Niggard
(noun) miser; mean person; skinflint
“Be not niggard of your speech.” (Macbeth)
(adjective) miserly; parsimonious; sparing
“The niggard prodigal that praised he.” (Rape of Lucrece)
grudging; unwilling
“Niggard of question” (Hamlet)
(verb) begrudge; hoard; use sparingly
“now niggard not thy state” (The Two Noble Kinsmen)
put off; fob off; stint
“nature must obey necessity/ Which we will niggard with a little rest” (Julius Caesar)
source: Shakespeare’s Words by David and Ben Crystal
Adam West. Immortalized forever for delivering corny, wooden lines in the one-year tv series. I still remember, in grade 12, a student dressed up as Batman swinging thru the gym air on a rope in the dark at a noon-hour sock-hop while the Batman tv theme played “Batman! Batman!” maniacally over and over. A moment of immortality for that student as well. Ah, memories.
in his prime–the Blonde on Blondedays)
Quote any 10 memorable poetic lines by Atwood, Walcott, any other poet of the past 6 decades..
Quote any 10 memorable lines of Dylan. (Some of these can be recited in full song form.)
(BTW/ Rudyard Kipling, who was another rhymester, won a Nobel in 1907: “In consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creation of this world-famous author.” Hmmm, sounds like Dylan and his work, even to the point that Dylan has written many story songs.)
Some examples of poetry in Dylan’s work:
“You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?”
“Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while”
“Mona tried to tell me
to stay away from the train line
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine
And I said, oh, I didn’t know that,
But then again, there’s only one I’ve met
And he just smoked my eyelids
And punched my cigarette”
“The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep
They wait for you,
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin’ from my broken cup,
And as me to open up
The gate for you”
“With your sheet metal memory of Cannery Row
And your magazine husband who one day just had to go
And your gentleness now which you just can’t help but show
Oh who among them do you think would employ you?
Now you stand with your thief, you’re on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold
and your saint-like face and your ghost-like soul
Oh who among them do you think could destroy you?”
“She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She’s a hypnotist collector
You are a walking antique”
“The cloak and dagger dangles
Madams light the candles
In ceremonies of the horseman
Even the pawn must hold a grudge
Statues made of matchsticks
Crumble into one another
My love winks, she does not bother
She knows too much to argue or to judge”
Other Dylan songs which are pure poetry (sans music) with quotable lines:
All Along the Watchtower
Ballad of a Thin Man
Blowin’ in the Wind (anthem of a generation)
Chimes of Freedom
Dear Landlord
Desolation Row
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Forever Young
Girl from the North Country (sung with Johnny Cash)
Gotta Serve Somebody
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Highway 61 Revisited
Hurricane
I Don’t Believe You
I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
I Pity the Poor Immigrant
I Shall Be Released
I Want You
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
Idiot Wind
If Dogs Run Free (jazz recitation)
If Not for You
It Ain’t Me Babe
It’s All over Now, Baby Blue
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m only Bleeding)
Just Like a Woman
Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues
Lay Lady Lay
Like a Rolling Stone
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Man Gave Names to All the Animals
Masters of War
Mr. Tambourine Man
My Back Pages
One Too Many Mornings
Positively 4th Street
Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
She Belongs to Me
Simple Twist of Fate
Slow Train Comin’
Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Tangled up in Blue
Tears of Rage
This Wheel’s on Fire
Time Passes Slowly
The Times They Are-A-Changin’
To Ramona
Tombstone Blues
Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You
Visions of Johanna
When the Ship Comes In
When You Gonna Wake Up?
With God on our Side
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
(later added, of his songs up to 2001: Ballad in Plain D, Black Diamond Bay, Bob Dylan’s Dream, Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream, Gates of Eden, Isis, Joey, Jokerman, Lay Down Your Weary Tune, Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, Long Ago Far Away, Man of Peace, Only a Pawn in Their Game, Romance in Durango, Sign on the Window, Three Angels (recitation), Tomorrow Is a Long Time.
His work has had a huge impact on our generation and subsequent listeners, and abroad (Beatles were huge fans). He continues to put these song-poems and a zillion others out there (still touring and recording).
I can’t think of another poet (and that goes for Thomas, Auden, et al) with as huge a catalogue. And I do think his use of rhyme is amazing and has made him very popular and quotable. That he has been commercially successful seems to be a non-starter as an argument; rather it suggests how influential he’s been. That he’s not a woman or non-caucasian–the politically correct stuff–is another non-starter. He’s beyond them, beyond very good, beyond very prolific, beyond very poetic; his work’s great: period. I think he’s the greatest songwriter of the 20th century. He has done way more with lyrics than Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie or any songwriter you’d care to nominate.
(from a signed Dave Brubeck letter I have)
July 27, 1988
Dear Pat,
Thank you for your letter. It is very difficult to give someone else advice, because I believe, in the end, one makes choices not from heeding other people’s advice, but from listening to one’s own inner voice. So, the best advice I can give to an aspiring musician, or to someone else for that matter, is to try to know yourself. The life of a musician is not always a rewarding one in terms of money earned, or social position, or family life, so to be a musician means lifelong dedication to music.
Often people ask me why I chose to be a musician. My answer is “I had no choice”. In other words, it has been as far back as I can remember and will be until I die, as integral a part of my life as breathing. I hope my comments will help you.
Yours sincerely.
Dave Brubeck
…………………………….
“Know thyself”–words in a temple in Delphi
“To thine own self be true.”–William Shakespeare, Hamlet
(posted in memory of the great jazz innovator-pianist-composer, Dave Brubeck, 1920 -2012)
Life is fraught with risk all the way down the line. But it is important to pursue what gives you pleasure, meaning, and purpose. There are those moments along the way when you will hear the call. It is important to heed the call and risk at moments like that. These opportunities are not likely to happen twice.
There is a lot we repress along the way and this can build up. Things we ought to say and do sometimes.
But always it is your gut instinct you should listen to since you yourself will be the final arbiter of what incoming/arising information is relevant and true for you, as well as what you most need and want. Doing what others or society tells you can be a big and sometimes long mistake. There will be no shortage of others to tell you how to live, but few that will know you as well as you know yourself and what works best for you. In any case, roles imposed by others can be/come very restrictive. Far better to just be yourself or true to yourself/your core as Hamlet said.
The divine and eternal often end up as chosen projections or externals beyond the self. In fact, the divine and the eternal are to be found and known within the individual and others. As for the eternal, one need look no further than nature and William Blake’s lines from “Auguries of Innocence”:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.
And as Joseph Campbell has remarked, when we serve others, we are in service to the spirit which lives within others. It is important to remember, at the same time, that we have to serve and take care of the spirit within ourselves. That is our own very important obligation so as to avoid withering up and dying in various ways.
Each of us has a very unique road to travel which is our own. So, though we may be like others or have kindred spirits, it is our ‘mission’ and fate to go much of the day and life alone. Many days there will seem to be no clear route, but often if one keeps walking, the road thus created is the one we were meant to take.
As I’ve said in one of the first blog entries (“Conferring the Meanings of One’s Own Life”), we are the final arbiters of the meaning and purpose of our own lives. We decide what the true or final meanings of our lives will be, no one else. As the cliche goes, we have to (be able to) live with ourselves. There is finally a courage and integrity to this lifelong process.
But in later life, there might be a rightness to letting go, yielding, and accepting changes and other possibilities. In that, a rightness that may be conducive to freeing one’s perpetually restless heart, soul , and oneself beyond ‘normal’, the conventional, or one’s beliefs and expectations. Freeing the mind, heart, and spirit to/for larger living and larger states of consciousness, meaning and purpose. Again, risky and adventurous, but not out of sync with following one’s own bliss, as Campbell put it. (One does have to break eggs in order to make an omelette.)
(January 1967 at the time of the release of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane’; grade 12 school operetta cast party–armed with electric guitar, playing Eric Burdon and The Animals’ “I’m Mad” with shoulder-length-haired Ed Greene wailing on vocals and Eric Crone on blues harmonica; my then-brief teenybopper-girlfriend facing the camera)
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”
–William Wordsworth
(alternative sleeve from the brand-new version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; an outtake from the most celebrated album cover ever done)
Sgt. Pepper taught The Beatles to play. June, 1967. ‘Twas one of those glorious moments to be young and alive. I was just about to go into my Manitoba grade 12 departmental exams when the album arrived in Winnipeg around June 1.
The previous three albums, Rubber Soul–a ground-breaking acoustically-driven Euro-sounding album, had come out in the winter of ’65-’66, followed by Revolver in the summer of ’66, and Yesterday and Today (in Canada) in the winter of ’66-’67, along with the Januaryish-Februaryish releases of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Penny Lane”, and “Paperback Writer.”
The Beatles had given up performing live and the last aforementioned three songs along with “Tomorrow Never Knows” signalled that they were changing their sound and style bigtime. They had used feedback creatively on “I’m Only Sleeping” and radio clips on “Tomorrow Never Knows”–a ‘deep’ title suggested by Ringo btw. As well, they were using band music and arrangements on Revolver, “Strawberry” and “Penny”.
But no one, but nobody remotely guessed that they would do the second concept rock album (The Who was first with Tommy), or expand listener consciousness as much as they did on this landmark album. The band arrangements were there again as was the psychedelic imagery and subject matter. But their songwriting had now reached its peak along with Ringo and George’s work and contributions.
The album had humor (audience laughter, social criticism, sarcasm, references to pop culture, animal sound effects); it featured harp and sitar, violin arrangements, Existentialism, mellotron, circus organs, amazing use of echo, and the most memorable single piano chord ever played in music by several people to end-punctuate the album.
Paul wrote most of the album: “Sgt. Pepper’s”, “Getting Better”, “Fixing a Hole”, “She’s Leaving Home” (a classical music piece with lyrics), “When I’m Sixty-Four”, “Lovely Rita”, and the bridge in “A Day in the Life”. Lennon wrote “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, “Good Morning”, and most of “A Day in the Life”. George’s contribution was the powerful Eastern-inspired arrangement “Within You, Without You”, which cleverly blended violins and Indian instruments. And George Martin, as usual, deserves the lion’s share of credit for the final sound, facilitating everything the group wanted and asked for, as well as playing some keyboards and writing arrangements which helped raise the bar set by the basic songs.
Did I say it was impossible to study or focus on mundane stuff like finals with the soundtrack of this album playing in my ear 24/7? It was a revelation, too, to hear the album at my friend Lorne’s place. He had the best stereo setup of all my friends, and this was definitely an album to be savoured in stereo with separated parts, sounds, and kinesthetic effects. The latter is on full display in “Good Morning, Good Morning” as animal sounds alternate from the speakers and a fox hunt runs across from one side to the next. There were also delicious swirling effects on “Mr. Kite”, George’s song, and “A Day in the Life”. None of this kind of thing had ever been done on a pop record before.
Well, shrewd marketing with the release of the overpriced, but interesting nonetheless 50th anniversary album package. You get a new stereo mix, a mono version, 2 CDs of outtakes showing how the songs developed (the best part of the audio materials), a Blu-Ray and DVD version of how the album was made, along with 3 promotional featurettes/videos of “Penny”, “Day” and “Strawberry”. The latter three reflect the Carnaby and psychedelic atmosphere of the time.
I enjoyed the trip down memory lane on what I still consider to be the best rock/pop album of all time. The humorous opening of the title song with a rock base; Ringo’s catchy “With a Little Help from My Friends with its straight-ahead, strong backup vocals; John’s far-out imagery with modified sounds in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; the peppy “Getting Better” with its falsetto call-backing and Eastern droning (an early favorite for me); Paul’s moody “Fixing a Hole”(an ultimate song for loners and thinkers), “She’s Leaving Home” (with its clever use of Lennon’s overlapping vocals); “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” (a spacey, nightmarish answer to Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”); “Within You, Without You” (the second-most challenging song to realize on the album); “When I’m Sixty-Four” (which Paul wrote as a teenager); “Lovely Rita” ( a ad-libbish free-for all); “Good Morning, Good Morning” (inspired by and spoofing a Kellogg’s corn flakes ad, replete with over-the-top sound effects); and “A Day in the Life” (arguably the album’s masterpiece of social commentary and 100% targeted at youth of the day).
50 years, eh? And still one of the great musical trips and odysseys ever.
The overlapping lesson of the two events being one of the randomness of timing, damage, and death. One can’t predict when or where one might be killed by Nature or terrorists. Being in the wrong time in the wrong place potentially applies in both cases.
“The greatest step toward a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.”
–Steve Maraboli
(Waskesiu Lake, SK, wedding-gift painting by Hazel Karaloff, my wife’s aunt; a memory from my wife’s childhood)
(another living-room painting, by ‘Patrick’, gift of my wife’s parents)
(bird ornaments, living room, part of a much larger collection)
(“DOGS”, mixed-media embroidered cushion, living room)
(“City Lights, Edmonton”, 1965 serigraph by George Weber, front hall)
(large poster of Mundy’s Map of Edmonton-Strathcona, January 1911, front hall)
(Pont de Neuf, Paris oil painting, purchased by my parents from a street artist in the 1980s, back hallway)
(“In Dreamland”, picture by Adelaide Hiebel, which formerly hung in my parents’ bedroom since the 1950s–they associated it with me)
(print of a favorite Canadian painting by Francis Ann Hopkins in my bedroom; “Canoes in Fog, Lake Superior, 1869)
(heads of Holmes and Watson on wall by the bookcase of English literature in my bedroom)
A few of my many favourite things…
