BERNEVAL

Will Young
“Jealousy”
on the album Echoes

The lyrics I have seen reproduce the long languorous pauses with line breaks and spacing. They bring into high relief the relation between waiting and thinking.

And it feels like jealousy
And it feels like I can’t breathe
And I’m on, down on my knees
And it feels like jealousy.

I’m tired of waiting.

I’m tired of thinking.

And it feels like jealousy (hey)
And it feels like I can’t breathe (I can’t breathe)
And I’m on, down on my knees (oh)
And it feels like jealousy

Listen in at 1:89 there are more words with telling rests:

And all this
feeling
taking over
me

Right there after the tired of thinking and waiting, just before the iteration of the naming of jealousy. Could this be a case of Will Young: ‘I forget lyrics and start making them up’? Improvisation that laid down the track?

And so for day 2391
30.06.2013

On the occasion of his turning 100, a piece appeared about Robert Blackburn, Chief Librarian, under whose leadership the card catalogue was converted to machine-readable form.

It ends with a fine sentiment:

His birthday wish? “Only that my work in all those covered-wagon days will continue to provide my successors with the flexibility and scope that are needed to command a great future.”

That is a classy legacy statement.

And so for day 2390
29.06.2013

Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
In Praise of Shadows
Translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker

On lacquer

First one coat…

And I realized then that only in dim half-light is the true beauty of Japanese lacquerware revealed. The rooms at the Waranjiya are about nine feet square, the size of a comfortable little tearoom, and the alcove pillars and ceilings glow with a faint smoky luster, dark even in the light of the lamp. But in the still dimmer light of the candle stand, as I gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, I discovered in the gloss of this lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark pond, a beauty I had not before seen. It had not been mere chance, I realized that our ancestors, having discovered lacquer, had conceived such a fondness for objects finished in it.

Then another…

Sometimes a superb piece of black lacquerware, decorated perhaps with flecks of silver and gold — a box or a desk or a set of shelves — will seem to me unsettlingly garish and altogether vulgar. But render pitch black the void in which they stand, and light them not with the rays of the sun or electricity but rather a single lantern or candle: suddenly those garish objects turn somber, refined, dignified. Artisans of old, when they finished their works in lacquer and decorated them in sparkling patterns, must surely have had in mind dark rooms and sought to turn to good effect what feeble light there was. Their extravagant use of gold, too, I should imagine, came of understanding how it gleams forth from out of the darkness and reflects the lamplight.

… prose as carefully built up layer by layer as the objects it describes.

And so for day 2385
24.06.2013

Comparing what I heard with what I read, I became aware of two versions of the song. A snippet for comparison…

Melanie Version

There’s no time to lose I heard her say
You gotta catch your dreams before they run away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind
Is life unkind

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who is gonna hang a name on you
And when you change with every new day
Still I’m gonna miss you

Rolling Stones Version

“There’s no time to lose, ” I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind
Ain’t life unkind?

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m gonna miss you

~~~

Slight but impactful differences … might … will

And so for day 2384
23.06.2013

Wallace Edwards
Alphabeasts

Truly captivating images of animals in action and simple verse that complements the images well. From which I have collected these bonbons…

There are also brushes dripping with paint that get repeated and fruit too.

And so for day 2383
22.06.2013

Partition by way of modality…

I don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution, I accept it. It isn’t a matter of faith, but of evidence.

The whole undertaking of science is to deal, as well as it can, with reality. The reality of actual things and events in time is subject to doubt, to hypothesis, to proof and disproof to acceptance and rejection — not to belief or disbelief.

Belief has its proper and powerful existence in the domains of magic, religion, fear, and hope.

Ursula K. Le Guin “Belief in Belief” in No Time to Spare.

And so for day 2382
21.06.2013