Can I get a translator?

FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 2010


Can I get a translator?

Lots of times this is exactly how I feel. Since I have some pretty cool nieces and nephews and some grand nieces and nephews in the progression this has not been too much of a problem with KidSpeak.

I feel like Bill Murray except I don’t have Scarlett fever. Well, maybe just a little. I sometimes say something and other people or some DAWG just look at me as if I am underwater with the mermaids of Weeki Wachee, Florida’s City of Mermaids. They can hear some mumbling but can’t quite make out what I am trying to say.

I think I am pretty clear when I am trying to tell someone something important… like I told the neighbor in no uncertain terms that I would rather his dog used his yard to relieve itself. He pretty much got that but there are still those days where I have suspicions but am not willing to pay for lab testing.

Lately though, it is as much a problem of me being understood as me understanding what someone is trying to tell me. Nieces through grand nephews can be no help at all here.


One of these special areas I discussed in the “What would Monty Python do?” blog entry. Today I got three of them at my private email address. This bunch of people speak Russian or some other language that uses letters from that alphabet I don’t even recognize. I am certain it is not Socrates calling me from the dead through the miracle of electronic mail.


I never even try to read these missives and have asked Outlook repeatedly to only put mail in my Inbox that I can read. Like things written in English. Some of the authors have been permanently added to the block senders list but they continue to demand a return receipt. I usually do not send one… DUH!

Outlook since it was a software engineering marvel of MicroSoft, as in most other cases of MicroSoft software, continues to ignore me. I was thinking if I could find a translator that understands the Cyrillic alphabet and he or she would translate some of these emails that there might be instructions from MicroSoft on how to get some of my software to do what I ask it to do.

I am pretty sure that is not the case at all. Maybe these Cyrillic coded posts come from Steve Jobs warning me that my WinDoze machine is going to blow up in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4… waiting, waiting, waiting. No, that wasn’t it.


My best guess is that they are song lyrics. Yes, that must be it. They are the words to American Pie.

From: http://understandingamericanpie.com/
“In the autumn of 1971 Don McLean's elegiac American Pie entered the collective consciousness, and over thirty years later remains one of the most discussed, dissected and debated songs that popular music has ever produced.”


Huh, these coded Cyrillic emails want to discuss and dissect this most debated song?


“A cultural event at the peak of its popularity in 1972, it reached the top of the Billboard 100 charts in a matter of weeks, selling more than 3 million copies; and at eight and a half minutes long, this was no mean feat. But this was no ordinary song, either: boldly original and thematically ambitious, what set American Pie apart had a lot to do with the way we weren't entirely sure what the song was about, provoking endless debates over its epic cast of characters.”


Some of the epic cast of characters sure looks strange to me.


"And these controversies remain with us to this day. But however open to interpretation the lyrics may have been, the song's emotional resonance was unmistakable: McLean was clearly relating a defining moment in the American experience—something had been lost, and we knew it.”


Yup, it must be that they want to discuss Buddy Holly.

“Opening with the death of singer Buddy Holly and ending near the tragic concert at Altamont Motor Speedway, we are able to frame the span of years the song is covering—1959 to 1970—as the "10 years we've been on our own" of the third verse. It is across this decade that the American cultural landscape changed radically, passing from the relative optimism and conformity of the 1950s and early 1960s to the rejection of these values by the various political and social movements of the mid and late 1960s.”


What cultural landscape? I lived through those years and there was very little culture unless you count the Chicago 8 or John Lennon or possibly the Nixon administration. “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio.”


A lot of the young people were yelling but few were listening… neither the young or the old.


“Coming as it did near the end of this turbulent era, American Pie seemed to be speaking to the precarious position we found ourselves in, as the grand social experiments of the 1960s began collapsing under the weight of their own unrealized utopian dreams, while the quieter, hopeful world we grew up in receded into memory. And as 1970 came to a close and the world this generation had envisioned no longer seemed viable, a sense of disillusion and loss fell over us; we weren't the people we once were. But we couldn't go home again either, having challenged the assumptions of that older order. The black and white days were over.”

Was it about Black Power?

Back then I didn’t need a translator. I just plain got it. Thank goodness Don McLean was not just a one hit wonder!

“Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.”


But there is plenty of hope and we can never give up. The hippie in me still cries out Imagine!

“Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one”
There is lots of music from those days that should be played over and over and over for the leaders of the modern world. If they need translators it shouldn’t be that hard to find some.

Maybe we can put some of this behind us and move forward in peace and harmony. It is not as if we need “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers” or Julia Andrews and Christopher Plummer singing Climb Every Mountain to figure out it is time to get this show on the road.

Art and music do not need translators.

Imagine!


Or is it that some powerful people have permanently added us to the block senders list? If necessary let's send the return receipt.

The heck with it, pass the shoe bomb. No one is listening. No one really cares.

“Bye bye, Miss American Pie.”

Come here DakotaDawg… just a second… Hier DakotaDawg kommen. Es ist nur ein kleines Gewitter.

© 06.25.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg


POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 1:56 PM 0 COMMENTS