Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofryu (catfinition) – short poetry form, similar in structure to haiku: three lines, with twenty-three syllables. Floofryus deal with the foibles of cats, also known as floofs.
In use:
Dancing with paws and claws extended
mouth open and teeth exposed
she battles phantom adversaries
In 1971, I was fifteen years old, and entering high school. Richard Nixon was president. The Vietnam War continued, and the Pentagon Papers were printed while the U.S and U.S.S.R. continued their arms race. Protesters marched against the war and the bomb. Although it was a new decade, we hadn’t turned the page socially. The summer of love, Watts riots, and Chicago ’68, among many events, all still resonated through our awareness.
Peace was a major topic. From it came songs, like this one, “Peace Train.” Cat Stevens wrote and released it. He’d soon add to the national conversation by becoming a Muslim and changing his name to Yusuf Islam after almost drowning.
He’s an interesting, talented person.
I’m sure I posted about this song before. I’ve always found it compelling, as it expresses the behavior of a person struggling with love, self-confidence, addiction, and the inability to express themselves. Yes, that’s a lot for a rock song to carry. The same lines return to me: “She gets mad and she starts to cry. She takes a swing but she can’t hit. She don’t mean no harm. She just don’t know what do to about it.”
Here’s Jane’s Addiction with “Jane Says” from 1987.
I first heard this song as a version by the Byrds in 1969. Then it sorted faded away, but resurfaced a few years later, by the Doobie Brothers. I’ve found that many others have covered it. It’s just one of those songs.
“Jesus Is Just Alright” has interesting (but not numerous lyrics). Upbeat, with changing tempos, it has religious overtones but remains light and reflective, and a simple statement. “I don’t care what they may say, I don’t care what they may do.” I love that firm belief, this is what I believe, believe what you want.
I feel obliged to mention that it’s about faith, not facts. You can have firm beliefs in your faith; that’s cool. If you’re a fiction writer, you can create your own facts within the structure of fiction. But when it comes to reality, you can’t just declare, this is what I believe, I don’t care what your facts say.
Challenging to hold this apparently contradictory processes and directions in your head. Messy, innit?
Something to think about on a Tuesday.
Ah, folk rock.
Today’s song comes to me via “Frankie & Grace.” Robert surprises Sol with tickets to a folk rock cruise. Sol gets on Internet message boards and exclaims, “There’s a rumor Dan Fogelberg is going to be the special guest.” Robert replies, “I think Dan Fogelberg is dead.”
I looked it up on Wikipedia. Robert was right. Fogelberg died in the last decade when he was fifty-one years old. Thoughts of Fogelberg triggered memories of the folk rock music of the late sixties and early seventies, and Fogelberg’s work. It’s all “Part of the Plan.”
I have these moments
All steady and strong
I’m feeling so holy and humble
The next thing I know
I’m all worried and weak
And I feel myself
Starting to crumble
h/t azlyrics.comh/t azlyrics.com
Walking by a church – it’s amazing how many houses of worship this little town sports – I thought, “The devil went down to Ashland, he was looking for a soul to steal.” Of course, he didn’t go to Ashland, but Georgia.
Here’s another of my favorite songs, streaming all the way from 1979, CDB with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
From out of the dreams came some streams, and from the streams came some songs….
This one grew more forcefully shaped and remembered as the lyrics echoed through memories’ canyons and flew over plains of time.
I…I will begin again
I…I will begin again
Sometimes, when events took me down, I took strength from music, and lyrics like these. I take strength wherever, however I find it, as it seems like life drains my strength so quickly. It’s good to remember that at the rate that our bodies replace our cells, we’re always being reborn.
From 1983, U2 with “New Year’s Day.”
This is one of those songs that I asked of myself, “What the fuck are they singing?” when it was first released.
It came out in 1987, before the Internet became the familiar household pet it now is. That meant learning what was being sung wasn’t easy. I listened to the song and discussed it without others. Beer was involved. You’d think that with beer involved, a solution would be found, but nobody knew the words.
Hell, it’s no wonder, now that I can use the Intertubes to find the lyrics:
I cry wolf give her mouth to mouth
Like a movin’ heartbeat in the witchin’ hour
I’m runnin’ with the wind a shadow in the dusk
And like the drivin’ rain yeah like the restless rust
I never sleep
Hmmm? Yet the song works as FM rock fodder, delivering that need for a chorus, something that everyone understands and can sing with them:
I got ta feel it in my blood wo oh
I need your touch don’t need your love wo oh
And I want and I need
And I lust animal
And I want and I need
And I lust animal
n/t lyricsfreak.com
Electric guitars and lots of pounding drums and thumping bass go a long way to making the song memorable. It’s definitely modern rock.
I must have heard this somewhere recently. As is my norm, my stream picked it up and added it to the mental jukebox and it randomly popped up today.
Fiona Apple’s “Shadowboxer” is lazy, slurred, and haunting to me. I attribute my impression to the beat, lyrics (and material), and the volume’s slow rise, as if she’s been thinking aloud about a relationship and is reaching a conclusion. It’s a song that goes well with dimly lit rooms and a glass of wine at a weary day’s end.
Here she is, from way back in the last century (1996).
A fraction of this song got trapped in an eddy of my mind stream. “Who is this?” I kept asking myself, but could only remember some words, and none of it seemed connected to a place and time in my life.
Not fully recalling it bugged me so I did searched until it was resolved. (I’m peculiar that way.) The song is “Ordinary World,” performed by Duran Duran. That’s what kept me confused. As a Duran Duran song, it’s not associated with anything else of their music that I’ve heard. It came out in 1992, so I was back in America, stationed at Onizuka Air Station and living in Mountain View.
The lines that kept going through my head this morning were,
And I don’t cry for yesterday
There’s an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive
