I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.
Thursday, 5 June 2014
The Last Leviathan......
Siggy Stern, singing a beautiful song, by Andy Barnes, recorded and better known by the Dubliners, Siggy, to me, does a better job.
Not a recording artist, she has uploaded a few songs to YouTube.
This song came to mind when I was viewing a post by 'Nag on the Lake' about a dutch painting, that in restoration was found to have originally featured a beached whale.
The Lost Whale
Beautiful....
ReplyDeleteLovely
ReplyDeleteSplendid
ReplyDeleteHaunting ... 'specially since watching a fascinating documentary on BBC 4 this week about the history of Scots whaling in South Georgia. BTW On my trip to the Highlands this week I was listening to Suzanne Vega's "Solitude Standing" again, which you recommended to me MANY moons back :)
ReplyDeleteSo many I don't recall, and even Suzanne Vega can't remember, That would be about... 1987? I think my brother, Hugh, went to a gig of hers and bought the record. Round black thing. Remember those? You stick a nail in a bit of wood and follow a wiggly groove and it makes noise. Weird.
DeleteActually same little brother has all my old records, or had them. I sometimes wish i still did, physically thumbing through old discs, reading sleeve notes.... instead of downloading them.
Well, actually I don't do that much now either.
Maybe its part of being an old fart, the ability to enjoy silence, where once you needed clamour. I had an eight track once. We thought that in the definition of amplifiers and speakers that louder must inevitably be better. We had our ears pounded by standing in front of speaker stacks that could power a moon launch.
crazy.
As for South Georgia, the only leviathans I saw there were heading for Wal-Mart.
DeleteI'd steer clear of Wal-Mart myself if I saw Japanese factory-ships in the car-parks.
Iosip Vissarionovich Stalin spent many a year crying the cyrillic equivalent of "Thar she blows!" while rowing small boats across the rolling steppes. Failing to bring back the blubber caused him to re-evaluate his career, and send him into politics.
Call me Ishmael.
Feel I need to join in with all this now - you obviously started this blog years before Geoff and I even knew what the word 'blog' meant! Glad to hear about your new start in life over in the States (which incidentally is my favourite place, especially Yosemite). Have you got a doggy over there, too?
ReplyDeleteOnly a fake dog. A dachshund with a napoleon complex who refuses to believe that he's a dog.
ReplyDeleteThe plan does include a proper dog of proper dog proportions, which knows the basics of being a dog. Although there is comic value in calling a dachshund, and persuading it to run so fast that its legs are a blur. Its brain is the size of a shrunken walnut, so sometimes when the legs are in full blur, it catches sight of something that distracts it, forgets the correct order in which to work them, and bowls over, tail over nose and repeat.
Dachshunds are like fleas. Despite having legs the size of fingers, they can leap several times their own height. They are nature's garbage disposals, eating, for instance, the discarded centres of corn cobs, or pretty much anything that they can steal. Anything except dogfood, no matter the premium high octane star studded vitamin reinforced grade. They sneer at that, and beg for anything they think humans eat. They can be fooled into eating raw carrots, potatoes accidentally dropped etc. Plain day old boiled rice is a delicacy to them.
They.crap a lot.
If you hop over and have a look at my blog - http://chrissiedixie.wordpress.com/ - you'll find lots of pictures of our two mad lunatics. Full size lunatics, of course.
DeleteAnd you are the only person I ever met who had a dog with the buoyancy of a lead ballooon.
DeleteThe current Boxer's no different...
DeleteAnyway, no dashchund could ever top a Labrador for waste disposal, I'm sure - http://chrissiedixie.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/the-labrador-and-the-seagull/
DeleteI know this song from a blues/folk lady named Rory Block. no youtube, sorry. And it seems like I heard it in a movie too.
ReplyDeleteHi Soub!