Sunday, December 21, 2014

Shoegazing



Like many women, I love shoes! My husband finds it amusing when I pack a suitcase full of shoes for travel along with a toothbrush and change of clean underwear. On the street or in the mall, if he sees a shoe store nearby, he tries to steer me away from it. Actually, I am very good about window shopping but not buying. I gaze at unique shoes with zippers, unusually colored shoes, shoes with fun heels, saddle oxfords, huaraches. At home, I secretly surf the web for purple boots or red suede walking shoes. Rarely do I buy, but I also have to admit that I have a small foot, so these days finding shoes in my size proves quite challenging. So I look and long.

Imagine my surprise recently when I came across the word “shoegazing” while looking up another word in the dictionary. (I was even more surprised that my picture was not next to the word.) I have heard of stargazing, but shoegazing? As it turns out, the action of shoegazing does involve looking at one’s feet, but in a specific context. The “American Heritage Dictionary” on-line defines shoegazing as “a genre of popular music characterized by droning, electronically modified sounds, typically performed and listened to motionlessly with the eyes cast downward in introspection and often under the influence of psychoactive substances.”

Never having heard of this activity, I immediately completed a Google search. I found two helpful articles, “Shoegaze: a beginner’s guide,” and “Where to start with this enigmatic music known as shoegaze.” Evidently, shoegazing first originated in Britain in the late 1980’s and currently is undergoing a resurgence. I listened to a song or two. I found the music alluring, although I was under the influence of caffeine, if that substance qualifies as a “psychoactive substance.” As tempting as it is to become a musical shoegazer, I am going to stick with gazing at “durable covering for the human foot, made of leather or similar material with a rigid sole and heel, usually extending no higher than the ankle” in shoe stores and on web sites.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Odysseus the Odious (or Let’s Take a Ulyssiad!)



“All along the southbound odyssey/ The train pulls out at Kankakee . . .”

Only a poet with the humor and imagination of Steve Goodman would rhyme “odyssey” with Kankakee in his classic song, “City of New Orleans.” “Odyssey” is not normally a word I think about, even when planning a trip. However, a few weeks ago, I received “Odyssey” as the word of the day from the “Oxford English Dictionary” e-mail list. The definition contained nothing surprising: “(The name of) one of two great hexametric epic poems of ancient Greece traditionally attributed to Homer (the other being the Iliad).” The second definition covers the common noun meaning of “odyssey” as “a long series of wanderings; a long adventurous journey.” Imagine my surprise, however, when I read that the source of the name of the traveler, Odysseus, comes not from a word that reflects epic grandeur, but from a Greek word meaning “to hate” and the Latin “odium.” The entry notes, “Odysseus was thought to be so called because he was ‘hated by gods and men’.”

Having taught “The Odyssey” several times as a cross-curricular unit with Global Studies, I am aware of Odysseus’s foibles. As a teacher, and as a female, I gave him little quarter when it came to his infidelities with Circe and Calypso. (Note: If you have not read Margaret Atwood’s “The Penelopiad,” the story of “The Odyssey” from Penelope’s point-of-view, I highly recommend it.)

While Odysseus did display other examples of bad boy behavior--such as taunting the Cyclops or endangering his men by demanding that he alone hear the song of the Sirens--he looked after his men very ingeniously. The fact that none of them made it back to Ithaca alive testifies to their own bad judgment, not to a failure to lead on Odysseus’s part.

Odysseus is better known for his cunning than his bad behavior. After all, he came up with the ruse of the Trojan Horse, which finally put an end to the 10-year Trojan War. Out of curiosity, I looked up the Latin equivalent for Odysseus, Ulysses, in the “OED” and found this definition: “Used as the type of a traveler or adventurer;  . . . also, a crafty and clever schemer.” I also found the adjective “Ulyssean” meaning “resembling Ulysses in craft or deceit, or in extensive wanderings.” Does Odysseus deserve the loathing associated with his name?  He did displease Poseidon, and the gods took sides for and against this intrepid traveler. Interestingly, his Greek name reflects the gods’ displeasure with the epic hero, but his (roamin’) Roman name reflects his clever accomplishments, giving the epic hero some credit.

Next time you embark upon an odyssey and have an unpleasant time, you can blame it on Odysseus the Odious. Occasionally on “Be-Worded,” have suggested new words. (See “friendkind” and “pixelography.”) In defense of Ulysses, the Clever, I am going to propose a new word for those journeys we take which have pleasant twists and turns: ulyssiad. Maybe in the future, a clever lyricist in the tradition of Steve Goodman will craftily rhyme “ulyssiad” with a place, creating another classic in the world of songs about travel.

NOTE: A Google search of “ulyssiad” turned up an old book, “The Ulyssiad: An American Epic,” by Eliza Madelina Wilbur Souvielle, published in 1896. As best as I can tell, this book involves Ulysses Grant and the Civil War on some level.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Chickens--WDSS (What Does Shakespeare Say?)



Some of the most vexing questions in life involve chickens. Which came first—the chicken or the egg? Why did the chicken cross the road? In a recent blog, “Fowl question—Chicken or Cock?” I address another perplexing question—why does English have two words for the domestic fowl, “chicken” and “cock”? To add some perspective to these questions, I have posed another: What Does Shakespeare Say About Chickens?

Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare did not write in “Old English” but instead wrote in Early Modern English—the same English that we speak today, although the language has continued to evolve. When Shakespeare was writing, French was waning as an influence on English. It makes sense that Shakespeare uses “cock” more than he uses “chicken” in his works, according to entries in Alexander Schmidt’s “Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary,” because “cock” evolved in the English and French traditions and “chicken” in the Germanic tradition.

Many of the usages of “cock” in Shakespeare’s works involve their alarm clock function, crowing cocks. In “Hamlet,” the crowing of the cock sends the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father away. In “The Tempest,” Sebastian describes the rather verbose Gonzalo as “The old cock” and his prattling as “crowing.” In “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Speed tells Valentine that he can tell when Valentine is in love because [you are] wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock.” In “The Taming of the Shrew,” Petruchio and Kate have the following conversation early in his attempt to woo Kate:

Kate: What is your crest? A coxcomb? (fool’s hat)
Petruchio: A combless cock (gentle rooster), so Kate will be my hen.
Kate: No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven. (a chicken chicken, that is one who will not fight)

Shakespeare makes very few references to chickens, and most of those are metaphoric. In Sonnet 143, he employs a simile of housewife leaving her child aside in order to chase an errant chicken to evoke the feeling of neglect that an ignored lover might feel. Near the end of “Macbeth,” MacDuff, after receiving the news that his wife and children have been slaughtered, utters in disbelief, “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam/ At one fell swoop?”

As the consummate artist, Shakespeare even addresses both the chicken and the egg in one fell swoop. When Pandarus and Cressida discuss whether Troilus loves Helen of Troy, Pandarus asserts, “Troilus? Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle [spoiled] egg.” Cressida replies, “If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens in the shell.”

As a lover of chickens, especially rubber chickens, I would be remiss not to mention Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale.  This tale, widely acclaimed as perhaps the most artful one in the Canterbury Tales, has chickens in major roles, although I must also admit the tale includes reports of some smoking chicken sex. However, in the interest of family-friendliness, I will say no more about Chanticleer’s conjugal life with his many chicken wives.

In closing, I will leave you with a little chicken trivia. The first known appearance of the chicken crossing the road joke goes back to “The Knickerbocker” (The New York Monthly) magazine in March, 1847. Also, Harvard physicist David Morin imagines how famous physicists might answer the question. Finally, an anonymous site offers answers that famous philosophically minded characters—both real and fictional--might provide to the question. Hamlet offers my favorite: “That is not the question.”