Lyrical ballads 2.0

My 15-year old son told me about this site, SongMeanings. Love the idea. People commenting on lyrics and making connections that way. Just take a look at the discussions around A Day in The Life.

As with anything else 2.0, these things improve with time and increased “liquidity”, as people learn about the subtlety of the mashup. I can see so many ways to vary what I see at SongMeanings, having people come together with comments and views and ratings around a catalogue of “things”. And I am sure that most of them are being done already.

Chopping bits out of books

dettmer2_14

Those of you who know me well will also know that I love books. I read them. I devour them. I collect them. I love them.
At home, we had books everywhere, and I have many wonderful childhood memories built around reading. The way we lived, it was perfectly normal to hear harrumphs and guffaws as you wandered in and out of rooms, the sounds made by people enjoying what they read; there were times of day (and night) where all those who were awake were reading.

We read eclectically. And voraciously. We were the kind of people that would walk a mile for a Camel or a new Rex Stout; if we had to choose, then Rex Stout won. We quoted from poetry and from plays, from books as well as magazines. We were Walter Mittys and Holden Caulfields, we lived among Empresses as well as Queens, we moved from misty-eyed meanderings about “acres and acres of golden yellow pajamas glinting in the noonday sun” to equally misty-eyed meanderings about the liquefaction of Julia’s clothes.

We read Wodehouse all day as if our lives depended on it; at high noon it was Max Brand; in between games of Cluedo it was Perry Mason time; our Grishams weren’t Grisham, they were Desmond Bagley and Alistair Maclean and Hammond Innes. [An aside. We played a short-lived charade game where you had to guess “composites”, weird creatures that were portmanteau phrases merging a popular film with a popular song. And the worst one I can remember was “The Guns of Navarone A Sunday“, which should need no explanation. That one hurt].

We read Shakespeare as well as Pynchon, Dante as well as Rabelais, the Thousand and One Nights as well as George Mikes, Salinger and Mailer, Dumas and Swift, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Hawthorne and Eliot, Whitman and Twain, Carroll as well as Castaneda, Sellar with Yeatman. We moved from Parker to Parker as if nothing was amiss. Leo Rosten kept warm alongside H Allen Smith. Somewhere in between we read a lot of comics as well, but that’s for another post.

We dwelt among many untrodden ways. We would talk to each other about the books we’d read, the books we were reading. [An aside, about “untrodden ways”. I remember a time when the men of the house were busy reading the oeuvre of Nevil Shute book by book, while the womenfolk were equally busy with …. Mills and Boon. It drove us crazy. So we the menfolk did the only thing possible, we started reading the Mills and Boons as well. Which drove the others crazy. Yup, I’m confessing to having read a horde of “Violent” Winspear (Violet’s heroes were always festooned with romantic scars) and Anne Mather and Janet Dailey and others of that ilk). We laughed and teased about Innocent Deceptions and long tall drinks with cubes of ice clinking at the bottom of the glass (sic).]

Yes, we read a lot. And we treasured books. So when I came to this country, I was unprepared for some of what I saw. People tearing chapters off books and throwing the “read” bits in the bin. People clearing houses and throwing hordes of musty mouldy books into skips. People actually destroying books.

I was aghast. And I’ve been collecting books ever since. Some strange collections, some very strange collections. For example, I have over 180 different first editions of just one book. Don Quixote. Just for the illustrations.

Bearing all this in mind, I had some mixed feelings when I first saw the works of Brian Dettmer, one of which I’ve used as an illustration above. I’ve decided I quite like his stuff. What do you think?

If you do like it, you can find out more at Aron Packer Gallery, which is where I found out about him. How did I get there? I Stumbled.

Cricket: The Sound and Numbers Game

Thank God for the Web. How else could I have done what I did a few minutes ago?

It all started this morning. I was doing my snooze-awake thing, a critical technique practised and refined over years of really important business meetings. You know the one I mean. When your eyes are open, one ear is cocked attentively and tuned to the right channel, and the rest of you is fast asleep, ready to spring into action as soon as your name is mentioned. That’s what I mean by snooze-awake.

So there I was. Snooze-awake, with the cricket on in the background; India versus Pakistan at Eden Gardens; there was nothing really happening, India had just declared, and Pakistan had yet to come out. The expert commentators were out in their droves. And then someone said something.  He said that it looked like VVS Laxman had scored a century consisting solely of ones and boundaries.

I sprang awake. And a part of me went “wow, could that be true?”. So I resolved to check it out, which, thanks to the web, I can now do. Easily. So I went to Cricinfo, got to this page containing ball-by-ball text commentary for the entire Indian innings, and laboriously went through every ball Laxman faced, all 178 of them. And it was true. VVS Laxman scored his 112 all in ones and fours.

I wonder how often that has happened before. And how I would find the answer to that question. Any budding Bill Frindalls or Wendy Wimbushes out there?

Incidentally, I understand that India managed to achieve an unusual sequence in this innings: 111/1, 222/2, 333/3, 444/4, 555/5.  Again, I wonder just how often that has been done.

For those of you who don’t follow cricket, all I can say is it’s never too late. The sound of willow on leather. The sound of harrumphing moustaches and gentle snores. The sound of the Barmy Army and of calypso cricket. The sound of Eden Gardens in full cry.

Cricket. A game of sounds. And numbers.