[Note: an abbreviated whiskey river Fridays post today, since I'm out of town. Normal blogcasting (whatever "normal" means) will resume tomorrow. This includes tracking down primary sources for the quotations, per my usual practice on Fridays.]
[Image: Urban Security Suit, designed by Tim Smit of Nieuwe Heren. For more information,
see the note at the foot of this post.]
From whiskey river:
No one lives his life.
Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures,We come of age as masks.
Our true face never speaks.Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.Maybe all paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived things.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God)
…and:
It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.
(Leonard Cohen)
Not from whiskey river:
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
(Kurt Vonnegut)
…and:
All Souls
A few of us — Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky — peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picksover chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody
screwdriver puttied to her forehead.Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble
of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy
to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,
“What a perfect mask it has!” While the Countwhistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,
and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one
the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”
“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt
and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,
wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.
Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold handsand then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on
the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs
abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room
turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”
the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.
The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.
We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.
(Michael Collier)
I don’t really know for sure which song is referenced in the above poem… but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be this one (playing behind a video tribute to its composer, Bo Diddley); it’s something of a paean to the notion of donning a costume in pursuit of a lover:
[The lyrics I found for this the other day aren't quite right; I suspect their version may have been performed as a cover by some other artist. But I don't have the software I need to correct the problem right now. Looks like fixing them will be another feature of the retun to regular-blogging "normalcy."]
_________________________________________________
About the image: the Urban Security Suit, says its designer, is:
A vision of the nowadays society of living in fear.
With all the possible threats people face these days,
Civilians will eventually be in need of a fashionable and wearable armor.
Made out of neoprene and bone lined Kevlar.
They do not mention here that the matching gas mask is apparently part of the ensemble; at least, it appears in all the other photos, too.
Lest you draw any untoward conclusions, they hasten to add: “Nieuwe Heren is a pacifistic organisation, that doesn’t support any act of violence.”
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I immediately thought the singer was Ronnie Hawkins, The Hawk, and that the revelers in the living room were listening to The Band’s album, “The Last Waltz”…because that’s what I would do. It’s late and deep into a Halloween party, a fighter squadron’s party, at Merritt Island in Florida, at the end of Tropical Trail where one real estate savvy jet jocky had bought a house for his retirement on some unimaginable day far into the future. I’m amazed that a person who gets so regularly and spectacularly drunk is capable of that sort of long-range planning. Or of flying a jet every day of the week, for that matter, but there you go.
I’m Carol Burnett as The Charwoman. I refused to wear a mask; too vain and I hate costumes. And Halloween. And this party. But the raccoons…probably Charlie and his family who usually dine at the picnic tables outside the barbecue joint just over the bridge…them, I like.
Jet jockeys always seem to have it all: day-to-day thrills, substance-abuse endurance, long-term planning skills, and of course dancing — and leaving the party — with the smart, cute girls. Top Gun practically demanded to be made with Tom Cruise as the star; it just wouldn’t have been quite the same film with, oh, say, a young Dustin Hoffman or William H. Macy. Damn jet jockeys.
I loved that poem. And I’m very pleased that it struck a chord in you, too!
(So good to get a glimpse of you here on the RAMH dance floor, btw. :))
I think you might be perpetrating fighter pilot profiling here. Remind me to tell you about Leo, the Christian Scientist, dedicated Deadhead fighter pilot who wore Earth Shoes and owned a vintage yellow J-3 Piper Cub. He took me for a ride over the cornfields of eastern North Carolina in it. And he wrote the most wonderful letters. I miss him. I probably married Mr. Mature because he had the good taste to choose Leo as his best friend.
Yeah — guilty of perpetration, as charged. Other than the Mary Baker Eddyism, Yours Truly does seem to have more in common with Leo than with Mr. Mature. (I loved my Earth Shoes, even though — if I recall correctly — they didn’t actually do what they claimed to do, and in fact actually did some things one really wouldn’t want done, given one’s druthers.)
I like costumes sometimes. I don’t like costumes that change me too much. I wouldn’t be a vampire, say, because…well, I don’t like them. I would be a ghost. It depends. My costumes this year will have to do with butterflies.
Well, did you watch this last season of the BBC’s Sherlock? Sherlock and Irene Adler have a nice little exchange about disguises.
So far I’ve seen only the first Sherlock season — via Netflix, one episode after another (yes, yes: ALL THREE of them) — and really, really, really liked it. (I’m not sure if I’d want Stephen Moffat’s job(s), but I wouldn’t mind being him for a few days.) Looking forward to the second season very much, whether I catch it in re-runs or also via Netflix!
Butterflies? As in literal butterflies, or in-your-stomach butterflies? (I seem to remember your last few costumes have had something to do with writers’ neuroses, so I’m guessing the latter.)
My most memorable costume in anything like recent years was as the Unabomber (or at least as he was depicted in the police sketch circulated at the time, only substituting his real face instead of that idealized Tom-Berenger look). Even though I thought it was plainly meant as a joke — I carried a shoebox wrapped in brown paper, with an alarm clock taped to it — not many people seemed amused. Maybe I just look(ed) a little too much like the picture.
A friend of mine once dressed as Jackie Kennedy for Halloween. He dressed as Jackie in a pink suit and pillbox hat with blood splatter. Some people were not so amused at that either.
As for my costume, you’ll have to wait for Halloween.
The new season isn’t on Netflix yet, but keep an eye out. This season is darker, I think. But very Moffat.
Yeah. There seems to be a saturation point when it comes to costumes: if it creeps out just one person at a party, it’s probably funny; if it creeps out 90% of the peoplein attendance, it’s probably overdone. Jackie — in the 11/22/63 garb — probably falls in the 40-60% range, depending on the audience.
The Unabomber getup probably just didn’t sink in with most people; it was after he’d already been caught, I think, and the popular imagination had moved on (as it will do).
Another “Sherlock” fan, right here. Do you think it would be less wonderful if the star were named Fred Nussbaum?
“Benedict Cumberbatch” is maybe a tad more Dickensian than Holmesian (“Doyleian”?), but it’s almost too good a name for ANYONE. And its bearer absolutely had to be a BBC cast member.
Actually, “Rupert Graves” for a Watson isn’t bad, either.
You have to know that your comment sent me scurrying around the Web, nose to the ground, looking for M. Nussbaum. It finally sank in that you’d reached for it as a generic Everyman name. (The Missus uses “Joe Schmuckatelli” like that.)
I don’t know if the link will work, but I wanted to share the photo.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150111027184196&set=a.10150111026664196.323147.782004195&type=3&theater
That guy deserved an award for that one.
I like the snug fit of that hoody. And the “repository of unlived things.”
I’ve yet to find the right mask. ;)
I wondered when somebody was gonna comment about the suit!
Choosing the right mask: oh, blurgh. Good luck with that one. I try to keep a whole closetful of them within reach!