This is the Meanwhile

I shall marry the miller's son,
Pin my hat on a nice piece of property.
Friday nights, for a bit of fun, we'll go dancing.
Meanwhile...

It's a wink and a wiggle and a giggle in the grass
And I'll trip the light fandango,
A pinch and a diddle in the middle of what passes by.
It's a very short road from the pinch and the punch
To the paunch and the pouch and the pension.
It's a very short road to the ten thousandth lunch
And the belch and the grouch and the sigh.

In the meanwhile,
There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed
And a lot in between in the meanwhile.
And a girl ought to celebrate what passes by.

Or I shall marry the businessman
Five fat babies and lots of security.
Friday nights, if we think we can,
We'll go dancing.
Meanwhile...

It's a push and a fumble and a tumble in the sheets
And I'll foot the highland fancy,
A dip in the butter and a flutter with what meets my eye.
It's a very short fetch from the push and the whoop
To the squint and the stoop and the mumble.
It's not much of a stretch to the cribs and the croup
And the bosoms that droop And go dry.

In the meanwhile,
There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed,
And there's many a tryst and there's many a bed
To be sampled and seen in the meanwhile.
And a girl has to celebrate what passes by.

Or I shall marry the Prince of Wales,
Pearls and servants and dressing for festivals.
Friday nights, with him all in tails,
We'll have dancing.
Meanwhile...

It's a rip in the bustle and a rustle in the hay
And I'll pitch the quick fantastic,
With flings of confetti and my petticoats away up high.
It's a very short way from the fling that's for fun
To the thigh pressing under the table.
It's a very short day til you're stuck with just one
Or it has to be done on the sly.

In the meanwhile,
There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed,
And there's many a tryst and there's many a bed,
There's a lot I'll have missed but I'll not have been dead when I die!
And a person should celebrate everything passing by.

And I shall marry the miller's son.

Despite my references to Candide, which might mislead you, the Jesuits (who, despite my choice of link, are not in Britain alone) didn't get their hands on me during my formative years. At different distances, one of which became in-person contact (and no, I'm not telling which), Sondheim, Seuss, Keats (for whom I was far too young), Shelley & Co. (and yes, I know Keats to have been amongst them), Gorey, Addams and Thurber did. They didn't get their hands on me, but they got their words and music and images in me, and those seethed into and rewrote my DNA.

The same thing happened at later stages, with different artists, of course. (Shall we discuss visuals and Andy Goldsworthy, who is worth far more than gold? For a moving visual, look here.)

People get bickery about show music and I'm sure to cause the turning up of no few noses, citing a lyricist as a poet (There's worse to come, darlings. The bonnie blog is young, but a-growin'.), but Sondheim is far more than a hack lyricist -- and well-crafted songs are poems with more layers, nothing less or more.

Sondheim's words and music do much for me, even after the hundredth hearing. The day Pacific Overtures touches nothing in me, I shall no longer be me.

Call 'The Miller's Son' (sung by Petra in A Little Night Music) a pivotal influence. If you haven't heard it, then you can sample what you're missing here. I'll wait until you're back.) (Do you need a breather?)

'The Miller's Son' is primal and passionate, a full-blooded and throated vocalised urge, a rowdy behest for the living of life -- not a prayer for for mercy, but for full-on, 'Don't just embrace it; take it home and have its children' life. It puts down its glass, leans forward over its comfortably wide-spread legs (bugger conformity) and says, 'Jaayyysus, ya daft fool. Go do it.' Had Petra been Penelope, Ulysses would have had a shorter journey. That Petrafied Penelope wouldn't have waited at home. She'd have gone out there and brought back her man, leaving some sore and bewildered Sirens and other problems in the back-end of her path.

Shifting mythologies and legends and lores for a moment, the miller's son is no bad bargain. Puss in Boots worked with him.

Returning to Petra: She's a pragmatist. Babies make messes. Princes move in other strata (although they, too, come to beds at night). The road is short but this girl isn't going to creep or crawl (although she certainly plans to fumble). She's going to kick up her well-rounded heels and dance her way to the far end, however near or far it may be. And the gods have not invented that good night into which this girl is going to go gently. She's going to go out of life just the way she came into it and precisely the way she lived it while she was here: every pore open, each sense ready and every bit alive right up to the instant after the last exhalation. And I have no idea who's going to help anybody who gets in her way on this or any other side. Any song that gets that vitality pulsing through a hearer is doing a service for far longer than the timespan of a poem, with or without a score.

What Do You Mean It Was Brillig?

(It still is.)

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the JubJub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Opening detour: The title of this entry is the title of a James Thurber story. (Keep checking; implicit in The New Yorker's statement that the archives are not yet fully on line is the promise of intention that they will be.) Please don't allow yourself to get all huffy at the opening paragraph. Thurber wrote in his era, as do we all. He wrote not only in, but of it: double-thick walls. Here endeth the detour.

According to Princeton's lexical database, 'portmanteau' has two meanings:

a large travelling bag made of stiff leather

blend: (a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings) `smog' is a blend of `smoke' and `fog';`motel' is a portmanteau word made by combining `motor' and `hotel'"; `brunch' is a well-known portmanteau

Prior to Lewis Carroll (henceforth PLC), only the first of those meanings existed. Carroll Throughout Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll packed two words into one, simultaneously compressing and expanding the English language. In Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Carroll has Humpty Dumpty explain it all, “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy…You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

When I was young (prepubescent), I caught a flu and developed the kind of fever that brings delirium. Being of my peculiar sensibility (each of us having sensibilities peculiar to him or herself), what else would I do in an untoward state? I unpacked all of the portmanteau words in Jabberwocky. Was it the soundest of choices? Perhaps not, but the fact that I remember it with such distinct clarity (amidst the fog of hands laying cold towels across my brow, endless sweats, turbulent sleep and other broken moments) induces in me a belief that the unpacking was healing: words into their constituent parts (a mental focus), body back to health (a physical determination).

I don't think that was the onset of my devotion to Carroll. My much-suppressed passion for words fuelled it, surely. A later interest in origami (Americans, look here. Those who want to be awestruck by the possibilities in paper, turn to Origamido.) and, in a particular way, mathematics, deepened the interest.

Far too much has been written about Carroll for the world to need another biography, even a single-page one. There are Lewis Carroll Societies in the UK, the US, Japan, New Zealand and points -- from any direction -- farther at sea. If you're tired of Waiting for Godot and aching to do more active; there's a Finding Lewis Carroll site. Feeling game? There's an Alice in Wonderland games site. You, too, can play chess with the Red Queen (and your head, physically if in no other way, will be perfectly safe). Do you want to go Through the Looking Glass online? Done and done. Care to see a few of his puzzles? Here you are. Want to wear your Tenniel? Bergamot Brass Works reproduced his plates as belt buckles (Alice goes into the mirror on one side and comes out on the other; Humpty Dumpty swells the top of his buckle). Bergamot no longer produce the buckles, but they might (You never know.) succumb to pressure. It's happened before. From time to time, you can find them at street fairs and in online auctions.

It's plain that I went a little bit Lewis-mad, but more in a Cheshire than a Hatter fashion. The smile was mine alone.

That's a lie. In grammar school, Carroll broke my shyness barrier. I rang my tutor (How did she not kill me?) at home and asked whether we could learn 'You Are Old, Father William' for school.

'Would you recite it?' she asked.

That was a bridge too far. I could not accede to recitation, but was willing to commit myself to an act of memory. Why not? I'd learnt Keats and Shakespeare, both of whom preceded Carroll in my miniverse. Shakespeare had nudged and winked at (and told a few atonal jokes to) my inner absurdist. Carroll took it out and fed it cakes and cream.

My tutor and I agreed and I condemned my unwitting (and a few intentionally witless) classmates to a round of Carroll.

"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And you have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray what is the reason for that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling a box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs.

You have to hand it to Father William -- and to his progenitor. He ages with rare gusto.