Deep Dark Truthful Mirror

Song written by Elvis Costello; performed by Elvis Costello featuring The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

The sky was just a purple bruise

A stripping puppet on a liquid stick gets into it pretty thick
A butterfly drinks a turtle’s tears, but how do you know he really needs it?

‘Cos a butterfly feeds on a dead monkey’s hand,
Jesus wept he felt abandoned

Just a few excerpts in no particular order.

I feel obliged to point out that I never thought this song was directed at anyone other than the self.

It cannot come as a shock that the biggest nerd of the late 70s new wave has been on repeat play for my internal soundtrack for as long as I can remember. I recognize that the intersections between Costello’s music and events in my life is as much a factor of serendipity as any real significance. Given a five year difference in either direction for my birth date and I might be saying the same of Graham Nash or Bruce Hornsby. Yet, here I am with the guy that wears the National Health Plan glasses, loves old standards, and knows more words than I do. (That last one really hurts.)

Let’s take a real left turn here. Due to an unfortunate lacrosse accident at the end of high school, I needed a pair of glasses very quickly. At home for an afternoon, the vision center displayed the five or six choices available to me if I wanted my glasses in two hours. I picked the pair without examining them closely. As it turned out, the inside bore a label: “Battlestar Galactica”. The original show had been off the air for some time at that point, I believe. For the next couple years, you could stand off to my side and discover my unexpected affinity. Needless to say, I had sympathy for anyone forced to wear glasses chosen by weird luck.

Then there’s a couple other factors.

I like people who can talk and think. Costello hosted a short-lived talk show that displayed a remarkably facile knowledge of the world and, especially, the music that has filled that world. Basically, it’s always nice when you don’t cringe when someone you admire opens their mouth. I’m well past having to agree with everything someone says, but a visible ability to think is always pleasing.

Lastly, the thing I’ve been avoiding bringing up. If you’ve followed his career for a while, then you are well aware that Costello gets angry. Some of his best songs have the emotion on clear display. While bringing up Woody Guthrie and others, I haven’t really touched on the undercurrents running beneath some of their best art. Anger is tough to translate into art because it too easily becomes rhetoric. It can also cloud the artist’s ability to evaluate their own work and decide whether or not it is audience-ready. Costello, like the other greats that I have mentioned, has a remarkable ability to channel righteous indignation into something beautiful and powerful for its beauty.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 80 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Duck Soup

Film written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and others; directed by Leo McCarey; starring Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo

If you want to be known as the greatest actor of your generation, then you tackle Shakespeare. But, it can’t be just any Shakespeare- it has to be one of the big three roles: Hamlet, Othello or Lear. No matter how great you might be in As You Like It or Two Gentleman of Verona, that’s not the way to the peak. (I was about to point out that no one seems to do Verona anymore, but look at this.)

Despite a reputation that suggests otherwise, comedies do win Oscars for best picture of the year, although Annie Hall was the last one that made me laugh out loud, but I wasn’t the one who threw Terms of Endearment in with the funny ones (or classified West Side Story as a “crime, drama, musical,” which I guess it is if you want to force the issue).

The importance of seriousness has to taught. From our first breaths, we seek our first laughs. To be a grown up is to know when to set aside the giggles and get down to business. All appearances to the contrary, I’m not decrying this state of affairs. You don’t build anything or find a vaccine for something if you spend your day telling fart jokes. On the other hand, a well-timed belch can bring the laughs that make a little more overtime bearable. I have never heard anyone say that all they need is ten minutes for a good cry and then they’re set to start the double shift.

If

the Marx Brothers are unfamiliar to you, then consider this as an introduction, though it is one small sample. This is my favorite scene in all their films, but then it would be. Bonus points to the choreographer for the legs in the air move. Yes, over the years, I have seen as many as I could locate.

I discovered the Marx Brothers when I was young. They have proved a useful bellwether ever since. If you get them, then you probably get me, at least a little bit. Realistically, I can think of no other artist that has had as great an influence on me. That might seem a little pathetic, but I am not saying that they had a great influence, just a notable one.

Which is a stumbling way to point out that they did present a world view. Plenty of stand-up comedians come across as edgy with their thinly-veiled (or blatant) statements, but little of that comes across once they reach the rarefied air of television and movies. Be that as it may, the Marx Brothers taught a straightforward cynicism about everything from words to appearances. They embodied not judging a book by its cover or a liar by their words.

One more, just because, well, it is a philosophy. Also, once again, bonus points to the choreographer.

Oh, and I’m serious about the choreographer. Now, that’s an art form where it’s hard to be funny intentionally.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 81 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Pickman’s Model

Short story written by H.P. Lovecraft

Let’s just take a moment and consider the fact that cosmicism is a thing. I mention this now because it may help place all of the following into some context.

My writing tools bridge major technological changes. I learned how to type while in middle school on an electric typewriter. I had fooled around with our manual typewriter before that, but it was beyond my fingers to develop any speed on the thing. My parents bought the electric version because somebody needed it for school and then it sat around the house until I came along with my school papers.

I shifted to pen and paper for short bursts of creative writing. If I liked anything, then I typed it into a form that could be read by other people. I stuck with the typewriter through most of college, but dabbled with word processing on the Apple II. They had four of them in the computer lab at university. That was the entire lab. They didn’t need more of them. I always found one available when I wanted to use it. Subsequently, I progressed with word processing and much preferred it to the typewriter and whiteout. Even when I idiosyncratically wrote a novel in pen, I transcribed the second draft with the word processor.

Along the way, I discovered that libraries (especially academic ones) accept donations of “papers” from historic and artistic figures. In my experience, the interest that you have in said papers is directly proportional to the difficulty in reaching the library. One exception for me has been the papers of H.P. Lovecraft which reside at Brown University, which has been near at hand on multiple occasions.

My interest

in Lovecraft circles around to the fact that everyone seems to think that I ought to be interested in him. I don’t mean people in the street, but any wide reading in genre fiction and you develop the sneaking suspicion that you ought to know more about this individual. After a while, you feel as though you claim to be a huge fan of detective mysteries, but, no, you’re perfectly happy being ignorant of this Conan Doyle person.

It did not hurt that people who wrote about Lovecraft (or expanded on his writings) were good writers who made it all seem very interesting. My first attempts splattered against boredom with the exception of one short story: Pickman’s Model. So, I visited the master’s writings at the Hays Library. Back then, you sifted through a card catalog of the collection and requested a specific box. A formal process proceeded involving gloves and a private room. Frankly, I felt very unworthy. Then, you touched the actual letters and drafts and smelled the mildew.

I think that I sought some sense of what made this person important. What I discovered was a writer doing work that looked a lot like what happened when I wrote with a typewriter. Now, I don;t know about you, but I can sit for hours and watch someone else do skilled labor. They might be great at it and they might not, but I’m really not the person to evaluate. What I respect is the work and the output of something useful.

They have boxes of work by Lovecraft at that library and I started falling in love with the mind that crafted all those words. Words about Lovecraft continue to pile up, but his actual words are finite and it was a privilege to hold them and start on a path toward seeing beyond all the obstruction that has arisen between the man’s work and me.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 82 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.