Mari Ness

As many of you know, I gained an odd fascination with the decidedly, um, odd campaign of Mike Gravel back when he started to throw random rocks at people and to set things on fire, since if I can admire any quality in a presidential candidate, it's open honesty about his or her ability and willingness to damage us all, hopefully with live weapons.

Now, having unexpectedly decided to leave the Democratic Party for the Libertarian Party while endorsing a Green Party candidate,* Gravel has, to his credit, refused to abandon his technique of campaigning with almost completely inexplicable videos, choosing to combat Barack Obama's musical triumphs, with, um, well, I think it's meant to be rap music, because it sure as hell isn't the Beatles or U2:

[Warning: contains some potentially disturbing violent imagery]



I can see I'll be counting the Gravel votes in the November election!

Thanks to wyldemusick for the link.

* For international readers, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party are pretty much polar opposites.

My musical tastes tend towards the classical, and I have different music for different needs, different places: Mozart, Faure and Pergolosi at work; Anuna, various Jeff Beal soundtracks, Bharamji and Maneesh while struggling with words while writing, and so on. (That's a very partial list.) But here's a very partial list of the songs that make me bounce:

Tom Cochrane, "Life is a Highway." "LIFE IS A HIGHWAY I'M GONNA RIDE IT ALL NIGHT LONG!" Many people have learned, to their cost, that standing near me when this song is playing can be deadly, deadly dangerous.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No 6, Pastorale. No, not because it brings to mind atrociously cute little flying horses and so on. Not my favorite of his symphonies – that would the 7th – but I find this one puts me into a calmer mood. Which means technically, I suppose, this one should really be more in the "music that calms me" group, but in this case, it has both a calming and cheering effect.

Joel McNeely, "The Kiss," from Last of the Mohicans.

Three Dog Night, "Joy to the World." Come on. This is on everybody's list, right? Sing it with me: "Joy to the fishies in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me." We can even sing it in harmony if you like.

Elvis Costello, "Veronica." Why precisely a song about Alzheimer's and aging would cheer me I have no idea. Maybe it's the beat. Maybe it's something else.

Louis Prima, "I'm Just a gigolo." This is another one that, based on the lyrics alone, probably shouldn't cheer me – after all, the constant repetitions of "I'm so sad and lonely," really should be getting me down. But maybe it's the way Prima sings it, maybe it's knowing that I'm not the only one getting occasionally sad and lonely.

Sinead O'Connor, "Daddy I'm Fine." This one, though, is because of the lyrics, and specifically for these lines:

Wanna make my own living singing/ Strong independent pagan woman singing.

Yeah.

Eurythimics, "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)". Some of you have had the unfortunate experience of being near me when this song, or a bit of this song, comes on, and to you, I apologize greatly. It is, I assure you, a completely Pavlovian response. Not a song I can play in the office. Incidentally, I also like the Thomas Anders cover of this.

Depreche Mode, "Personal Jesus.": I can hear some of you now: mariness? Depreche Mode? Seriously? Yep.

Charlie Daniels, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Even if I'm still convinced that the Devil actually sounds a hell of a lot better than Johnny does.

Bruce Hornsby, "Mandolin Rain." This shouldn't be on a cheery list, either, given the lyrics, but something about the very phrase "mandolin rain" cheers me up.

Pet Shop Boys, "Integral." So I'm driving behind C a few days before on our way to some place or other, and I start bouncing in the car. Bouncing. This is noticed. This is the problem with the Pet Shop Boys. Or specifically, this song.

The Party Ben remix of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." Er. Move to the next song.

Earthsongs, "Raise Your Voice." Yeah, it's a hymn. Yeah, I don't really like hymms. Did I mention that I'm not always consistent in my musical tastes, or did you miss the "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" bit? In any case, if you missed this particular one, and you probably did, it starts off very quietly, with a single clear voice, and then moves into mad inspiration. At least for me.

Eric Idle/Monty Python, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." I think because I first heard this sung by crucified people. That, or the whistling.

The Verve, "Bittersweet Symphony."

Meant to note yesterday, but forgot:

So yesterday morning, I turned on my iPod, as always, and turned on Shuffleplay, as about half the time, and my car boomed out:

"6 am, day after Christmas, I throw some clothes on --"

It most certainly wasn't 6 am, but otherwise...My Shuffleplay is rarely that accurate, but this amused me.

(The song is "Brick," by Ben Folds Five, if you were wondering.)

So over the last few days I've had a surprising number of conversations about the correct usage of "lie" versus "lay," this surprising because this is usually not the sort of thing I want to talk about since I can never remember the damn rules for them myself. (When I taught English as a second language, I resorted to the cheap trick of telling my students to just never, ever, lay anything down anyplace -- just put it down someplace, which had the additional advantage that they didn't even have to worry if they were putting said item down in the past or present or how to spell the damned past participle. Also, this eliminates all confusion between "set" and "sit." Put: your solution to English grammar issues everywhere. I love that word. But I digress.)

As it turns out, the confusion is not limited to ESL teachers and their students, as demonstrated by a little song by Snow Patrol called "Chasing Cars," which includes the following bit:

If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world..."*

Beautiful.

Now, some of you, hearing this song, undoubtedly took it as a song demanding a retreat from reality; a plea to to forget the world; a plea to bring some grace and meaning into the world; a cry against the fear of aging and death; a desire to tell the world to go fuck itself while we run around chasing cars; a song of angst and emo and hatred and all that. This is all true, but I think you are all missing the deeper meaning here. No, this a song about the agony of choosing between "lay" and "lie"; about how the agony of having to make the choice, of having to trying to remember the damn difference, of trying to remember those hideous grammar exercises your cruel English teachers made you write out over and over and over will actually destroy your mind, to the point where the only solution is to either hide under the blankets or alternatively run around wildly chasing cars, with the second alternative at least burning off calories. I find it a powerful indictment against the role of grammar in our society, and I highly approve the song.

* Yes, in the first chorus, it sounds distinctly as if Gary Lightbody might be singing "If I lie here," but he corrects this punctuation later, so we're going with the second and repeated punctuation.

For the grammar geeks, the second use is correct, the first incorrect: you have to lay down things; if you're just flopping around, you lie around, sort of, unless you're a cat, in which case you curl up into a small ball or wiggle frantically on a person to find the absolute most comfy spot and point out that all of that time spent worrying about grammar could more profitably be spent either in little cat dreams or, better yet, in procuring tuna fish for small cats.

(But wait, I hear you telling me. Isn't "If I lay here" in the subjunctive mood? And doesn't the subjunctive do something screwy to verb tenses? Well, yes, if -- and only if -- we are talking about two different situations: the third person singular [which is not the case here], or in cases where the first person singular is followed by a form of the verb "to be" ["If I were a tree, I would not be wasting time writing silly posts about lying and laying around thinking about the damn uses of the subjunctive but would instead be focusing on wondering why, precisely, my bark seems to attracting a certain sort of bird, and what I can do about what that bird is doing to my bark."] again, not the case here.)

Edit to footnote: Much thanks to S for pointing out that after all that, I messed up my parenthetical punctuation. Heh. Corrected now. I blame the general events of the day.