{"id":24591,"date":"2021-05-28T08:27:49","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T12:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=24591"},"modified":"2021-05-28T08:28:12","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T12:28:12","slug":"this-string-of-pearls-we-call-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/this-string-of-pearls-we-call-moments\/","title":{"rendered":"This String of Pearls We Call &#8220;Moments&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"top\" class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Sj5bNXeiZ0M\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left smalltext\"><em>[Video: unsurprisingly, YouTube&#8217;s got many videos set to this song &#8212; even to this exact version. I&#8217;m not sure why the person who posted this one decided to illustrate it with a black-and-white montage of Hollywood actresses, not all of them contemporaneous with the recording; I assume the idea was to present them strung together, like a <em>metaphorical<\/em>&#8230; well, you get the idea. For more on the song, though, see <a href=\"#note\">the note at the foot of this post<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2021\/05\/what-is-meant-by-reality-it-would-seem.html\" target=\"_blank\">A few days ago<\/a>, the always reliable <em>whiskey river<\/em> floated this poem ([<em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=k77hAZmFw2IC&amp;pg=PA185#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">source<\/a><\/em>]) from Czeslaw Milosz our way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>Gift<\/strong><\/p><p>A day so happy.<br>Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.<br>Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.<br>There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.<br>I knew no one worth my envying him.<br>Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.<br>To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.<br>In my body I felt no pain.<br>When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Diane Ackerman ([<em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=IQnBT-983jwC&amp;pg=PA19#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">source<\/a><\/em>]) muses on moments like Milosz&#8217;s, thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>The brain is a gifted illusionist. Here&#8217;s one of its best tricks: I seem to perceive the winter woods today in lavish detail, because whatever I pay attention to looms, furiously present, and saturates my awareness. An ice storm has turned a Japanese maple into a glass figurine. As I caress it with my eyes, the rest of the scene blurs, unless I shift my focus to something else, when that leaps into view&#8212;a female cardinal with taupe breast feathers and beak orange as candy corn sitting atop a starry fence. I don&#8217;t feel like I&#8217;m looking through a periscope, but glancing outside at nature in the round. A subtle sense of all that&#8217;s lurking in the rest of the scene lulls me into thinking I&#8217;m seeing the yard in a single eye-gulp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>That &#8220;single eye-gulp&#8221; may not entirely, or even remotely <em>fairly<\/em> represent the world actually seen. It does, though, speak to the heart as much as &#8212; more than &#8212; all the details considered serially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/helenandglennmiller_stringofpearls_med.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/helenandglennmiller_stringofpearls_med.jpg?resize=250%2C394&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-24592\" width=\"250\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/helenandglennmiller_stringofpearls_med.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/helenandglennmiller_stringofpearls_med.jpg?resize=190%2C300&amp;ssl=1 190w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a><figcaption><em>(Helen and Glenn Miller, 1936; note the string of pearls around Mrs. Miller&#8217;s neck)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"note\"><strong><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">About &#8220;A String of Pearls&#8221;:<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The best single source of information about the 1941 song I found while preparing today&#8217;s post is <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colorado.edu\/amrc\/sites\/default\/files\/attached-files\/a_string_of_pearls.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">an informal research report<\/a> (from 2017) by one Dennis M. Spragg. Among much else about the composer, Glenn Miller, the song&#8217;s chart history, and so on, it provided me with the photo at right. (I found it nowhere else.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In many ways the song is unremarkable; as one source said, it&#8217;s effectively a <em>melody without a melody<\/em>&#8230; which is nonetheless instantly recognizable. The Miller orchestra&#8217;s original arrangement, however, does include one (heh) pearl of genius: the cornet solo, a bit more than thirty seconds long, plopped into the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That solo was the work of <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu\/?q=program\/sweet-hot-salute-cornetist-bobby-hackett\" target=\"_blank\">Bobby Hackett<\/a>, a talented multi-instrumentalist (guitar, cornet, etc.), who&#8217;d joined Miller&#8217;s Big Band a few months before they recorded the song. When he was let loose in November 1941 to improvise in &#8220;A String of Pearls,&#8221; Miller reportedly so appreciated the result that he asked Hackett if he could play it again, <em>exactly<\/em> that way, in all future performances and recordings; Hackett replied something like, &#8220;Uh, yeah, I think so&#8230;&#8221; Thus do inspired, one-of-a-kind phenomena become note-for-note rote icons!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One more note: until reading up about the song over the last few days, I didn&#8217;t know that it had ever had lyrics &#8212; was, y&#8217;know, actually <em>singable<\/em>. A bit forced, maybe, given the music&#8217;s relentless <em>dah, dah, DAH-dah-dah<\/em> rhythm, but the lyricist did what he could with it. Here are the first couple of verses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Ba-by, here&#8217;s a five-and-dime<br>Ba-by, now&#8217;s about the time<br>For a string of pearls \u00e0 la Woolworth<\/p><p>Every pearl&#8217;s a star above<br>Wrapped in dreams, and filled with love<br>That old string of pearls \u00e0 la Woolworth<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The rational, word-parsing mind (mine, anyhow) resists lyrics which hammer at it, especially with a dumb claim like &#8220;These pearls from an old discount chain store are magical and quite valuable.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t help when said lyrics cram the claim into a narrow meter, syllables bulging through he seams. Oddly, though, once I slowed down and drew a breath &#8212; temporarily pulling back from tongue-clucking semantic aggression &#8212; the words seemed shaped for today&#8217;s theme after all. On balance, I&#8217;m happy to have met them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>[<a href=\"#top\">back to top<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: unsurprisingly, YouTube&#8217;s got many videos set to this song &#8212; even to this exact version. I&#8217;m not sure why the person who posted this one decided to illustrate it with a black-and-white montage of Hollywood actresses, not all of them contemporaneous with the recording; I assume the idea was to present them strung together, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Czeslaw Milosz, Diane Ackerman, and a cornet solo: 'This String of Pearls We Call \"Moments\"'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,247,1027,1393,74,251,4159],"tags":[1003,1045,1438,5380,5381,5382,5383,5384],"class_list":{"0":"post-24591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whats-in-a-song-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-music","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-songwriting","14":"tag-czeslaw-milosz","15":"tag-diane-ackerman","16":"tag-glenn-miller","17":"tag-bobby-hackett","18":"tag-cornet","19":"tag-big-bands","20":"tag-pearls","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-6oD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24591"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24613,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24591\/revisions\/24613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}