The Saunterer

Cole Porter on the practical limits to sophisticated lyrics

    Lyrics can be too cute for their own good, turning off most listeners. Cole Porter comments:

Sophisticated allusions are good for about six weeks. Futile as presenting Sophocles in the original Greek. Audience reaction to Lady Mendl lasted about eight weeks. Sophisticated lyrics are more fun but only for myself and about eighteen other people, all of whom are first-nighters anyway. Polished, urbane, and adult playwriting in the musical field is strictly a creative luxury.

    Our theory is that if the music is average, it can carry at most mildly sophisticated lyrics. But if the music is great - as Cole Porter’s was - it can carry lyrics of greater sophistication.
    Could any of the lyrics of today’s songs be called sophisticated?
    (We quote Cole Porter from page 205 of The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball. Da Capo Press, 1992.)
    For a brief biography of Cole Porter, click here. For images of and relating to Cole Porter, click here.

John Updike’s test of musical genius

    The test for genius is obvious: Long after the creator is gone, the work lives on. Here is John Updike applying the test to Cole Porter:

The proof of Cole Porter’s genius was in the stage shows and movies he made his crucial contributions to, and in the dozen or more standards - "Just One of Those Things," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Begin the Beguine," "In the Still of the Night," "I’ve Got You Under My Skin," "It’s De-Lovely," "From This Moment On," "You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To," "It’s All Right with Me," "Night and Day," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," "You’re the Top," etc. - that are woven into the airwaves of these United States and familiar to all who have ears to hear.

    (Quoted from John Updike’s forward to The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball. Da Capo Press, 1992.)
    So, if in seventy-five years no Rap or Hip-Hop song of today is a standard "woven into the airwaves," the world will know that the music of our age was inferior.
    For a brief biography of John Updike, click here. For a brief biography of Cole Porter, click here. For images of and relating to Cole Porter, click here.

Theodor Adorno on the depths of music

    We have just finished a two-year project of Saunterering though The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter (Robert Kimball, editor; Da Capo Press, 1992), reading every word. Along the way we got a good sense of how song lyrics are poems, and how, like poems, most people would have to work to memorize them. But hitch lyrics to music, and memorizing them is spontaneous.
    For instance, the first couple of times you heard Johnny Mercer’s lyrics to “That Old Black Magic” you knew them forever. Words live in the shallows of the mind, music in the depths. And that is close to what Theodor Adorno said:

Music is speechlike. . . . But music is not speech. Its speechlikeness points the way into the interior, but also into the vague.

    (Quoted from page 3 of Music Speaks: On the Language of Opera, Dance, and Song, by Daniel Albright. University of Rochester Press, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Theodor Adorno, click here. For images of and relating to Theodor Adorno, click here. For a brief biography of Daniel Albright, click here.

William Oldys on the meaning of life

    The importance of life is independent of the length of life. For if it were dependent, a longer life would have more importance than a shorter life, which makes no sense (even to turtles).
    Further, the importance of life, the Saunterer believes, is the same for all species. An insect’s life means as much to it as a human’s life means to it. Put these two ideas together and you have William Oldys’ poem “The Fly”

Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
Drink with me, and drink as I;
Freely welcome to my cup,
Could’st thou sip, and sip it up;
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short and wears away.

Just alike, both mine and thine,
Hasten quick to their decline;
Thine’s a summer, mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore;
Threescore summers when they’re gone,
Will appear as short as one.

    (William Oldys’s poem is quoted from the front matter of The Hungry Fly: A Physiological Study of the Behavior Associated with Feeding, by V. G. Dethier. Harvard University Press, 1976.)
    For years we had undergraduates read Vincent Dethier’s book, To Know a Fly. Short and interesting, it painlessly taught students a dry subject, the hypothetico-deductive method of testing research hypotheses.
    For a brief biography of William Oldys, click here. For a brief biography of Vincent Dethier, click here.

Orlan on what art is for

    The Saunterer likes the idea that some art should take risks, but refuses to defend Orlan’s insistence that all art must take risks. Though her art takes risks by portraying perversions, she doesn’t harm animals, which is OK by us. Give her a listen before giving her a look:

Art that interests me has much in common with - belongs to - resistance. It must challenge our preconceptions, disrupt our thoughts; it is outside the norms, outside the law, against bourgeois order; it is not there to cradle us, to reinforce our comfort, to serve up again what we already know. It must take risks; at the risk of not being immediately accepted or acceptable. It is deviant, and in itself a social project. Art can, art must change the world, it is its only justification.

    (Quoted from In Her Own Image: Women’s Self-Representation in Twentieth-Century Art, by Danielle Knafo. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009.)
    Must art change the world? Societies are caught in sweeping change. Shouldn’t most of art preserve time-honored values? What do you think?
    For a brief biography of Orlan, and to see her working methods, click here. For images of and relating Orlan, click here. For a brief biography of Danielle Knafo, click here.

Northrop Frye on space and shape pollution

    The Saunterer lives in Cache Valley, Utah. Once lovely, Cache Valley is every day more spoiled by space and shape pollution, caused by runaway breeding, largely decreed by the people’s religion. The tragic figures of excess: in 2000, there were 91,897 people; in 2010, 117,758 are projected; in 2030, 181,921; in 2060, 331,594 - figures from the Utah Governor’s Office of Budget and Planning, as reported in The Herald Journal, 5 December, 2009.
    How important is the problem of space and shape pollution? Listen to Northrop Frye:

I have been living in Toronto for forty years, have seen it change from a quite habitable town to the usual wilderness of freeways and highrise apartment buildings, and consequently I have experienced something of what you call the realities of sentiment and nostalgia. I am quite convinced that space and shape pollution is quite as important a social problem as noise and dirt.

    (Extract of a letter from Northrop Frye to A. E. Parr, 9 March 1970, from Northrop Frye: Selected letters, 1934 - 1991. McFarland Publishers, 2009.)   
    For images of and relating to Cache Valley, Utah, click here. For a brief biography of Northrop Frye, click here. For images of and relating to Northrop Frye, click here.

E. M. Forster on muddles

    On the whole, arguments for and arguments against global warming make a muddle, and here is E. M. Forster’s stand on muddles.

There’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror . . . beware the muddle.

    (Lines from E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Quoted from page 80 of Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science, by Carol Kaesuk Yoon. W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.)
        For a brief biography of E. M. Forster, click here. For images of and relating to E. M. Forster, click here. For Carol Kaesuk Yoon’s home page, click here.

Frankie Laine rebuts Ernest Dowson about old age

    Ernest Dowson’s poem “Dregs” is pessimistic about old age. Frankie Laine, as you’ll see in a moment, goes on stage at age 92 and rebuts everything in the poem.
    First, Ernest Dowson’s “Dregs”:

The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,
(This is the end of every song man sings!)
The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,
Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;
And health and hope have gone the way of love
Into the dear oblivion of lost things.
Ghosts go along with us until the end;
This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.
With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait
For the dropped curtain and the closing gate:
This is the end of all the songs man sings.

    Well just watch Frankie Laine’s vitality at 92, crushing the pessimism of Dowson’s poem - click here.
    To read The Saunterer’s post of August 5, 2009, titled "John Updike (1932-2009) giving the meaning of 'back there and then',” a tribute to the memory of Frankie Laine, click here.
    (“Dregs” is quoted from page 19 of The Art of Aging: A Celebration of Old Age in Western Art, by Patrick McKee and Heta Kauppinen. Insight Books, 1987.)
    For a brief biography of Frankie Laine, click here. For a brief biography of Ernest Dowson, click here.

Helen Caldicott on overpopulation and the Roman Catholic Church

    The Saunterer can’t be alone in noticing that the world of business (run by men) is the  greatest of all Ponzi schemes, constantly pushing for more and more profit, which demands breeding more and more people to buy more and more products, which will bring Nature to collapse. The world of religion (run by men) is its partner in crime. Hear Helen Caldicott:

    The Roman Catholic Church is run by men meant to be celibate. Yet Jesus did not lecture his followers on the subject of birth control, contraception, or abortion. Indeed, the prohibition on abortion became part of the Catholic teachings only some hundred years ago. In a world threatened with extinction because of overpopulation, the pope continues to exhort people to have more babies.
    In Dublin, Ireland, I saw a scene that I think illustrates contemporary Catholic tradition: a young, unkempt woman looking harassed, staggered along in high heels, carrying a screaming toddler, followed by a husband pushing a pram containing a tiny infant, and, in their wake, six other young children of various sizes and ages. Abortion remains illegal in Ireland. However, contraception was progressively legalized in 1979 and 1984, and it is now fully legal. Moreover, Mary Robinson, who believes in birth control, abortion, and divorce, was elected president of Ireland in 1990, and she helped to create political change with regard to these important issues. Divorce is now legal.
    It is clear that the reproductive policies of certain religions are out of date, if life on Earth is to continue. . . . It is beyond time for women to assume leading roles in the Earth’s representative religions and to establish new and more appropriate spiritual organizations. I do not make this statement lightly, but with a sense of gravity and urgency.

     (Quoted from page 149 of If You Love This Planet: A Plan To Heal The Earth, by Helen Caldicott. W.W. Norton & Co., 2009.)
     For a brief biography of Helen Caldicott, click here. For images of and relating to Helen Caldicott, click here. For images of and relating to one of the gangs whose policies are mightily contributing to global warming and the loss of wilderness, click here.

Charles A. Eastman’s hope for civilization

    Charles Alexander Eastman, whose given name was Ohiyesa, was a Native American born in 1858 on a reservation. After you read his hope for civilization below, decide whether the way civilization has turned out would have pleased him or not:

Yet even in deep jungles God’s own sunlight penetrates, and I stand before my own people still as an advocate of civilization. Why? First, because there is no chance for our former simple life any more; and second, because I realize that the white man’s religion is not responsible for his mistakes. There is every evidence that God has given him all the light necessary by which to live in peace and good-will with his brother; and we also know that many brilliant civilizations have collapsed in physical and moral decadence. It is for us to avoid their fate if we can.
    I am an Indian; and while I have learned much from civilization, for which I am grateful, I have never lost my Indian sense of right and justice. I am for development and progress along social and spiritual lines, rather than those of commerce, nationalism, or material efficiency. Nevertheless, so long as I live, I am an American.

    (Quoted from page 194 of From the Deep Woods to Civilization, by Charles A. Eastman. Little Brown, and Company, 1916.)
    For a brief biography of Charles A. Eastman, click here. For images of and relating to Charles A. Eastman, click here.