One of my favorite books
that I will never write a full blog about is U2 by U2. This book is almost exactly what
the title makes it sound like
(*). Although I highly recommend it, I suspect that being a significant U2 fan is likely a prerequisite for
reading it.
Unsurprisingly, the difficulty of interpreting the meaning of U2 songs range from crystal clear to basically impossible (which I assume is true for most bands (1)). An example of a very clear one is 'All I Want Is You' (a love song) while a song such as 'Walk On' is almost impossible to figure out from just listening and spawns many different, often personalized interpretations from their fans (2).
Occasionally, what the songs are written about evolves over time and both the original intent and the new meaning can exist simultaneously. I think 'Running To Stand Still' is a good example of this.
Originally released on The Joshua Tree in 1987, this song is about a heroine addicted Dublin couple. And it still is. But it is also true that in the liner notes for the 20th anniversary edition of the album, writer Bill Flanagan stated, "'Running to Stand Still' is for anyone who feels trapped in an impossible circumstance by overwhelming responsibility."
That last line made me think about Maniac Magee, the title character of Jerry Spinelli's Newbery Award winning novel, and the concept of meaning evolving over time fits nicely into how I have interpreted this book over many rereadings since my first introduction to it in sixth grade (3, 4).
The thing that catches my attention every time I read these 150 pages is the wisdom available to 'middle' readers through the sheer volume of symbols. This is not necessarily surprising, since I recall identification and analysis of symbols as a standard feature of many middle school reading assignments (what were the symbols, what did they mean, etc).
A lot of the symbolism is like 'All I Want Is You', very clear and simple to anyone on the first pass. But I also suspect some of this is hard to catch at the age most readers wade into these pages and perhaps some of this is not really there at all- in the same way I used come up with my own understanding of 'Walk On', I suppose it is possible that some of the symbolic elements I find in Maniac Magee have more to do with me than they do with the author's intent.
It brings me to a question about symbolism that my school age assignments never covered- what is the author's intent behind the symbolism included in the work? Can a reader's relationship to symbolism change over time, allowing multiple interpretations to hold up, or can readers only be mistaken until someone wiser comes along to set them straight?
Flanagan's quote suggests support for the former and I suspect his line about 'Running To Stand Still' resonated with me because it describes Maniac Magee almost perfectly- he is a character weighed down by a simultaneous feeling of obligation to help those he can reach while also looking for a way out of his present set of circumstances.
This idea is introduced from the start when a recently orphaned Maniac is sent to live with his dysfunctional aunt and uncle. In a home described as 'the house of two toasters', his guardians prop up a failing marriage by owning two of every conceivable household item.
Maniac tolerates this for eight years before his guardians' fear of challenging their anti-divorce beliefs breaks him. Screaming "Talk! Why don't you talk!" at his aunt and uncle before running away from home, Maniac flashes his sense of duty to bring hopelessly broken pieces together while perhaps attempting to improve his own circumstances.
Failing, he begins a period of homelessness that takes him to the town of Two Mills. His period in Two Mills is marked, countless times, by his completion of tasks or challenges that townsfolk see as 'legendary' but Maniac perhaps does only out of obligation.
Maniac stands up to bullies, such as one named John McNab, and helps two little kids in their own unmanageable living environment fight back the urge to run away from home (John's brothers, coincidentally). Maniac rescues kids trapped in forbidden backyards and never turns down a toddler who asks him to untie a sneaker knot.
The latter leads to his challenge of Cobble's Knot. This knot is owned by a corner store on Hector Street- and Hector Street just happens to divide the town into its racially-segregated halves (the West End is all-white, the East End is all-black).
The knot is the cleanest symbol of racism in the book. It is considered unsolvable in town, thanks to decades of tiny, accumulating actions that have made the knot more hard ball than tangled string. At the time Maniac arrives, it seems only a supreme individual effort can undo it. The store owner has reflected the unlikelihood of this by offering a prize of one free large pizza per week for a year to anyone who succeeds. Maniac, who is allergic to pizza, does the 'unthinkable' and unties the knot.
In addition to further reinforcing the symbolism of the knot by bringing onlookers from both sides of the dividing line together to witness this event, the challenge also makes a comment about the difference in motivation and obligation. It suggests that those driven by the possibility of reward might not nearly have the same capability as those driven internally to do what might be considered the 'right' thing.
But what drives Maniac to do these 'right' things? Running is one possibility, an activity that Maniac seems to do all the time, and this idea is encouraged by the publishers- almost every cover of the book depicts Maniac running. In fact, Maniac arrives in town running, having just run away from home, and runs alone almost every morning.
But over time, you see that he encounters problem after problem in the book and handles most of these by running away from them. No matter how much he runs, Maniac comes back to where he was, making him very similar to those who simply stand still. Running is a welcome escape for him but, despite everything he sees and everything he knows, he cannot find a way out of his circumstances.
As he grows, Maniac's approach to running evolves, figuratively as well as literally. One example of the figurative is how he initially arrives in town as a runaway but eventually spends a lot of time trying to prevent those two young kids, Russell and Piper McNab, from running away themselves.
An example of the literal is how he initially runs away from Mars Bar Thompson (an East Ender of the same age as Maniac) but, by the end, they run together each morning. As Maniac's approach to running matures, his preparation for making the required self-acknowledgments for transformation are underlined.
The other angle to his encounters with Mars Bar involve books. Maniac only runs into Mars Bar because of a book he is trying to return to a girl, Amanda Beale, from whom he borrowed it on his first day in Two Mills. The act of trying to return this book brings him to the East End, and to his encounter with Mars Bar, and starts the long chain of events which eventually bring him to a place he might call home.
But it is a journey and he needs help to find a balance between his sense of obligation and his need to resolve his homelessness. Amanda, who at one point tells Maniac that 'you can't get a library card without an address', serves as another key figure in forcing Maniac to acknowledge the help he needs to change his circumstances. Her lending the book to Maniac validates his right to be in town despite his homelessness and suggests that the help he needs lies not in the formal assistance of public programs or foster care but in accepting the kindness from others that he does not yet do naturally.
Books, in fact, appear all over the place in this story. One purpose books serve is to illustrate the different relationships the characters have to 'home'. When Mars Bar rips a page out of the book in that first encounter, the obligation to repair it leads Maniac to Amanda's house and to an offer from her parents for him to live there.
He remains in their care until another act of vandalism, the shredding of Amanda's encyclopedia by someone 'celebrating' Maniac untying Cobble's Knot, forces Maniac to leave and resume his homeless wandering instead of staying and potentially causing more pain. A book gives him an address, a book takes it away.
His time living with the elderly Grayson is defined by books. Using the money Grayson gives him, Maniac buys used books from the library. These he uses to teach himself subjects his peers are learning at school. Not being in school allows him to spend time with Grayson, to build a place they each call home after being starved of such a place for most of their lives. The safety of this place makes Grayson feel 'at home' enough to finally admit his illiteracy and this admission prompts Maniac to buy books for teaching the old man how to read.
In addition to the foundation books provide for building and providing homes, there are also a examples of characters using books as substitutes for the power to stabilize their own lives which they, as children, lack, and which their own versions of home do not sufficiently provide.
For example, Amanda, who finds her private collection of books constantly under siege from her younger siblings, lugs a suitcase full of her books around town with her at all times. Maniac, unwilling to attend school due to his homelessness (and unable to get a library card due to his lack of an address), regains some semblance of control over his education by purchasing those used library books referenced above as learning material.
Both characters, finding an element of their home lives over which they have little control impacting their relationship to books, find solutions which allow them to regain a sense of power over their own circumstances and continue to work with their books in a way that is satisfying to them.
There is also a commentary on routines that books illustrate in various ways. Sometimes, these are explicitly stated, such as when reading in the afternoons is described as 'providing just enough stability' to allow Maniac to handle the chaos that ensues while he is trying to help Russell and Piper sort out their own shambles of a home life.
At other times, the commentary is more subtle. As described above in a couple of examples, various characters use reading or possession of books to build routine into their lives. A routine, being stable, often provides an important sense of control during otherwise stressful times, and the actions of these characters bring that idea to life in their own ways.
But routines are also dangerous because reliance on a routine blinds us to what goes on, both within us and in our surroundings. Grayson's ability to live without fully acknowledging his illiteracy is an example of internal ignorance, the casual acceptance of the east-west division in town an example of blindingly moving within our environment. In each case, the routine of daily living allows acceptance of corrosive conditions.
Maniac gets books involved to break the cycle of acceptance that traps these characters. When Grayson finally feels the needed safety to admit his illiteracy, Maniac's old library books serve as primary learning aids. As his reading ability develops, Grayson finds, at last, the missing pieces of his life coming together, the pieces his routine would always prevent him from finding and uniting.
And needing to return that first book he borrowed from Amanda, Maniac crosses the town's dividing line. It does not solve anything, this movement from one side of a street to another, but it is notable for its symbolic value. His own cycle of accepting his homelessness drives him to do the right thing, in a way, because it allows him to fulfill his sense of obligation without fulfilling a 'selfish' need to take care of himself first.
But it is a cycle that needs breaking and he finds a place to start in that trip over the line. It is not necessarily symbolic that, when he does enter the East End, he meets the book-tearing Mars Bar, but it is notable that this is the very character who finally forces Maniac to rip away from his own routine acceptance of his homelessness by finding him at his outdoor sleeping place and suggesting he come home with him.
I guess it is not possible to be sure what one idea books stand for in Maniac Magee, which might be what the author intended. The construction of the story as a legend hints at this, since legends acknowledge a composite of fact and fiction, just like anyone's interpretation. But if books are written with the intent of being read carefully and considered thoughtfully, then perhaps this is all intended, even if my ideas have nothing to do with what went through the author's mind when he first put pen to paper.
When I really mean when I say that Maniac Magee is my favorite book is that I value greatly this ability to read it, once a year, and continue to mull and interpret it in different ways. People who love art presumably feel a similar way in that their favorite pieces are those that challenge their ability to relate and to interpret. They want to find a connection to the artist through understanding the message, by finding some underlying meaning for the work's existence, or perhaps they seek to find some connection to a disappearing place within themselves.
Art sometimes delivers the message and sometimes shines a light on messages whose receipt we have chosen not to acknowledge. Maniac Magee's lessons on racism are delivered cleanly to me as a reader but perhaps ideas about homelessness being an impossible public problem were left for me to uncover, on my own, fifteen years after my first reading.
Sometimes, art does both, which is what books ultimately do in this story, and this is what many great books do whenever they are read. They arrive clearly at first and then, some time later, uncover something within us that we need to know, hear, or acknowledge at that specific time. Or, the message arrives cleanly but must wait over many years for our own evolution until we can finally understand it.
'Running To Stand Still' is not considered U2's best song. That title might go to 'One', which is a song that some people have played at their weddings. Bono, upon hearing this, reportedly remarked about these couples "Are they mad? It's about splitting up!"
And I think he's right, because that is what the song is about. But the couples he talks about are right too because art changes over time and so with those changes do their interpretations. Or maybe it is the listener, the reader, the observer who changes, and the art works like a good mirror to let us see what those changes mean about us in a way that we could not see using just our own two eyes.
**********************************
Thanks as always for reading. I will post on Tuesday at the usual time.
Have a nice weekend and I will see you then.
Tim
Footnotes!
1. Supersonic tangent...
Songs can be written with no ready interpretation, too, perhaps due to the drug use (ital) by the artist (ital) at the time the song was written. According to Noel (or according to an article I just found, I suppose) this was the case for Oasis up until 1997.
Here's a fun one- the lyrics leading to a debate (*) by their fans regarding who 'Elsa' is a reference to:
She's into Alka Seltzer
She sniffs it through a cane on a supersonic train
She made me laugh
Elsa is apparently a dog that was in the recording studio the day the song was written. To be more specific, Elsa was a rottweiler with a flatulence problem. She belonged to one of the producers.
2. 'Walk On' tangent...
'Walk On' was written about Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese academic and activist, she is never mentioned by name in the lyrics and her twenty years under house arrest for pro-democratic activities never explicitly described. Therefore, I find the likelihood that anyone can determine the intent of the song from simply listening to be very close to nil.
And it is open to different interpretations, as almost anything is, evidenced by my use of lyrics from this song to link to ideas about 'home' in a post last month. Other interpretations include it being about heaven, about working through adversity, and so forth.
3. Problem child tangent...
Sixth grade English class was the last time I had serious 'behavior problems'. Things got so bad that I was formally banned from attending the end of year Holes luncheon, an event where us sixth graders were due to meet with a group from the local senior center to discuss Louis Sachar's book and otherwise exchange pleasantries, share a meal, and enjoy each other's company. It is kind of strange that my favorite book emerged from the rubble of that year.
Just to summarize- banned from the HOLES LUNCHEON!
4. Pointless annual traditions tangent...
By two weeks ago, I mean on Marathon Monday. In fact, it is a personal tradition to read this book every year, Marathon Monday being the start date (but not always the end date).
A comprehensive listing of pointless calendar-based personal (aka solo) traditions:
*Marathon Monday- read Maniac Magee (c 2011- present)
*July 4- go for an early morning run along the Freedom Trail (c 2013- present)
*Mid-December- watch the 'Jimmy V' speech (c 2010- present)
I have to admit, I thought the list would be a lot longer when I started it.
*Except that it is written by Neil McCormick , who is not a part of U2, but the book is kind of like an oral history, too, so I guess U2 wrote it, so maybe the title is true on average.I enjoyed any section exploring what specific songs were intended to mean. The reason is simple- I like finding out when my initial interpretation of a song's lyrics are correct (or at least in line with the songwriter's intent).
Unsurprisingly, the difficulty of interpreting the meaning of U2 songs range from crystal clear to basically impossible (which I assume is true for most bands (1)). An example of a very clear one is 'All I Want Is You' (a love song) while a song such as 'Walk On' is almost impossible to figure out from just listening and spawns many different, often personalized interpretations from their fans (2).
Occasionally, what the songs are written about evolves over time and both the original intent and the new meaning can exist simultaneously. I think 'Running To Stand Still' is a good example of this.
Originally released on The Joshua Tree in 1987, this song is about a heroine addicted Dublin couple. And it still is. But it is also true that in the liner notes for the 20th anniversary edition of the album, writer Bill Flanagan stated, "'Running to Stand Still' is for anyone who feels trapped in an impossible circumstance by overwhelming responsibility."
That last line made me think about Maniac Magee, the title character of Jerry Spinelli's Newbery Award winning novel, and the concept of meaning evolving over time fits nicely into how I have interpreted this book over many rereadings since my first introduction to it in sixth grade (3, 4).
The thing that catches my attention every time I read these 150 pages is the wisdom available to 'middle' readers through the sheer volume of symbols. This is not necessarily surprising, since I recall identification and analysis of symbols as a standard feature of many middle school reading assignments (what were the symbols, what did they mean, etc).
A lot of the symbolism is like 'All I Want Is You', very clear and simple to anyone on the first pass. But I also suspect some of this is hard to catch at the age most readers wade into these pages and perhaps some of this is not really there at all- in the same way I used come up with my own understanding of 'Walk On', I suppose it is possible that some of the symbolic elements I find in Maniac Magee have more to do with me than they do with the author's intent.
It brings me to a question about symbolism that my school age assignments never covered- what is the author's intent behind the symbolism included in the work? Can a reader's relationship to symbolism change over time, allowing multiple interpretations to hold up, or can readers only be mistaken until someone wiser comes along to set them straight?
Flanagan's quote suggests support for the former and I suspect his line about 'Running To Stand Still' resonated with me because it describes Maniac Magee almost perfectly- he is a character weighed down by a simultaneous feeling of obligation to help those he can reach while also looking for a way out of his present set of circumstances.
This idea is introduced from the start when a recently orphaned Maniac is sent to live with his dysfunctional aunt and uncle. In a home described as 'the house of two toasters', his guardians prop up a failing marriage by owning two of every conceivable household item.
Maniac tolerates this for eight years before his guardians' fear of challenging their anti-divorce beliefs breaks him. Screaming "Talk! Why don't you talk!" at his aunt and uncle before running away from home, Maniac flashes his sense of duty to bring hopelessly broken pieces together while perhaps attempting to improve his own circumstances.
Failing, he begins a period of homelessness that takes him to the town of Two Mills. His period in Two Mills is marked, countless times, by his completion of tasks or challenges that townsfolk see as 'legendary' but Maniac perhaps does only out of obligation.
Maniac stands up to bullies, such as one named John McNab, and helps two little kids in their own unmanageable living environment fight back the urge to run away from home (John's brothers, coincidentally). Maniac rescues kids trapped in forbidden backyards and never turns down a toddler who asks him to untie a sneaker knot.
The latter leads to his challenge of Cobble's Knot. This knot is owned by a corner store on Hector Street- and Hector Street just happens to divide the town into its racially-segregated halves (the West End is all-white, the East End is all-black).
The knot is the cleanest symbol of racism in the book. It is considered unsolvable in town, thanks to decades of tiny, accumulating actions that have made the knot more hard ball than tangled string. At the time Maniac arrives, it seems only a supreme individual effort can undo it. The store owner has reflected the unlikelihood of this by offering a prize of one free large pizza per week for a year to anyone who succeeds. Maniac, who is allergic to pizza, does the 'unthinkable' and unties the knot.
In addition to further reinforcing the symbolism of the knot by bringing onlookers from both sides of the dividing line together to witness this event, the challenge also makes a comment about the difference in motivation and obligation. It suggests that those driven by the possibility of reward might not nearly have the same capability as those driven internally to do what might be considered the 'right' thing.
But what drives Maniac to do these 'right' things? Running is one possibility, an activity that Maniac seems to do all the time, and this idea is encouraged by the publishers- almost every cover of the book depicts Maniac running. In fact, Maniac arrives in town running, having just run away from home, and runs alone almost every morning.
But over time, you see that he encounters problem after problem in the book and handles most of these by running away from them. No matter how much he runs, Maniac comes back to where he was, making him very similar to those who simply stand still. Running is a welcome escape for him but, despite everything he sees and everything he knows, he cannot find a way out of his circumstances.
As he grows, Maniac's approach to running evolves, figuratively as well as literally. One example of the figurative is how he initially arrives in town as a runaway but eventually spends a lot of time trying to prevent those two young kids, Russell and Piper McNab, from running away themselves.
An example of the literal is how he initially runs away from Mars Bar Thompson (an East Ender of the same age as Maniac) but, by the end, they run together each morning. As Maniac's approach to running matures, his preparation for making the required self-acknowledgments for transformation are underlined.
The other angle to his encounters with Mars Bar involve books. Maniac only runs into Mars Bar because of a book he is trying to return to a girl, Amanda Beale, from whom he borrowed it on his first day in Two Mills. The act of trying to return this book brings him to the East End, and to his encounter with Mars Bar, and starts the long chain of events which eventually bring him to a place he might call home.
But it is a journey and he needs help to find a balance between his sense of obligation and his need to resolve his homelessness. Amanda, who at one point tells Maniac that 'you can't get a library card without an address', serves as another key figure in forcing Maniac to acknowledge the help he needs to change his circumstances. Her lending the book to Maniac validates his right to be in town despite his homelessness and suggests that the help he needs lies not in the formal assistance of public programs or foster care but in accepting the kindness from others that he does not yet do naturally.
Books, in fact, appear all over the place in this story. One purpose books serve is to illustrate the different relationships the characters have to 'home'. When Mars Bar rips a page out of the book in that first encounter, the obligation to repair it leads Maniac to Amanda's house and to an offer from her parents for him to live there.
He remains in their care until another act of vandalism, the shredding of Amanda's encyclopedia by someone 'celebrating' Maniac untying Cobble's Knot, forces Maniac to leave and resume his homeless wandering instead of staying and potentially causing more pain. A book gives him an address, a book takes it away.
His time living with the elderly Grayson is defined by books. Using the money Grayson gives him, Maniac buys used books from the library. These he uses to teach himself subjects his peers are learning at school. Not being in school allows him to spend time with Grayson, to build a place they each call home after being starved of such a place for most of their lives. The safety of this place makes Grayson feel 'at home' enough to finally admit his illiteracy and this admission prompts Maniac to buy books for teaching the old man how to read.
In addition to the foundation books provide for building and providing homes, there are also a examples of characters using books as substitutes for the power to stabilize their own lives which they, as children, lack, and which their own versions of home do not sufficiently provide.
For example, Amanda, who finds her private collection of books constantly under siege from her younger siblings, lugs a suitcase full of her books around town with her at all times. Maniac, unwilling to attend school due to his homelessness (and unable to get a library card due to his lack of an address), regains some semblance of control over his education by purchasing those used library books referenced above as learning material.
Both characters, finding an element of their home lives over which they have little control impacting their relationship to books, find solutions which allow them to regain a sense of power over their own circumstances and continue to work with their books in a way that is satisfying to them.
There is also a commentary on routines that books illustrate in various ways. Sometimes, these are explicitly stated, such as when reading in the afternoons is described as 'providing just enough stability' to allow Maniac to handle the chaos that ensues while he is trying to help Russell and Piper sort out their own shambles of a home life.
At other times, the commentary is more subtle. As described above in a couple of examples, various characters use reading or possession of books to build routine into their lives. A routine, being stable, often provides an important sense of control during otherwise stressful times, and the actions of these characters bring that idea to life in their own ways.
But routines are also dangerous because reliance on a routine blinds us to what goes on, both within us and in our surroundings. Grayson's ability to live without fully acknowledging his illiteracy is an example of internal ignorance, the casual acceptance of the east-west division in town an example of blindingly moving within our environment. In each case, the routine of daily living allows acceptance of corrosive conditions.
Maniac gets books involved to break the cycle of acceptance that traps these characters. When Grayson finally feels the needed safety to admit his illiteracy, Maniac's old library books serve as primary learning aids. As his reading ability develops, Grayson finds, at last, the missing pieces of his life coming together, the pieces his routine would always prevent him from finding and uniting.
And needing to return that first book he borrowed from Amanda, Maniac crosses the town's dividing line. It does not solve anything, this movement from one side of a street to another, but it is notable for its symbolic value. His own cycle of accepting his homelessness drives him to do the right thing, in a way, because it allows him to fulfill his sense of obligation without fulfilling a 'selfish' need to take care of himself first.
But it is a cycle that needs breaking and he finds a place to start in that trip over the line. It is not necessarily symbolic that, when he does enter the East End, he meets the book-tearing Mars Bar, but it is notable that this is the very character who finally forces Maniac to rip away from his own routine acceptance of his homelessness by finding him at his outdoor sleeping place and suggesting he come home with him.
I guess it is not possible to be sure what one idea books stand for in Maniac Magee, which might be what the author intended. The construction of the story as a legend hints at this, since legends acknowledge a composite of fact and fiction, just like anyone's interpretation. But if books are written with the intent of being read carefully and considered thoughtfully, then perhaps this is all intended, even if my ideas have nothing to do with what went through the author's mind when he first put pen to paper.
When I really mean when I say that Maniac Magee is my favorite book is that I value greatly this ability to read it, once a year, and continue to mull and interpret it in different ways. People who love art presumably feel a similar way in that their favorite pieces are those that challenge their ability to relate and to interpret. They want to find a connection to the artist through understanding the message, by finding some underlying meaning for the work's existence, or perhaps they seek to find some connection to a disappearing place within themselves.
Art sometimes delivers the message and sometimes shines a light on messages whose receipt we have chosen not to acknowledge. Maniac Magee's lessons on racism are delivered cleanly to me as a reader but perhaps ideas about homelessness being an impossible public problem were left for me to uncover, on my own, fifteen years after my first reading.
Sometimes, art does both, which is what books ultimately do in this story, and this is what many great books do whenever they are read. They arrive clearly at first and then, some time later, uncover something within us that we need to know, hear, or acknowledge at that specific time. Or, the message arrives cleanly but must wait over many years for our own evolution until we can finally understand it.
'Running To Stand Still' is not considered U2's best song. That title might go to 'One', which is a song that some people have played at their weddings. Bono, upon hearing this, reportedly remarked about these couples "Are they mad? It's about splitting up!"
And I think he's right, because that is what the song is about. But the couples he talks about are right too because art changes over time and so with those changes do their interpretations. Or maybe it is the listener, the reader, the observer who changes, and the art works like a good mirror to let us see what those changes mean about us in a way that we could not see using just our own two eyes.
**********************************
Thanks as always for reading. I will post on Tuesday at the usual time.
Have a nice weekend and I will see you then.
Tim
Footnotes!
1. Supersonic tangent...
Songs can be written with no ready interpretation, too, perhaps due to the drug use (ital) by the artist (ital) at the time the song was written. According to Noel (or according to an article I just found, I suppose) this was the case for Oasis up until 1997.
Here's a fun one- the lyrics leading to a debate (*) by their fans regarding who 'Elsa' is a reference to:
*To the extent that Oasis fans engage in debates about lyrics, I suppose.I know a girl called Elsa
She's into Alka Seltzer
She sniffs it through a cane on a supersonic train
She made me laugh
Elsa is apparently a dog that was in the recording studio the day the song was written. To be more specific, Elsa was a rottweiler with a flatulence problem. She belonged to one of the producers.
2. 'Walk On' tangent...
'Walk On' was written about Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese academic and activist, she is never mentioned by name in the lyrics and her twenty years under house arrest for pro-democratic activities never explicitly described. Therefore, I find the likelihood that anyone can determine the intent of the song from simply listening to be very close to nil.
And it is open to different interpretations, as almost anything is, evidenced by my use of lyrics from this song to link to ideas about 'home' in a post last month. Other interpretations include it being about heaven, about working through adversity, and so forth.
3. Problem child tangent...
Sixth grade English class was the last time I had serious 'behavior problems'. Things got so bad that I was formally banned from attending the end of year Holes luncheon, an event where us sixth graders were due to meet with a group from the local senior center to discuss Louis Sachar's book and otherwise exchange pleasantries, share a meal, and enjoy each other's company. It is kind of strange that my favorite book emerged from the rubble of that year.
Just to summarize- banned from the HOLES LUNCHEON!
4. Pointless annual traditions tangent...
By two weeks ago, I mean on Marathon Monday. In fact, it is a personal tradition to read this book every year, Marathon Monday being the start date (but not always the end date).
A comprehensive listing of pointless calendar-based personal (aka solo) traditions:
*Marathon Monday- read Maniac Magee (c 2011- present)
*July 4- go for an early morning run along the Freedom Trail (c 2013- present)
*Mid-December- watch the 'Jimmy V' speech (c 2010- present)
I have to admit, I thought the list would be a lot longer when I started it.
