As The Music Plays #16 — Scarborough Fair/Canticle

Posted on 08/25/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

This is a series of posts about the music I play while writing.  This time it’s another Simon & Garfunkel song, Scarborough Fair/Canticle.  If you haven’t guessed by now, S&G are among my favorites in the music world.  Simon and Garfunkel first recorded this song in July 1966, releasing in on their album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, in October of that year.  This was their third studio album and it ranked among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2012.

The song is actually based on a traditional English song which has been traced as far back as 1670.  This is a ballad and like most traditional folk songs has a number of different lyrics and variations in melody.  The basic song is a man setting out a list of impossible tasks for his former lover to do in order to win his love back.  Clearly the man doesn’t want her back.

Here’s a traditional version of the song as sung by Joel Frederiksen:

Simon first learned of this song from the English singer Martin Carthy who had picked up the song from a songbook by MacColl and Seeger.  The traditional source of the song wasn’t credited on the album and many were upset about this.  Simon rewrote many of the words while Garfunkel composed new melody elements.

The interesting thing to note is that, Scarborough Fair/Canticle, is really two songs in one.  On the recording Garfunkel sings Scarborough Fair, while Simon alternates between signing with Garfunkel and singing a totally different song, Canticle, which is a reworking of an anti-war song, “The Side of a Hill,” that Simon recorded in 1963.  The melody and words meld so well together that it’s really hard to distinguish between the two sets of lyrics.

Let’s look at verse 4.  Garfunkel sings, “Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather.”  Then underneath that Simon is singing, “War bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions.”  Garfunkel’s part of the song tells the former lover to harvest a crop using a leather sickle and to gather it all into a bunch of heather — an impossible task.  Simon’s song continues with, “Generals order their soldiers to kill / And to fight for a cause they’ve long ago forgotten.”  They then join together in, “Then she’ll be a true love of mine” and on to the refrain.  It took me years to hear this as Simon’s voice is second to and under the great vocals of Garfunkel.  Also Simon has a way to garble his words in a way that makes it hard for me to decide what he’s really singing at times.  I’m sure this is purposeful and I wonder how many people actually realize the weaving of two songs into one musical whole.

It’s an impressive feat of music and I never tire of listening to it.

This ends up on my writing play list because of its haunting melody, and it’s ability to weave two different stories into a coherent whole.  As a story teller, I find that just simply impressive and something I want to aspire to.  This song also has the power to calm my mind, push the stresses of the day aside and move me into a contemplative space — all the things I need to get writing.

Here is the original Simon & Garfunkel version:

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Friday Work in Progress — “Here, the mud as turned to dust.”

Posted on 08/02/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

Just after the flood in the neighborhood, the A/C company came out to replace both my HVAC units. Now we have nice cool air throughout the whole house. Very nice. I mentioned a while ago the new creative practice Heather and I adopted. It’s working. I’ve been able to complete two more poems for my lectionary project and am now up to 20 out of 48 planed poems. If I can maintain this rate, I’ll complete the project before I die.

I haven’t made much progress on my novel. I’ve been using MS Word to write this novel and after using Scrivener for my poetry project, I’ve decided to make a switch. Converting from Word to Scrivener will take sometime, but I feel the effort will be worth it. I find Scrivener’s way of making notes and annotations really fit my writing process. The printing capabilities of Scrivener are a little lacking for me, but I’ll figure it out.

Last week I sent a friend an email update about the flooding we had, along with a long list of all my medical complaints like we old guys do. I opened the email with the phrase, “Here, the mud as turned to dust”. He replied that those words sounded like the opening line of a novel.

Well, I couldn’t resist the challenge so here are opening paragraphs of two possible novels starting with, those words:

The Historical Fiction Version:

Letter 1, May 11, 1935  (written as a collection of letters between family members):

Dear Uncle Wayne,

Here, the mud has turned to dust.  We were drowning just last week, but now you can’t walk more than two steps without raising a dustbowl.  I’m afraid we’ve lost the corn crop as the flood washed away half of the upper 40 near the river bend down to the cow pasture.  The wife thinks we’ll have to sell them soon as we don’t have much feed for ‘em.

Virgil fixed up the tractor and got her running again.  It was a mess, but he only had to drain the gas tank and dry out the carburetor.  Nothing seemed to get into the pistons so he had her running good until the dust came up so bad.  I’ve never seen it like this.  It’s like that newsreel we done seen at the Fox last week when the wind blows and you can’t see your hand in front of your face.  The carburetor keeps clogging up and that bucket of bolts just ain’t doing it’s job.

I’m afeared that we might have bitten off more than we can chew out here and I’m a reconsidering your offer to work at your new gas station, that is if the offer’s still open.

I’ll understand if’n you’ve already found a man for that.

Your Faithful Nephew,

Curtis

The SciFi Version

Chapter 1, Cultivation Base 6 (written as a series of messages, interspersed with dialogue)

“Here, the mud has turned to dust.  It’s that fine almost like lunar regolith.  It sticks to everything.  There isn’t an effective mitigation measure that works to keep it out of the habitation domes.  It’s just everywhere.  The water filtration plant’s filters keep clogging up and the life support techs are having trouble keeping us in clean water.  I’ve had to start a rationing system and there is a lot of grumbling about about the reduced shower and clothes washing schedule.

The flood damaged most of the ground cultivators and we’ve had to stop all planting operations.  Our engineering team is overwhelmed and we’re short on spare parts.  We estimate that with some imaginative parts swapping that we might get four back on-line, but that won’t be enough to achieve self-sufficiency this orbit.

Meteorology is doubting most of the pre-mission estimates on rain fall totals and frequencies.  I’m being told that we can expect extended periods of drought, interspersed with periods of monsoons much more violent that first projected.

I’m am growing concerned about the viability of this mission.  We’ll need to make major changes to our plan in order to succeed.  We’ll also require more support than first estimated.  Requisitions for new supplies and replacement parts is attached.

Respectfully submitted,

Commander Gupta, commanding Cultivation Base 6, Shiva Prime Colony Mission 4, Earth Expeditionary Force 15

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Wednesday — Where Have You Been?

Posted on 07/31/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

I’ve been away from working on the blog. Here’s a couple of pictures of what I’ve been up to:

On Sunday, 7/21 we had a thunderstorm that dropped three inches of rain, with hail and wind in about an hour. It looked like this from my back door:

The result was flash flooding, mud and blocked roads. The good news is that it didn’t affect my house, but a few houses down the street ended up with water and mud in garages and yards. Some folks had their whole landscaping washed away and a small number of people had water in their living spaces. The county emergency services reported that about 100 homes were affected. Here’s the view from my yard about an hour after the rain stopped:

I live at the top of the street and this is the downhill side of the road up to my place. You can’t really see it in this picture, but the fire department responded and out in that mess are two firefighters trying to unblock the storm drains. At the height of the flooding the water was about a foot higher than this picture shows.

The county sent out road crews and this is what they had to deal with on Monday:

It was up to a foot of mud in the deepest places. There was no damage to our house, but roads have been a mess since. The county has had trucks and equipment out every day since and the roads are passable — dusty but passable. Our neighbours have had to hire private crews to come out and deal with the damage to their property. Sadly, not many people here have flood insurance. It will be a long road for some.

Two days after the flash flood Heather and I went to the beach:

and:

This is lighthouse point in Santa Cruz, CA. It’s one of our favorite places to visit.

The trip was planned long before the flood, but we saw no reasons to not to get out of town while they fixed our roads.

I you need me, I’ll be washing the car — again.

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As The Music Plays #15 — Homeward Bound

Posted on 07/21/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

This is a series of posts about the music I listen to while writing.  This time I’m up to another Paul Simon song, Homeward Bound.  This song was written by Simon in 1964 while in England.  He had been performing around the country and often taking a train somewhere.  Homeward Bound was first released by Simon and Garfunkel as a single in 1966 by Columbia Records.  It reached number five on the pop charts and later was included in their album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Simon wrote this at a time of uncertainty in his career.  He wasn’t widely known at the time he wrote it, but now who could imagine not hearing this song when thinking of Simon and Garfunkel.  It’s a simple tune and straight forward lyrics and like most Simon songs, it stands alone as good piece of poetry.  This is one of the things that draws me to artists like Simon.  I have always felt that in the heart of a great song writer is a great poet.  In just two and half minutes Homeward Bound tells the story of a lonely disillusioned song writer.  The loneliness and self-doubt just drip from each verse.

These feelings are just strengthened by the chorus with its strong call home.  Home, that place in our hearts where things are good, peaceful and comforting.  How many of us think about just going home when confronted by hardship or obstacles?  I know I’ve said it often enough at the end of a bad day of work, “I just want to go home.”

It’s in the third verse of the song where I often feel just like the singer in the song.  It’s classic self-doubt with: “But all my words come back to me / In shades of mediocrity / Like emptiness in harmony “.

I can’t count the times that the critic in my head has looked at something I’ve written and just thought that it’s not even good enough to be mediocre.  I imagine that many artists and creative people feel this way from time to time — that horrible feeling of things just not being right and we’re not good enough.

This song ends up on my writing playlist for just that reason.  While Simon is expressing doubt and feelings of not being good enough, he manages to create a masterful work.  Simple, clear and to the point in a most poignant way.  This is the kind of poetry I aspire to and hearing these words, tell this story are oddly inspiring to work to find the creativity in even the most bleak situation.

Here’s the song for you to listen to again:

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