Guy de Maupassant’s “Sur l’eau” (1876) in Virginia Woolf’s “The Years” (1937)

In "Present Day", the final chapter of Virginia Woolf's novel "The Years" (1937), Peggy Pargiter, bored at a party, takes a book off a shelf and opens it: "He'll say what I'm thinking, she thought as she did so. Books opened at random always did." The book Peggy opens is in French: "La médiocrité de l'univers m'étonne et me révolte, la petitesse de toutes choses m’emplit de dégoût, la pauvreté des êtres humains m’anéantit." Woolf doesn't identify the book or the author, but the passage is from Guy de Maupassant's "Sur l'eau" (1876), which was published shortly before the first chapter in the novel, "1880" – and long before Peggy is born. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 January 2025)

Three perspectives on success in songs by Dire Straits

On "Sultans of Swing", from the eponymous debut by Dire Straits (1978), the band Sultans of Swing plays swing in a bar on Fridays. One member, Harry, "doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene"; that is, he isn't worried about success. The album's next song, "In the Gallery", recounts the life of another Harry, a sculptor, who only gets "in the gallery" after he dies "in obscurity". Listening to the album the other day, I was reminded of another perspective on success in a Dire Straits song: "Money for Nothing" ("Brothers in Arms", 1985), in which an appliance salesman envies the musicians earning "money for nothing" for an MTV video. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 January 2025)

The first three songs on the Dire Straits album “Making Movies” (1980)

The opener of the first side of the Dire Straits album "Making Movies" (1980), "Tunnel of Love", vividly evokes a fairground romance on the titular ride and several others, as well as arcades and dance floors. The second song, "Romeo and Juliet", retells Shakespeare's play with a breakup rather than a tragedy. After first forgetting "the movie song" ("Somewhere" from "West Side Story", an earlier Shakespeare revision), the singing Romeo later remembers it: "There's a place for us, you know the movie song". In the final song, "Skateaway", a young woman roller-skating around a city listens to a transistor radio, and the album's title comes up: "She's making movies on location". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 January 2025) 

Over 1600 111-word texts from 2020 to 2024

Two days ago, I counted the number of concerts I went to each of the last two years (and who I had seen most last year). Yesterday, I counted the number of poems I sent as birthday poems from 2015 to 2024 (and which poets whose poems I shared most often). So today, I thought I would count how many 111-word texts I have written since 1 January 2020, when I began preparing for the first round of my course "111 Words a Day: A Writing Project": over 1600 (over 177,000 words). To be precise, I would have to figure out how many posts on my blog weren't for 111-word texts. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 1 January 2025)