Nothing to See Here

It is of the nature of a conundrum, this puzzling passivity
That human beings, in the main, submit so readily to authority
Acquiescing to mass extinction events almost with alacrity
Fearful, as it were, of being accused of disturbing tranquility

A tall order, perhaps, to stick one's neck out in a fit of outrage
Exit, voice or loyalty. The perils, and limits, of moral courage
The dissonance between one's values and what one is prepared to live with
In the dark of night, realizing that our inaction makes us complicit

Inured to pain, with no trace of accountability
The routine tallies, dismaying figures as normalcy
Altogether brutish outcomes, a cheapness, a deadening
Nothing to see here, don't even count on a reckoning

Nothing to See Here, a playlist

A playlist for this intolerable time (spotify version)

• Sitting and Watching by Dennis Brown
• How Soon We Forget by Colonel Abrams
• I Can't Go for That by Hall & Oates
• I Just Don't Understand by Ann-Margaret
• Don't Know Why by Norah Jones

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: failure, coronavirus, pandemic, culture, observation, perception, despair, dislocation, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log. July 20, 2022

Maroon Creed

Long before those edifices of past sorrow were erected
They moved with the poetry of resistance
Disdaining the fraught burden of a label
Freedom and defiance, they owed allegiance to liberty

Naturalists by inclination, observers of the earth's promise
They found strength in conversation and community
The playfulness of the language, the meandering turns of phrases
Luminous idiolect that harkened to ancestral lands

By necessity navigating the contours of cultural interplay
Recognition in the names, a heritage weighted with history
They carried in their tongues the tales and the traditions
Fragments of identity, the métissage of their found society
The maroon creed, independence of thought, purity of faith
Sacred links, bonds forged in renewed nighttime ceremonies

To stand straight even amidst insecurity
To laugh when confronted with precarity
To flow around obstacles, resilient as a river
And always hewing to escape, shackles discarded
Sounding the alarm with conch shell at the ready
Intent, moving with purpose, their destination is history

Bearing traces of scars still lingering that speak to society's ills
Not beholden to the legacy of those days in the hills
Yet embodying by one's very existence the remembrance
Of the enduring shame of what man would do to fellow men
To strangers and neighbors alike, out of the wages of blood and sin
Charting a path then, spears burning, ever mindful of this proud legacy
Cast in this vein as living emblems of cultural memory

Maroon Creed, a playlist

A soundtrack for the Nèg Marron. Caution, take heed, behold a spear burning over yonder. (spotify version)

• Man in the hills by Burning Spear
• Spear Burning by Burning Spear
• Black Soul by Burning Spear
• Door Peep by Burning Spear
• Spear Burning (live) by Burning Spear
• Song of the Maroons by Courtney Pine
• Foi de Marron by Léon-Gontran Damas
  Listening to the premier poet of Négritude narrating his famous ode to the maroon creed is invigorating. It is easy to see the spark that he lit in Senghor, Cesaire and other contemporaries.

In memoriam Aba Cecile McHardy


See previously: Until Such Time, Traveling Light and Forgiveness and Love

File under: culture, observation, griots, maroon, perception, history, legacy, freedom, slavery, race, identity, poetry, Caribbean, Africa, Social Living, toli

Writing log: July 3, 2022

The Sense of Violation

A wrong has been done, there's no doubting it
It's hard to contain the sense of violation
The damage is done, there's no comfort to be found
Regret is all, it's proving hard to move on

Your cause is just, it goes without saying
Basic fairness should have made things go your way
Honor, decency, you've now run the gamut of emotions
To hear "wrong place, wrong time" is no consolation

It's only human to be subject to the vagaries of fate
We realize our place in the world and duly accommodate
But it's hard to bear the altogether capricious
Let alone the impact of the actively malicious

The hurt, the outrage in its wake is volcanic and all consuming
It's hard to control the righteous anger that you're feeling
It's probably wiser to keep a straight face and your own counsel
But, in this mood, the slightest thing could spark a conflagration

And we all know very well where this could be heading
How unproductive it will be, think of the recriminations
Indeed you can't understate the peril of this volatile situation
But, after this injury, there's no hope for reconciliation

Sense of Violation, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Right and a Wrong Way by Keith Sweat
• The Hurt by The Jacksons
• Anger by Marvin Gaye
• You Done Me Wrong by Al Johnson
• Outrage by Booker T & The M.G's
• Sacred by Amel Larrieux

File under: outrage, emotion, life, culture, observation, perception, strategy, anger, poetry, toli

Writing log. July 16, 2022

Love, a playlist

Love. The eternal subject. What is this thing called love, I wondered? Once upon a time I scoured my music library for the folk wisdom about love, filling my old ipod mini with 1,000 or so songs about love and its many textures.

Herewith then: Love, a playlist (spotify version)

I tried to stick to love qua love and focused on the word itself and its ramifications, thus there are only 5 songs about 'lovers' and 4 songs about 'loved' e.g. Bob Marley's Could You Be Loved? and The Impressions' I Loved and I Lost

Similarly, there were 12 songs about loving (You've Lost That Loving Feeling obviously needed to be on this playlist and clearly Minnie Riperton's Lovin' you was essential). A boyish Michael Jackson asking Who's loving you could not be denied.

With some effort, I ended up with 1,032 takes on love (caveat: A Love Supreme came in 4 parts). The playlist amounts to almost 3 days of continuous listening and flows quite beautifully if I might say so.

I tried not to repeat myself in this exercise so there are 866 distinct titles. The constraint of disk space on the fondleslab meant that I couldn't add the hundreds of cover versions of standards like Love for Sale that I have amassed (and only 7 versions of You Don't Know What Love Is made it sadly)

The selections focus mostly on soul, jazz and pop. Hip-hop hardly features (love doesn't sell in hip-hop on the whole, LL Cool J's I Need Love notwithstanding), and reggae features disproportionately (lovers rock being an important facet of that genre, just ask Dennis Brown)

Having amassed this body of love as it were, this corpus of love, that many splendored thing (3 versions), I couldn't help myself and did some rudimentary analysis. Consider these liner notes research on the anatomy of love. Let me tell you about love...

Frequency

The usual suspects who made a career on love shine here: Sade, Anita Baker, Luther Vandross and The Temptations. And Motown looms large, the composers Smokey Robinson and Ashford & Simpson dominate. Also, I was initially suprised that Al Jarreau and Regina Belle had such encylopedic takes on love.

The singularity that is Barry White is mainly dealt with in a separate playlist. I only included 7 of the 54 songs I have of his that directly addressed love. A monomaniac focus on the topic was a virtue of the walrus of love.

As far as the frequency distribution goes, who opines on love? Who shapes the narrative?

• Luther Vandross - 18 songs
• Prince - 17 songs (or 14 if we omit his duets with Sheila E, Madonna and Nona Gaye)
• Al Jarreau - 13 songs
• Temptations / Chaka Khan / Dennis Brown - 12 songs
• Smokey Robinson / Regina Belle - 11 songs
• Ashford & Simpson / Stevie Wonder / Elton John - 9 songs
• Anita Baker / Sade / Gregory Isaacs / Dwele - 8 songs
• Al Green / Barry White / Alexander O'Neal / Brian McKnight / Keith Sweat / George Benson - 7 songs
• Brenda Russell / The Isley Brothers - 6 songs apiece

Typology

Then to the meat of things. There were 66 songs "of love"

What do these songs of love tell us (skipping for now the 20 explicit by less precise "kinds of" love? e.g. The Sunday kind of love that Etta James sings of

The basics: Look of love, Power of love, Way of love, Mystery of love, Glory of love, Gravity of love, Ritual of love, Game of love

Metaphorical: Freeway of love, Caravan of love, Army of love, Sea of love, Land of love, Bed of love, Prisoner of love

Practical: Mind of love, Test of love, Best of love

Whimsical: Ingredients of love, Seeds of love, Color of love

Emotional: Tears of love, Victim of love, Pains of love

Association

"Love and" - what goes with love? Consider fully 24 companions of love. Al Green obviously has the anthems (Love and happiness, Love and affection). The Persuaders famously sang of the Thin line between love and hate complicating the picture. Love sometimes goes with war (Tamar Braxton) and at other times with peace (per Quincy Jones)

There are also the outliers, including my countryman Ebo Taylor who asks the listener to lend him their ears as he weaves a troubling tale about Love and death

Characterization

We may be social beasts but love is a matter of perspective and indeed love is personal:

Sweet love, Good love, Slow love, Tender love, Baby love, Real love, Endless love, Lost love, Everlasting love, Tasty love, Emotional love, Self love, Blessed love, Precious love, Lifetime love

There's a naivete in love:

Simple love, Special love, Perfect love, Pure love, 100% Pure love, Superfine love, Fine Fine love, True love, Easy love, Sentimental love

Or think of the stages of love: New love, Old love, Young love, Teenage love, Puppy love, Old fashioned love, First love

Pathologies of love: Secret love, Blind love, Hidden love, Unrequited love, One way love, Unreleased love, Stupid love, Strange love, Crazy love, I'd hate to love you

Arcane takes: Cosmic love, Stone Love, Hysteric Love, Carnival Love, Electric Love, Killer Love, Tough love, Bitter love, Superficial love, Famous love, Lucky love, Shotgun love, Telephone love

Time-bound love: Saturday Love, Weekend Love, Love in the night, or as Roberta Flack notes, Tonight I celebrate my love

Religious love: Jesus is love, God is love (a couple of versions). Opinions are divided on whether the Higher love that Steve Winwood sings off falls in this category.

Parental love: The love between me and my kids per Smokey Robinson. The Supremes' Baby love is euphemistic despite the name on the front

It's about mores and values, some takes are quite spicy: Free love, Sexual Love, Love Triangle, Part time love, Love Affair

But love is complicated: Love can't turn around per Farley Jackmaster Funk and its celebrated Isaac Hayes sample, indeed we can get into semiotics: Love is not made in words (Deborah Cox) and Love is not a word (Peter Cinotti)

Love can also be prescriptive: Love shoulda brought you home per Toni Braxton or say, It's gonna take all our love as Regina Belle asserts

And then the defaults: One love, Any love, Typical love, More love, Only love and a couple of versions of Love changes (Mother's Finest and the lovely cover by Kashif and Meli'sa Morgan)

At a loss, 12 artists just go with the single word: Love, and who can blame them.

• Big City double things up with Love Love
• The incomparable Donny Hathaway is three times exuberant with Love, Love, Love
• Lulu claims with the Rule of Four that Love Loves To Love Love
• As Tall as Lions go over the top with Love, Love, Love (Love, Love)

Perspectives

More analysis, who is the subject of love?

40 songs about "your love"
39 songs "love you"
5 songs "love your"

27 songs "my love"
26 songs "love me"

9 songs "our love"

And on declarative matters:

12 songs "for love", causes of love perhaps

4 songs "love or" alternatives to live (Prince's Love or Money being the funkiest)

33 songs "the love"
24 songs "this love"

Declarations

Then there are the descriptions. There are fully 93 songs explaining what "love is" including a few eye openers:

• Love is a house
• Love is a battlefield
• Love is my religion
• Love is contagious
• Love is like a plague
• Love is medicine
• Love is my drug

Following that social disease theme, it's no wonder that Robert Plant is Addicted to love

True, there are contradictions: Love is the answer for Kenny Burrell but for Linval Thompson, Love is the question

Sade, almost inevitably, chimes in with hard-won experience, namely that Love is stronger than pride while Roy Ayers claims that Love will bring us back together.

Similarly, Loose Ends declare I don't need to love, but for LL Cool J, it's the opposite: I need love; your mileage may vary

Location

There are 9 songs about finding love, its difficulty and its locations (e.g. Love on a two way street by The Moments), The places you find love by Tevin Campbell and Beres Hammond crooning about Love from a distance

Where Roberta Flack is somewhat coy Feel Like Makin' Love; Johnny Gill explicitly suggests making Love in an Elevator. No wonder some say they don't make love songs like they used to?

Obligatory disclaimer, any playlist I make has to flow and move me, hence I included a few songs that you might say are love adjacent per my criteria. Sue me

• Right and a Wrong Way by Keith Sweat - this falls under prescription. The lyric goes "There's a right and a wrong way to love somebody"
• The Lovers and Sentimental from Alexander O'Neal (Jam and Lewis's best interpreter oozes love without trying)
• Between the sheets by the Isley Brothers mostly for the part that goes "Enough of this singing, let's make love"
• Je t'aime, moi non plus Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin after realizing that this was an overly anglophone take on the matter
• Part time lover by Stevie Wonder simply for Luther Vandross's adlibs on the chorus
• Loving you by Tony Toni Tone which, as I've noted previously, puts the contraception in baby making music
• As well as a couple from Prince: Joy in Repetition for the telling phrase (Love me) that prompted the song's title and Adore which is the ultimate love song ("love is too weak to define what you mean to me")

I'll end with sentimental favorites: The Beatles optimistically chiming in with All You Need Is Love while Brenda Russell sings of A Little Bit Of Love and, for good measure, Teddy Pendergrass is struck by Love T.K.O.

There's a spreadsheet, if you want to wrangle the data for yourself.

But mostly there's the playlist, do give it a listen.

I'm no expert but hey, I wrangled with the textures of love. Be prepared, they said, so I gave you Love, a thousand so ways. I tried to do my part, let me know what you think.

Love, a playlist (spotify version)

Disclaimer: About 80 songs didn't make it in the journey from YouTube to Spotify

The Adinkra symbol, odo nyera fie kwan, or "Love always finds its way home".

See previously: 66 Ways to Franco

File under: music, obsession, love, whimsy, culture, observation, perception, humour, language, analysis, statistics, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log. May 6, 2024

New Love

The breathlessness of new love
The quality of those early days
When, tentatively, you discover each other
The first time for everything
Butterflies, the newness of it all
The moment after the first touch
Embracing the rapture of infatuation
The first look, the first acquiescence
Reciprocating and mirroring, seeing anew
The light of a lover refracted in your eye
This is us. Together. This is our time.

New Love, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• New Love by Cherrelle
• Looking for a New Love by Jody Watley
• Love Struck by Jesse Johnson
• He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat) by Jill Scott
• Butterflies by Michael Jackson
• Newness by Musiq
• The Newness by Eric Roberson

File under: emotion, life, culture, observation, perception, love, poetry, toli

Writing log: July 3, 2022

The Parental Cone of Silence

The parental cone of silence is hard to exit
All-encompassing, it is very hard to resist
Sleep deprivation is the moving force, and it accumulates
Slowly at first, then it catches up on you suddenly, the sleep deficit
But there's no way to prepare for this cognitive theft
When your circadian rhythms are arbitrarily disrupted
And the little bundles of energy leave you exhausted
Witness your bleary eyes when you find yourself spent
After running on the initial fumes of elation, you find very little left

The parental cone of silence is a sort of sink
Responsibility, and the duty of care for the offspring
If you're lucky, you can share the burden with a kind of a zone defense
But, even with the best assistance, you're still apt to be depleted
A different story every day, labor in manifold forms, and always intense
Silence also seems like a misnomer when ear-splitting cries are your daily bread

As they grow older the quality of the challenge varies
Different demands arise as they develop their personalities
It's a wonder to behold their peccadillos, their eccentricities
And the conversations you have make you forget when you were running on empty
There's nothing like it, the joys of parenthood have to be experienced
But it's worth acknowledging upfront the parental cone of silence

Parenthood, a playlist

A soundtrack for the little bundles of energy. (spotify version)


File under: life, parenthood, culture, observation, perception, family, experience, poetry, toli

Writing log: July 2, 2022

Liquid Soul

Liquid soul, the very essence
Curves undulating altogether sensuous
Elliptical motion and melodious lines
A taste of paradise, a meeting of minds

Dreams, the undercurrent of these hypnotic grooves
Between comfortable exchanges and forlorn whispers
Sacred codes deciphered in nightly encounters
Bodies dissolve and insistently draw closer

Softly, slowly, quietly discerning the theme
Fleeting relief in the moment, tracing new patterns
Knowing that journey's end will bring new understanding
Together we write our own stories, we sing our own song

Liquid Soul, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. I'll admit that I was seriously questioned about my intentions the first time I played this playlist for someone, I hadn't quite realized its potency. Obsessions are many. (spotify version)


File under: sensory, emotion, life, culture, observation, perception, lyricism, poetry, toli

Writing log: July 1, 2022

Naming is Destiny

The CEO of my mortgage company is named Middleman
My bank manager back in Berkeley was named Rich
I pay due penance to Caesar; I know my place
Naming is destiny, needless to say

...

My NHS dentist when I lived in England was named Pull
Another in the same practice was named Chop
I decided to opt out and my teeth duly suffered
A personal choice, perhaps, to forego what was on offer
But also a comment on English dentistry
For it was undeniable; naming is destiny

...

I'll admit I always fall for it, heck, the marketeers rely on it
Despite knowing that it's likely a raw deal and overstated
There I go again, giving the benefit of the doubt to hucksters
Seduced by that fine label, the new formula
New and improved they say, and it was fitting
Expect buyer's remorse because naming is destiny

...

That they call it "credit card" is quite a tell
When it's a gateway drug into a debtor's hell
Truth in advertising or anchored expectations?
The verb credit has positive associations
Honor and achievement that enable the crucial leap of faith
And just, months later, you're ruing your mistake
Worse, you only have yourself to blame
In truth, a credit card is a confidence game
One you played and failed miserably
You plain forgot that naming is destiny

Naming is Destiny, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify)

• Don't believe the hype by Public Enemy
• My Name Is by Eminem
• Sweet Lies by Beres Hammond
• What's My Name by Prince
• Ain't My Type of Hype by Full Force

File under: humour, life, culture, observation, perception, strategy, Small Things, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: July 1, 2022

Proud Nimrod

It is said, in the good books, that Nimrod was a tyrant
That, full of himself, he rose against God's representative
Abraham in the Jewish tradition, Ibrahim in the Moslem
Further, he decided to challenge God himself
And ordered that the Tower of Babel be constructed
Every schoolchild knows what happened to that project
Archaeology would leave no visible trace in its record
Rather it was the linguists who were rewarded by his efforts

His next gambit was a further attempt to contact the heavens
He mounted in an eagle-drawn chariot to reach the sky
Legend has it that, for his troubles, a mosquito was dispatched
(In some Sephardic traditions, the buzzing tormentor was a gnat)
The mosquito would drive him crazy and altogether mad
One thousand years, this punishment was said to last
In some renderings, it is his entire army that was said to be afflicted
But, in most, the gods were specific: Nimrod was the only one targeted

Another scribe recounts when he threw Abraham into a bonfire
Only to have the latter shielded by the angel Gabriel
Thus saved from the burning coals, Abraham would walk out triumphant
While his antagonist was left punished with unbearable sounds inside his head

Cautionary tales abound on this man who paints a stark figure
The arrogance of the king, who lived surrounded by wooden idols
The object lesson, the temerity of God's would-be rival

Thus it was that proud Nimrod was brought low
Tormented as we've seen by a mere mosquito
Buzzing in his mind for a thousand years
So troubled that he would order some of his soldiers
To strike him upon his head for good measure
Taking turns to administer the beatings and customary slaps
Many generations would be raised to this curious soundtrack

To his way of thinking, far better a concussion
Than this continued auditory hallucination
That for his temerity, the gods had offered this baleful choice
The quality of suffering heavy blows weighed against piercing insect voices

There remains considerable controversy among scholars
About the subsequent course of events for the stories peter out
For some historians, the lack of further detail is to be expected
To their thinking, the gods's action spoke for itself,
Mankind would draw the obvious conclusion
The moderns love Nimrod's stories as striking illustrations,
Vivid manifestations even, of public health lessons
The recipe of unbounded hubris and believing that one was invincible
Only to be brought low by the invocation of the mosquito principle

Brought Low, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Brought Low by Benjamin Muñiz Matlack
• Down with the King by RUN DMC
• Down by Amel Larrieux
• Nimrod by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
• Pride and Vanity by Ohio Players
• Mosquito by The G.G. All Stars

File under: myth, religion, folktale, legend, culture, observation, perception, history, hubris, huhudious, humour, poetry, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: July 1, 2022

The Master and the Sea

The great man, Master of the Royal Mint,
Was possessed by a seminal lunacy
Much to his chagrin, he lost most of his fortune in the damn'd South Sea
After first doubling his money, he became infected with animal spirits
The madness of the crowds, he'd plain forgotten the lesson of the tulips

He doubled down repeatedly,
Fully taken in with the heights of delusion
Plain greed overtook the age's premier scientist,
A whiff of collective hubris
For judgment goes missing in action when in the throes of a mania
The most dubious schemes seem to garner a golden sheen of hysteria

The erstwhile Warden of the Mint,
Who recoined the very fabric of the state
Someone so well versed in finance,
Considered the ultimate sophisticate
Days consulting on the search for Longitude,
Leading the Royal Society
A large retinue of servants,
Evenings entertaining visiting dignitaries

Enter the alchemists, the boosters, the miscreants and the storytellers
So compelling were their promises, there was no doubt returns would be stellar
Well he lost his shirt when the bubble popped,
along with many other notables
History would be an unforgiving judge,
indeed his dismay was ever quotable

That he poured half of his net worth into soon to be worthless stock
To great amusement in the House of Commons and the many press reports
A lesson for the ages this episode,
an alternative reading of Newton's Principle

"I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

After reading

• Isaac Newton and the perils of the financial South Sea
• The Damn'd South Sea

See also: A Seminal Lunacy

A Seminal Lunacy, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) by Pet Shop Boys
• I'm a Greedy Man by James Brown
• Ez Come Ez Go (What goes up must come down) by Wreckx-N-Effect
• I Wanna be Rich by Calloway
• The Boy in the Bubble by Paul Simon
• Fool's Paradise by Meli'sa Morgan
• Money, Money, Money by ABBA
• Caught Up by Usher
• Easy Come, Easy Go by Steve Lawrence
• Greed by Bill Evans
• It's Going Down by Ralph Tresvant
• Easy Come, Easy Go Blues by Bessie Smith
• Shut Em Down (Pete Rock mix) by Public Enemy

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried


File under: humour, bubble, hatchet job, economics, finance, panic, credit, depression, history, Newton, culture, observation, perception, greed, hubris, poetry, Observers are orried, toli

Writing log. June 21, 2022

Breakthrough

It was quite uncanny, the mailman had pulled up in his truck at the curbside
I walked out, for want of a change, to pick up the day's mail
The neighbor must have had the same idea. We walked in parallel
There were head nods but, that morning, we skipped the usual pleasantries
For we were both wearing N-95 masks, the ones you use in extremis
The ones that, by design, require some effort to take off
It didn't need to be said, the same visitor had breached our walls
A quick glance at each other, solidarity and a touch of recognition
Stoic and grim-faced, we turned and walked back in our houses

...

They call it a breakthrough, a breach of your body's fortified defenses
For the weapons on hand were finely targeted at the ancestral strain
And new variants, equipped with modified spikes, could maneuver around
What with waning effectiveness, the natural decay of protection would obtain
It was said that the severity and intensity of the attack would be reduced
Because of the multiple layers that, once activated, would come into play
Generalists, those memory cells that would serve to root out the scourge
Even when the antibody specialists, those shock troops were overwhelmed
Vaccines were engineered in record time, in many ways it was a miracle
To guard against severe disease and death, for that we must be thankful
Still, so many bought the promise of a panacea in a fit of wishful thinking
That they ignored all other measures leaving us prone to breakthrough infections

...

Did I give it to you? Will I die?
Heartbreaking that his first thought was whether he'd infected you
No need for guilt, young man, you'll pull through
It's nobody's fault but mine, my son
Went against my better judgment, it was a lapse
We tried to keep you safe but, at length, we missed
The gods would dispose of human vanity
We are challenged and the future may be perilous
But we trust also that the gods have mercy
So I'm going to snuggle up and give you a hug
But, first things first, let's find us some masks

Breakthrough, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• There it is by James Brown
• Here it is! by Alan Toussaint
• There it is by Shalamar
• Overcome by Tricky
• Nobody's fault but mine by Nina Simone
• There it is by Barry White
• Breakthrough by JazzyFatNastees
• There it is by Tyrone Davis

After Omicron BA.2.75 (Centaurus)

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: coronavirus, pandemic, disease, culture, observation, health, perception, life, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log. June 21, 2022

Three Seconds

It was the microwave situation when it came down to it
It was her way with the microwave that really got to him
She simply couldn't bring herself to press the stop button
Preferring instead, as the timer counted down, to pull the door open

She had the puzzling but unerring habit
Of interrupting the microwave's operation
With just a few seconds to spare on the digital timer
0:02 or, more typically, 0:03 seconds, unblinking
Stark numbers would stare at you from the control panel

He grew increasingly infuriated at the countdown idiosyncrasy
Destabilized, as he was, by the tension of those last remaining seconds
Of late, he noticed that she had even taken to leaving the display stuck at 0:01
Virtuosity in her timing that upped the ante of dismay

Why leave just a few seconds on the clock? It made no sense
Did she really need to heat things up for 57 seconds?
Why not wait for the satisfaction of the final beeps?
Defrost for 28 instead of 30 seconds? What was her issue?
Was it an aversion to hearing the beeping microwave?
An aural infirmity or a baroque superstition?

She never said anything about it, ignorance was bliss
It's the small things that get to you, that you start to notice
The way someone squeezes the toothpaste tube, all those things
But the microwave situation was, quite simply, confounding
The tension of those last few seconds that left you hanging

Still, love is blindness, he decided to take it as an omen
A saving grace, this eccentricity of never pressing the stop button
He made his peace with the strange legacy of those three seconds
Comforted that it would always be around midnight in their kitchen

Three Seconds, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Three Seconds by Oliver Nelson
• Hanging on a String by Loose Ends
• Never Stop by Brand New Heavies
• Digital Display by Ready for the World
• The Control Panel by Richard Yost
• Microwave Blues by Ralph Lalama
• Clocks by Coldplay
• A Few Seconds by Loiseau
• Just a Little Bit Longer by Maxi Priest
• 'Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk
• Things That Annoy Me A Bit by Scott Sandwich
  Concluding with a spoken word piece to destabilize things

[Update]

Apparently some even see this deviance as a game these days

File under: life, Small Things, culture, observation, humour, perception, relationships, poetry, toli

Writing log. June 17, 2022

Memory Islands

The ancients observed that reversals were, in many ways, as important
As the victories their communities would accrue in the course of affairs
It would become their practice to find a way to commemorate the former
Even as even the most minor triumphs were what tended to be celebrated

They recognized, however, that it is hard to resist the temptation of the salutary
When the alternative prospect is of encumbering the mind with the unpleasant
After a long consultation with the gods, they devised a solution
The mist of memory became a safe haven

The contours of this terrain was replete with caveats
Overstuffed caves and secret chambers of detailed recall
Next to retreats to escape hatches of situational amnesia
Memory islands were the conflicted legacy of mankind

Too acute a remembrance and one is inhibited
For, if vivid and at the forefront of the mind, a memory can surely blind
Too raw a reminder of past hurt, and decision making would be tentative
They found that sometimes memories were debilitating and that forgetting was best

A fine balance was needed, however, to navigate this fraught life
For, on other occasions, the reverse would be summoned
In many perilous moments, prompt recall can be of the essence
And, even without urgency, precise action can be preferable to a blank slate

The moderns - we should not begrudge them, would now speak of hormones
And sundry glands and secretions that encode our instinctive responses
Yet the ancients would maintain that these textures of ancestral memory
Are merely the rivers that course through nature's memory islands

Memory Islands, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Do You Remember by Jill Scott
• Forget Me Nots by Patrice Rushen
• It's Easy to Remember by Billie Holiday
• Don't You (Forget about Me) by Simple Minds
• I Remember When by Stan Getz
• Did I Remember by Billie Holiday
• Remember When by Ronny Jordan

See previously: Decision to Forget. Cultural memory is my enduring theme.

File under: decisions, memory, culture, observation, strategy, perception, Buyer's Remorse, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log. June 9, 2022