This is just for fun....just sayin'!
Chana gave me this impossible mission
Remember Mission Impossible?
Good Morning Ms. Isis. I have a new assignment for you and your Poetic Impossible team. We have a suspicion that these two men Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (AKA: Tom & Jerry, AKA: Simon & Garfunkel) have been writing songs and passing them off as poetry. I need you and your Poetic Impossible team to analyze their words and explain them to me in verse (rhymed or unrhymed, your choice). If you or any of your PI staff should be caught or killed in this mission, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your mission. This tape recording will self detruct in 10 seconds.
"A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)"
I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored.
I been John O'Hara'd, McNamara'd.
I been Rolling Stoned and Beatled till I'm blind.
I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed.
That's the hand I use, well, never mind!
I been Phil Spectored, resurrected.
I been Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered.
Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay.
And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,
And all my wealth won't buy me health,
So I smoke a pint of tea a day.
I knew a man, his brain was so small,
He couldn't think of nothing at all.
He's not the same as you and me.
He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain't got no culture,
But it's alright, ma,
Everybody must get stoned.
I been Mick Jaggered, silver daggered.
Andy Warhol, won't you please come home?
I been mothered, fathered, aunt and uncled,
Been Roy Haleed and Art Garfunkeled.
I just discovered somebody's tapped my phone.
Good luck Ms. Isis (tape destructing jqwkuwfuwfwfu1)
In response to this mission given by Chana:
My Impossible Mission Response is:
The Naked and the Dead, bombed and Viet Nam'd
War, huh, yeah What is it good for
Absolutely nothing Uh-huh!
Butterfield 8 led Oscar & Liz to their first date
He was the Secretary of state from 1961 to 68
Cant get no satisfaction, I Want to hold your hand
Girls loved to scream for the boys in each Brit Band
A Capitalist Nut case off her Fountainhead
Baby with a mind like that we'd be better off RED!
A crazy record producer married to a Ronette
Another married to the niece of Nanette
Shelley Fabares, the Ballad of the Green Beret
A comedian whose edgy humor was a zinger
and he was the inspiration for Corporal Klinger
Man that's a lot of grass
it'll keep you stoned on your ass
The Rebbe's Robert Zimmerman
wasn't just blowin' in the wind
for the times they were a changin'
with Subterranean Homesick Blues
he left us clues so we'd think & choose
He's the lead singer of the Rolling Stones
Am I the only one who misses Brian Jones?
An old american folk song
Baez sings as Dylan plays along
Pop art king Campbell Soup Can Man
I think I just might be his number one fan!
a great record producer for Paul & Art
two nice jewish boys who have my heart!
no doubt J Edna Hoover was on the phone
so none of us were ever safe at home!
For the More Obscure Bits
In 1977 I was visiting another friend named Chana in Far Rockaway New York in a Chassidic community. I met the Rebbe of that community and sat at the desk where Bob Dylan had carved his name while he had been there studying. The name was Robert Zimmerman. They kept the desk and it was shown to me as if it were a sacred object so they feel something positive about him though he stepped outside their world. I felt that the things said in the song where he sings "The times they are a changin' had to be a response to the world he visited there. It was my response too!
Ronnie Spector was a Ronette...and the ex very ex mrs. spector
silver dagger is an american folk ballad Joan Baez sang and Bob Dylan accompanied
but didn't sing on the recording.
Nanette Fabray is the aunt of Shelley Fabares who was married to Lou Adler and got her first break in the Bad Seed with that sweet little Miss Rhoda Penmark!
Also must say I think Simon and Garfunkel are just so beautiful! Mama Rachel likes them! thanks Chana for thinking of them!
Subterranean Homesick Blues..
Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when
But you're doin' it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin' for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
In the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten
Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin' that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone's tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D. A.
Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't try "No Doz"
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows
Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin' to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail
Look out kid
You're gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin' for a new fool
Don't follow leaders
Watch the parkin' meters
Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don't wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don't work
'Cause the vandals took the handles
Copyright © 1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music
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Comments: 48
I didn't know you were as old as I. I used to listen to that song in high school.
In truth most of this I knew but had to work a bit at it! Birth date June 26, 1962
Thanks for your comments though! It was a reasonable guess.. I do remember Brian Jones with sadness.. the political stuff is vague.. never heard Lenny Bruce just of him.. have been to New York and met Bob Dylan's Chassidic Rabbi.. from the days before fame.. that was in the late 70s however. They still had a desk with his name Robert Zimmerman carved into it.. he had done that.
So I know he was singing to the old Rabbi's about the changing times.
A thing they will not hear.
Blessings,
Isis
An excellent job of de-obfuscation. This is a bouncy and fun song, one of my favorites of theirs. Thank you!
Good job.
Was your google on fire?
I was a bit ahead of my age always and was called the walking encyclopedia as a kid. I actually understood Shakespeare quite well before puberty. Everything changed then I have to say.
I had teen age cousins and in the late sixties I heard them speaking of everything...the Beatles, Bob Dylan. They had a friend who had joined the peace corps. Speaking of him with hushed tones and great reverence it was recounted that he did not like the Beatlles. Bob Dylan was pure, the Beatles commercial.
By this time my mother was married to a beat generation artist, actor, drama professor and he had the most amazing group of friends and I was often along for the ride on some strange adventures.
I once met Timothy Leary's psychedelic cook... and I just didn't get it. What was the big deal about a cook? This was 1969 and I didn't know why they were all so amused by a cook. All I knew about Timothy Leary was he told everyone to tune in, turn on and drop out. What was so great about that?
Also what was all this talk about free love? Jesus taught us to love everybody! Love our neighbors as ourselves.. what was so unusual you had to wear a button? I believed in free love and at seven went around telling everyone I did!
I had two babysitters.. young women.. one a beat nik and I loved her. She loved Bob Dylan and the other one named April was a flower child and she loved John Lennon and I loved April so I loved John Lennon.. and we used to watch the Smothers Brothers and laugh at this wonderful girl, Goldie O'keefe, and "Share a little Tea with Goldie". That was great.
Then Simon and Garfunkel and their beautiful music. Well...this brings back memories for me too but some hazy.
As for Norman Mailer...heard a lot about him, Lenny Bruce, and the stupid Ayn Rand but they were beyond my reach and the political stuff I was aware of. As a kid one thing I was really aware of besides the space program was the war and how upset all were over the war. And went marching with older people in the big march at the end of the decade.
I also was with family supporting Eugene McCarthy the summer Bobby Kennedy was killed and I remember being at some big gathering just before Kennedy was killed and how shocking and absolutely depressing that all was.
For John O'hara, Roy Halee, Silver Dagger and a double check on Maxwell Taylor my google was used. The rest I knew. Older cousins.. Shelley Fabares, Shelley Fabares, niece of Nanette... Lou Alder Lou Adler..big deal record producer in all the magazines ...just remember he was a big deal for some reason and they had old Ronette records and Phil Spector was some genius. Norman Mailer was well known.. in the circles of adults surrounding. Lenny was famous but the kid was not allowed to know.
Ayn Rand's mental disabilities and stupid book were a topic I overheard discussed and it was boring and I could not get into it when I did have a look. I know too I heard people who thought she was brilliant but they were considered to be quite strange by the adults around me.
So google not on fire.. oh I do remember how sad all were when the pretty man Brian Jones died. He was the Rolling Stone that appealed to my eyes as a child. Very interesting and beautiful.
I also remember seeing Ronnie Spector interviewed in the '80's about her nut job husband Phil who though a genius also literally held her under house arrest for years and so we know he got worse and killed a woman a few years ago. How charming.
Or that is the charge.
Oh I love Liz. She is a big deal in my childhood and life and I think she hated Butterfield 8... if that is not the movie she hated then forgive but I do think it was the one she disliked and yet it brought her gold statue to her.
Bright Blessings,
Isis
J Edgar Edna Hoover was the boss of my closest friends father and a man that man worked to avoid turning down every offer to work in Washington DC for it put him next to a man he did not respect. This was information that came to my ears as a young adult as my friend recounted her tales of strange childhood. She even met Nixon as a kid. Creepy.
Isis
I wanted to be in high school then. I wanted to catch up but am still not there.. it is just beyond reach always. Can't quite touch it.
It all changed when I got there.. a different and more boring world when I did. You guys had the fun and a lot of sad stuff too.
Must have been interesting times though.
Love and light,
Isis
You got this whole Simon and Garfunkel/Bob Dylan beat in my head and even when I read this "Birth date June 26, 1962" (I am not saying you are not a lady, I just made that judgement for myself.) it came out as poetry to my ear. You also taught me some things I did not know. It's always good to end each day with more knowledge and wisdom than you started it with. I see you reaching for the stars, I hope you never stop. Contrary to what Sam Spade said in "The Maltese Falcon" (No I am not that old!) that is the stuff that dreams are made of.
Chris "Paul Simon wrote poetry and passed it off as songs" I was being facetious, it was part of the whole "Poetic Impossible" motif. This started as a fun thing because Isis and I are both into the 1960's (though I was "in to" it more being older) and because of a comment I made on a poem written by Suji another member of our group Post Art - Any Medium (if you are an artist or an artlover or both you are more than welcome to join) called Love the lighted Candle !!!. I have to say I loved her re-interpretation of Paul Simon's masterpiece and the comments it sparked. Something else you might be interested in, I read an article on the internet on exactly what you are saying about Paul Simon. I published it on Gather with a few short comments of my own. If you would like to read it you can find it here But Is It Art?. Have a wonderful day, Chana
Chana, thanks for the initial writing and for challenging Isis to complete the collaborative joy.
Isis, thanks for taking up the challenge so well.
The 1960s were such a wonderful and painful time and I think really what truly shapes this era is the struggle for freedom, equality, peace, justice, the reaching for light and love, the work of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Beatles, a lot of people, and the work, lives, and the shocking deaths of three great men... maybe four if we look into someone I do not know enough about.. so am not qualified to comment. John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and maybe a fourth... but I will leave that for now.
I wonder what the world might have become if John, Bobby and Martin had lived.
Because what happens in America influences this whole planet.. we are the whole world in one place...everyone came here and it is a great experiment. It cost a lot of people but it has not failed yet. So if we can heal ourselves maybe we can help heal our world.
I know someone who met Bobby Kennedy and this person belongs to a religion that believes in all the religions and sees them as part of an on going revelation..chapters in the divine book.. and in the equality of men and women and the oneness of the human family. In Justice and in knowing for yourselves out of your own knowledge and experience not because your fathers believed or because tradition says it is so. Unity in diversity is another teaching of that tradition. She said when she mentioned her religion to Bobby he took her hand and looked into her eyes and said "Never give that up. I will never forgive you if you do!"
Abraham, Martin and John
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OqdHMoTxE&feature=related
Thanks for all the comments.
Love and power to the people!
Isis
it's a pleasure working with you. (i'm cyber-saluting, but alas: it must go unseen...)
my favorite of S&G will always be "The Boxer". seconded, rather closely, by "Scarborough Fair". these two are equally mystical--"Boxer" ("lie-luh-lie...!") being the up-tempo'd big brother--"Scarborough", in turn, the musing cousin in the corner of a garden.
i am the boxer, then; you, the quiet and contemplative cousin.
or i'm FOS.
let Time decide, eh?
with Utmost Affection,
BTW, Simon & Garfunkel were among the late Papa's all-times favorites... I remember him presenting me with their CD for what turned out to be his last New Year, 2004/2005.
Love and blessings - S.
And your casual yet deft way of bringing back old times with these greats using bold rhymes to comment on their fates was fab, never drab, luv!
Pave paradise, put up a parking lot" JMitchell
You are incredible ISIS! I too am a few seconds older (4) and can relate on so many different things. I too wish that I had been older to enjoy all that was the '60's and have reflected on it quite a few times here on Gather.
The only thing that I didn't know was the song "Silver Dagger" by Joan Baez. I may have even heard it before but not known the name as I truly did enjoy her singing and her joining in all of the peace marches and all.
My Dad was in Viet Nam three times so I thought myself a hippie and against the "establishment" when I was only a kid too back then. I wore my love beads and did everything that any real hippie did back then and would imagine that I would have appeared to be out of space and time for my age.
I too reach for the time and space but get there and am sent back all too soon. ;(
Week Comments
Then I got my beat nik babysitter and by summer 1968 my flower child babysitter. I was in heaven with both. They are Miranda and Goldie of the other poem.
Remember Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and the Byrds making a big impression... Sonny and Cher too.. then Janis and the Doors.. Jimi Hendrix... parents listened to them all.
In 1969 embroidered .. badly.. my bell bottom jeans with an ankh on one side and a peace symbol on the other. That was a big deal to me then... Marched in the Moratorium with the older kids and adults against the war and in the summer before helped at McCarthy headquarters in Portland Oregon. Remember the shock of Bobby Kennedy's death and then Sharon Tate (I loved her!) and all the joy came crashing down... innocence long gone. Still lots of good memories, great people and change.
God.. I love looking back but am glad to be here now!
Thanks Selene,
Isis
I could read you forever.
B. Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Jim Morrison and a few others from that time truly do qualify as "Great American Poets"!
"June 26, 1962", Wow! All I want to know is how did you get so much wiser than me when you are only 56 days older than me? ;-)
"
do you meditate? I blame it on that and .. hmm.. I lived many life times but.. how do you know I am wiser? eek. and let us not focus too long on how old we are .. I belong to Peter Pan and do not want to break the spell!
thanks,
Isis
No longer Kira but Kathryn
Memories, people, change--the 60's. During the decade of the 60's, I was in primary school, high school, and college. I experienced my first genuine, intense young love and messed it up. I had sex for the first time, got married, became a father. I bought my first car. I joined the Marine Corps (a college officer program--the PLC) and spent six weeks at Quantico, VA doing basic training (then went back to school). I was sustained in that by a song "If You're Going To San Francisco" by Scott Mackenzie. Gentle, hippie stuff, the antidote for my growling platoon sergeant. I had a buzz cut and hair down to my shoulders. I was a pious Roman Catholic and an atheist. I was a good son and my parents threatened to kick me out of the house. I read "Stranger In a Strange Land" and "Atlas Shrugged." I lived for rock and roll and I bought my first classical album, Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony." Meanwhile, the world was turning very fast and we went to the moon--besides all that other stuff. The personal change compounded by the social and political change--Wow! It is worth remembering. Remember also that Paul Simon wrote "Slow Down, you're movin' too fast/Got to make the morning last/Kickin' down the cobblestones/Lookin' for fun and feelin' groovy." That and "As I watch the drops of rain/weave their weary paths and die/I know that I am like the rain/There but for the grace of you go I."
Kathryn,
Kira has become a fairly common name. As I understand it, it's very popular in Russia. It means, if I remember correctly "flower" in Persian. Sorry you "hated" Rand.
This is one of the great reads on Gather. I broke off a morsel of every line and savoured the taste before I swallowed.
These bites sparkled and brought a change over me. I began to see rainbows and ...was that a yellow submarine?
I have many 60's recordings and if you had been in Pretoria today you might have heard me singing a Dylan song.
Not so long ago, Paul Simon made recording with a South African group called Graceland. We really love that song here.
Thank you for this totally absorbing half hour and, be sure, I'll live on your Gather doorstep. You're that good.
Isis, please go to my page and read the Epic of Gilgamesh. I'd love to discuss it with you.
..
U wishing you laughter
Thank you.
splendidly written!
Wow. It was listening again to S&G’s perplexing lyrics back in the day.
“I been Mick Jaggered, silver daggered.
Andy Warhol, won't you please come home?”
Made me recall just how flummoxed we all were by the breakthrough wordsmithing.
anyway thanks Ken.. so much fun to have your comments. Bright Blessings, Isis
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