{"id":6371,"date":"2009-12-18T12:38:08","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T17:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=6371"},"modified":"2009-12-18T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2009-12-18T17:38:08","slug":"cold-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/cold-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"toothpastefordinner.com\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[See original at toothpastefordinner.com<\/a>]\n

From whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Report From A Far Place<\/strong><\/p>\n

Making these word things to
\nstep on across the world, I
\ncould call them snowshoes.<\/p>\n

They creak, sag, bend, but
\nhold, over the great deep cold,
\nand they turn up at the toes.<\/p>\n

In war or city or camp
\nthey could save your life;
\nyou can muse them by the fire.<\/p>\n

Be careful, though: they
\nburn, or don’t burn, in their own
\nstrange way, when you say them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(William Stafford)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Common Cold<\/strong><\/p>\n

Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
\nYou shall not sneer at me.
\nPick up your hat and stethoscope,
\nGo wash your mouth with laundry soap;
\nI contemplate a joy exquisite
\nI’m not paying you for your visit.
\nI did not call you to be told
\nMy malady is a common cold.<\/p>\n

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
\nBy fever’s hot and scaly grip;
\nBy those two red redundant eyes
\nThat weep like woeful April skies;
\nBy racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
\nBy handkerchief after handkerchief;
\nThis cold you wave away as naught
\nIs the damnedest cold man ever caught!<\/p>\n

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
\nHere is the genuine Cold Colossal;
\nThe Cold of which researchers dream,
\nThe Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
\nThis honored system humbly holds
\nThe Super-cold to end all colds;
\nThe Cold Crusading for Democracy;
\nThe F\u00fchrer of the Streptococcracy.<\/p>\n

Bacilli swarm within my portals
\nSuch as were ne’er conceived by mortals,
\nBut bred by scientists wise and hoary
\nIn some Olympic laboratory;
\nBacteria as large as mice,
\nWith feet of fire and heads of ice
\nWho never interrupt for slumber
\nTheir stamping elephantine rumba.<\/p>\n

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
\nAh, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
\nDon Juan was a budding gallant,
\nAnd Shakespeare’s plays show signs of talent;
\nThe Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
\nAnd your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
\nOh what a derision history holds
\nFor the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Ogden Nash)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

It is little more than dawn when the general comes down Front Street slumped in the front of his coalwagon, the horse named Golgotha hung between the trees and stumbling along in the cold with his doublejointed knees and his feet clopping and the bright worn quoits winking feebly among the clattering spokes. In the whipsocket rides a bent cane. There is a gap in the iron of one tire and above the meaningless grumbling of the wagon it clicks, clicks with a clocklike persistence that tolls progress, purpose, the passage of time. When they stop it is a violent shudder, as if something has given way. The general climbs and climbs down from his seat and goes to the rear and takes up his blackened basket and sets it in the street. He levers up the lantern glass and blows out the tiny flame. He hands down coal lump by lump until the basket is filled and with pain he hefts and carries it to the dim house, through the chill fog bent and muttering, returning lightened but with no better speed or humor to where the horse stands sleeping in the traces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Cormac McCarthy, Sutree<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Finally: I first heard about the Seattle band known as Fleet Foxes just about a year ago, courtesy of Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast<\/em> (yes, the same Jules<\/a> who JUST, GOT, A, FREAKING, BOOK, CONTRACT<\/em>). They seemed to me to have come out of nowhere fast, thriving on word-of-mouth rather than marketing. Reviewing<\/a> a performance in the UK’s Independent<\/em> in 2008, Simon Price wrote:<\/p>\n

What Fleet Foxes have done is to blend West Coast hippie rock (think steel guitars and close harmonies) with Elizabethan madrigals, and — as a side-effect — inadvertently revealed the latter to be a hitherto-undetected ancestor of the former.<\/p>\n

The songs, brought to life with ukulele, piano and tambourine as much as with larynx and fretboard, are — in their words — “baroque harmonic pop jams”, expressing 21st-century concerns over 1970s sounds, or in some cases, 1570s sounds. They’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name, hey nonny no.<\/p>\n

It’s ridiculously haunting (that between-song chat is necessary just to settle the nerves, lest it all become too much), utterly incongruous, and quite beautiful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also in 2008, Spin<\/em> named<\/a> lead singer Robin Pecknold its “Voice of the Year”:<\/p>\n

Unlike the alien whines of Auto-Tuned pop stars and vocoder-addicted MCs, Pecknold’s vocals feel homemade and imperfect, like a tattered, pilling old sweater — grizzled beyond his 22 years…<\/p>\n

It’s hard to listen to Pecknold murmur and wail about shivering dogs and frozen rivers without also thinking about the Pacific Northwest — about Douglas first and percolator coffee and, of course, impenetrable tangles of facial hair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(That last line refers to Pecknold’s beard, which can seem an apparently impenetrable tangle indeed.)<\/p>\n

Jules’s first recommendation to me was their “White Winter Hymnal” — the claymation-style video<\/a> is well worth\u00a0 watching (and listening to) — and I guess that could fit into today’s whiskey river<\/em>-driven theme. But I also like a selection from their first EP, 2006’s Fleet Foxes<\/em>. (I saw one reference on the Web to how widely that EP was circulated: about 200 copies, all in the Seattle area.) The song is called “Icicle Tusk.” I haven’t (yet) found the track online in MP3 or other form, but here’s a YouTube video which plays it over a static image (maybe the EP’s cover?). Lyrics below the video, as usual.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Lyrics:<\/p>\n

Icicle Tusk<\/strong>
\n(by Fleet Foxes)<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll shoot you dead
\nFor the father
\nOf the coal miner’s daughter
\nBeneath the icicle tusk
\nYou and me among the flattering dusk<\/p>\n

In my haste I draw my weapon
\nDesigning your final lesson
\nAs you recede to the floor
\nAll is silent but the fluttering door<\/p>\n

Twenty-five grand on the table
\nOf the high wall street stable
\nI’m not responsible for
\nThe reputation of the
\nNeighborhood whore<\/p>\n

But I’m a keyhole peeker
\nAnd you’re my surveillance keeper
\nAnd though my memory rusts
\nI will always see the icicle tusk<\/p>\n

And I must admit
\nThat it gets lonesome on my shelf
\nThis much I can tell
\nThis much I can tell<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I honestly can’t say what these lyrics, y’know, mean<\/em>. Or rather I should say: what the lyrics mean seems to shift from one line to the next. Is it a narrative? a love song? Is “the coal-miner’s daughter” Loretta Lynn<\/a> or, for that matter, Sissy Spacek<\/a>? No idea. But I love the way that the song seems more meaningful if you don’t listen too hard, if you relax a little — and let the sound sort of wash over you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[See original at toothpastefordinner.com] From whiskey river: Report From A Far Place Making these word things to step on across the world, I could call them snowshoes. They creak, sag, bend, but hold, over the great deep cold, and they turn up at the toes. In war or city or camp they could save your […]<\/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":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,74,5,50,251],"tags":[1227,1345,1548,1549,1550],"class_list":{"0":"post-6371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-language-writing_cat","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-ogden-nash","13":"tag-william-stafford","14":"tag-toothpaste-for-dinner","15":"tag-cormac-mccarthy","16":"tag-fleet-foxes","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1EL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371","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=6371"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6384,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6371\/revisions\/6384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}