Vanza and the scent of Don Q

When Vanza became Don Q’s squire, he wondered about the noticeable smell. There was something musty and sweaty about it, with an insufficient touch of cologne. He knew at once he should never mention it to Don Q himself, or even to anyone else. So when Vanza and Don Q saw a frenetic man come down the road and reach out his hand to them, Vanza also said nothing about the potent scent, reminiscent of forests, that mingled with the now familiar aroma of his master. After praising Don Q for his vision and vigor, the man pointed to the windmills and introduced himself, “Lone Odor. Let’s fight the giants together.” (Andrew Shields, #111words, 4 February 2025)

“Mohalaca” in Jorge Luis Borges’s “La busca de Averroes” (1947)

In “La busca de Averroes”, a 1947 story by Jorge Luis Borges, I came across “mohalaca”, which isn’t in the Word Reference bilingual dictionary. So I checked Wikcionario, which had a definition – and its example was the passage from Borges’s story! “Mohalaca” is a Spanish spelling of the Arabic “Mu'allaqat”, “the hanging poems”, which refers to a set of pre-Islamic poems in Arabic that were hung up in the Kaaba in Mecca. Borges, the Argentine writer who was not yet completely blind in 1947, refers to the poem by Zuhayr bin Abi Sulma and its reference to a “blind camel”: “I see death is like the blundering of a blind camel”. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 February 2025)

Mexican President Sheinbaum’s statement in response to accusations by the Trump administration about Mexican drug cartels and the Mexican government

Yesterday, a “fact sheet” released by the administration of United States President Donald Trump claimed that “the Mexican drug trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico”. In response, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum issued a statement: “We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Government of Mexico, accusing it of having alliances with criminal organizations.” While I was pleased that I was able to read her statement in Spanish without looking anything up, I was also struck by its tone: this is how politicians worldwide, and especially Democratic Party politicians in the United States, should be talking to the bullies in the Trump administration. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 February 2025)

“Fork it!”: An expression I picked up from “The Good Place"

Yesterday, I was doing something in the kitchen, and something (I don't remember what) slipped out of my hand and spilled onto the counter. "Fork it!" I exclaimed, and was amused as always when I use that expression instead of the other work that starts with F and ends with K. I picked the "fork" version up from the television series "The Good Place" a few years ago: the characters in the "good place" in the afterlife cannot use swear words, so they say "fork" and "shirt" instead. Once, when Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) finds herself outside of "the good place", she is thrilled to be able to cuss properly again. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 1 February 2025)

Lorca to Keats to Lenau to Shields to Lorca: Ruiseñores, nightingales, Nachtigallen

On Tuesday, my Spanish teacher and I discussed the phrase "un anochecer des ruiseñors" from Federico García Lorca's "El poeta dice la verdad." I mentioned John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale", of course, but also Nikolaus Lenau, who lived in the United States from 1832 to 1833 and called it "das Land ohne Nachtigallen". That phrase inspired my poem and song "Land without Nightingales". Yesterday, I read of the "zigzag de cantos de ruiseñores" in Lorca's “En el bosque de las toronjas de luna”. In looking for the text, I stumbled on his playlet "El paseo de Buster Keaton", in which a gramophone plays a recording: "En América no hay ruiseñores". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 31 January 2025)

Note: I never did find an online version of Lorca's “En el bosque de las toronjas de luna”.

Don Q and his squire Vanza at the edge of a field

Looking out across the field of shining white that stretched to the horizon, Vanza the squire hoped he had the right shoes. Beside him, Don Q held a hand up over his eyes and sighed. "Look at the beautiful green grass, Vanza, as far as the eye can see." Vanza looked across the field again, looked down at his shoes, and took a few steps. He slipped for a moment, but caught himself. His shoes weren't right. He looked back at Don Q. "The grass feels so soft under my sneakers, Don Q." He took a few more steps, and the soles of his feet began to get cold and wet. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 30 January 2025) 

Don Q and his squire Vanza shout about the Golden Age

When Don Q remembered how some people had entered the capitol shouting his name, he declared them free to return to the Golden Age. When some others who had been in the capitol said that age had never been golden, Don Q waved his hands in the air, and he and his squire Vanza shouted to drown them out. When the bishop told Don Q and Vanza to show mercy on those who did not want to return to an age that had not been golden for their ancestors, they waved their hands in the air and shouted some more with those Don Q had freed for the new Golden Age. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 27 January 2025) 

From mirrors to emptiness: The stage at the Theater Basel’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods"

For the first act, the stage at the Theater Basel's current production of Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods", directed by Martin G. Berger, has rotating mirrors against a black background. The fairy-tale characters mostly stay near the front of the stage to sing their parts, reflected in the mirrors and occasionally disappearing behind them. After the first act ends with "happily ever after", the second begins with the same stage, but later the mirrors, as well as the fairy-tale spectacle, retreat to the back of the stage and are hidden behind a curtain, and the singers are left to come to terms with the plot's twists on an empty black stage. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 January 2025)

Madison Keys and Aryna Sabalenka clenching their first when they win points – and a memory of Lleyton Hewitt

While watching the 2025 Australian Open women's singles final between Madison Keys and Aryna Sabalenka, which Keys won 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 to claim her first Grand Slam title and prevent women's world number one Sabalenka from winning her third straight Australian Open, I was struck again by how tennis players today clench their fists after almost every point they win. My sense is that Lleyton Hewitt, the Australian who was men's world number one off and on from 2001 to 2003, was the first player to do this all the time – at least I remember often wondering whether his rather intense celebrations of every successful point were a waste of energy. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 January 2025)

The Felon of the United States

The Felon of the United States has recently moved back into the Hush Money House at 1600 Grifter Avenue in Launderington, District of Corruption, where he idles around in the Offender's Office, scribbles Execution Orders at the Irresolute Desk, watches Fox and False Friends on his television every morning, and spends all day decrying those who say anything against him, the Convict in Chief, as Vermin and Radical Left Thugs. With every ALL-CAPS screed the Real Adjudicated Rapist posts to his social-media accounts, his supporters send him money for his latest pyramid scheme and applaud his refusal to show mercy to those they want their Hunted Witch to be cruel to. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 23 January 2025)

The “onestone parable” of Albert Einstein in James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake"

Tonight, we reached a milestone in our Finnegans Wake Reading Group in Basel: page 100! At our current rate of just over a page per session, we'll be done in about 20 years. But we also had the pleasure of reading an amazing paragraph on page 100 (lines 24 to 36), featuring "a onestone parable". "Onestone" is Albert Einstein, and the paragraph alludes to many features of his scientific career. His parables are his thought experiments, and special and general relativity offer a "cluekey to a worldroom" (German "Weltraum"). Even Einstein's 1905 paper on Brownian motion gets a reference with "chancedrifting", or the random movement of particles suspended in a medium. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 22 January 2025)

New demos by my band Human Shields: “Touchstone”, “Speak Up”, and “Not Who We Are"

After a long silence, I've recorded three new demos of songs for my band Human Shields, with my new musical accomplice Jörg Benzing. I wrote the words and music for all three songs, and I play acoustic guitar and sing on the tracks. Jörg plays acoustic guitar, bass, and flute, and he did the recording, mixing, and mastering. "Touchstone" began as an impression from Claraplatz in Basel. "Speak Up" began when I defended Greta Thunberg after someone said teenagers should not participate in political discussions. And I wrote the "Not Who We Are" poem on 7 and 8 January 2021 after the United States Capitol attack instigated by the now-resurrected Grifter-in-Chief. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 January 2025)

 

Mastodon and Pixelfed as alternatives to capitalist social media

For now, I have decided to continue using Meta products (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), but I also use social-media sites that don't belong to capitalists and shareholders. I started using Mastodon in November 2022 when things started getting grim over at Twitter. I heard from quite a few people that they found it difficult to sign up for Mastodon. The main problem back then was deciding which server to use. I don't know if that has gotten easier, but I just signed up for a photo-sharing site, Pixelfed, that was extremely easy to join. I chose a server based in Switzerland and have already followed one person and shared my first photo. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 20 January 2025)

 

On referees, yellow cards, and warnings in football

In theory, a football referee has two official ways to communicate to players that a foul they have committed was more than just a normal foul: the yellow card for one level of roughness, and the red card for a second. In practice, though, as I was reminded watching the Lugano-Basel match today, the referee has a further, unofficial way to tell the players about the degree or quantity of their fouls: they give them a verbal warning that a foul was close to being worthy of a yellow card, and add that their next foul will earn them the official warning. Referees, then, have added nuance to the official rules. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 19 January 2025) 

Tom Waits and John Lurie in JIm Jarmusch’s “Down By Law” – and in Jarmusch’s “Mystery Train” and David Lynch’s “Wild At Heart"

At the end of Jim Jarmusch's "Down By Law" (1986), at a fork in the road in Louisiana, Zack (Tom Waits) wants to go to Los Angeles, so he takes the fork that might head west, while Jack (John Lurie) wants to go to New York, so he takes the fork that might head east. In Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" (1989), Waits is only heard, as a radio DJ in Memphis. In David Lynch's "Wild At Heart" (1990), Lurie plays Sparky, one of the petty criminals Sailor (Nicolas Cage) meets in Big Tuna, Texas. So Zack and Jack each went in the wrong direction at the end of "Down By Law". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 18 January 2025)

Naomi Osaka, Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams, and coaching: US Open 2018 and Australian Open 2024

This morning, I watched an Australian Open match between Belinda Bencic and Naomi Osaka. As Osaka began to have a recurrence of an abdominal injury she suffered at her previous tournament, she consulted with her coach Patrick Mouratoglou. As this was the first match I've watched this year, it was also the first time I had seen a player and coach talk during a match, which has only recently begun to be allowed. What made this particularly striking was how it recalled Osaka's first US Open win in 2018, when Serena Williams received a warning from umpire Carlos Ramos for receiving coaching during the match – from the very same Patrick Mouratoglou. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 17 January 2025)

Years as chapter titles in Virginia Woolf’s “The Years” and Toni Morrison’s “Sula"

I recently finished rereading Virginia Woolf's "The Years" (1937), all of whose chapters (except the last, "The Present Day") are titled with the year they take place: 1880, 1891, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1917, and 1918. So when I also finished rereading Toni Morrison's "Sula" (1973) the other day (in preparation for my second three-semester cycle of Morrison's novels), I noticed that Morrison, too, used dates as titles of chapters: 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, and 1927 in Part One, and 1937, 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1965 in Part Two. Of course, Morrison knew her Woolf: she wrote her 1955 Master's at Cornell University on Woolf and William Faulkner. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 16 January 2025)

Brooke Herter James's poem "One Afternoon in Maine” and Robert McCloskey's 1952 picture book "One Morning in Maine”

This morning, I read Brooke Herter James's poem "One Afternoon in Maine". The poem clearly alludes to Robert McCloskey's 1952 picture book "One Morning in Maine". One morning in Basel, I read that story to my three-year-old son Miles, and while reading, I wondered what McCloskey did after publishing his famous books from the forties and fifties (including "Make Way for Ducklings", 1941, and "Blueberries for Sal", 1948). When I headed out the door to take Miles to day care, I grabbed the International Herald Tribune from the mailbox, and after dropping him off, I read that McCloskey, who was born in 1914, had died the day before, 30 June 2003. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 15 January 2025)

 

Heiner Müller’s poem “Missouri 1951” and the Great Flood of 1951

Heiner Müller's poem "Missouri 1951" ("Gedichte", Alexander Verlag, 1992) briefly sketches the Great Flood of 1951, a catastrophe that left over half a million people displaced and seventeen dead. When I read the poem recently, I realized I had never heard of that flood before, and it struck me how an East German Communist's poem taught me something about the history of my own homeland, the United States. Many Wikipedia pages on historical events include a section on literary or cultural representations of those events, but the Great Flood of 1951 page has no such section. But surely a few other literary or cinematic works, besides Müller's poem, refer to it. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 14 January 2025)

 

Missouri 1951

Es wurde von den Staaten

Dem Staudamm Geld verwehrt.

Weil sie nichts gegen ihn taten

Hat sich der Fluß beschwert.

 

Er ist aufgestanden

Ihm schien der Damm zu alt.

Die Stadtbewohner fanden

Das Wasser kalt.

 

Die abgehauenen Wälder wachsen

Unter der Erde fort.

Dresden ein Brandfleck in Sachsen

Die Toten haben das letzte Wort.

 

The editorial decision to publish critical journalism – or puffball personality pieces

In 2002, when the radical right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen made the runoff election for the French presidency, the Basler Zeitung published a two-page spread about his political positions – a critical analysis of the man and his politics. In 2017, when his daughter Marine Le Pen made the runoff election for the French presidency for the first time, the same newspaper, with its new right-wing editor-in-chief Markus Somm, published a two-page spread about her, too – on her cats, her apartment, and her charm. When you read articles about extremist politicians, keep in mind that actual critical analysis is always possible, and it is a conscious editorial decision when it is absent. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 January 2025)

Being Bob Dylan’s “chick”: Suze Rotolo and “hermeneutical injustice"

In "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties" (2009), Suze Rotolo describes being Bob Dylan's "chick" in the 1960s: "There was an attitude toward musicians’ girlfriends—'chicks,' as we were called, or 'old lady,' if a wife—that I couldn’t tolerate. Since this was before there was a feminist vocabulary, I had no framework for those feelings yet they were very strong." The situation of having an experience but lacking vocabulary to name it is "hermeneutical injustice", as philosopher Miranda Fricker dubbed it in "Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing" (2007). Fricker's prime example was women, like Rotolo, dealing with male supremacy before second-wave feminism. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 12 January 2025)

 

Quotation from Rotolo here: https://susanbordo.substack.com/p/a-complete-fiction-suze-rotolo-and

Recording sessions from the 1980s to 2025

With new strings on my Ovation acoustic guitar, I went to Freiburg today to record new Human Shields demos with my friend Jörg Benzing. The last time I did serious recording was in 2016 for the Human Shields EP "Défense de jouer". Those sessions were dramatically different from recordings I made in the 1980s and 1990s, live in a radio-station studio or with twentieth-century four-track or eight-track recorders. But even in the last nine years, it seemed to me today, the technology has made another leap forward, with intuitive on-screen editing making everything dramatically more efficient and productive (at least when someone knows how to operate the software, as Jörg does). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 11 January 2025)

Putting on new guitar strings, and buying a new pair of needlenose pliers

Last night, when I sat down to restring my acoustic guitar (the lovely Ovation I bought in 2017), I couldn't find the needlenose pliers I keep in the case for my trusty old Fender acoustic guitar (which I bought in 1985), and the pliers were missing from our toolbox, too. So I couldn't cut the long extra parts of the new strings off after tuning them all up. So today, I made a special trip to a hardware store for a new pair of needlenose pliers. So before practicing just now, I cut off the string ends. And of course, I had to retune the new strings after every other song. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 10 January 2025)

Breaking strings on my guitars

I began learning to play guitar in July 1983, and for almost twenty years, I broke strings all the time, whether on acoustic or electric guitar. Only in the early 2000s, when I began to play sitting down while accompanying my friend Markus Bachmann for his Swiss German songs, did I stop breaking so many strings. I still kept the percussive style that had perhaps led me to cut through them like butter, but I apparently became a less aggressive player when I played sitting down rather than standing. I thought of this today when I broke a string while practicing, which still happens far less often than it used to. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 9 January 2025) 

What I’ve done on Facebook over the years, and the need for alternatives

I joined Facebook in 2007 because my friend Geoff Brock wanted to play Scrabble with me. Over the years, I've created multiple networks of people to stay in touch with: family in the United States and elsewhere; friends there, in Germany and in many other countries; poets and writers all over the world; former Basel English students; and musicians I have heard and met in Basel and elsewhere. I've also established two traditions of my own: sending people birthday poems and writing my daily prose. But with various recent decisions made by founder Mark Zuckerberg, it's time to start thinking about alternatives, as I did when I left Twitter for Mastodon. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 8 January 2025)

A noontime concert of solo saxophone by Nicole Johänntgen

Last week, I learned my friend Roli Frei would be performing at the Theater Basel Foyer at noon today. As my Spanish lesson takes place there on Tuesdays from 11 am to noon, I was looking forward to hearing Roli play. But yesterday, I heard that the concert had been called off because Roli was ill (get well soon, Roli!). This morning, I learned from a Facebook post of his that saxophonist Nicole Johänntgen would be replacing him, but then I forgot about that. Then, when I was in the bathroom after my Spanish lesson, I heard a saxophone, remembered Nicole was playing, and stayed to enjoy her non-stop forty-minute performance. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 January 2025) 

My father and the first two albums by The Doors

My father bought the first two albums by The Doors in 1967, the year they were released: "The Doors" in January and "Strange Days" in September. I still have those two LPs, and the vinyl is incredibly thick, something I noticed even in the late 1970s when I started collecting LPs of my own, with the new releases being much thinner. Decades later, my father, who stopped listening to rock music in the course of the 1970s, said that The Doors had been his favorite band of the great performers of the 1960s, and he explicitly singled out the role of John Densmore's drumming in what he liked about their sound. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 January 2025)

Songs by Bertolt Brecht that I knew when I was young, thanks to Judy Collins and The Doors

Even when I was very young and was over a decade away from beginning to learn German, I already knew about Bertolt Brecht, thanks to Judy Collins and The Doors. On her 1966 album "In My Life", which my parents owned, Collins recorded "Pirate Jenny" ("Seeräuber-Jenny") from "The Three-Penny Opera" ("Die Dreigroschenoper", 1928), which made a strong impression on me even as a child: "And the ship, the Black Freighter / Runs the flag up its masthead / And a cheer rings the air." And on their eponymous 1967 debut, The Doors recorded "Alabama Song" from "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" ("Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny", 1930). (Andrew Shields, #111words, 5 January 2025)

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)