(for those of you who do not live in this extremely odd country,you might want to know that the republican nominee forthe us senate
for the state of delaware, is, quite vocally, running on an anti-masturbation platform! it is time for all self-pleasurers to come to the aid of their party!)
SHE BOPWe-hell-I see them every night in tight blue jeans--
In the pages of a blue boy magazine
Hey I've been thinking of a new sensation
I'm picking up--good vibration--
Oop--she bop--
Do I wanna go out with a lion's roar Huh, yea, I wanna go south n get me some more Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine They say I better stop--or I'll go blind
Oop--she bop--she bop
She bop--he bop--a--we bop I bop--you bop--a--they bop Be bop--be bop--a--lu--she bop, I hope He will understand She bop--he bop--a--we bop I bop--you bop--a--they bop Be bop--be bop--a--lu--she bop, Oo--oo--she--do--she bop--she bop
(whistle along here)...
Hey, hey--they say I better get a chaperone
Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone
No, I won't worry, and I won't fret--
Ain't no law against it yet--
three dames walk into a bar: a witch, a hag, and mother goose. 'aha!' cries the bartender -- 'it's the triplets!' am i the only one it took so long to figure this out?
the elements of cats, brooms, and good old age appear so often in illustrations of all three, that one becomes confused just trying to get it straight.
"The existence of demons and the efficacy of witchcraft were accepted facts throughout the world in 1692. The Puritans of Salem Village were certain of the devil's hand in every incident of evil they suffered, from petty misfortune to apalling tragedy. Witches and agents of 'the ould deluder' Satan delivered to the people of the commonwealth all manner of torments: deadly epidemics of smallpox; murderous raids by Indians; and ignorant children."
The Witches of Salem were hanged. This was less painful than the burning of witches in Europe. They thought the burning of a witch was the only way to release the evil, since the Devil would be forced to exit the melting body through the smoke.
Witchcraft in Massachusetts singled out:
• spinsters • barren women • the ugly • the extremely successful • the independent • the reclusive • the litigious • the willful. 1
i can assure you, i am every single one of these (well, maybe not litigious), and i suppose i am also, now, old -- or at least to the degree these other women are. and while i have no goose, i do have a cat.
would you need more proof?
let's look at that list once more: every single item challenges authority (usually male). if one is any of these she must be punished or laughed at or belittled: silenced.
to live the quiet, solitary life, free and in constant communication with the birds and spiders and fish, and the cat, to tend the garden, read a book, answer to no one....
There was an old woman tossed up in a basket Seventeen times as high as the moon; Where she was going I couldn't but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," quoth I, "O whither, O whither, O whither, so high?" "To brush the cobwebs off the sky!" "Shall I go with thee?" "Aye, by and by." •
Old Mother Goose, When she wanted to wander, Would ride through the air On a very fine gander.
Jack's mother came in, And caught the goose soon, And mounting its back, Flew up to the moon.
•
The words of the original Old Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme can be interpreted to find a darker meaning to the identity of ' Mother Goose'! The title ' Mother Goose ' probably originates from the 1600's -- the time of the great witch hunts. Comparisons can be made between the Mother Goose in the above children's poem and the popular conception of a witch during this era!
• Witches were able to fly (the broomstick has been replaced by a goose). • A witch was often portrayed as an old crone (with no man to defend her against accusations of witchcraft). • Witches are closely associated with living alone. • Witches were known to a have 'familiars,' most often cats but also owls. 2
so who am i now? from east or north? good witch, bad witch, in-between? & i know it doesn't matter. i'm a happy old woman, with cat, with garden, of modest means and expectations, will the iris open, will the spider catch the fly?
i've begun to wonder about the resurgence of interest in art nouveau in the 1960s; there aren't easy answers because, as it turns out, the questions aren't easy!
i had read somewhere that a collector with a huge collection of art nouveau treasures which had become all but worthless arranged for a museum exhibition, thus reviving value in what he owned. but even if i could find that reference again, which i have not, i am beginning to think it's apocryphal anyway: it's a story with as many roots as did the original movement itself, and i hope i can untangle some of them.
to give you an idea of what i mean, let's take rock posters, for a start. seeing them juxtaposed like this with those from 60 years earlier, it's almost hard to tell which are more "psychedelic," but the influence is obvious. but! what do we mean when we say influence? style? lettering? direct theft?
over the next number of posts we'll look at all of these, as well as the many others that arise. as usual, i'm learning as i go along, hoping to assimilate. i have books coming from the library, letters i've written to the artists themselves, etc. and of course rock posters is just the beginning. what about that mucha poster you had on your wall in 1969?
(a writer on his 69th birthday, listens to a tape-recording he had made on his 39th birthday)
-- upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then pushed out into the stream and drifted. She lay streched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking goose- berries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes.
(Pause.)
I asked her to look at me and after a few moments -- (pause) -- after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low.) Let me in. (Pause.) We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! (Pause.) I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.
Pause.
Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth.......
The late Takahashi Yasunari, who initiated Beckett studies in Japan, described affinities between Beckett’s drama and classical Noh theatre. Noh crosses borders between reality and dream, between life and death. Beckett’s art too undermines dualistic thinking and transgresses various borders. 2
Noh is closely connected with the ancient Japanese belief in the unpacified spirit of the dead. The unquenched passion of love, grief, or hatred endows the dead with a sort of immortality, and the ghost is compelled from time to time to emerge out of the Buddhist purgatory in a corporeal form that was his or hers in life and visit the world of the living in order to gain a partial relief from present torments by telling someone the story of his or her agony. 3
clearly, though, this is not singularly japanese. in hamlet too, for example, the living are asked to complete tasks for the dead.
in addition to the pivotal addition of ghosts (the personages of the past), the accoutrements of japanese theater had an influence on beckett as well.
"Beckett keeps approaching with ever increasing seriousness an austere theater, both in its skeletal bareness of structure and in its thematic obsession with past and memory ... It is a triumph of Beckett's art that he has successfully incorporated the very structure of the split soul of the modern man ... And Krapp is of course utterly incapable of exorcising or pacifying his former self.
Beckett started writing plays at the point in the history of the Western theater where all the realistic conventions of drama, including the assumption that the theater has nothing to do with the sacred, broke down, and it seems to be that, in his ruthless effort to strip the theater of everything that is not absolutely necessary, he has arrived somewhere close to where [the Japanese] started six hundred years ago.
Yeats had a significant influence on the history of world theatre in the 20th century, principally because he incorporated into his later plays, theatre techniques from the Japanese Noh to create a minimalist "theatre of the mind." Many theatre artists, including Samuel Beckett, are in his debt. 4
Noh is Japan’s “most classical” form of drama akin to Greek tragedy. Its roots lie in religious ritual, where the miraculous appearance of old gods, releases the players from the rigours of earthly life into the purity and clarity of the spirit world. The purpose of Noh is neither narrative nor moral, but is simply an attempt to express beauty -- the essence of Noh is that true art is felt, not understood.
This may seem a little removed from Beckett’s tramps, dustbins and reel-to-real replays. However the spaces, the purity and clarity are there. In Noh the drama strives to reveal its own essence. In Beckett, all we (we all) face is situation, just situation. The essence never arrives, except that the non-arrival itself, may be the essence. Just as Noh flows between reality and dream, life and afterlife; Beckett challenges dualistic thinking and crosses borders of language, genre, culture, bringing the ultimate questions into the commonplace -- and then asking if the questions matter. 5
'Ratty,' said the Mole suddenly, one bright summer morning, 'if you please, I want to ask you a favour.'
The Rat was sitting on the river bank, singing a little song. He had just composed it himself, so he was very taken up with it, and would not pay proper attention to Mole or anything else.
Since early morning he had been swimming in the river, in company with his friends the ducks. And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle their necks, just under where their chins would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite ALL you feel when your head is under water. At last they implored him to go away and attend to his own affairs and leave them to mind theirs. So the Rat went away, and sat on the river bank in the sun, and made up a song about them, which he called
'DUCKS' DITTY.'
All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all!
Ducks' tails, drakes' tails, Yellow feet a-quiver, Yellow bills all out of sight Busy in the river!
Slushy green undergrowth Where the roach swim-- Here we keep our larder, Cool and full and dim.
Everyone for what he likes! WE like to be Heads down, tails up, Dabbling free!
High in the blue above Swifts whirl and call-- WE are down a-dabbling Up tails all!
'I don't know that I think so VERY much of that little song, Rat,' observed the Mole cautiously. He was no poet himself and didn't care who knew it; and he had a candid nature.
'Nor don't the ducks neither,' replied the Rat cheerfully. 'They say, "WHY can't fellows be allowed to do what they like WHEN they like and AS they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them? What NONSENSE it all is!" That's what the ducks say.'
'So it is, so it is,' said the Mole, with great heartiness.
from wind in the willows, written in 1908 by kenneth grahame. i got the text here but the whole book with some illustrations is here.
We-hell-I see them every night in tight blue jeans--
She bop--he bop--a--we bop
Hey, hey--they say I better get a chaperone
