{"id":9568,"date":"2012-01-17T11:39:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T16:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=9568"},"modified":"2012-01-17T11:39:59","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T16:39:59","slug":"you-didnt-forget-the-words-did-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/you-didnt-forget-the-words-did-you\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;You Didn&#8217;t Forget the Words, Did You?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vTMbJUvKitY?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"600\" height=\"407\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: a zebra teaches a little girl to <a title=\"Wikipedia, on scat singing\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scat_singing\" target=\"_blank\">scat-sing<\/a>. Found it <a title=\"Zooglobble: Video: 'Say What?' - Lucky Diaz and the Family Jazz Band\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zooglobble.com\/archives\/2012\/01\/video_say_what_lucky_diaz_family_jam_band.html\" target=\"_blank\">at <\/a><a title=\"Zooglobble: Video: 'Say What?' - Lucky Diaz and the Family Jazz Band\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zooglobble.com\/archives\/2012\/01\/video_say_what_lucky_diaz_family_jam_band.html\" target=\"_blank\">Zooglobble<\/a>, home of &#8220;kids&#8217; music worth sharing.&#8221;<br \/>\nWarning: do not visit that site if you are even mildly distractable.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">M<\/span>y Dad taught me many things about music, especially jazz, even (I&#8217;m certain) in ways which I have yet to understand or even recognize. But on one point he was (I believe) mistaken:<\/p>\n<p>We were watching Ella Fitzgerald on some variety-TV show; after pausing for a musical break by the band, all of a sudden she burst into this chain of nonsense syllables: <em>Obba-dobba-DOO-dah, ba-dadda-da-doo-da-DOO<\/em>&#8230; (or whatever). Her eyebrows waggled like Mexican jumping beans, and she smiled slyly. Dad burst out laughing. &#8220;She always does that,&#8221; he said, &#8220;when she forgets the words.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Like I said, I think Dad was wrong about that (especially given how enthusiastically he welcomed <em>instrumental<\/em>\u00a0improvisation). But singers who depart radically from the composed lyrics must brace themselves for the inevitable skepticism.\u00a0Judges on televised singing competitions lose patience with contestants who forget the words to the songs they&#8217;re singing. I&#8217;ve seen such contestants (and woebegone karaoke&#8217;ers) freeze, lock up hopelessly, stuck in a loop of flickering blankness. They stammer, neurons misfiring; they&#8217;re\u00a0like desperate smokers rummaging through a drawerful of out-of-gas cigarette lighters. Sometimes, you can see on their faces, they know it&#8217;s coming even before they get there: they take off at a wild dead run at a gap they know they won&#8217;t be able to cross &#8212; they gallop\u00a0<em>right up to the edge<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0leap, bursting out in something like charismatic glossolalia: <em>Obba-dobba-DOO-dah<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Then their eyes dart from side to side as they smile, weakly, as though to convince the onlookers: <em>I&#8217;m doing this on purpose, y&#8217;know. &#8220;Norwegian Wood&#8221; can <\/em>always<em>\u00a0be improved by some good scat<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span>t feels like a long time since I had nothing in particular to write. (In the grand scheme of things, not so long, really &#8212; about 4\u00bd years.) As I set about doing whatever-comes-next with <em>Seems to Fit<\/em>, I&#8217;m nervous about Not Writing. Yes, I continue to get up a couple hours early every day but Sunday. And yes, I&#8217;ve got plenty of writing-<em>related<\/em>\u00a0stuff to do: research into agents, query-writing-and-editing, picking here and there at the lint which I keep finding on the book&#8217;s opening chapters. (It&#8217;s gotta be drifting down from the overhead vents or something. I <em>swear<\/em> those pages were immaculate the last time I looked at them.) I&#8217;ve got more time for <em>reading<\/em>, not to be sneered at.\u00a0And yes, of course there&#8217;s blogging to be done.<\/p>\n<p>Even with blogging, though, it&#8217;s been a while since I last wrote &#8220;outside the box.&#8221; If you go back to the first year of <em>RAMH<\/em>\u00a0archives, you&#8217;ll see that I was doing pretty close to a post a day; for a long and more recent time, I&#8217;ve been posting\u00a0almost exclusively just on Wednesdays and Fridays. And the <em>Midweek Music Break<\/em>\u00a0and <em>whiskey river Fridays<\/em>\u00a0series, whatever their charms for readers might or might not be, however much work they do or don&#8217;t take to prepare, just don&#8217;t qualify as, well, <em>writing<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I&#8217;ve got little bits of new fiction lying around. (Every time I open that junk drawer, one or the other of them pops and fizzles weakly at me.) Nothing really igniting yet, however.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, I know myself: if I let myself get distracted by something new and shiny and <em>substantial<\/em>, like a new story or book, I won&#8217;t put in the time and (relatively boring) effort necessary to steer <em>Seems to Fit<\/em>\u00a0into readers&#8217; hands. But if I fritter away the hours on trivia, on writing exercises and blogging and the like, suppose I&#8230; suppose I <em>forget the words<\/em>? Have I already forgotten them &#8212; do I already not remember what it&#8217;s like to have no particular fire burning under me?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s really only one solution, I think. Just gotta keep going: putting one word after another, and another, after another&#8230; Unlike Ella (and other great improvisers), I doubt that the result will resemble &#8220;art.&#8221; But it&#8217;s the only way to keep the hardware from corroding, from falling apart in disuse.<\/p>\n<p>So then:\u00a0<em>Obba-dobba-DOO-da<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: a zebra teaches a little girl to scat-sing. Found it at Zooglobble, home of &#8220;kids&#8217; music worth sharing.&#8221; Warning: do not visit that site if you are even mildly distractable.] My Dad taught me many things about music, especially jazz, even (I&#8217;m certain) in ways which I have yet to understand or even recognize. [&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":"","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":[183,247,12,74,5,372,515],"tags":[2765,2766,2767,2768],"class_list":{"0":"post-9568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-03_runningaftermyhat","9":"category-music","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-style-and-craft","12":"category-grail","13":"tag-scatting","14":"tag-scat-singing","15":"tag-flogging-metaphors-until-they-scream","16":"tag-distraction","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2uk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9568","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=9568"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9585,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9568\/revisions\/9585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}