what will the day bring
when the day starts out playing
the Liberty Bell march
Big Bill wrote:
To sleep, perchance to dream — ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
I put it to you:
to wake, to face the day, ay there’s the rub:
For in the day of waking, what reality will come.
I got up today and followed my morning regime of shower, coffee, newspapers, clothes, medicines and nostrums and sat down if front of my computer to start work.
I turned on my computers, logged in and clicked the link to the online radio station from London that plays behind my day and heard the single stoke of a bell.
Then band music began to play in the unmistakable style of a John Phillip Sousa march.
The bell sound identified the piece of music as Sousa’s Liberty Bell March, which according to Wikipedia, was written by Lieutenant Commander Sousa as part of unfinished operetta but became famous as march.
Also from Wikipedia, The ship’s bell from the SS John Philip Sousa, a World War II Liberty ship, is housed at the Marine Barracks and is used by The President’s Own in select performances of the march.
The march follows the standard form of AABBCDCDC. The trio (sections C and D) uses tubular bells to symbolize the Liberty Bell ringing. The bells usually begin during the first breakstrain (section D), but some bands use them at the first trio (section C).
This is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, and strings.
For me?
For me and a lot of people my age, the Liberty Bell march meant one thing.
It meant Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Again from Wikipedia,
The march is best known today for being associated with the British TV comedy program Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–1974), which used as its opening theme the version performed by the Band of the Grenadier Guards and published in 1938. Cast member Terry Gilliam, the only American member of the troupe, argued for the use of “The Liberty Bell” because it had fallen into the public domain by that time and could thus be used without the need to pay royalties. He has said the piece was chosen because the troupe thought it would not be associated with the program’s content, and that the first bell strike and subsequent melody would give the impression of getting “straight down to business.”
The Monty Python mode of presenting the tune was with a single strike of the bell, lifted from the third section and increased in volume, followed by a strain of each of the first two sections, followed by the famous stomping foot animation and a noticeably flatulent “splat” sound reminiscent of a whoopee cushion.
John Cleese once described the show and comedy at large as a ‘accepting a ridiculous situation and then proceed through the situation logically.’
For example Mr. Cleese pointed out, what if sidewalks were perpendicular?
Mr. Cleese answered that by saying something like, ‘If sidewalks were perpendicular, people using the sidewalks would have to be outfitted like alpine mountain climbers.”
Which led to sketch of the Python Troup making there way up a sidewalk with ropes, pitons and thick winter clothes with a background narration of a tense BBC presenter pointing out all the danger of climbing a sidewalk and the awful scene of one the climbers losing their grip and rolling down the sidewalk, plunging to sure death.
Of course, the entire time, real people are walking up and down the sidewalk, past all the climbers.
Accept a ridiculous situation and then proceed through the situation logically.
Its February and gray and rainy and cold here and everywhere.
Through out literature people ask about things God created and ask why.
Why Mosquitos?
Why Platypuses?
I ask, Why February?
The country faces a Presidential election where by most accounts, most folks don’t like or want either candidate and there is a near consensus of those who haven’t lost their minds that these candidates cannot be the best people for the job in a country of 330 million.
Wars are becoming common once again through the world.
Nature again seems to be trying to wash us all away, but only because we, the world as whole, pissed off nature and messed up the climate.
And my day started with the sound of single stoke of a bell.
Accept a ridiculous situation and then proceed through the situation logically.
As Bette Davis said, fasten those seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy flight.
For in the day of waking, what reality will come.
At least the song got me to look towards the coming day with a laugh.
Tune in tomorrow.
No Haiku For You 