“The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.”
— Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur
Vanessa Redgrave sings “The Lusty Month of May” in Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot
After you’ve put your right hand in, and then you’ve taken it out, and then you’ve put it in and out a couple of times and shaken it all about, is it a cokey or a pokey that will follow your hokey? Continue reading
“After four movies, three concerts, and two-and-a-half museums, you sleep with him. It seems the right number of cultural events. On the stereo you play your favorite harp and oboe music.”
“Your day breaks, your mind aches / You find that all the words of kindness linger on / When she no longer needs you”
Seen on the NYC subway C train, Feb 25, 2015.
Words aren’t something that spring to mind when we think of the Oscars: maybe gowns, bling, best performances, best direction and best pics. But there are a lot of interesting words going on there too: in the speeches, and in the movies themselves. For example: Who stole the show at the Oscars in 1999 when one of the winners declared that “I would like to be Jupiter. And kidnap everybody and lie down in the firmament making love to everyone”? Who said the immortal words “Frankly, my dear, I dont’ give a damn”? And perhaps more to the point, who wrote those words? Who has received the most nominations for best screenplay writer? Who gave the shortest Oscar acceptance speech? And has anyone named Oscar ever won an Oscar?
Answers to these and other Oscar word trivia questions are below. And as for Sunday, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night…” Continue reading
Gabriel von Max (via Wikimedia Commons)
* * *
Desire
Desire to us
Was like a double death,
Swift dying
Of our mingled breath,
Evaporation
Of an unknown strange perfume
Between us quickly
In a naked
Room.
— Langston Hughes Continue reading
Seen on the NYC subway B train, 22 January 2015.
“Auld Lang Syne” is one of Scotland’s greatest gifts; sung around the world from Times Square to Tokyo, the song recalls those we’ve loved and lost and beloved memories of days gone by, as well as giving those who sing it a sense of belonging and togetherness that looks forward to better times. Robert Burns wrote a poem in 1788 and set it to the tune of a traditional folk tune. Soon after the song was penned, it became a Scottish custom to sing it on New Year’s Eve (or what the Scots call “Hogmanay”) — a tradition that soon spread to other parts of the British Isles. Then, as the Scots and Brits started to emigrate around the world, so the song and the tradition travelled internationally. “Auld Lang Syne” translates into English as “old long since” or, more colloquially, “long long ago”, “days gone by” or “old times”. So the first line of the chorus — “For auld lang syne” — can be loosely translated as “for (the sake of) old times”, and indeed those words are often added to the final line of the chorus (ie. “for the sake of auld lang syne”) for this reason.
Here is Burns’s original poem, and below is the song as we sing it around the world today.
Auld Lang Syne
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?
CHORUS: Continue reading
The Fifth of November
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!
English folk verse, c. 1870 (from Poem of the Week)
For Lily
John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, read by Benedict Cumberbatch
Ode to a Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. Continue reading