Maddenation
On Time
One of my students, Kam Wing Cheung, who’s from Hong Kong, has given me an interesting quote. It was hidden among some uninteresting ideas about time and friends lost (including “time does fly”), but I think it shines with newness, even if it was unintentional or the result of translating in his head. He said:
Time is the most unpredictable and secret thing in our life.
I don’t know why I like it so much, except that it attaches two unexpected adjectives to time (and makes them superlative). It rings like great wisdom. Maybe if you pick at it, it will fall apart, or admit some weakness. And probably unpredictable is not as interesting as secret. In any case, it seems to leverage the mind into some new ways of considering mysterious time. I like it for that.
Patrick • Quotes • 05/16/06 • 8 comments
Comments
Dad • 05/23/06 • 9:56 PM:The quote does make you think, I’ll give it that. But in some ways, time is the most predictable thing in our life. We can count it off in heartbeats or seconds, the angle of the sun or the moon, the comings and goings of leaves and cold and ice. Even the mysterious increase in entropy gives us a measure of the duration and direction of time. And that makes it anything but secret. I think those adjectives are unexpected because they don’t apply.
Dan • 05/24/06 • 5:31 PM:By “time” does your student mean “life”? Because I like Lennon’s quote better,
Of course, we’ve touched on this quote before
But speaking of good thoughts among uninteresting ones, the band N.E.R.D has a dandy in their song Fly or Die, which is about a kid with pre-teen angst. The lyric goes,
To me it’s about struggling with the notion of selling out, choosing money over integrity (or “keeping it real”). Etc.
Patrick • 05/30/06 • 12:16 AM:Yeah, Dan, he meant “Life is the most unpredictable and secret thing in our life.” In any case, I think the meaning is the anverse of the Lennon quote.
But what I really want to ask you is to go ahead and sing to yourself that line “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” and then go listen to it. Did you get the melody right? I didn’t. In fact, I think John Lennon sings it wrong.
As for “Gasping for air makes the righteous path harder to choose,” I don’t like it. Here’s why: The subject is a gerund phrase instead of a real noun, so that there’s no real actor in the phrase. Who is gasping? A fish? A spy who’s had his throat slit? The subject ought to be “you” or “I” or “Tommy” or whatever. This inverted sentence construction is very trendy, especially with pop-philosophers trying to make a deep statement. You can tell that this is the case with this band, because they’re so proud of the line that they bring it out again and again. It also supermixes metaphors. I mean, is this righteous path somewhere in the ocean? Are there lane lines to mark it off? And why would gasping for air really make a path harder to choose? Say I’m walking down a literal path. I get an athsma attack and start gasping for air. Do I suddenly want to/have to swerve into the woods? Would that help me breathe better? A metaphor has to make literal sense or it’s worthless.
Now, I can handle a certain amount of lyrical inanity if the music’s good, so maybe I’d like this song in the end, but the lyrics are not good. Sorry, Dan.
Dan • 05/30/06 • 2:03 PM:Oh geez. Well anyway
I got the melody right. The reason I got it right is because one day the song was in my head and I couldn’t get that melody right, so I spent a few minutes listening to it over and over until I got it right. I think the harmony makes it sound odd.
Patrick • 05/30/06 • 3:09 PM:I, too, sat down to memorize the Lennon melody (not necessarily the “correct” melody), playing it over and over to engrain it in my brain (“enbrain” it?), but I think I still have it kind of wrong. That’s why I think Lennon sings it wrong. This happens with other songs, sometimes, too. One I can think of is the “La la la la la” part of “Sing, sing a song, Make it simple…” that the Carpenters and the Sesame Street gang sings. I swear it should be one way (and I suspect it even IS that way in some part of some version), but I keep hearing it sung WRONG. This, I believe, points to some fundamental MUSIC that rules all iterations we humans give music. Sometimes a musician comes very close to plugging directly into the MUSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, but gets it slightly wrong. Then people like me hear their song but “remember” (with ancestral memory) the TRUE melody from beyond in place of the approximation. Make sense?
Dan • 05/31/06 • 9:45 AM:I sorta hear what you’re saying with Lennon, but I don’t know the Carpenters song. With Lennon’s song, I think the lyrics are out of place more than the melody.
Huh?
Patrick • 05/31/06 • 2:48 PM:He means that you might not be planning on getting hit by a car, but it might happen anyway, so take his hand.
No, you’re right. It cheapens the appeal of the aphoristic line if you attach it to what comes before. Just another instance of the impulse to fit a pattern (or rhyme or rhythm) messing up a noble sentiment.
Dad • 06/05/06 • 5:33 PM:Not to mention that the rhyme and rhythm of the phrase is bad anyway. He might has simply said, “Life is just what happens while you’re making other plans.”
On the Carpenter’s la, la bit, are you referring to the last la, which seems too low? Anyway, they do it both ways in the song. I got used to the low note (a fifth?) after a while, but the other note (a fourth?) sounds more like it should be. I agree with your concept of a musical “consciousness” that evaluates and rules on the acceptability of melodies and harmonies. That’s why computers don’t generally write good songs. Also, it’s why modern composers, trying to expand the envelope of musical patterns, often write weird-sounding stuff.
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