Things Which Seem Otherwise

From whiskey river:

Let me make this perfectly clear.
I have never written anything because it is a Poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don’t care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have ever cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
and in the long light,
Breathing.

(Gwendolyn MacEwen, “Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear,” Afterworlds)

…and:

Then there is the BIG PROBLEM — who are you? There is an endemic human tendency for self-deception. We all think we’re one kind of person when we’re somewhat different (especially viewed by others) than we imagine we are. You — the reader — no doubt feel you’re an exception.

(Alan Fletcher)

…and:

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Can’t you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—

(G.K. Chesterton, from The Man Who Was Thursday [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Consider the plight of Ophelia and Gertrude, who must pretend that they are having normal conversations with Hamlet but know they are staging it for eavesdroppers hiding behind arrases and elsewhere. Bad enough, as I have been supposing, to have to attend to the colleague you are talking to and worry about what you are going to say next. But imagine if that colleague were Hamlet. A reptile on a cold day would be a nervous wreck talking with him. How do you converse with Hamlet and not walk away feeling humiliated unless, like Horatio, you have cultivated a stoical disposition? Hamlet is so much smarter than you, and he delights in never letting you forget it. He makes each conversation a contest to see whether you can follow his speed-of-light access to startlingly original images juxtaposed in difficult and fantastic ways. He tests to see whether you can fathom his incessant punning, his playing with words only a tenth of which you grasp at the moment; and while you are figuring out how to respond to them, another hundred whiz right by you, ones that future editors of Hamlet’s conversations will spend years parsing. When you finally steel yourself to open your mouth, he plays with your words, turning them against you or making you not only feel stupid but look it too. Now add that Gertrude and Ophelia have to perform not just for Hamlet but for the eavesdropping Polonius or Claudius and know that by so doing they are betraying Hamlet. It is amazing they don’t give up immediately under the stress of the duplicitous conditions in which they are being asked to converse and perform as genuine interlocutors.

(William Ian Miller, Faking It [source])

You may know it’s been an unpleasantly distracting week for me, technology-wise. Of all the songs which might have become lodged in my mind over the last few days, then, looping endlessly, the one which follows — which has nothing at all to do with technology — seems an unlikely choice to head the list of candidates. It fits right in with the whiskey river theme, though: Robert Cray‘s “Little Boy Big,” from his 1995 album Some Rainy Morning.

Cray is a great favorite of The Missus and me. There’s something about the way his voice combines the satin of soul with the misery of blues — something which just gets to us (and he’s a mean guitarist). In this particular number, he uses both those tools to good effect in a tale of a protagonist who fools himself while living a life of fooling others. (For some reason, the image in that last couplet — right after the whistling — always affects me.)

(Remember: If streaming audio is not working for you, there’s always an alternative — clumsier, but it should work just fine. Just keep an eye on the correct bracket.)

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 5:12 long.]

Lyrics:

Little Boy Big
(words and music by Robert Cray;
performance by the Robert Cray Band)

(guitar intro)

So it’s all said and done
And you promised you wouldn’t do it again

Now where are you going?
You’ve knocked on someone else’s door
And you, jived and you told some great big lies about it
Don’t you think they know you?

Why, when something goes wrong
Do you walk away from love
Just like it was nothing?

You hide, and then you move on
You don’t walk away from a good love
Nooo, little boy big

Now she begged and pleaded with ‘ya
Tried and she tried and she tried everything that she could

Could you feel it?
You got one more go round this time, little fella
You better take hold to it if you can
You know you’ve got to

Can you feel it?

You hide, when something goes wrong
Even if it’s just a little thing
That throws you off

Why can’t you be strong?
You don’t walk away from a good love
Noooo

(instrumental break)

Why, when something goes wrong
You turn your back and walk away from her
Just like it was nothing

You hide, and then you move on
You can’t walk away from a good love
Noo, little boy big

No, no
La, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
Little boy big

(whistling)

With your hands in your pocket
You walk down the street singin’

La, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
Oh, little boy
Little boy big

________________________________

Note: The image at the top of this post comes from Halbritter’s Plant-and-Animal World, by Kurt Halbritter. Halbritter was a German cartoonist who died in 1978. (Very little information about him seems to be on the Web — at least in English.) The book is a collection of line drawings of various fantastic flora and fauna, together with pseudo-academic thumbnail descriptions and even scientific names.

Here’s what Halbritter says of the little fellows depicted above, the Nosehare and the Snifflemouse:

Nosehare
lepus nasultus

Distant relation of the Fingeroo (see page 41), but smaller and less outgoing. Can generally smell a rat before it sees it and a hunter’s horn before it hears it. Harebrained animal that one is best advised to shoot only on sight. Tamed, it is no substitute for dogs or cats.

Snifflemouse
nus olfactans

Distant cousin of both Church and Lay mouse (kitchen variety). Unlike the latter, it doesn’t mouse around but sticks its nose into everything. Its abnormally enlarged olfactory organ (the sniffle) makes it the nosiest creature on earth. It sniffles loudly, especially at night, particularly annoying to anyone trying to get a good night’s rest. Snifflemice, however, never cry.

And, since someone is bound to ask, here’s the Fingeroo to which the Nosehare is distantly related:

Fingeroo
halmaturus digitatus

A real handful, the Fingeroo cannot stop jumping around. Capable of enormous leaps and bounds in any and every direction. Although volatile by nature, the Fingeroo is a faithful lover and picks his partner according to the size of her pouch.