9 November 2006

Fragments

Words and tunes flutter in my sub-conscious, sometimes rising to the surface like fish. I find myself whistling or humming tunes and very often, driving in the car or walking somewhere, I might be heard singing snatches of songs - perhaps from long ago. Maybe I'm teetering on the edge of madness. Surely it isn't normal - whatever that means - to be strolling down the street singing bits and pieces of songs. Here are some recent lines that rose from the depths:-

"Who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time (pause) goes?"
"Have you seen the old man outside the seaman's mission, memory fading with the medal ribbons that he wears?...."
"Woman I can hardly express, my mixed emotions at my thoughtlessness...."

bd_2

Pottery from Chile: Singing Man

"Oh I was born with the name Geraldine, with hair cold black as a raven..."
"Sunshine on my shoulder looked so lovely. Sunshine almost always makes me smile..."
"Will ye no come back again? Will ye no come back again?"

"If I listen long enough to you, I'll find a way to believe that it's all true..."
"Earth, stream and tree return to the sea, waves sweep the sand from my island... My sunsets fade, field and glade..."
"Alright now, baby I'm alright now"

And I could go on and on. Do you think it's a kind of madness, like the first throes of senile dementia? Or perhaps a psychiatrist/psychologist would see these rising bits of songs as the outward manifestation of my inner self - urges, values, interests briefly registering their inner presence. So many songs I heard in the past seem long gone and buried - nothing ever surfaces from them but like old wooden stakes in the sand , greeting another high tide some lyrics and tunes have endured...

7 comments:

  1. OK Mr P, so you've recited ONE song that you can rememeber though I don't know why you used a different colour for every line, there must be some others.

    some words often heard in my household are' I've been dazed and confused so long it's not true...' and Mrs C says I should make it into a song

    One thing I always find is when I'm perhaps out for a walk on my own or doing something equally non-thinking songs often come into my brain but never anything of class and merit, but odd stuff like 'Ra ra rasputin' or 'what's a matter you?' - why does the same thing not happen with something decent, like a bit of the brandenburg concertos or all saints? explain that if you can Dr pudding of the random musical rememberences research department of yorkshire university !

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  2. Vell Herr Clewley... Schnell! On to my couch bitte! Zees songs you are alluding to zay much about your psychological hinterland. "Ra-ra-Rasputin!" suggests dat you agonize about your mental health for Rasputin was ze mad monk of ze Tsarist court. And ze counterpoint to ze udder singing is "What's a matter me?" again revealing inner mental torture. Zer iz no Brandenburg concerto in your repertoire because that would signify a higher intellectual level than ze one you actually occupy.
    Zat will be funf hundred marks bitte!

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  3. With that collation, I wouldn't rule out madness. Either that or the plate in your head is picking up Radio 2.

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  4. You might have earworms. Are you experiencing a cognitive itch?

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  5. Welcome to my world! The trick is to write down the words you hear that other people DIDN'T write and make them into poems or songs of your own. Then you get off being called mad on the grounds of being 'creative.'

    And as an unqualified analyst of the school of Jungian/witchy thingy, I would say that judging from those lyrics you are suffering from feelings of isolation, gender identity crisis and fear of death ineterspersed with random optimism. ie you are human. Though if you were really born as Geraldine remember the door of the church of the divine universal Ladyboy is always open!

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  6. A poem on the subject by American Poet Billy Collins from his book Nine Horses.

    "More than a Woman"
    by Billy Collins

    Ever since I woke up today,
    a song has been playing uncontrollably
    in my head--a tape looping

    over the spools of the brain,
    a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun,
    mad fan belt of a tune.

    It must have escaped from the radio
    last night on the drive home
    and tunneled while I slept

    from my ears to the center of my cortex.
    It is a song so cloying and vapid
    I won't even bother mentioning the title,

    but on it plays as if I were a turntable
    covered with dancing children
    and their spooky pantomimes,

    as if everything I had ever learned
    was being slowly replaced
    by its slinky chords and the puffballs of its lyrics.

    It played while I watered the plant
    and continued when I brought in the mail
    and fanned out the letters on a table.

    It repeated itself when I took a walk
    and watched from a bridge
    brown leaves floating in the channels of a current

    In the late afternoon it seemed to fade,
    but I heard it again at the restaurant
    when I peered in at the lobsters

    lying on the bottom of an illuminated
    tank which was filled to the brim
    with their copious tears.

    And now at this dark window
    in the middle of the night
    I am beginning to think

    I could be listening to music of the spheres,
    the sound no one ever hears
    because it as been playing forever,

    only the spheres are colored pool balls,
    and the music is oozing from a jukebox
    whose light I can just make out through the clouds.

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  7. I don't think you're nuts. Trust me, I know nuts. Sounds like music has been a large part of much of your life. It has been mine, as well. I can think of tunes for about any emotion I may be feeling. I even title cassettes I create for driving as "angry music", "sad music", "music for daytime", "music for nighttime", etc. Perhaps you and I are both a little nuts?

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Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

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