much lucubration, confused line of thought – this way of course, lies madness
Yes, I had to look it up.
Lucubration means study or mediation or a piece of writing, typically a pedantic or overelaborate one.
Like some blogs I know.
I seem to be stuck in rut quoting James Thurber lately.
His book on the founder of the New Yorker Magazine, The Years with Ross, is a trip to the dictionary waiting to happen.
I cannot vouch for its content or the stories told in the book except to mention that the White’s. EB and Katherine Angell, did not care for the book and thought the portrayal of Ross by Thurber was unnecessarily unkind.
The writing.
The contruction.
The play of words against each other.
It is fun to read for the writing.
Then with the discussion of how Harold Ross edited short stories.
Well, like I said, I have been dipping in and out of it over and again since I was able to get a copy in ebook form.
The passage in particular dealt with how long a certain story took to write.
Thurber is quoting another managing editor, Stanley Walker, who said about Harold Ross (Thurber wrote):
“He thought such a story should have required at least a week’s work and painful lucubration. Then, following this confusing line of thought, he wondered if he were not being cheated by the writers who took too much time. This way, of course, lies madness.”
It must have been crazy wonderful to work in that environment I think.
Most of my working career has been spent working in ‘Creative’ Deaprtments.
I have had great bosses who understood that the last thing you want to do is creative people is force them into a system and take away the thing that makes them creative.
I have had bosses who believed in the system and did not care a fig about the output so long as all the check marks were checked.
This way, of course, lies madness.
Thurber ends these couple of pages with one last quote from Mr. Walker on his time at the New Yorker.
“. . . it was like fighting a revolving door in a blizzard. You can’t win, but anger doesn’t get you anywhere either. “
I guess.
So long as there is generous time available for much lucubration.
just ‘not right’ you know? touch of the flu, a slight sprain a tad overwhelmed
I am not sure how bad a ‘touch’ of the flu is.
I am not sure how bad a ‘slight sprain’ is.
How much overwhelmed is a ‘tad overwhelmed’?
You got the flu or you don’t.
It’s sprained or it’s not.
If things get worse, are you more overwhelmed?
Then just ‘not right’ does seem to work.
It is not right.
It is not what I would choose.
Is it not all the way to being wrong, well, gee whiz.
Then I think of this line from Wobegon Days, by Garrison Keillor.
When I was a boy, if I came around looking glum and mopey, [my mom would say], “What’s the matter? Did the dog pee on your cinnamon toast?” and the thought of our old black mutt raising his hind leg in the pas de dog and peeing on toast made me giggle.
Well it might be just ‘not right’ but no dog climbed up on the table and peed on my toast.
And the picture does make you laugh.
And I don’t feel so fluish.
My ankle doesn’t hurt.
And I seem to hold off the incoming tide for a bit.
And I’ll go make some toast.
Growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in a family of 11 kids, we all had our days and we all had our favorite things to do.
My little brother Pete loved to have toast for a snack, morning, noon and night.
We could be watching TV and Pete was gone soon to return with a plate of two pieces of cinnamon toast.
It could be late at night.
Middle of the afternoon.
For some reason it was those moments when our family would return from being somewhere, anyway, the store, a family party, church or anything where we were all gone and we would pile out of the car in fall into the house and Pete would make a beeline for the bread box and the toaster that stick in my mind.
We all knew about his habit.
And we all knew when he made toast.
We all knew because Pete never ever, so far as I know and I will have to check with his kids, learned how to operate a toaster.
Or, Pete like burned toast.
For him, the smell of burning toast was the signal the toast was done.
I don’t know what you remember about your home as a kid but in the days before people started burning popcorn in a microwave, there was few household smells worse than burning toast.
I came to hate and still hate that smell.
I would see Pete get up with the ‘I need toast’ look in his eye and start feeling just ‘not right’ right then.
It made me sick though I am not sure if it was the smell or worrying that I would have to smell it the rest of the night.
And then Pete would get up and burn some more toast.
He would come back to the TV room with his plate of charcoal and I would ask him, why, why do have to burn it.
I think I even offered to make toast for him.
I can smell it to this day.
The next time I am feeling just ‘not right’ you know? A touch of the flu, a slight sprain or a tad overwhelmed, I am going to think of a dog coming in a peeing on Pete’s toast.
Not sure what good it will do but I bet it will sure make me feel better.
find the relation between incompatible and affinity
Adapted from A Letter to a Young Poet by Virginia Woolf Published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London, W.C.1 1932
That perhaps is your task—to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist’s way, but condensed and synthesised in the poet’s way—that is what we look to you to do now.
one small step for man one giant leap for mankind did step on the moon
What did Neil Armstrong say when he landed on the Moon?
I mean okay, after he said Houston …
What did he say when he first stepped on the Moon?
The writers at NASA crafted this great line that he memorized but when he said it there was a buzz of static and the world remembers that he said, “one small step for man …’ and then said, “one giant leap for mankind.”
The goofy thing is I was 9 and I distincly heard FOR MAN and wondered what the difference was between MAN and MANKIND.
But NASA issued the press release that said Mr. Armstrong said, “A MAN.”
Mr. Armstrong said he said, “A MAN”
As in “One small step for A man.”
Which works much better with “One giant leap for mankind.”
What is funnier is that the third man on the moon, Pete Conrad, the mission commander of Apollo 12, who was shorter than Mr. Armstrong, said, “That might have been one small step for Neil, BUT WHOOOEEEEE.”
I guess in a way it IS more important that Mr. Armstrong steps were out on to the moon.
And he was the first to do it and that isn’t going to change.
But I came across another Neil Armstrong footnote yesterday that I was not aware of and I read a lot of these ‘early days of NASA’ books.
Yesterday I went in pursuit of the song, Fly Me to the Moon.
The information I came across again and again referred to the the fact that NASA had adopted the tune as a sort of theme song for the entire space program.
I thought that was interesting but not worth mentioning.
Not worth mentioning until I went search for a you tube video of the song.
I said yesterday I found lots and lots of videos of different recordings of Fly Me to the Moon.
One of them was of Jazz Great Diana Krall.
Well gee whiz, a LOT of them were of Jazz Great Diana Krall.
But one had a very odd thumbnail graphic.
I would swear it showed, a piano and Ms. Krall set up … in a church??
I had to click on it and there it was.
At the memorial service for Neil Armstrong, Commander of Apollo 11 and first man to set foot on the moon, Diana Krall performed Fly Me to Moon.
And you know what?
That is just pretty darn cool any way you present it.
Entirely appropriate.
Such a very right thing to do.
So entirely unexpected.
Commander of Apollo 11 and first man to set foot on the moon and Diana Krall performed Fly Me to Moon at your funeral.
That’s a trifecta in any book.
ps – anyone making notes for when the time comes and my ashes are scattered in the out going tide, you can ask Diana Krall to come sing and she can choose the song.
fly me to the moon let me play among the stars fill my heart with song
There are worse songs to have stuck in your head for the last 48 hours.
There are a lot of worse songs to have stuck in your head.
This is the funny part though.
Many of them are this same song.
According to Wikipedia, Fly me to the Moon was recorded and released by any number of well known vocalists as the song In Other Words between its release in 1954 and 1960.
It wasn’t until 1960 when it was recorded by the wonderful Peggy Lee, that Ms. Lee convinced the song writer, Bart Howard to change the name to Fly me to the Moon.
It wasn’t until 1964 that Frank Sinatra recorded the song with Count Basie with a re-arrangement in 4/4 time in place of the original 3/4 time.
A factoid that I can repeat but is completely meaningless to me.
I am happy to report that it is not the voice of Mr. Sinatra that has been going through my brain the last couple of days.
I am not sure what the result on my psyche that might have.
Nothing against Mr. Sinatra or his voice or his talents.
He just not my cup of tea so to speak.
Also in one of those quod-hoc-propter-hoc mental sequences I have this Sinatra block that plays in mind whenever I meet up with Mr. Sinatra in my daily sojourn.
The mental sequence goes like this …
The Johnny Fontaine character in the movie, The Godfather is modeled on Frank Sinatra.
Fontaine sings at the opening wedding scene in the movie, The Godfather.
When Fontaine walks onto the wedding scene he is dressed in a white tux and black bowtie.
The first time my wife saw the movie, The Godfather, when Fontaine walks onto the wedding scene, she said, “I didn’t know Pee Wee Herman was in this movie.”
What do you think of when you watch The Godfather?
I think of Pee Wee Herman.
Somehow I think that story could make Francis Ford Coppola cry.
What do you think of when you hear Frank Sinatra sing?
I think of Pee Wee Herman being in The Godfather.
Somehow I think this thought would get me slugged by Mr. Sinatra.
He did slug Mario Puzo after the movie came out according to some sources.
What do I think when I see Pee Wee Herman?
I think of Don Corleone slapping him, saying, “You can act like a man!”
Goodness but its lonely being me some days.
So back to the song.
I was looking for a song on You Tube the other day.
Of late I have been listening to the music of Tatiana Eva-Marie & Avalon Jazz Band of late (go ahead, it will make your day) and one of the suggested songs by You Tube when I was searched French jazz singers, over there on the right hand margin of YouTubem was this video labeled, Emil Ernebro and Zandra – Fly Me To The Moon and I clicked on it.
It was a two people set up, vocalist and guitar with an stage empty of other musicians but filled with instruments.
The simple setting, like two bands members after a show singing for the pleasure of singing caught me attention.
In the book, The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk writes about hearing a young singer at an audition:
The girl seemed to be singing for the pleasure of friends, rather than for an urgently desired job. This was no great voice, nor even a professional one. It was just such singing as a bright girl who had a love of music and a pleasant voice could accomplish, and it had that peculiar charm denied great performers, the caroling freshness of song for its own sake.
These words got etched in my brain and now I am sucker for music videos like this on You Tube.
I remember when MTV was launched and videos were produced that made the singing of almost any song a matter of life, death and the success of the free world.
With what a lot of these bands went through as portrayed in some of these videos, to sing their songs, it was a wonder anyone would every want to get into music.
Then there are those clips, those recordings of the singing of a bright girl who have a love of music and a pleasant voice with that peculiar charm denied great performers, the caroling freshness of song for its own sake.
Intrigued by the image with the song, I clicked on it.
And I was captivated by the singing of a bright girl with a love of music and a pleasant voice with that peculiar charm denied great performers, the caroling freshness of Fly Me to Moon for its own sake.
My intrigue and interest was rewarded by having the song playing in my brain for the last 48 hours.
Comes this morning when I starting typing in the words of the song because with everything going on in this world, that is what was on my mind because I can’t stop the music.
I start typing the lyrics and the rest of this post just spilled out of my brain through my fingers onto the keyboard.
I think that was evident.
So this post came together and all I needed was a link to the video in question.
Could I find it?
Nope.
When I searched, Fly Me to the Moon, Could I find anything else but Mr. Sinatra and the like as entries in You Tube.
Nope.
100s and 100s of links but not the one I wanted.
I was close to the point that maybe I didn’t really hear this song.
It was stuck in head, maybe I made it up in my head.
Replaying last Friday morning over in my brain, I came up with the scrap of information that in the video caption, was the mention that the guitar player in the video was ‘Sweeden’s [sic] premire guitarist’.
With this other piece of information on which hang my search, Fly me to Me Moon Sweden Jazz Great, I am happy to report, I found the video.
For your start to this week, and for no other reason, here is the singing of a bright girl with a love of music and a pleasant voice with that peculiar charm denied great performers, the caroling freshness of Fly Me to Moon for its own sake.
I can only imagine what it be like to write such a song.
I can only imagine what it would like sing such a song.
To sing with with a love of music and a pleasant voice with that peculiar charm denied great performers, the caroling freshness of song for its own sake.
But I can click on it a listen to with the best of them.
And that is good enough for me on a Sunday Morning.
There are worse songs to have stuck in your head.
The lyrics are fun, too.
Fly me to the moon And let me play among the stars Let me see what spring is like On Jupiter and Mars In other words hold my hand In other words darling kiss me Fill my life with song And let me sing forevermore You are all I hope for All I worship and adore In other words please be true In other words I love you In other words I love you
Fill my heart with song And let me sing forevermore You are all i hope for All I worship and adore In other words please be true In other words I love u
No Haiku For You 