Forgive me. I need a break from all this earnest writing about wine. Which will resume soon, I promise.
Two things.
First, this is St. Terence's feast day. A round of applause for the oulde saint, and a raised glass. (There he is on the left, as seen by Bellini. Distressingly fey. Where are all the butch saints?)
Secondly, the rest of this post has to do with lyrics. Lyrics of songs, rimes, jingles. The silly things that get into your head -- the silly incorrect things that get into your head -- and become firmly lodged there.
For example, when Billie Holiday sings "I've got a right to sing the
blues," what's the next line? I don't know the real one any more.
What I hear is:
"I've got a right to want new shoes."
Sort of poignant in its idiotic way, don't you think?
I do this kind of substitution all the time, sometimes with obscene results. I'll spare you those. But I remember being warped this way at a very early age when my aunt (more like a big sister, we were so close in age) taught me to sing just before a family friend's wedding:
Here comes the bride
Big fat and wide.
That's what the song says to me even now. No idea as to the real line. And it caused a minor sensation when I sang it at the wedding in my wavering four-year-old's voice.
I also attribute some of this nonsense to my late father, last seen in 1957. He was a Cockney and famous for his impromptu parodies of poems and popular songs. (Often with obscene results. Hmm...) Norman Wisdom fans would have found him hilarious. I did too until he crossed the line with one drink too many. Then we heard knuckle music and songs of rage.
I wish I had the powers of Theodore Roethke when it comes to smoothing the roughest edges of the past -- equal powers of self-deception and forgiveness:
MY PAPA'S WALTZ by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
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