Mysterious

When we were in Kingston last weekend, I photographed a Cooper’s Hawk (thanks for identifying it, Goodbear!) through the upper back window of an esoterica shop. I also took a couple of pictures from its upper front window, trying to get the shop signs across the street in full swing; it was very gusty that day.

Well, I wasn’t able to capture the tilted signs, but discovered when enlarging the photos that one of the stores is devoted to mystery novels. It’s called, “As the Plot Thickens.” Had I realized that at the time, I might have gone to see if there was a Viscosi section!

GC-14 and Little Willy

Geoff (stage name GC-14) adjusts his lapel mike. Photo courtesy Wikicommons.

I’m pretty fussy when it comes to pop music. I like a nice hummable tune, interesting instrumentation, and lyrics that mean something. As a teen I claimed to dislike disco because its lyrics were often insipid; some big hits contained only half a dozen words. (Though truth to tell, it’s just as much because disco was such happy music that moody Turtle Teen didn’t care for it. )

I never really understood rap music, either. There’s plenty of meaning in its words, even if I don’t understand all of them; some expressions seem to be new to the English language. But tuneless lyrics? I didn’t get it.

Shame on me.

In the 14th Century, a rap artist named Geoffrey Chaucer was knocking ‘em dead onstage. He protested the excesses of the Church and the inanities of the over-indulged; he joked about sexual infidelities; he took potshots at minor government officials. Most people in his audience didn’t own any books, and many were barely literate.

Two hundred years later, a radical named William Shakespeare thumbed his nose at the Puritan authorities and penned sexy, satirical, sensitive stageplays in a funky backbeat rhythm of ten beats per line. When the words didn’t fit quite right or didn’t express what he wanted to say, he invented new ones.

If the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare were taught properly in school — with emphasis on hearing those works rather than reading them — the commonalities between them and rap would be more apparent.

Stage entertainment. Rhythm and rhyme. Reflection and social critique. Ingenuity, passion — and spoken, not sung. Rap is POETRY, you silly Turtle! If you want tune, go listen to Silver Convention’s “Fly, Robin, Fly.”

A Study in Car Chases

It was a dark and steamy night.

I don’t care much for action films. I don’t mind the odd one, but I don’t seek them out, either. They’re usually full of gears and gadgetry, strong on political intrigue or the perpetration of perfect crimes, weak on interesting stuff like interpersonal relationships or pets.

Besides, I’m onto these films. Every one of them, whether light-hearted or dark and dangerous, puts the pedal to the metal at least once. Wake me up when the car chase is over. Or the plane chase, or the motorcycle chase, or the school bus chase, or whatever — it’s all the same conceit. Why can’t modern movies come up with something a little more innovative? Give me an old book anyday, when the climax didn’t involve mechanical speed.

Imagine my surprise.

I was reading “The Sign of Four” last night. It’s Arthur Conan Doyle’s second-ever Sherlock Holmes mystery, published in 1890. Resembling a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, the plot includes an old captain with a wooden leg, a treasure, and a dwarf with poison darts.

Holmes has figured out where the villains are, and awaits them with Watson and the police in a police boat on the River Thames, guessing that they will attempt to board a ship bound for the Americas.

Will the evildoers take a hansom cab to get them to the quai on time? Oh no, they’ve hired a private launch, the Aurora. Read on:

“And there is the Aurora,” exclaimed Holmes, “and going like the devil! Full speed ahead, engineer. Make after that launch with the yellow light. By heaven, I shall never forgive myself if she proves to have the heels of us!”

She had slipped unseen through the yard-entrance, and passed behind two or three small craft, so that she had fairly got her speed up before we saw her. Now she was flying down the stream, near in to the shore, going at a tremendous rate. Jones looked gravely at her and shook his head.

“She is very fast,” he said. “I doubt if we shall catch her.”

“We must catch her!” cried Holmes, between his teeth. “Heap it on stokers! Make her do all she can! If we burn the boat we must have them!”

                – “The Sign of Four”, chapter X.

Holmes, of course, is not far off from being literal. These were steam launches, powered by coal; the stokers are the guys shoveling it into the furnace. At full velocity, these amazing boats would be speeding along at about 15 kilometres an hour. Wow, a whole mile in just under eight minutes! Doesn’t the thought leave you breathless?

And yet it works. The “car chase” conceit, I learned last night, predates the car. The convention is an oldie, and still a goodie, and won’t be retiring any time soon.

Today’s photo is of a steam launch from the turn of the Twentieth Century. If you click on the photo, you will get the web picture showing the entire boat. And if you’re planning a vacation in the Argyll region of western Scotland, you might want to visit the website of Avich and Kilchrenan, from which I scoffed the photo. The website comprises information on the two tiny villages of Avich and Kilchrenan, and their surrounding countryside. Besides its page on the history of the local steamships, the website features gorgeous photos of the lochs and hillsides themselves — which, personally, I find far more breathtaking than the thought of vehicular pursuits at whatever speed.