By John Fitzgerald
The week of my debut on earth,
at number one was Mack the Knife.
I came from the soundtrack
I couldn’t help but hear.
For the first couple years
I did little but listen,
a language machine,
osmosing sound,
until at terrible two
a history-of-self emerged.
There is no primal memory per se.
But if there’s anything
I remember more than words,
it’s words set to music.
Some lyrics seem tailor-made
for a child to remember.
“It’s easy, like taking candy from a baby.”
A child gets that.
Love Me Do rings a bit fickle.
A song I’ve heard since I was two.
I’m looking for someone new to love,
someone exactly like you.
I’ll always be true,
just not to your predecessor.
Doesn’t strike confidence in the listener.
I think the Norwegian Wood bird
gets her house burned down.
Michelle is a lovely choon.
A man tells a woman
her name rhymes
with his sentiments.
How swell.
And though he doesn’t
speak her language
and they’ve never had so much
as a single conversation,
he learned the words
I love you
in her mother tongue and is hoping
that might get her into bed.
I want you I want you I want you.
I came from The British Invasion.
I think you know by now.
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
No two humans are exactly alike. Each has an interior world that the outside world knows nothing about, except to the extent it can be expressed. That expression stretches along a continuum from utter falsity at its worst to absolute truth as its highest achievement, the search for perfection. To the extent one is able to communicate that highest inner expression of truth, that is art, and it is what lifts humanity above its baser, animalistic tendencies. Art gives meaning to an otherwise mundane existence. Life without art is no more than an unknowing fulfillment of some ecological niche, surviving off marrow sucked from the bones of the dead, with nothing loftier to strive for. And that striving for perfection is the only heaven the human mind can muster. We don’t even know we are here without it.
What was the inspiration for your creative work?
My first decade was the entirety of the sixties.
Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation? "From deep space, earth is a pale blue dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us." --Carl Sagan
Photo credit: Charles Elliott
