"Sing! Nevermind the
words."
"Everybody knows that the bird is the word, uh, well, uh,
wa-pa-pow-pa-pow-pa-pow!"
"I'm gonna get, get get get you drunk, get you drunk
get you love drunk off my boogie wonderland."
"Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, Jimmy Crack
Corn and I don't care, heyyyy macarena!"
"Jill stayed up, she wants to learn how to jive and go
half on a baby."
“Hey Pharell, I ain't tryin' to kill
your mood, but, I need you to please explain the war."
“I’m going where there’s no
depression, to a better land that’s free from care so please keep your hands to
yourself when you follow me home.”
"Don't worry if I write rhymes, I wrote this record while 30,000 feet in the air, and you are not invited."
"Who wants yesterday’s papers? If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any breezeblocks."
"I see a sea anemone/The enemy/See a
sea anemone/And that'll be the end of me/
Or he’ll go blow the loudy/Saudy of sour Saudi/Wiley up off
peyote/wilding like that coyote."
"You ask me if I love you? Don't ask a question
with such a funny word. Celestial crops carry me home--Hands on the wheel?"
"Uh-uh, fuck that. Someone put an order in for a chicken (FOR A CHICKEN)."
"Somebody ordered pancakes, I just sip the chim chim cher-ee, tutti frutti...oh
hidey hidey hidey ho aidey aidey aidey ay."
"Little baby brown bear walkin'
through the forest, findin little berries on berry trees and eatin' 'em, and it
stoned me just like jelly roll, roll me over, Romeo, there you go."
"Bandz a make
her dance, bandz a make her dance, I never did nothing but break the ground on
top of the asphalt."
“Twista--you told 'em....right?”
“Hank Williams hasn't answered yet,
but I hear him coughing all night long."
"Do dum dum dum doo doo dum dum.”
“You
actin’ kinda shady, ain’t callin me Ba-ba-ba-barbara Ann….”
"As I was walking down the street one dark and dreary day, I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay, the sign was torn and tattered from the storm the night before, wind and rain had done its work and this is what I saw: Welcome
to Atlanta where the players play and you drive past the Stop & Shop with
the radio on I’m in love with Massachusetts. They don’t like my dirty body,
they don’t like my filthy hair, that’s that shit I don’t like."
"He had a cigarette with his number
on it, he gave it over to me: 'Do you want it?'"
“I
told her, I’m 18 and live a crazy life, plus it might have been a molly, ‘cuz
my mind’s being blown.”
“You’ve
got to be cruel to be kind, in the right measure, cruel to be known as the man
of the century, if I burn up upon reentry, gotta red-blooded wife with a
strange condition, a day in prison…it’s got me out of my head, and I don’t know if I
should buy jelly beans, have to eat them all in just one night and day, you are
the one, only you beneath the moon and under the sun, we smell the musk at the dusk in the crack of the dawn.”
“But if nothing’s shaking come this
here July, you’ve got to learn how to die, if you wanna wanna be alive...okay?”
Disposable
Dixie cup drinkin’, I assassin down the avenue, burning tires on my street,
past the roar and debris, street tar and summer, they’ll do a job on your soul.
Last
call for drinks, I’ll have another stout,
turn
around
and
replied,
“why,
yes;
but
I prefer the term
‘African
American
Express.’”
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post, or at least just the parts of the post I understood. At the beginning, it seemed that it was a conversation with two people, possibly more. But as I kept reading, the number of people in the conversation became irrelevant; if anything I thought it was a conversation with oneself.
ReplyDeleteAt first, the post was a rag tag string of lines from different songs. Seeing those references (the ones that I understood) sporadically played a playlist in my head. But similarly to idea of nonsense being within a structured sentence, the nonsense that I found was that the song lyrics were only iconic and memorable parts of the song, like "wa-pa-pow-pa-pow-pa-pow" from The Fox by Ylvis or "I'm gonna get, get get get you drunk, get you drunk get you love drunk off my..." from Humps by the Black Eyed Peas. This string of random but well known phrases (assuming you know the referenced songs well) makes sense as to where they come from, but mashed together become nonsense.
Near the second half of the post, there is a sense of structure as a stream of consciousness. Talking about the cigarette and being offered drugs and then thinking about buying and eating jelly beans, it all feels like a constant stream of thoughts. While it does not make any sense in a strict sense, it does look like it could be anyone's thought process throughout the day. Whether or not the quotations mean a real conversation, or a conversation in someone's head or someone just talking to him/herself out loud doesn't really matter; regardless of which you look at it as, it sort of adds to the nonsense because you don't know if it is being said out loud or not, I think anyway.
The last bit of the post seems to make the most sense out of everything else because it appeals to a person's physical senses: the burning tires, street tar and the feel of summer. It gives you a sense of location of possibly at a bar, more so because of the disposable Dixie cups and the last call. Of course the last part with the African American Express is amusing because it takes something we don't think about everyday, like the name American Express, and change it slightly, which may come from the strange relationship between society and being politically correct or something of that sort.
Of course, it is more amusing because it just sounds like a random comment from a drunk person.
I really liked the way you approached this assignment by writing it like a whole bunch of random quotations. It almost seems like this post could be the compilation of random conversations you would hear on the streets during the 1950s or 1960s just going off of some of the words you used here. I also agree with what Matt said before me that if you just kind of read over it once quickly it seems like a bunch of random comments coming from drunk people. Especially since you included the occasional song lines it reminds me of how quickly you can divert a drunk persons attention. Towards the end when you start talking about the billboard it almost seems as if the post might actually start making sense again you put in another song’s lyrics. It is also very interesting how each separate quote by itself relates to similar ideas and there are also instances where it almost seems like you have a conversation going but when you look at the entire post as one piece of writing each quote loses all significance and blends into this stream of random occurrences.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the entire post kind of comes together at the end when you mention “last call” like the whole post before that was the description of maybe a dream or a crazy night and its all coming to an end. This reminded me a little of how Lewis Carroll brings everything to a close at the end of Alice in Wonderland where she has finally awakened from here bizarre dream but in your case the stream of thought is coming to a close. Over all this was very interesting to read as I did not notice any one else who approached the assignment in this way.
I agree a lot with Matt’s initially take on this post. It was very exciting to see in what direction this post was moving towards. A lot of the parts that made most sense happened to be lyrics from songs I was already familiar with. I think that this can be an overarching theme when it comes to making sense of the nonsensical. A lot of the times we find that what is unfamiliar is what we label as nonsense and making connections between different subjects becomes what we look for to make sense of any form of writing.
ReplyDeleteYet, towards the end of the post some phrases, although unfamiliar, to me made sense but took longer to dissect the particular point they were trying to make. For example the line, “you’ve got to be cruel to be kind,” was very meaningful to me in that it made me think of situations in which this phrase would be applicable. As soon as I understood certain lines, there would be an abundant amount of entertaining nonsensical lines following. The compilation of conversations and actions became almost fluid and adventurous, especially by ending the post with the drunken conversation, which seemed to make the least amount of sense.
Overall, I thought the post was very entertaining to read because as I read it, I felt a pattern of switching from understanding one line, to not understanding the next. There were parts where I felt the author was digging into their subconscious self and those inner thoughts were being scrambled into the moving lyrics being played in the background.