St Paddy's Day is come...

[flemmings]

Aye, Caesar, but not gone.

Hopefully the Chinese winebottle collectors have collected the winebottles from my front lawn so there's nothing for the Poorly Behaved Students Drunk Off Their Asses to smash in their merry glee. See, this is why I won't buy a house in the Annex even if I win tonight's 7 million 649. Fraternities have held on to the buildings they bought when the area was a rundown location for rooming houses, so you may sit in your 3 million dollar refurbished Edwardian mansion on Huron and still be assailed by loudspeakers from three different locations in a one and a half block radius.

Also the shopping in the Annex is punk.

But since it was Saint Paddy's Day, my aunt's retirement home had a concert for the residents, where a bubbly cheerful woman sang blandly cheerful Irish-American songs (not Irish: note the difference, please) and bullied people into singing along to Toora loora loora. Posh as the place is, I should hate to be subject to that kind of holiday camp jackbootery in my dotage. (Responded by singing sotto voce in my corner, Tora tora tora/ Tora tora lai/ Tora tora tora/ We're the se-eh-ven samurai.)

I said to my aunt, bad-temperedly, that traditional Irish songs are beautiful, so why give us the vulgar likes of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling or My Wild Irish Rose or I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen, all transposed into a swing rhythm to make it worse. She opined, mildly, that people like them. Yes well, they like I'll Be Home For Christmas too, possibly because they've never heard the Coventry Carol or Quem Pastores. Give them some of those sad songs Chesterton talked about, or even Come by the Hills, and maybe they'd prefer them.

Well, no matter. I came home and put on Loreena Mckennitt and finished several bits of housekeeping I'd been postponing for months if not years, that aches and wanhope had held me from, and gave the kitchen floor a good wash afterwards. So peevishness has it uses.

Comments

[incandescens]

Is that Chesterton reference from the Ballad of the White Horse? "All their wars are merry / And all their songs are sad"?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The men that God made mad. A bit condescending and even more kimoi given the events of the time, but a good line nonetheless.

[incandescens]

Chesterton has so many good lines ... and then one gets to the next line, or the next verse, and hits an attitude or statement that one does not want to quote.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Curate's egg, feet of clay, man of his time. Read with caution.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

People respond to what they already know. I expect that in my dotage I'll be subject to terrible renditions of Stairway to Heaven and probably, sadly, forgive it, potentially even enjoy it, as cringe worthy as it may be.

[incandescens]

I was trying to remember a particular poem of his the other day, a month or two ago, after someone had died (sadly, I now forget who it was) relating to how you can tell something about a man from the way his enemies react after his death. And I managed to find the poem, and read the last two verses, and thought yes, that's it. And then I read the first part of the poem, and was less enthusiastic.

Things that one doesn't really notice as much when reading Chesterton in the early teens and being carried away by the words...

(For reference - http://fullreads.com/poetry/the-dead-hero/ )

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That is... truly awful, even for GKC.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

But Stairway to Heaven is amazing!! People still listen to it, who weren't born when it came out.

Actually I'm amazed at the music on the radio these days, when I hear it at work. I look at the kids boogeying to Yellow Submarine and think 'you know, that really *was* a hit before your mother was born.'

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

We had very good music! I'm sure there's very good music now, too, I'm just unaware of it. Now I'm going to have to go listen to that LP!

I'm waiting for the new equivalent of the 'sounds of a thousand strings' LPs. They could ruin anything. :)