Friday, October 16, 2009

Thinking About La


“Do” is not a deer, female or otherwise. First, even if she was a female deer, to point that out would be redundant anyway. Right? ...I mean, if she wasn’t a female deer, she’d be a “buck”, right?

But “Do” is not a deer, “Do” is a verb expressing the imperative mood.

“Do this. Don’t do that. Can’t you read the sign?!” –Five Man Electric Band

Besides, if “Do” was a deer, a female deer, I’m just sure that with that misspelling, during her elementary school days she suffered no end to being called “Dew” or “Due”. There’s just no way to get “Doe” (rhymes with “go”) out of the spelling “D-o”. How embarrassing for “Do”. No doubt she constantly had to explain the spelling to her teachers…

"It's French", I can almost hear her say.

And “Re” isn’t a “drop of golden” anything. “Ray” is my plumber. “Re” is a prefix. If Ray could prefix my plumbing, he wouldn’t have to make house calls. But I’m not waiting for my basement to fill with water on that possibility.

And when referring to myself, I don’t spell me, “mi”. And it’s really not a “name” I call myself. It’s a pronoun that refers to me, but that’s technically not a “name”. Technically, it is a referent.

“Mi, a referent by which I refer to myself, but spell differently.”

Fa may be a long, long way to run if you live down south and are given to droppin’ final consonants. Which brings up an interesting anomaly…

A southerner might drop the final “r”, making “fa” out of “far”. But this dropping of an “r” is obviously not because of the lack of ability to actually articulate the final consonant. I’m guessing that it is for clarity. I’m guessing that it done so as to differentiate between the long, long way to run, and observable combustion.

Which brings up another interesting observation:

A southerner would NEVER yell “fire!” in a crowded building.

"So". Again with the unnecessary misspelling. “So” and “sew” are homonyms, even if “sew” looks as though it might be pronounced “Sue”. And yet, it, not "so", is the needle-pulling-thread word. I can almost hear the songwriter….

“So, sue me”

And that brings me to the pathetic, “La”. No identity in herself. She is merely “a note to follow So”.

Totally codependent.

I wonder if there is any kind of support group for co-dependent major scale notes. Going through life only finding identity in the act of "following so" would, I believe, eventually lead to neurotic behavior, if it isn’t already indicated.

And just to function in the musical world? ...I imagine it would be such a burden to ever be wondering things like, "So, how closely do I follow so?". "If it's an oriental piece do I follow further back?". The pressure to perform must be overwhelming at times. At times I'll bet that like most co-dependent relationships, la has almost lost the sense of where so ends and la begins.

Just guessing here, but I’ll bet La has trouble ever being any more than a 64th note

2 comments:

  1. hi john... how coincidental, sofia's been singing this song of late. of course she says "far" instead of fa. she keeps bugging me when i'm on the computer to go to youtube and find the clip of julie andrews on the sound of music... wish i had a plumber

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  2. You, of course, favor the Homer Simpson version...

    Dough...... the stuff... that buys me beer...
    RAY..... the guy that sells me beer...
    ME...... the guy... who drinks the beer,
    FAR..... a long long way to get beer...
    SO...... I'll have another beer...
    LA...... I'll have another beer...
    TEA..... no thanks, I'm drinking beer...
    That will bring us back to...

    (looks into an empty glass)

    D'OH!

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