Terrance Hayes’s poem "Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm”, PechaKucha, proper names, and Isamu Noguchi

Terrance Hayes calls his poem "Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm" (from "So To Speak", 2023) "an analogue PechaKucha", a Japanese presentation form that involves making twenty-second statements about twenty slides. In my Contemporary Poetry seminar, we discussed the proper names in Hayes's poem: Kafka, Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Matisse, Picasso, Hitchcock, and Isamu Noguchi. As none of us had heard of Noguchi before, I gave the students two minutes to prepare a twenty-second statement about what the poem says about him, and then called on students at random to make their statements. Afterwards, we looked him up: Noguchi (1904-1988) was an Usonian artist, furniture designer, and landscape architect. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 October 2024)

[Hayes’s poem is online, but he revised it considerably for book publication, so here’s the poem as it appears in “So To Speak”]

Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm

Terrance Hayes, "So To Speak", 33-36

 

An Analogue PechaKucha, 2020

 

¯\_('.')_/¯

It appears I will never be remembered

as a great singer nor extravagant eater.

Either I am standing or I am dreaming.

Or I am standing near the mouth of a theater.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

One early & deeply progressive symptom

of the Kafka Virus: a stream of movies seeps

into the shell of the infected individual's sleeping.

Dream factors greatly in the disease.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

I accept I may never get over the ways my mother

loved me poorly. She is close to god in me.

On a planet without surefire

gods & mythologies, there is family.

 

¯\_(--)_/¯

Inside the stream of Whitney Houston's

voice, Dionne Warwick warns,

"You're gonna need me one

day. You're gonna want me back in your arms."

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

There are no ugly people, only expressions

of uglinessm when the mouth is set

this way or that. It's best to think of time

the way a miser thinks of money.

 

¯\_(' ')_/¯

Matisse liked to have the nude near to see her,

but Picasso liked to close his eyes upon her.

What I remember of 1987, is mostly what I remember

of '88 except with different deaths & births.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

If you watch Hitchcock's Vertigo

the other way round, you may notice 

inside the movie is a whole other movie

told from the point of view of the young lady.

 

¯\_(--)_/¯

Each new pair of glasses assures things

never look the same, but several glasses

of liquor can create the same feeling.

Balance the morass & the molasses of jackasses.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

Even where I doubt the presence of God 

I am awed by the scale of creation. 

Any science suggesting all that happens

is coincidence, is nonsense.

 

\_('.')_/¯

"Intrepidation." "Misfortunate." "Ya-licious."

"Holy smoked turkey." "Attack of the third dimension."

I continue to half believe a fourth s

resides somewhere inside the word obsession.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Clap for a low back country road 

like a tree talking below a constellation.

A low back river talking twilight 

with the leaves clapping below a constellation.

 

¯\_('.')_/¯

Often right after taking a photo you immediately

crop or color the image so it seems

the doctored thing is the memory.

I'm not saying you have to lie to dream.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

I stream the sequel to a terrible disaster

movie where the protagonist searches for a lover

with the support of characters who meet catastrophe

helping the main character.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

The gun is lowered but then a toe

or two in the boot is shot & when the shoe

comes off, there's a hole a grandchild or two

a generation or two later can put a finger through.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Before the sleeping dream,

we are told to keep nickels in the glasses

of wine by our beds. The virus seems

to have some relationship to cash.

 

¯\_('.')_/¯

Clap for Tetris, the video game

that teaches you the most geometry for life.

Stacks of boxes of books, closets of hangers

and monster angels and historical fabrics.

 

¯\_('-')_/¯

I was struck by the sky of my South

Carolina. It made my mouth ache.

I was old by the time I heard the prophet

Isaiah used to preach naked.

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Ghost, the loss that broke you was so

ubiquitous, I failed to see it lingering in the ether

like the misspelled affections that go

undetected by both letter writer & letter reader.

 

¯\_(--)_/¯

Often I confuse Vivamus, moriendum est,

which means "Let us live, for we must die,"

with Bibamus, moriendum est which means "Let

us drink, for we must die."

 

¯\_(:-|)_/¯

Isamu Noguchi sculpted the marrow

of a black stone into bamboo & planted husks

of live bamboo shoots to guard it. I know

this ragged clock waits to be clogged with dust.

 

The magnificent career of Rafael Nadal

Early on, Rafael Nadal made this Roger Federer fan suffer by beating him at the French Open four years running (2005 in the semifinal; 2006 to 2008 in the final). But I learned to appreciate Nadal's compelling style, especially on the clay courts at Roland Garros, with his fourteen titles, 112 wins, and only four losses. Even though his clay-court style had been around for seventeen years by the time he last won it in 2022, only three players ever figured how to beat him there: Robin Söderling (2009), Novak Djokovic (2015 and 2021), and Alexander Zverev (2023, when Nadal was suffering from the injuries that have now ended his career). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 October 2024)

Finding Coover’s "The Universal Baseball Association” on a library shelf at Stanford in the 1980s

Regarding Robert Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." (1968), I remember now that I did not read it in school when I played tabletop baseball games, but in college a few years later. I worked at Stanford's Meyer Library shelving books, and when I shelved one by Coover, I recognized him as the author of a novel about such games, so I checked it out and read it. By then, I had already begun reading literary criticism, so I dug up an article about the novel. To my amusement, the scholar did not know those games actually exist, but thought that Coover had completely made them up. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 October 2024)

SwissPass, the Swiss Federal Railways, and the “enshittification” of customer service on the internet

The internet's "enshittification" (Cory Doctorow) includes how companies make it hard to contact them. I received a suspicious-looking email from SwissPass, a service of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). Although it wasn't phishing, I replied to mention that it looked like it was. It was a no-reply account. The SwissPass website has no email address or contact form. I found an SBB Customer Service email address. An auto-reply said it's no longer used. That reply mentioned a "help and contact" page – which has no email address or contact form. Both sites offer phone numbers to call – but not toll-free. I finally wrote them using a form for complaining about train personnel. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 October 2024)

“The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." (1968), by Robert Coover (1932-2024)

When I recently had the idea of writing about mechanical pencils, I put it on my list of possible topics for daily prose. But only yesterday did I not come up with an issue to write about (films and politics having grabbed my attention for most of the past week). While I was writing about my life with mechanical pencils, which began with tabletop baseball games in the 1970s, I thought of a novel I read back then about a man playing such games: Robert Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." (1968). So it was uncanny to learn this morning that Coover died on Saturday at 92. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 October 2024)

Mechanical pencils

In the mid-1970s, I began playing tabletop baseball games like Strat-O-Matic, though my favorite was eventually one called Extra Innings. I stopped playing them around 1980 or so, but one thing remains from my years playing such games: mechanical pencils. Back then, when I needed a new pencil or new lead, I would walk the mile or so from our house in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, to the University of Toledo bookstore, which had a great collection of Pentel pencils. I still prefer their P205 pencils with 0.5 mm lead. Back then, such pencils were only available in black, but these days I have several of them in a range of colors. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 October 2024)

Anti-smoking rhetoric in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” (2017) and Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” (2010)

About eight minutes into "Get Out" (Jordan Peele, 2017), Rose (Allison Williams), a young white woman, takes a cigarette from her boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young Black man, and throws it out the window of the car she is driving. Her opposition to his smoking, which her parents turn out to share, runs through the film. This time around, it reminded me of the guardians at the boarding school in "Never Let Me Go" (Mark Romanek, 2010, based on Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel), who insist that their "students" should never smoke. In both cases, the anti-smoking people want to keep the bodies they want to exploit as healthy as possible. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 October 2024)

A petition against Basel’s staging of the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2025

Today in my mailbox was a petition from the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland to start a referendum against the staging of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Basel next May: "35 Million [Swiss Francs] in tax money for a propaganda show?" Given what I know about this small, "national-conservative" Swiss political party, which is against homosexuals, trans people, and abortion, I assumed they were against the "propaganda" of a "gender ideology" they would claim was bering spread by Nemo, the non-binary winner of the 2024 ESC. But to my surprise, they dislike the ESC for the "occultism and Satanism" that they claim some of the contest's performers have been spreading. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 October 2024)

"When the defendant [Donald J. Trump] lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office"

In the "Government’s motion for immunity determinations" filed yesterday, 2 October 2024, by Special Counsel Jack Smith in United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, the "Factual Proffer" that "provides a detailed statement of the case that the Government intends to prove at trial" begins with a straightforward claim: "When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office" (3). This is not actually disputed by former President Trump's legal team. After all, they did not defend him by saying that he did not commit crimes; they defended him by arguing that, as President, he was immune from prosecution for those crimes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 October 2024) 

“Such stuff as dreams are made of” at the end of John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” (1941)

At the end of "The Maltese Falcon", John Huston's 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, Detective Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) picks up the titular falcon, asks Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) what it is, and is puzzled by Spade's response: "Such stuff as dreams are made of." The quotation comes from a speech by Prospero in William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (1610-11): "We are such stuff / as dreams are made on." In the film, Spade knows his Shakespeare, while Polhaus apparently does not. Yet as actors, both Bogart and Bond surely knew the line. Actors, after all, are immersed in cultural history in ways the characters they play are usually not. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 October 2024)

Ward Bond and Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon"

Elisha Cook, Jr., in “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) and “The Big Sleep” (1946) – and in a 1949 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby"

Today, when I saw a man tailing Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) in John Huston's 1941 film of Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", I was reminded that I have always liked Elisha Cook, Jr., who plays that henchman of Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet). Cook also appears in another Bogart film, "The Big Sleep" (Howard Hawks, 1946). Otherwise, I know hardly anything he made, but Cook also played Klipspringer in Richard Maibaum's 1949 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby", a film I had never heard of before. In "The Maltese Falcon", Cook is on the receiving end of Bogart's memorable line, "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 October 2024) 

Watching “The Lady in the Van”, “Nobody Wants This”, and “Un cuento perfecto” while down with a cold

I've been down with a bad cold since Thursday, so I've been watching things. After honoring Maggie Smith (1934-2024) with Nicholas Hytner's "The Lady in the Van" (2015), I turned to the new Netflix series "Nobody Wants This", because I like Kristen Bell from "The Good Place". After that, I wanted something in Spanish, and I found a 2023 Netflix series "Un cuento perfecto", with Anna Castillo, whose work I knew from Salvador Calvo's "Adú" (2020). Castillo, like Bell, has such an expressive face. – And this "perfect story" is the first film or series I have ever seen that has a sex scene interrupted because the woman is having her period. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 September 2024)

The case of Lionel Tate in Claudia Rankine's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric" (2004) – and on the internet today

While re-reading Claudia Rankine's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric" (2004), I was struck by her mention of Lionel Tate. In 2001, Tate was convicted of murder as an adult for a death he caused at 12. In 2004, when his conviction was overturned, he accepted a plea deal including ten years' probation, so when charged with armed robbery in 2005, he was sentenced to ten years for the robbbery and thirty years for violating probation. Since all the reports on this were at least ten years old, I limited my search to the past year – and the results about Tate's case were mostly essays for students to plagiarize. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 September 2024) 

From Claudia Rankine to Aimé Césaire and César Vallejo

Between April 2016 and March 2017, I read Claudia Rankine's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric" (2004) four times (in part because I taught a course on Rankine's work – and Anthony Vahni Capildeo's – in the Spring Semester of 2017 at the University of Basel English Department). The epigraph to Rankine's book is from Aimé Césaire's "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal", so I read that in French back in 2017, too. Now, rereading Rankine for a student's MA exam, I notice again her references to César Vallejo's "Considerando en frío" – but now, having been learning Spanish since November 2020, I went to read that poem in the original, too. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 September 2024)

Not remembering Maggie Smith in “As You Like It” at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario in Spring 1977

In spring 1977, presumably during our spring break from school, my family went from in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, to Stratford, Ontario, for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. My father was especially excited about the trip, because he wanted to see Maggie Smith as Rosalind in the festival's production of William Shakespeare's comedy "As You Like It". I wish I remembered something about her performance, but all I remember about that trip was that a dog bit me on what an online map suggests was Tom Patterson Island in Lake Victoria in central Stratford. Still, Maggie Smith (1934-2024) always reminded me of that trip, even if I all I remembered was that dog. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 September 2024)

Explaining the form of sonnets with Ernst Jandl’s “sonett"

In a class today on two sonnets by William Shakespeare (18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", and 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"), I began by discussing the form of a sonnet. I hadn't planned to use it, but I suddenly remembered the wonderful example of Ernst Jandl's "sonett", all of whose lines are variations on the first line: "das a das e das i das o das u". With the clear unstressed articles and the stressed names of the vowels, the meter is easy to describe. The rhyme scheme is also clear, and the fourteen lines and their organization (Petrarchan) are also straightforward. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 September 2024)

 

sonett

Ernst Jandl

 

das a das e das i das o das u

das u das a das e das i das o

das u das a das e das i das o

das a das e das i das o das u

 

das a das e das i das o das u

das u das a das e das i das o

das u das a das e das i das o

das a das e das i das o das u

 

das o das u das a das e das i

das i das o das u das a das e

das e das i das o das u das a

 

das o das u das a das e das i

das i das o das u das a das e

das e das i das o das u das a

Re-reading four novels by Virginia Woolf for a student’s Master’s exam this fall

In 2019 and 2020, I went through Virginia Woolf's nine novels from "The Voyage Out" (1915) to "Between the Acts" (1941), as well as her unusual 1933 book "Flush", a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from the perspective of her dog Flush. Many years before that project, when I was still at university, I had read "Jacob's Room" (1922), "Mrs. Dalloway" (1925), "To the Lighthouse" (1927), "Orlando" (1928), and "The Waves" (1931). Now a student will be doing her Master's exam with me, and one of her topics is London in four Woolf novels, so I'll get to reread "Night and Day" (1919), "Jacob's Room", "Mrs. Dalloway", and "The Years" (1937). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 September 2024) 

Epanalepsis (or epanodiplosis) in Emily Dickinson’s "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -" (Fr591)

While preparing Emily Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -" (Fr591) for discussion on Wednesday, I noticed the structure of the penultimate line: "And then the Windows failed - and then." It begins and ends with the same phrase. In the past, I've described such lines as "framed" by the repeated phrase. But recently, I've been discovering the many old rhetorical terms for types of repetition (with "epistrophe" being my favorite, because of Thelonious Monk's composition "Epistrophy"). So now I've been able to find "epanalepsis" or "epanadiplosis" for such repetition at the beginning and end of a sentence (or, in this case, of a line of poetry). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 September 2024)

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591)

Emily Dickinson

 

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air -

Between the Heaves of Storm -

 

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room -

 

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly -

 

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me -

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see -

 

 

A Michigan absentee voter since 1992

Late Friday, I received my absentee ballot from Michigan. When I first voted from abroad in 1992, I registered at my mother's address in Michigan, and I have been a regular absentee voter there ever since. In my first Presidential election in the United States in 1984, I lived in California, where I was going to university; in my second in 1988, I lived in Pennsylvania, where I had just started graduate school. I sometimes wonder if I was supposed to have applied for my 1992 absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. But at the time, I was using my mother's address as my US address, so Michigan made more sense to me. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 September 2024)

A New Zealander in Basel, over twenty years ago

When our son Miles was about two or three years old, we went for a walk on a damp and gloomy autumn weekday. We lived in Kleinbasel at the time, and we crossed the Rhein at the dam. We hadn't intended to stop at the playground there, but we did. There were only two other people there: a woman and a child. It turned out the woman was from New Zealand. She had married a French-speaking Swiss man who was a letter carrier, and she was very homesick. I don't know what made me remember that woman today, but we never saw her again, and I wonder what happened to her. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 September 2024)

Terrance Hayes and his revision of poems between magazine and book publication

For the first session of my Contemporary Poetry seminar this semester, I picked out the poem "Continuity", by Terrance Hayes ("So To Speak", 2023). Yesterday, when I found the poem's first publication in The New Yorker in 2021, I copied it to prepare notes. But then I remembered that when I did the same a few semesters ago with one of Hayes's "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin" (2018), I didn't notice that Hayes had revised the poem between its original magazine publication and its appearance in a book. So now I checked – and was glad I did. The changes were mostly small, but one couplet was significantly different. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 September 2024)

Former President Donald Trump “goes to eleven”:“This is Spinal Tap” in a political commentary

In "Trump’s Old News", his commentary for The New York Review of Books on the debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Fintan O'Toole interprets Trump's rhetoric: "It is hard for Trump to increase the volume when he long ago turned it up to eleven." "Up to eleven" comes from the 1984 Rob Reiner movie "This is Spinal Tap", when Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), guitarist in the band Spinal Tap, brags about how his amplifier dials "go to 11". Tufnel's failure to understand that the labelling of the dial doesn't change the amplifier's volume now marks Trump's increasing inability to ever do anything but shout his outrage. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 September 2024)

 

The similarities between men’s and women’s football – and one noticeable difference

Recently, I have gone to see the FC Basel women's team play a few times. For the most part, the football the women play looks just like how the men play, with the same strategies and tactics, the same ball-control skills, the same mistakes, and the same occasional strokes of genius. But last Friday, at the match between the women's teams of the FC Basel and FC Zürich, I did notice something different about free kicks: in women's matches, the defending players in the wall between the ball and the goal put their hands behind their backs, while the men in the wall put their hands in front of their crotches. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 September 2024)

References to the “weirdness” and “abnormality” of MAGA and the Right” from early 2024

Back in July, when Minnesota's Democratic Governor Tim Walz (now the party's candidate for Vice President) described leading Republican and MAGA politicians in the United States as "weird", the expression caught on, and there was much discussion of the use of the term. The usage seemed new at the time, but today, at the end of an opinion column in the New York Times about Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris, I saw links to two opinion pieces by conservative Times columnists from earlier this year: a January column by Ross Douthat about "the Right's abnormality problem" and to a February column by David French about "the profound weirdness of MAGA." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 September 2024)

Weird Beard’s excellent psychedelia at the Bird’s Eye Basel, 10 September 2024 (and again tonight, 11 September 2024)

At their concert at the Bird's Eye in Basel last night, Weird Beard blended styles into wide-ranging psychedelia: Luzius Schuler contributed electric keyboard textures and jazz-piano solos; drummer Rico Baumanm played rock grooves enriched with inventive jazz fills; Dave Gisler shimmered through electric-guitar sounds from choppy staccato to long, fast, fluid runs; and Florian Egli laid down steadily pulsing lines on electric bass guitar for the others to paint pictures around. There were only a dozen or so people in the audience, and all my Basel-area friends interested in psychedelic improvisations should go check them out tonight at 8:30 pm for the second of their two Bird's Eye shows this week. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 September 2024)

Weird Beard: Luzius Schuler, Florian Egli, Rico Baumann, Dave Gisler

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Thing Around Your Neck” (2009) and xenophobic urban legends about immigrants eating pets and wild animals

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "The Thing Around Your Neck", the title story of her 2009 short-story collection, Nigerian immigrant Akunna hears from her "uncle" what his neighbors in a town in Maine once suspected about his family: "Your uncle [...] told you how the neighbors said, a few months after he moved into his house, that the squirrels had started to disappear. They had heard that Africans ate all kinds of wild animals." I remembered this moment in Adichie's story when I heard the urban legend spread by Republican Vice Presidential candidate J. D. Vance and other xenophobic politicians that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating their neighbors' cats. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 September 2024)

A good line in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please”: "Don't bring me to tеars when I just did my makeup so nice."

I watched and listened to Rick Beato's countdown of the Spotify Top Ten, which he does every few months. While he pays attention to the details of the music, with comments about such things as chord progressions, the use of autotune, and the decade a recording sounds like, he never comments on the lyrics. That's my thing, of course, and one line in a song, Sabrina Carpenter's  "Please Please Please", stood out to me: "Don't bring me to tеars when I just did my makeup so nice." Variations on "don't make me cry" permeate pop music, but I have not heard the wonderful and convincing link to makeup running before. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 September 2024)

 

John Perry Barlow, The Grateful Dead, “Throwing Stones”, and Republican Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris for President

When Dick Cheney, the Republican Vice President of the United States under President George W. Bush (2001-2009), ran for Wyoming's seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1978, Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow worked on his campaign. But within a few years, Cheney's increasingly right-wing politics inspired Barlow's lyric for a 1982 Grateful Dead song by Bob Weir, "Throwing Stones". I hadn't heard of Cheney when I first heard the song then, but I've despised him since he was Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush from 1989-1993. Yet now, that life-long Republican has endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 September 2024)

Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” and my son when he was three years old

When my son Miles was three years old, and my mother was visiting us in Basel, he asked her to read him "The Lorax", by Dr. Seuss. But they couldn't find our copy of the book it was in (a collection of Seuss stories that did not say "The Lorax" on the cover). My mother knew he had heard the story often, so she asked him to recite it to her: "I bet you know it by heart." Then he reeled off line and line of the book, until he stumbled two-thirds of the way through, lost the thread, and despaired: "I'm sorry, Grandma, I don't know 'The Lorax' by heart." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 September 2024)

The Sullivan Act, John Dos Passos’s “Manhattan Transfer” (1925), and the United States Supreme Court’s Bruen decision

In John Dos Passos's novel "Manhattan Transfer" (1925), unemployed and broke Dutch Robertson, who is about to begin a series of robberies, is warned by his girlfriend Francie about carrying a gun in New York State in the 1920s: “Next thing some cop’ll see it on your hip and arrest you for the Sullivan law.” The Sullivan Act was a New York state law passed in 1911 that required people to apply for licenses "to have and carry concealed a pistol or revolver". But the United States Supreme Court struck down the Sullivan Act as unconstitutional in its 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 September 2024)

My favorite pop concerts, my favorite Grateful Dead concert, my favorite recent jazz concert, and the best band I’ve ever seen

The best pop concerts I've ever attended are Talking Heads in San Francisco in 1983, Leonard Cohen in Zurich in 2008, and Taylor Swift in Zurich in 2024. But for me, that category excludes all Grateful Dead concerts and jazz concerts. My favorite Dead show was 22 July 1984 in Ventura, California. The most recent exceptional jazz concert I've seen was Jason Moran on solo piano in Basel this past April. But for the quality of the musicians and the range of the material, the best ever was John Zorn's Naked City in New York and Philadelphia in 1988 and 1990 (with Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith, and Joey Baron). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 September 2024) 

On hearing “Sultans of Swing”, by Dire Straits, in January 1979

I was 14 when the Dire Straits song “Sultans of Swing” came out in the United States in January 1979. I listened to Top 40 radio at the time (I hadn’t yet discovered anything else to listen to in Toledo, Ohio), and the song's guitars and driving beat and evocative story sounded so different than anything else that I heard on the charts. As I just found out, it peaked at number four. When I got the band's eponymous debut album featuring the song, I played it often. Now, at 60. I still turn to it once in a while, as well as to the band's third album, 1980’s “Making Movies”. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 September 2024)

A Japanese lantern lit by gas in Marcel Proust's "Du côté de chez Swann" (1913)

When Charles Swann has tea with Odette de Crécy in Marcel Proust's "Du côté de chez Swann" (1913), they ascend stairs that feature “une grande lanterne japonaise suspendue à une cordelette de soie (mais qui, pour ne pas priver les visiteurs des derniers conforts de la civilisation occidentale s'éclairait au gaz)”. In the mid-to-late nineteenth century France of the novel's "Un amour de Swann" section, the oriental fashion of the Japanese lantern hanging on a silken string may offer an exotic touch, but the practical comforts of occidental progress, here in the form of the gas used to light the lantern, are still maintained. Eastern ornamentation serves to decorate Western functionality. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 September 2024)

Songs about turning or being 64 or 22 or 18 or 16 – but none about turning or being 60?

A friend who turned 64 shortly before I turned 60 responded to my congratulations with "When I'm Sixty-Four", by The Beatles ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", 1967). I couldn't think of a song about turning or being 60, so I responded with "22", by Taylor Swift ("Red", 2012). My friend countered with "I'm Eighteen", by Alice Cooper ("Love It To Death", 1971). Of course many songs have "sixteen" in the title, such as "You're Sixteen", which was written by The Sherman Brothers (who also wrote the songs for "Mary Poppins") and recorded by Johnny Burnette in 1960. I haven't found a song called "Sixty", so maybe I'll write it myself. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 September 2024) 

Witchcraft in Thomas Hardy’s “The Return of the Native” (1878)

In Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" (1878), Eustacia Vye is attacked by her neighbor when she visits church: "Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye with a long stocking-needle [...]." Suspecting Eustacia of witchcraft, Susan responds with her own counterspell. Later, wandering the heath near Susan's house, Eustacia is visible "as distanct as a figure in a phantasmagoria", and Susan proceeds to make a beeswax effigy of her enemy, stick it full of needles, and hold it over her fire to melt and burn. In a storm later that night, Eustacia falls into a roaring stream and drowns, but nobody but Hardy's readers knows about Susan's burning of the effigy. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 August 2024)

Steve Silberman (1957-2024): The Grateful Dead, journalism, the history of autism, and a lively presence on social media

I first heard of Steve Silberman (1957-2024) at the latest in 1994, when he published "Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads" with David Schenk. Later, I discovered him on Twitter, where I followed his sharp, insightful, and witty posts on a wide range of subjects, from queer issues to jam-band music, and especially the history of autism and the concept of neurodiversity that he explored in his 2015 book "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity". Today, when I began listening to the latest episode of the Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast, it was sad and moving to hear his voice after the news that he died Wednesday night. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 August 2024) 

Ben Rhodes, the moment between the Trump assassination attempt and the Biden withdrawal, and our moment today

"How will we look back on this moment?", writes Ben Rhodes in the New York Review of Books of 15 August 2024. With its references to "the horrifying attempt to assassinate Trump" and a potentially "hastily chosen alternative" to United States President Joe Biden's candidacy for re-election, the article's "moment" was between 13 July (the assassination attempt) and 21 July (Biden's withdrawal in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris). Yet Rhodes's point remains in our new moment today: even if Donald Trump loses, "we still won't move beyond the ominous nature of our current predicament." A Harris win won't make Trump's supporters and their authoritarian threat to the United States disappear. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 August 2024)

 

German words hyphenated at the end of lines of print: “bein- / halten” and “Isotopenana- / lysen"

In the early 1990s, while working on my dissertation in Comparative Literature ("Observing Women: Doris Lessing, Christa Wolf, Marguerite Duras", University of Pennsylvania, 1995), I found a German word hyphenated at the end of a line of prose: "bein- / halten". I thought this had something to do with "holding" ("halten") a "leg" ("bein"), but that made no sense in context. Only after I looked it up did I see that the word combined the prefix "be-" and "inhalten" and recognize it as a verb meaning "comprise" or "contain". I remembered this just now when it took me several seconds to decipher "Isotopenana- / lysen" as "Isotopen-analysen" or analysis of isotopes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 August 2024)

“Orangeade” in Marcel Proust's "Du côté de chez Swann" (1913) and the history of the word “orangeade”

In Marcel Proust's "Du côté de chez Swann" (1913), Mme Verdurin offers the young pianist at her salon a drink: "Allons, donne-lui de l'orangeade, il l'a bien méritée." The "-ade" ending for fruit-flavored drinks was introduced into English through the French loanword "limonade". French Wiktionary cites an earlier "orangeade" in Alexandre Dumas père's novel "Joseph Balsamo" (1853). And the Corpus of Historical American English has a reference from an 1855 article in Harper's that marks the word's French origin: "The French are, in a similar manner, famous, from of old, for their skill in the manufacture of refreshing beverages, which they call, from the fruits that are used, orgeade, orangeade, etc." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 August 2024)

The origin of “cliffhanger” and moments of excellence in Thomas Hardy’s novels

In "The Secrets of Suspense" (The New Yorker, 27 May 2024), Kathryn Schulz mentions the origin of the word "cliffhanger" in Thomas Hardy's novel "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (1873), in which Henry Knight hangs on a cliff until his love interest Elfride Swancourt is able to rescue him. Schulz then adds, "I cannot in good conscience recommend 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' [...]". But then she admits that "the scene on the cliff is a tiny, self-contained masterpiece: smart, riveting, and, so to speak, completely over the top." That is what keeps me reading Hardy's novels in chronological order: even his weaker novels are full of such moments of excellence. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 August 2024)

 

Celebrating my 23rd birthday in 1987 at Angels Camp with David Lindley, Santana, and The Grateful Dead

I spent the weekend of 22-23 August, 1987, at Calaveras County Fairgrounds in Angels Camp, California. I didn't see any "celebrated jumping frogs", but there was an air show both days, and a few musicians gathered on stage to play many hours of music: first, David Lindley and his band El-Rayo X; then Santana; then The Grateful Dead, with Carlos Santana sitting in with them on two songs each night ("Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "In the Midnight Hour" on Saturday; "Iko Iko" and "All Along the Watchtower" on Sunday). It was a nice way to celebrate my birthday (23 on the Sunday) with my friends Sam Sandmire and Eric Williams. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 August 2024)

Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France; the Second Vatican Council; and Georges Brassens

Today, my friend John Arbuckle and I visited the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France (designed by Le Corbusier in 1955). During the mass held while we were there, visitors were allowed in but asked not to take any photographs. It was all in French, of course, and I first thought that when the church opened, the mass would still have been in Latin, as vernacular languages only began to used in Roman Catholic services after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). And then I thought of French singer Georges Brassens (1921-1981) and his 1976 song "Tempête dans un bénitier": "Sans le latin, sans le latin, / La messe nous emmerde." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 August 2024) 

Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., during Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2024 Democratic National Convention speech

For a couple of seconds during Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last night, the camera cut to the eighty-two-year-old Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., and I remembered two previous presidential elections: first, I voted for Jackson in the California presidential primary in 1984 (the first presidential election after I turned 18) and watched his televised speech at the DNC that July in San Francisco. Second, on election night in November 2008 in Chicago during Barack Obama's speech after his opponent John McCain conceded, there was a similar cut to Jackson crying at the sight of the first African-American to win the highest office in the United States. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 August 2024)

Nineteenth-century criticism of colonialism and enslavement by Lord Byron and US Catholics of the time

In "The British Museum’s Blockbuster Scandals" (The New Yorker, 13 May 2024), Rebecca Mead writes, "[...] the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles [in 1816] was controversial from the start (Lord Byron decried their removal from the Acropolis as vandalism)". And while reviewing "The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church", by Rachel L. Swarns (The New York Review of Books, 23 May 2024), Tiya Miles writes, "[...] every [antebellum] argument for slavery and human sale presented by a Jesuit priest or church leader was countered by other members of the faith". Such examples undermine claiming that criticism of past colonialism and enslavement constitutes "presentism". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 August 2024)

 

Dictating poems in Spring 1997

In Spring 1997, I had a problem with my right wrist which made it hard to write. I spent the University of Basel semester break in Poitiers, where Andrea was teaching in the University's German Department. As I wanted to write poems, I bought a handheld dictaphone and tried out what it was like to dictate poems instead of writing them. Then I typed them up left-handed, which was also an interesting experience for someone who knows how to touch type. I found myself writing two poems in the voice of a seventeen-year-old girl, Erica, who was in trouble with her parents for having stayed out all night with her boyfriend. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 August 2024)

Andreas Schärer, Colin Vallon, and Mario Hänni will be at the Bird’s Eye in Basel on 13 and 14 August 2024

For my 30th and 31st concerts by Andreas Schärer, I'll go to the Bird's Eye in Basel tomorrow and Wednesday (13 and 14 August) to see him with Colin Vallon on piano and Mario Hänni on drums. I've only seen Vallon once before, with guitarist Rory Stuart at the Bird's Eye in July 2005. I've never seen Mario Hänni, but the first thing I found when I just looked him up was him performing Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" with Evelinn Trouble in a ten-piece band in Geneva in May 2023. That makes this Pink Floyd fan look forward to seeing him! Come and join me if you can! (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 August 2024)

 

Thomas Hardy’s “The Hand of Ethelberta” (1876)

A few days ago, I finished another Thomas Hardy novel: "The Hand of Ethelberta" (1876). While George Gissing considered it "surely old Hardy's poorest book", I thought it worked pretty well. While Hardy's two previous novels, "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (1873) and "Far From the Madding Crowd" (1874), had central female characters with three men wanting to marry them, the titular Ethelberta has four men after her in the course of the book (plus, she's already a widow). For me, its main flaw is the ending, which skips a number of years that could have offered a very interesting story of Ethelberta taking control of her spendthrift second husband's life. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 August 2024)

Epidemiologist Adrien Proust (1834-1903) in Simon Schama’s “Foreign Bodies” (2023)

As many readers of Simon Schama's "Foreign Bodies: The Terror of Contagion, the Ingenuity of Science" (2023) probably were, I was surprised that a chapter in a book on the history of vaccination was titled "Proust's Travels." But the Proust in question is not Marcel (1871-1922), the author of "À la recherche du temps perdu" (1913-1927), but his father Adrien (1834-1903), an epidemiologist whose journey all over Europe and Asia to try to organize a cooperative international response to cholera led him to be called "the geographer of epidemics". Like numerous figures in Schama's book, Adrien Proust clashed with political and nationalist resistance to public-health measures taken to combat infectious disease. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 August 2024)

“Oh give me a break”: Words from Donald Trump that Kamala Harris should use against him

Asked at a press conference yesterday about the size of the crowds at speeches by Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Vice Presidential cnadidate Tim Walz, former President and Republican Party candidate Donald Trump began his answer with colloquial exasperation: "Oh, give me a break." I hope to see this turned into a meme that can be used to respond to convicted felon Trump's many ridiculous statements, such as his subsequent lie at that press conference that "nobody died on January 6th" when the United States Capitol was stormed by his violent supporters in 2021. May Harris, Walz, and other Democratic politicians add "give me a break" to their rhetoric. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 August 2024)

Swifties in Vienna sing “Long Live” to defy terror

After the cancellation of the three Taylor Swift concerts scheduled in Vienna for 8-10 August, Anne Sauer (author of "Look What She Made Us Do", Rowohlt 2024) posted an Instagram video of Swifties singing "Long Live" (from "Speak Now", 2010). Swift wrote the song for her fans and the members of her band: "Long live the walls we crashed through / How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you / I was screaming, 'Long live all the magic we made' / And bring on all the pretenders / One day, we will be remembered." The Swifties in Vienna have made it into an anthem for joy and against terror. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 August 2024)

Scientific American summarizes the “dangers to science” in Project 2025, the policy blueprint for a second Trump administration

In July, Scientific American published "What to Know about Project 2025’s Dangers to Science", an article by four of their editors, Ben Guarino, Andrea Thompson, Tanya Lewis, and Lauren J. Young. With a focus on abortion, agriculture, climate change, education, the environment, health care, and technology, the article characterizes the devastating effects on science of policies proposed in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a second Trump administration in the United States. Among the project's many radical, dangerous, and ridiculous proposals is the elimination of the National Weather Service, a move that would cripple the country's warning system for such severe weather events as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and heat waves. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 August 2024)

 

Governor Tim Walz, the “weird” Republican leaders, and people in the United States as "WEIRD"

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, the nominee for Vice President on the Democratic Party ticket with current Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States election, first drew significant national attention for his characterization of the leadership of the Republican Party: "These are weird people on the other side." While there are nice ways to be weird, Walz has offered the creepy examples of Republican politicians "taking books away" and being in the doctor's office. But I keep remembering anthropologist Joseph Heinrich's acronym WEIRD for "Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic" people. In these terms, from a global perspective, almost everyone in the United States is "weird". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 August 2024)

The common swifts have left Basel, but there’s still another brilliant aerialist to observe

In the jet-lagged daze that I was (and actually still am) in after I returned to Switzerland last Wednesday, I did not think of looking into the sky to see if I could catch a last sighting of swifts before they head to Africa for the winter. Only on Saturday did they cross my mind, when they were almost certainly gone (at least the common swifts, as the Alpine swifts around the Basel Münster often leave later). But when I went on a walk this evening, I had several sightings of another magnificent aerialist: bats, whose insect-hunting flight through the same habitat as swifts has led them to evolve similar traits. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 August 2024)

XTC’s “Leisure” and the need for a universal basic income

"They taught me how to work / But they can't teach me how to shirk correctly": for the unemployed speaker in Andy Partridge's song "Leisure" on XTC's 1982 album "English Settlement", the powers-that-be ("they") failed to educate him for the life he is actually living. But in late twentieth-century capitalism, as well as today, "they" do not want workers to learn "how to shirk", that is, enjoy any leisure time, even in the face of chronic unemployment: "What a waste of breath it is / Searching for the jobs that don't exist." In 2024, I'm spinning this as an anthem calling for a universal basic income instead of a miserly dole. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 August 2024)

Judith Butler’s concept of the “phantasm” of gender as a way to understand the outrage directed at the women competing in Olympic boxing

While I was in the United States last month, I picked up Judith Butler's "Who's Afraid of Gender?" (2024). By now, I have read fifty-plus pages of it. As I expected, Butler uses some psychonanalytic terminology (which I am very skeptical about). But their identification of the term "gender" as a "phantasm" that "has to gather up a wide range of fears and anxieties – no matter how they contradict one another – package them into a single bundle, and subsume them under a single name." This week, I have found the concept of the phantasm useful in understanding the incoherent outrage directed at Olympic boxers Imane Khelif (Algeria) and Lin Yu-Ting (Taiwan). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 August 2024)

The trinational background of my three children – and of United States Vice President Kamala Harris

Like Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States and the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for the United States presidential election on 5 November, 2024, my children have three national backgrounds. Harris's parents were born and raised in India and Jamaica, while she was born and raised in the United States (and lived in Canada as a teenager). I was born and raised in the United States, and my wife Andrea in Germany. While our first child was born in Germany, our other two children were born in Basel, Switzerland, where all three have grown up. They all identify strongly with their three countries: the United States, Germany, and Switzerland. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 August 2024)

The binational background of Donald Trump’s children and the trinational background of Kamala Harris

Donald Trump was born in the United States in 1946. His first wife, Ivana Zelníčková Trump, was born in Czechoslovakia in 1949; this third, Melania Knauss Trump, in Slovenia in 1970. His children, Donald Jr. (b. 1977), Ivanka (b. 1981), Eric (b. 1984), and Barron (b. 2006), thus all have binational backgrounds. Yet all that doesn't keep Trump from spouting racist nonsense about the trinational background of Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in the 2024 United States presidential election: her father Donald J. Harris was born in 1938 in Jamaica, her mother Shyamala Gopalan was born in 1938 in India, and she was born in 1964 in the United States. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 August 2024)

“You won’t have to vote anymore”: The convicted felon announces his intention to end democracy in the United States

In a speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, this evening, convicted felon Donald Trump told the audience at the Turning Point USA Believers' Summit that they "have to get out and vote." He then added, "In four more years, you know what? It will be fixed. It will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote." So Trump has just announced that, if he wins the Presidential election on 5 November 2024, he does in fact intend to end voting in the United States, and hence end democracy. Or how else can this be interpreted? (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 July 2024)

Good music by local musicians: Screen Door at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston, Massachusetts

It's nice to go out on a summer evening and hear some good music by local musicians. In this case, my sister, my daughter, and I went to Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston, Massachusetts, and heard a duo from nearby Holden called Screen Door, two vocalists playing accordeon and acoustic guitar (with subtle touches from an electric hi-hat pedal). They offered an excellent selection of covers, from Otis Redding's "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" and Paul Simon's "Me And Julio Down by the Schoolyard" to songs by The Decemberists and Ray LaMontagne, as well as a number of tunes I didn't know but others in the audience did. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 July 2024)

Doing a lazy breaststroke while listening to music, then remembering Hal Ashby’s “Harold and Maude” (1971)

 The air temperature where my sister lives is 24° C (75° F), and the water temperature in her pool is 26° C (79° F). Still, in the water, I kept moving to not be chilly. With music playing from my phone, I swam the crawl a bit. But I don't like swimming laps, so I did a lazy breaststroke with my head out of the water to hear the music. I felt like Mrs. Chasen (Vivian Pickles) slowly swimming to the first movement of Tschaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and merely glancing at her well-dressed son Harold (Bud Cort) floating like a drowned corpse in Hal Ashby's "Harold and Maude" (1971). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 July 2024)

On United States President Joe Biden’s decision to serve out his term

One of my first thoughts when I heard that United States President Joe Biden had withdrawn from the Presidential campaign was that he should also resign the presidency now, but of course he rejected that idea in his official statement with his decision "to focus solely on my duties as President for the remainder of my term." In the meantime, I think that was the right move, as it frees up Vice President Kamala Harris to focus on campaigning. Still, if Harris were now the 47th President of the United States, that would have had the ironic side effect of ruining former President and convicted felon Donald Trump's "Trump 47" merchandise. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 July 2024)

From Biden’s poor debate performance to his withdrawal from the Presidential campaign

I was incredibly annoyed by the public discussion in the United States of President Joe Biden's poor performance in his debate with convicted felon Donald Trump on 27 June 2024. As has happened so often lately, everything seemed to be about criticizing the flaws of the Democratic Presidential candidate while ignoring the Republican candidate's weaknesses. So I'd been hoping Biden would stay in the race. But when he withdrew yesterday, he chose a good time for the decision: after the Republican convention last week. Vice President and likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will surely face similarly unbalanced coverage, but the age issue Republicans have been emphasizing now only applies to Trump. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 July 2024)

Word Salad: A writing activity for groups

At our family reunion this evening, I did an activity I adapted from a project by German poet Thorsten Krämer. My brother-in-law dubbed it "Word Salad": I asked everyone to write their name and six words on an index card. I then wrote each of them a short text that contained their six words. After dinner, I read all those texts out loud to the group. An alternative would be to have the group guess whose words were used in each text. I've also used this near the end of the semester in creative-writing classes, with each student writing a poem based on six words chosen by one of their classmates. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 July 2024)

Deciding to read Emily Dickinson’s letters, then stumbling on a new edition a few hours later

When I took the train into Boston yesterday, I alternated between reading R. W. Franklin's "Reading Edition" of "The Poems of Emily Dickinson" (1999) and Alfred Habegger's "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson" (2001). In the latter, I read about letters Dickinson wrote in 1850, the year she turned twenty, and I decided that I wanted to finally read an edition of her letters. In the evening at the Booksmith bookstore in Brookline, I was browsing the "new non-fiction" section, and there was a brand-new 2024 edition of "The Letters of Emily Dickinson", edited by Cristanne Millear and Domhnall Mitchell. I bought it, of course. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 July 2024)

A very minor incident at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

In the Dutch Room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston today, I wanted to take a picture of the oil painting "A Lesson on the Theorbo," from the workshop of Gerard ter Borch the Younger (1617–1681). When I pulled my phone out of my pocket, the plastic number I'd been given when I checked my backpack fell behind a set of early 19th-century French chairs of walnut and gilded bronze. Given that the room is where two Rembrandts were stolen in 1990, I did not go down on my knees to get the number, but a security guard reached behind the chairs to pick it up for me. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 July 2024)

Finding an affectionate English expression for an old woman to translate a bit of German word play

In a graphic novel I'm translating from German into English, an old man on his sixtieth wedding anniversary calls his wife "meine Faltenschnitte". I played around with this word for a while to try to figure out what to do with it, but when I finally admitted I was stumped, I consulted with my wife Andrea, a native speaker of German. She associated it with "Sahneschnitte", which is both a type of pastry or cake and a word for an attractive young woman. So she made several suggestions for a possible English translation of "Faltenschnitte" as a term of endearment for an old woman, of which my favorite was "sugar wrinkle". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 July 2024)

“Bright pools of electric glare” outside a cinema in John Dos Passos’s “Manhattan Transfer” (1925)

In John Dos Passos's "Manhattan Transfer" (1925), in a scene that takes place in the early 1910s, before the outbreak of World War One (given an earlier reference to the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and a later reference to Sarajevo), dancer Cassandra (Cassie) Wilkins and her boyfriend Morris McAvoy leave a cinema: "They came out of the movie blinking into bright pools of electric glare." What strikes me about this is how often that is my own experience of coming out of a cinema, especially when the movie started before night fell: I am very aware of the "bright pools of electric glare", and often quite disoriented by the nighttime lights. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 July 2024) 

Thomas Hardy’s references to painters in “Far From the Madding Crowd” (1874)

Charles Dickens's novels are full of references to literature that inspired Dickens (especially "Robinson Crusoe"), and I have also noticed some in Thomas Hardy's novels. But unlike Dickens, Hardy also refers to painters. In "From the Madding Crowd" (1874), he compares Gabriel Oak's dog George's fur to paintings by English painter J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), "as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner’s pictures". That comparison remains in England, but charwoman Maryann Money's "brown complexion" recalls the earlier French painter Poussin (1594-1665) with its "mellow hue of an old sketch in oils—notably some of Nicholas Poussin’s." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 July 2024) 

The two Presidents of the United States whose previous highest office was being in the House of Representatives: Garfield and Lincoln?

In a conversation this evening, the issue of whether Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is old enough to run for President of the United States came up. She almost is, as she will turn 35 (the minimum age) in October. But I wondered who has ever been elected President with the House of Representatives as their previously highest elected office. Unless I missed someone, there are two cases: Abraham Lincoln (Representative from Illinois, 1847-1949; elected President in 1860) and James A. Garfield (Representative from Ohio, 1863-1880; elected President in 1880). The odd coincidence is that both were assassinated (Lincoln in 1865; Garfield in 1881, after only six-and-a-half months in office). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 July 2024)

Taylor Swift in Zurich, 9 July 2024

Yesterday, in the baking heat at Zurich's Letzigrund stadium, we experienced three-plus hours of music and performance by Taylor Swift, her dancers,  her band, and her stage designers. The show was as intense as my previous two benchmarks for pop concerts: Leonard Cohen (Zurich 2008) and Talking Heads (San Francisco 1983). I was particularly struck by how, in part by the powerhouse arrangements and in part by the concert's sheer volume, the selections from the almost ambient recordings on Swift's two 2020 albums, “folklore” and “evermore”, were transformed live into anthems, especially in a moving performance of "marjorie": "What died didn't stay dead, / You're alive, you're alive in my head." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 July 2024)

How I memorized the setlists during concerts by The Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead setlists changed from show to show, with few or no repeats in multi-show runs at one venue. The peak for me was when they played 97 songs with only five repeats at a six-show run at the Berkeley Community Theater around Halloween 1984. I got good at memorizing the lists during shows; I’d remember the first word or letter of each title. For the second set on 30 October 1984, then, I would have remembered Scarlet Fire Far Estimated Eyes Drums Space Other Stella Sugar US or perhaps just SFFEEDSOSSU. On the way home after shows, my friends were always surprised I could remember the whole list so well. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 July 2024)

Taylor Swift could play five three-hour concerts without repeating songs + my wishes for the “surprise songs” on the first night in Zurich

Your numbers may vary, but there are 232 tracks on 11 albums in my Taylor Swift music collection, with a few duplicates, such as two versions of "State of Grace". It  comes to fifteen hours and twenty minutes of music in all. Her concerts on her Eras Tour are three hours and fifteen minutes long, so she could do five such concerts with few or even no repetitions of songs. (This is how a Deadhead thinks, of course.) But the current setlist includes 44 fixed songs plus two "surprise songs" at each concert. Tomorrow in Zurich, I'd like to hear "New Year's Day" and "When Emma Falls in Love" as surprises. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 July 2024)

The vividly developed conceits of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun” and Ringo Starr’s “Octopus’s Garden” on The Beatles 1969 album “Abbey Road"

From 1967 on (the year of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"), John Lennon and Paul McCartney's lyrics were so consistently strong that it becomes less interesting to describe what makes them so good. I'll conclude my posts on lyrics by The Beatles, then, with "Abbey Road" (1969) – and two songs by their bandmates, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Harrison's "Here Comes The Sun" may be a very simple text, but it vividly develops its conceit from start to finish (and of course the acoustic guitar is gorgeous). The same can be said for Starr's even more vivid "Octopus Garden", a "joy for every girl and boy" – and adults as well. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 July 2024)

The first two songs on “The Beatles” (1968, aka “The White Album”)

The double album "The Beatles" (1968), or "The White Album", as fans immediately dubbed it, has so many songs I'll just comment on the first two's lyrics. Paul McCartney's "Back in the USSR" lives from its specificity, such as the BOAC flight from Miami Beach to the Soviet Union, and its humor, which peaks in the verse alluding to The Beach Boys song "California Girls": "Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out." John Lennon's "Dear Prudence" is much simpler in its address to Prudence, but it spins out variations on a theme, from "Won't you come out to play?" to "Open up your eyes" and "Let me see you smile." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 July 2024)

The vividness of Paul McCartney’s “Penny Lane” and other songs on the US version of “Magical Mystery Tour”, by The Beatles (1967)

My posts on Beatles lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney have focused on the song lists on their UK releases. But the US version of "Magical Mystery Tour" supplements the six songs on the British EP with five extraordinary singles, including the brilliant pair of Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever" and McCartney's "Penny Lane". Those two are not only grounded in the songwriters' lives but also overflow with imagery, something completely absent from songs on the band's early albums. "Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes", McCartney sings – and the vivid descriptions of the barber, banker, fireman, and nurse make it live for our ears and eyes, too. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 July 2024)

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarizes the nonsensical implications of “Trump v. United States"

In her dissent in the aptly named "Trump v. United States" decision today, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor explains the majority's ruling: "The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s exercise of 'core constitutional powers.' [...] the second move [...] is to create expansive immunity for all 'official act[s].' [...] Finally, [...] evidence concerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him. [...] That holding, which will prevent the Government from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 July 2024)

 

The complete opinion is here. 

John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s wide-ranging lyrics on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967)

On "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967), John Lennon and Paul McCartney further expanded their lyrical range. "A Day in the Life", one of the few real collaborations in the Lennon-McCartney songbook, blends Lennon's surreal spin on reading the news with McCartney's down-to-earth take on getting up in the morning and going to work. In "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", Lennon drew on a drawing by his son Julian and a nineteenth-century circus poster, as well as on Lewis Carroll. In the title song, McCartney played with stereotypical concert announcements, while "When I'm Sixty-Four" offers a playful long-term take on romance. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 June 2024)

How I predicted a goal in the Germany-Denmark match right before it happened

In the 68th minute of this evening's match between Germany and Denmark at the UEFA European Men's Football Championship, Germany's Antonio Rüdiger passed the ball from midfield back to Manuel Neuer, and I said, "There's going to be a goal now." Neuer passed to Nico Schlotterbeck, who made a long pass over more than half the pitch to winger Jamal Musiala, who controlled the ball and shot it past Danish goalkeeper Kaspar Schmeichel for a 2-0 lead. My wife Andrea wondered how I'd called the goal, so I explained: the Euro app on my iPhone announces goals a few seconds before they are shown on the obviously slightly delayed television broadcast. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 June 2024)

The widening subject matter of Beatles songwriters Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s lyrics on “Revolver” (1966)

The breakthroughs in lyrics by Beatles songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney on "Rubber Soul" (1965) were formal: they involved humor, rhetoric, characterization, thematic development, scene-setting, and storytelling. Only Lennon's "Nowhere Man" and "In My Life" widened their basic subject matter beyond variations on love songs. On "Revolver" (1966), McCartney's lyrics may have mostly stuck to that subject, but he also wrote the moving character study of the impovishered old woman "Eleanor Rigby" and the surreal sing-a-long "Yellow Submarine", while Lennon contributed increasingly wild songs that culminated in the album closer "Tomorrow Never Knows", inspired by LSD trips and Timothy Leary's "The Psychedelic Experience" (and driven by Ringo Starr's thunderous drumming). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 June 2024)

John Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood” and the lyrical breakthroughs of “Rubber Soul”, by The Beatles (1965)

John Lennon's "Norwegian Wood", which started my train of thought about lyrics he and Paul McCartney wrote for The Beatles, tells a quickly and precisely sketched story (of a one-night stand) in a vivid setting (the woman's apartment with its "Norwegian wood") with humor ("I crawled out to sleep in the bath"), rhetoric (the antimetabole that opens the song), and a twist (the man sets fire to the apartment at the end). Several other superbly developed lyrics exemplify the songwriters' breakthroughs on "Rubber Soul" (1965), including the character sketch of Lennon's "Nowhere Man" and the bilingual humor of McCartney's  "Michelle" (along with his "Drive My Car" and "I'm Looking Through You"). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 June 2024)

 

Footnote: Lennon later said he hated the album closer, his own "Run For Your Life", for its abusive misogyny. 

The stronger lyrics on “Help!” (1964), the fifth album by The Beatles

There are still some flat lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney on "Help!" (1964), The Beatles' fifth album, but more songs have clear strengths. Lennon's title song has strong thematic development, while his "Ticket to Ride" has another striking title, and both "I've Just Seen a Face" and "Yesterday", by McCartney, explore the effects of the passage of time. The album's strongest original lyric is Lennon's "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away", with its vividly developed image ("gather around all you clowns"), but again a cover song has the best lyric: the comic story of Johnny Russell's "Act Naturally", originally released in 1963 by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 June 2024)

“Beatles for Sale” (1964): A step forward in Lennon and McCartney’s lyrics

With "Beatles for Sale" (1964), John Lennon and Paul McCartney take a step forward with their lyrics. Lennon's "No Reply" has a setting and objects ("your door", "your window", a telephone). Although they mostly just repeat it, other songs have some imagery, such as Lennon's "I'm a Loser" (a clown with a mask; tears like rain) and McCartney's "I'll Follow the Sun" ("tomorrow may rain, / but I'll follow the sun"). And although it is also repetitive, "Eight Days A Week" has its striking and memorable title. But as on "With the Beatles", the best lyric here is by Chuck Berry, with the vivid extended figures in "Rock and Roll Music". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 June 2024) 

The somewhat better lyrics of the Lennon-McCartney songs on The Beatles’ third album, “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964)

The lyrics John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote for The Beatles' third album, "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), show some improvement compared to the consistently flat and clichéd lyrics on their first two albums. The title song has its paradoxical title, and "Can't Buy Me Love" has some clear thematic development. On "I'll Cry Instead" and "You Can't Do That", Lennon livens up his songs with some anger. And McCartney's "Things We Said Today" (with its lovely and surprising B-flat chord at the end of the bridge), whose lyrics are still mostly vague and generic, at least has the nice variation of "Someday when I'm lonely" to "Someday when I'm dreaming". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 June 2024)

The weak lyrics of the Lennon-McCartney songs on “Please Please Me” and “With the Beatles” in 1963

The songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney on The Beatles' first two albums ("Please Please Me" and "With the Beatles", 1963) explode with musical energy (as with "I Saw Her Standing There"), but their texts are cliché-ridden and devoid of imagery, story, characters, or even humor. Some of the cover songs have better texts: "Till There Was You", by Meredith Wilson (from the 1957 musical "The Music Man"), is full of well-developed images, and the epistolary conceits of both Chuck Berry's 1956 "Roll Over Beethoven" and the multi-authored 1961 hit "Please Mr. Postman", by The Marvelettes, are rigorously and wittily extended. Only later did Lennon and McCartney become good lyricists. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 June 2024)

Why does a teen idol like Taylor Swift interest even oldies like me?

I'm still getting interview requests about my Taylor Swift seminar. This week, I was asked how a teen idol like Swift could interest even oldies like me. I gave three answers. First, with eleven albums in eighteen years, and four since her thirtieth birthday, she has long been writing music for adults. Secondly, I don't listen to music according to its "target audience". I listen, and when I like something, I keep listening. Thirdly, as a teacher and parent, I have enough experience with young people to take them seriously, rather than "assuming they know nothing", as Swift says, or in this case, that they are mere suckers for marketing campaigns. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 June 2024)

The Basel-based vocal group OWK and their wide-ranging arrangements from Coltrane and Sinatra to Mitchell and The Bee Gees

Yesterday in the foyer of the Theater Basel, I heard the Basel-based vocal group OWK for the second time: the four singers Maria von Rütte, Alice Auclair, Martina Henriques Dias, and Sneha Lama, accompanied by guitarist Eren Şimşek and bassist Paddy Fitzgerald. Once again, they impressed me with their wonderful arrangements, which ranged from John Coltrane's 1960 "Naima" (from "Giant Steps") and David Mann and Bob Hilliard's 1955 "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" (which Frank Sinatra was the first to record) to Joni Mitchell's 1971 "A Case of You" (from "Blue") and The Bee Gees' 1977 "How Deep Is Your Love?" (from the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever"). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 June 2024)

Excellent commentary on BBC1 for the UEFA European Men's Football Championship

I have several options for watching the UEFA European Men's Football Championship in languages I know: stations from Germany, France, Austria, and Britain, or Swiss broadcasts in German and French. For last Sunday's match between England and Serbia, I enjoyed the BBC1 commentary so much that I just watched Germany play Hungary on that channel. Wasting little time with background, the commentators focus on details like German midfielder İlkay Gündoğan's superb movement or moments of poor positioning by defenders, as when Hungary's center-back Willi Orbán moved his feet poorly and was unable to clear a ball without surrendering a corner. In one hour, I'll stay on BBC1 for Switzerland against Scotland. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 June 2024)

Jamming from The Velvet Underground’s 1967 song “I’m Waiting for the Man” into Traffic’s 1967 song “Dear Mr. Fantasy"

At the end of "I'm Waiting for the Man", which Lou Reed wrote and recorded with The Velvet Underground for their 1967 debut "The Velvet Underground & Nico", I like to go into a jam that feels like drifting along high on something (heroin in the song; jamming for me), "until tomorrow but that's just some other time." Today, I suddenly found myself going into "Dear Mr. Fantasy", which Traffic recorded on their 1967 debut "Mr. Fantasy" (with words by Jim Capaldi and music by Steve Winwood and Chris Wood. Afterwards, it seemed fitting: in Capaldi's words, Reed may "break out in tears", but he still "can make us all laugh". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 June 2024)

A giant red rose painted on my face and a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert, forty years ago today, 17 June 1984

Forty years ago today, there was some sort of summer fair on the Stanford University campus, and I came across a woman who was doing face-painting. I asked her if she could do a giant red rose around my right eye. She said she'd give it a try, we agreed on a price (I don't remember how much, but more than for her standard things), and she spent quite a long time patiently painting that rose. That evening, I went to the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco to see Stevie Ray Vaughan (for the second time), and all through the concert, I wondered why people kept staring so intently at me. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 June 2024) 

UC Berkeley law professor John C. Yoo should be persona non grata, but if you quote him, you should always identify him as the author of the torture memos

In a Substack post today on "The Right's Politics of Revenge", historian Thomas Zimmer summarized what Donald Trump supporters said after his felony conviction on 30 May. I liked how he identified one supporter: "John C. Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley and also the guy who authored the torture memos under George W. Bush [...]." Although I'd seen Yoo's remarks on Trump before, I was sure he'd only been referred to as a professor, but at least The New York Times on 5 June called him "the author of once-secret Bush administration legal memos declaring that the president can lawfully violate legal limits on torturing detainees and wiretapping without warrants". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 June 2024)

 

"Luckily we can predict what our machine guns will do”: A line from Katy Evans-Bush’s “Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle” and its echo in a SCOTUS decision

"Luckily we can predict what our machine guns will do," writes Katy Evans-Bush in "From lines by Kenneth Patchen #14" in her book "Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle" (CB Editions, 2024). These poems make songs of what this decade offers us ("what it takes to make songs with" in #9), but that machine-gun line makes a song of something that happened yesterday, long after the poem was written: the United States Supreme Court ruled that "bump stocks", which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire nearly as fast as machine guns, cannot be regulated in the United States. Unluckily, we can almost always predict what SCOTUS will do these days. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 June 2024)

Remembering reading Philip Levine’s poem “28” in “The New Yorker” in September 1986

Yesterday, British poet Raymond Antrobus asked me if I had a favorite poem I had first read in The New Yorker. I remembered reading "28" by Philip Levine back in the 1980s. I dug the poem up in the magazine's archives: it was published in the issue of 1 September 1986. I was 22 at the time, and the poem floored me with the 56-year-old poet recalling (and perhaps fictionalizing) his experiences half his life ago: "At 28 I was still faithless." The poem appeared in Levine’s “A Walk with Tom Jefferson” in 1988. I bought the book in Boulder, Colorado, on 17 August 1988, which I noted in the book. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 June 2024)