trivia and ability to sing all the songs still amaze me to this day). But tonight, I was ambushed by 'The Rain in Spain' yet again.

For those who don't know, this song isn't one of the good ones in the musical. But it is certainly one of the great ones, because it is terribly addictive. It is one of those songs that inserts talons into your brain and refuses to let go. The key phrase in it is, "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." That phrase has the long 'a' sound repeated five times in some sort of phonetic exercise.

But what if the song is not sung in English? I used to worry about that a lot, and in the days before I learnt anything much more about languages (I was about 9 years old, I think), I had auditory hallucinations of phrases like, "La rana en Espana estana mana en la plana." Now of course I know that this isn't a proper translation of the original phrase. In fact, it probably (ungrammatically) means something like, "The frog in Spain is flowing into the flat." If you made it grammatical, it would probably be 'los ranas' or something, but wouldn't sound so beautiful.

You see the problem? Fortunately, Answers.com has... the answers, nicely assembled. I reproduce them here:

• Czech: "Déšť dští ve Španělsku zvlášť tam kde je pláň"
  
• Danish: "En snegl på vejen er tegn på regn i Spanien"
  
• Dutch (Version 1): "Het Spaanse graan heeft de orkaan doorstaan"
  
• Dutch (Version 2): "De franje in Spanje is meestal niet oranje"
  
• Finnish: "Vie fiestaan hienon miekkamiehen tie"
  
• French: "Le ciel serein d'Espagne est sans embrun"
  
• German: "Es grünt so grün wenn Spaniens Blüten blühen"
  
• Hebrew: "ברד ירד בדרום ספרד הערב" ("Barad yarad bidrom sfarad haerev")
  
• Hungarian: "Lent délen édes éjen édent remélsz"
  
• Icelandic: "A Spáni hundur lá við lund á grund"
  
• Italian (Version 1): "La rana in Spagna gracida in campagna"
  
• Italian (Version 2): "La pioggia in Spagna bagna la campagna"
  
• Norwegian (Version 1): "Det gol og mol i sola en spannjol"
  
• Norwegian (Version 2): "De spanske land har altid manglet vand"
  
• Polish: "W Hiszpanii mży, gdy dżdżyste przyjdą dni"
  
• Portuguese (Version 1): "O rei de roma ruma a Madrid"
  
• Portuguese (Version 2): "Atrás do trem as tropas vem trotando"
  
• Russian (Version 1): "На дворе трава а на траве дрова" ("Na dvorye trava a na travye drova")
  
• Russian (Version 2:) "Карл у Клары украл коралы" ("Karl ooh Klary ukral koraly")
  
• Spanish (Version 1): "La lluvia en Sevilla es una pura maravilla"
  
• Spanish (Version 2): "La lluvia en España los bellos valles baña"
  
• Swedish: "Den spanska räven rev en annan räv"
  

It's quite a beautiful list. I note with pleasure that my version of the Spanish line is much less meaningful but a lot more mellifluous than what exists. You may feel differently, though. Or 'think different', if you're the kind who prefers, "The apple in chapel taps happily a capella."

A Personal Anthem

Over the years, I've accumulated a lot of songs that play in my head at the oddest of times. Some are sacred, some get my blood pumping, some of them act as a source of irony in dark times, some of them give me the kind of strength that ignores coercion and the abuse of power.

Tonight I heard one of my old favourites, a song which reminds me of my days as a reckless young man with much to play for and little to lose (well, that's what I thought then, in the ignorance of youth). The song is David Foster's St Elmo's Fire, performed by John Parr. The words go like this:

St Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)

Growin' up, you don't see the writing on the wall
Passin' by, movin' straight ahead, you knew it all
But maybe sometime if you feel the pain
You'll find you're all alone, everything has changed
Play the game, you know you can't quit until it's won
Soldier on, only you can do what must be done
You know in some way you're a lot like me
You're just a prisoner and you're tryin' to break free

I can see a new horizon underneath the blazin' sky
I'll be where the eagle's flying higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future's lyin', St. Elmo's Fire...

Burning up, don't know just how far that I can go (just how far I go)
Soon be home, only just a few miles down the road
I can make it, I know I can
You broke the boy in me, but you won't break the man

I can see a new horizon underneath the blazin' sky
I'll be where the eagle's flying higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future's lyin', St. Elmo's Fire...

I can climb the highest mountain, cross the wildest sea
I can feel St. Elmo's Fire burnin' in me, burnin' in me

Just once in his life a man has his time
and my time is now, I'm coming alive

I can hear the music playin', I can see the banners fly
Feel like you're back again, and hope ridin' high
Gonna be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future's lyin', St. Elmo's Fire

I can see a new horizon underneath the blazin' sky
I'll be where the eagle's flying higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future's lyin', St. Elmo's Fire

I can climb the highest mountain, cross the wildest sea
I can feel St. Elmo's Fire burnin' in me
Burnin', burnin' in me, I can feel it burnin'
Oooh, burnin' inside of me...

1985

You can see how that kind of song might make a young man feel great about life. But now, looking at where I am and what I do, I can't help but feel a certain nagging irony. St Elmo's Fire, that phosphorescent lightning found on ships at sea, is now just a faintly glowing cavalcade of odd fires in random directions to me.

The problem that I see is one of creeping irony. This comes from the combination of an active sense of humour, a working environment in which things sometimes do cock up but everything is made to look great, and a reasonably intelligent mind able to put many things together into a whole and fairly accurate picture. After a while, everything inspiring sounds vaguely ironic. It's worse when people distort the sacred and powerful for purposes of expedience: I remember posting about such distortion here.