This Writing Game

Leonard Cohen once asked Bob Dylan “How long does it take to write a song, Bobby?” To which Dylan replied “You tell me first.” “It takes three years”, said Leonard. “Three minutes,” Dylan told Cohen. “You see, I’m a three-minute guy.” That exchange is said to have taken place around 1967.

What are we to make of it, apart from the fact that at least one of them was probably exaggerating?

Cohen always thought of himself as a poet (and novelist) first and foremost. He only turned to music when his novels didn't sell and poetry couldn't pay the bills. Dylan on the other hand self-deprecatingly claimed he was just a song and dance man. Yet he's the one who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 2016, just a month before Leonard Cohen died. When Cohen was asked in jocular fashion by an interviewer if he'd forgotten to fill out the forms and if he'd like to comment on Dylan's award, Len replied somewhat gnomically: "It's like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain." 

Laughing Len and Freewheelin' Bob

Reading that exchange between the two writers made me think about the different approaches to their craft. They were both north American Jewish kids in love with words and wanting to forge a living from writing...and I don't think it matters than one wrote primarily poems and novels and the other wrote primarily songs. (Of course it shouldn't be overlooked that Dylan also published a collection of experimental prose poems written in 1964/65.)

Cohen went to McGill University and read English Literature, wrote poetry which he performed in the cafes in Montreal and also played in a country music band. After graduating he embarked on an MA but dropped it in favour of trying to make a living as a writer, using inheritance money from his grandmother to relocate to Hydra in Greece in 1960 where the weather was good and the living was cheap. 

Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota but claims he didn't attend much, got kicked out of English class for using four-letter words and spent most of his time learning to play guitar and getting into the local folk scene. He dropped out of university at the end of his first year and moved to New York City in 1961 intent on becoming a folk musician. The city library and the folkies he met on the circuit of clubs and coffee houses became his real education as a writer.

It's true that Cohen used to take a long time to write his poems, novels and songs. He was a patient and studious writer, working at his craft every day, revising, re-shaping, maturing and polishing what he felt he needed to say. He never forced writing out into the world until he felt the work was ready, was as nigh on perfect as it was possible to be. When he said it sometimes took him three years to complete a poem or a song to his satisfaction, he wasn't exaggerating. In fact later in his career he confided that some works took five or ten years to gestate.

Dylan on the other hand was the hare to Cohen's tortoise. Impatient and mercurial and fuelled by amphetamines where Cohen made do with retsina, it's true he didn't take long to write songs. It was almost as if he was extemporising in the beat tradition. Songs and poetry came pouring out of him, more inspiration than perspiration. He rarely revised what he wrote and is famous in the recording studio for wanting to do everything in one take then move on quickly to the next song. Admittedly three minutes was a somewhat dubious claim, especially as many of his greatest songs are twice or three times that long just to sing, but the difference between the two is clear, minutes as opposed to years, sparking as opposed to smouldering. Maybe it's a question of temperament, for the way they worked was really at opposite ends of a spectrum

Dylan appears to have enjoyed a facility that Cohen did not have, dare I say it a livelier imagination and a brain operating at a higher voltage, closer to genius, and I think Cohen clearly acknowledged that Dylan was worthy of the citation bestowed by the Nobel committee. Of course, it's not really a competitive undertaking, though egos do come into it. We're lucky to have had both Bob and Len in our lifetimes.

I suspect I'm nearer the Cohen end of the spectrum than the Dylan end in terms of modus operandi. Of course I wouldn't claim to be anywhere near either of them in terms of talent. Nonetheless I have been working towards a first collection of poems over the last few years and it should be here in a couple of months' time.

the cover of my upcoming poetry collection

If you enjoy reading these Saturday blogs and the poetry they contain, From the Imaginarium pulls seventy-five of the best poems together. That's the plug for now. More news when I have it.

Bob Dylan, if  by any unlikely chance you're reading this blog, excuse me for reproducing one of my favourite Leonard Cohen poems in preference to one of yours. I'm just trying to even things, giving a shout out to K2.

There Are Some Men

There are some men

who should have mountains

to bear their names to time.

Grave-markers are not high enough

or green,

and sons go far away

to lose the fist

their father's hand will always seem.

I had a friend:

he lived and died in mighty silence

and with dignity,

left no book, son, or lover to mourn.

Nor is this a mourning-song

but only a naming of this mountain

on which I walk,

fragrant, dark, and softly white

under the pale of mist.

I name this mountain after him.

                                        Leonard Cohen, 1961

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Lifelines & Deadlines

The pressure has been on this week to complete a new poem, after two Saturday Blogs in succession without one. Truth to tell, I've not been idling. There has been lots of other stuff going on in  the second half of April, not least in the footballing world, what with that monstrous ESL franchise-grab which needed talking down, and then the nerve-shredding excitement of plucky Blackpool FC's big spring push for promotion and the consequent upsurge in questions and suggestions from fans regarding ticket allocation, should the Seasiders get into the play-offs. And now suddenly it's May already.

Earlier this year, February 23rd actually, was the 200th anniversary of the passing of one of England's finest 'romantic' poets, John Keats. He died aged just twenty-five in Rome, of tuberculosis, and was buried in that city's Protestant cemetery. At the turn of the year, in anticipation of that impending anniversary, the Poetry Society challenged its members to write something relevant to the occasion and the poet. I had every good intention of doing so, of writing an ode in the style of Keats.

Many is the time I've drunk in The Spaniards pub in Hampstead, have sat in its beer garden, where Keats is supposed to have listened to that nightingale and composed his famous ode. As January rolled into February, I had the concept all lined up... but I never quite got the poem down: lifeline busy, deadline missed.

Never mind, I'm looking to put all of that right in this week's blog about  lifelines & deadlines  as they pertained to one of my favourite contemporary musicians and poets, international man of misery Leonard Norman Cohen.

Lugubrious Lenny (1934-2016)

I've enjoyed Cohen's poetry and music since the late 1960s, as I'm sure many of you have done, but it's only been in the last year or so that I've delved in any detail into his life story. I posted a blog recently about bohemian creatives on the Greek island of Hydra in the early 1960s. Cohen was one of them and you can link to that blog here if you missed it: Colonies  

 Cohen's time on Hydra was transformational. He arrived from the cold of Montreal as a published poet ('Let Us Compare Mythologies'), seeking sun and the inspiration to write more poetry and novels. Much of the poetry in 'The Spice-Box Of Earth' and 'Flowers For Hitler' was written on or inspired by Hydra as was his first novel 'The Favourite Game'. It was fortunate for him that living on a Greek island was relatively inexpensive, for Leonard soon discovered that there was not much money to be made from writing poetry or avant-garde novels. Luckily, he'd taken a battered old guitar along with him and for many a night in the early 1960s he would lead the coterie of impoverished writers, painters, their guests and some friendly locals in sing-songs at some quayside taverna or other. Initially the repertoire was old English or American folk standards but as the decade progressed Cohen began to write original material and though he never had much confidence in his singing voice, he was encouraged by the praises of his Hydra cohort. 

Matters came to a head in 1966 when he was on an extended visit to the USA. He was broke, his second novel 'Beautiful Losers' had failed to reverse his fortunes and he was persuaded by the movers and shakers of the New York folk scene that he should try out as a folk singer. He even toyed with the idea of moving to Nashville; but then Judy Collins recorded a couple of his compositions, 'Suzanne' and 'Dress Rehearsal Rag' on her 1966 LP 'In My Life' (yes, the Beatles' song) and Cohen's lifeline changed dramatically from that point. Producer John Hammond heard a demo tape of Cohen's songs, CBS Records signed the Canadian as their latest singer-songwriter sensation and soon Leonard was being feted by the scene, was appearing at festivals, recording his debut LP, numbering Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell among his paramours. 

'Songs From A Room' (many of them originally conceived on Hydra) cemented the reputation established by his eponymous debut and for a couple of years Cohen's lifeline was swept along by the music industry machine, a schedule of touring, song-writing, recording, being idolised by thousands all wanting a bit of him. 

By the early 1970s he'd certainly tapped into the exposure and financial rewards that had been out of reach of the poet and novelist, but such success came at considerable personal cost - deadlines, demands, disorientation, so much so that by 1971 (or it might have been 1972), he was describing himself as "a broken-down nightingale". When I read that statement in one of his biographies, I knew what my Keats-inspired narrative poem was going to be about: a reimagining of that night in the middle of an exacting and crazed European tour when lugubrious Lenny (or Captain Mandrax as he was known) nearly went over the edge into the abyss.

A clockwork Nightingale

I'm not a big fan of the constraints of versification and metre, but this is one instance in which I felt obliged to adhere to the structures of rhyme-scheme (ababcdecde ) and iambic pentamers (with a trimeter inserted at each eighth line) as employed by Keats in his original Ode To A Nightingale. I have also, for obvious reasons, changed the narrative perspective from first person and set a limit of five on the number of stanzas, as compared to the original eight. I'm happy I've done the form justice. It's for you to judge the merit of the content and its overall effect. Here we go then, on the wings of Poesy...

 

Ode To A Broken Down Nightingale

Your throat aches and a numbness dulls your hand,

  So though the plaudits ring around the hall,

You dose on mandrax washed with wine and stand

  Your ground, refuse to take the curtain call.

Though some might envy you your role tonight,

  Another foreign town with plush hotel,

A line of girls who queue to share your bed,

    None of this feels quite right.

The goddess Fame span a beguiling spell

  But you have come to view her hold with dread.

Now far away and almost quite forgot,

  That simpler time upon a Grecian isle

When life was sweet and Poesy was your lot

  With Marianne your Nordic muse, whose smile

Unlocked the spice-box for you, and who placed

  A fresh gardenia on your desk each day,

All distractions kept at bay except one;

    Warm evenings when you graced

The harbour cafes, happy just to play

  And sing for those bohemian friends - all gone.

In Berlin or in Rome your body fits

  To simulate the lover and the seer

Whose words have filled some million bedsits,

  Whose intimate confessions forced a tear

In corners where your lonely listeners dwell.

  They paid their pound and now they want the flesh.

Our recording angel's testimony

    States you fake the part well,

Can rail like a bird that's caught in a mesh,

  Such anguish revealed, nothing sounds phoney.  

And yet the mirror doesn't lie. Dark pools

  Reflect a deeper truth, the death of hope

As, burdened by the weight of trusting fools,

  You fantasize of reaching for the rope.

One knot, one drop might free you from this trap,

  To fly into the dark beyond at last

With weary mechanism jettisoned.

    Is this the final lap?

Your dress-rehearsal rag audition passed?

  The executioner stares, reticent.

Lore of your fathers makes you turn away,

  Pull on the famous raincoat, collar up,

And slip discreetly the post-concert fray

  Through damp September streets, your bitter cup

Brimming with furious pity for yourself

  And for a world gone wrong, where every song

Beats wings against the urgings of your heart,

    Each show erodes your health.

You make the choice once more not to belong,

  Outsider, now your future may restart.

Just for those of you who don't know the back story, Cohen could easily have died an early death, like Keats, but he decided to walk away from the scene, to escape from what he called "captivity in the tower of song" and he joined an order of Buddhist monks. Only decades later, when he discovered that his manager had swindled him out of his funds, did he make a belated return to the circus of the music world, to pay for his retirement years. In his sixties and seventies he wrote, recorded and played concerts once more, to great acclaim, only this time on his own terms and not anybody else's. Respect to the man.

Thanks for reading. Tonight will be fine.....for a while. S ;-)

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Colonies

Over the last few months, I've read quite a few books about an ex-patriate international colony of artists who made the Greek island of Hydra their home in the 1950s and 1960s. I suppose the fascination with those people, their lives and the works they produced was in part compensation for my not being able to make a customary visit to Greece last summer, not that I would have chosen Hydra as a destination, for it lacks both antiquities and decent beaches, although it has a beautiful harbour and encircling town.

the harbour and 'amphitheatre' of Hydra town, 1955

It is also just a couple of hours by ferry from Athens, quite a lot of Athenians have second homes there, and it also has an extension of the Athenian School of Art, which might explain why it became a hub for international artists and writers after the second world war, people looking to 'get away from' the rat race and the crushing social conservatism of those immediate post war/cold war years, to 'get away to' somewhere they could be a little more bohemian, where there was good light, plenty of sunny days, and where house rents and the cost of living were cheap by comparison - an out of the way but still accessible idyll where they could pursue their unconventional lifestyles and creative calling - cue Hydra.

The Australian couple George Johnston and Charmian Clift along with their children were the first to establish a long-term presence and they lived on the island from 1955 to 1964. Their writings and network of friends attracted others from the antipodes to live and write or paint on Hydra, but other nationalities discovered it as well; American beats like Gregory Corso, northern Europeans such as Axel Jensen and his wife Marianne Ihlen, Paolo and Magda Tilche, David and Angela Goschen and Klaus Merkel. Perhaps the most famous of all, and the main reason for Hydra's lasting fame as an artistic colony, was Leonard Cohen who arrived there at the beginning of 1960. He swapped cold, snowy Montreal for a Greek island on a whim, but fell in love with the place and so when  he was left a sum of money by a relative, Cohen was able to buy a dilapidated house on Hydra, not just rent it. He had it refurbished simply in the local style and his family owns it to this day.

The artistic colony of ex-pats in Hydra town lived hand-to-mouth and in each others pockets, houses, beds, novels. They were close-knit but not always harmonious. In summer the living was easy, lots of sun, sex, olives, retsina and a little writing (though occasionally the water supply and the electricity failed). In winter it was tough-going, cold and cut off from the world on their rock in the Aegean. The novelists would bash away on their typewriters before sending their manuscripts off into the world via the ferry, then wait anxious weeks for a cheque, or more likely another rejection slip. The artists would paint when the light and their cold fingers allowed, storing up canvases they hoped to sell to summer visitors. And always there was intrigue and infighting. 

It was on Hydra that Axel Jensen ran off with an American painter and Marianne Ihlen fell into Leonard Cohen's arms, moving in with him as his muse and lover for some considerable time (check out the back cover of Cohen's second LP 'Songs From A Room'). It was on Hydra that Cohen finished his first novel 'The Favourite Game' and wrote his second, 'Beautiful Losers'. It was also on Hydra, outside the local tavernas on long, hot summer evenings, that Cohen armed with his guitar gradually made the transformation from poet and novelist to song-writer and singer extraordinaire.

Leonard Cohen (with guitar) entertaining outside Douskos taverna, Hydra 1960

He  never made a living from his poetry or novels and though he claimed he never had faith in the sound of his voice, it was on that island that he was persuaded he had a talent for writing and singing from the heart - and the cliched rest is history. In fact his sojourn on Hydra was the catalyst for many of his great early songs (from a room), including 'So Long, Marianne' and 'Bird On A Wire' - which only became possible the year the Greek telephone company installed telephone lines on the island, connecting Hydra with mainland Greece and the wider world.

By the mid-1960s most of the core of artists on Hydra realised that the only way to properly further their careers was to follow their work out into that wider world, which by then was becoming more bohemian like them anyway. And then came the military coup of 1967. But with the deaths of Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen within weeks of each other in 2016, interest in their tangled lives and those of their colony of Hydra friends has been reawakened, and it is a revisiting that I found pays dividends - see the bibliography later on.

I offer two poems again this week. The first is by one of finest Greek poets of the 20th century, Konstantinos Kavafis. Although written in 1924, it could almost be about Leonard and Marianne, so prescient does it sound.

Before Time Altered Them

They were full of sadness at their parting.

They hadn't wanted it: circumstances made it necessary.

The need to earn a living forced one of them

to go far away - New York or Canada.

The love they felt wasn't, of course, what it once had been;

the attraction between them had gradually diminished,

the attraction had diminished a great deal.

But to be separated, that wasn't what they wanted.

It was circumstances. Or maybe Fate

appeared as an artist and decided to part them now,

before their feeling died out completely,

before Time altered them:

the one seeming to remain for the other what he always was,

the good-looking young man of twenty-four.

The second is the latest from the imaginarium. It touches on the darker explanation behind the original 'fashion' for the predominance of white and that special blue, colours that many Greek island houses display to this day. It also supposes an act of civil disobedience. 

Incidentally, the original reason that houses were decked in colours was because most were built of stone, usually volcanic and dark. In order to keep them cooler in the very hot summers, they were plastered and lime-washed (ground limestone mixed with water - paint being either expensive of simply unavailable). Sometimes they were white-washed but often other pigments were mixed in with the lime, permitting a palette of pale, sun-reflecting colours: ochre houses as well as pink, green, lilac and sky-blue. Then came the military coups of 1935 and 1967.

Loulaki Blues

The King is fled, long live the Crown,

though don't let anyone connected to the

Ministry of Public Order hear you saying so.

Whites over time tend to yellow or grey.

We restored the illusion in the laundering

by adding a washing blue, Loulaki on Hydra.

Blue and yellow are complementaries

in the subtractive colour model, for that is

how the science works. But now a new edict

is being enforced across the islands such

that only white and blue must be the hues

of every house: white walls, blue woodwork,

roofs of the same cerulean, to be attained

by mixing our Loulaki washing powder in

with standard calcimine slaked whitewash.

It is regimentation designed to signal

resurgence of a nation, the Third Hellenic

uniform, pretty as a picture to all appearances

but our souls within, ferric with mute fury,

so we wilfully allow our shirts and blouses

to fade to yellow or grey. They'll stay that way

until the moment we are free from this

monstrous tyranny of Generals. Our clothes 

become us, symbols of resistance and of hurt,

degrading as months of heat and poverty

roll by. No mojo hands will deliver us from

uncivil prying of their eyes but iron will win.

The King is fled, long live the Crown.

Oppression struts in white as well as brown;

these days, we don't trust men in brilliant shirts.

loulaki powder 

If you're interested in following up on any of the Hydra creatives or the story of their time in Greece half a century or more ago, I can recommend the following:

'Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love' is a 90 minute documentary film by Nick Broomfield about Leonard Cohen, Marianne Ihlen, featuring much archive footage and interviews down the years.

'Half The Perfect World' (sub-titled 'Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra 1955-1964') is an in-depth account of the people and the times by a couple of Australian academics, Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziel, and is the go-to factual account of that ex-pat colony. It also includes many of James Burke's contemporary photographs.

'Mermaid Singing' and 'Peel Me A Lotus' are Charmian Clift's immensely readable accounts of life on Kalymnos and Hydra respectively and are due to be reissued in April.

'The Water and the Wine' by Tamar Hodes is one of a number of fictionalised accounts of that artistic community, this time by someone who had lived on Hydra as a child at the time.

'A Theatre For Dreamers' by Polly Samson is the latest in the line of novels based around the cast of artists and their friends living on Hydra in the early 1960s. Currently available in hardback, it is due for its paperback release in April (tying in with the Clift re-issues, for which Samson has written introductions.

The last words (sung in this case) should probably go to Leonard Cohen himself. Click on song title to activate the link through to: So Long, Marianne

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Tea and Oranges

I'm going for a minimalist approach this week, in true oriental mode, by posting something simple and elegant..



Kudos to all who spotted that the blog's title derives from 'laughing' Lenny Cohen's song about 'Suzanne' (who "feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China"). I don't want to be pedantic, but the oranges probably came from Japan and were more than likely mandarins or satsumas.

Oranges from Japan became a Christmas tradition in the USA and Canada from the1880s onwards when Japanese immigrants began receiving the fruit as a New Year gift from back home. The mandarins were harvested in November (often after the first snowfall) and were shipped by sea across the Pacific and then by train throughout the continent, so their arrival always presaged the start of the holiday season in North America and became synonymous with Christmas. They eventually came to be standard issue in Christmas stockings in Britain and Europe as well.

The tea probably was Chinese leaf, most likely Keemun (black tea) and may well have been Earl Grey's blend, which, fittingly, derives its distinctive aroma from being flavoured with Oil of Bergamot - itself derived from the peel of the Bergamot orange, grown in Italy. Earl Grey's tea (which happens to be a personal favourite) was also the perfect accompaniment for such recreational activities as chasing smoke-rings and the touching of perfect bodies with minds.

And so to this first new poem of the New Year...

Written In The Leaves?
Black china tea
in blue china bowls,
pure water poured
with ceremony.

Vapours arise,
an essence is perceived
written in the leaves;
senses reel -
an intimation of inconstancy.

Black-fathomed soul?
Blue-eyed intemperance?
Pure thought forbear
such calumny!

By the way, much tea was drunk but no oranges were harmed in the making of this blog.
Thanks for reading. Have a great week, S ;-)

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Play On

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight...

Aaaaooooooooooooooaaaaaoooooaaaaooooaaaaabumbawehhhhhhh

Aaaaooooooooooooooaaaaaoooooaaaaooooaaaaabumbawehhhhhhh

You can stand under my umbrella
(Ella ella eh eh eh)
Under my umbrella
(Ella ella eh eh eh)
Under my umbrella
(Ella ella eh eh eh)
Under my umbrella
(Ella ella eh eh eh eh eh eh)

It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I tell myself too many times
Why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut
That's why it hurts so bad to hear the words
That keep on falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth
Tell me...
Whyhyhyhyhyyyyhyhyhyhyhy
Whyhyhyhyhyyyyhyhyhyhyhy

We simple creatures love our catchy, repetitive hooks.  Ask the big religions (Glooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooria!).  Ask the advertising posse (I'm loving it...Moonpig.com...Go Compare...Terry's Carpets, Terry's Carpets).  Ask the football fans (You're -insert insult - and you know you are).  

Oral language is the home of this repetition, of sound.  Literate, written, language scoffs at such simplicity.  Repetition is acceptable if used in moderation but ideally you should avoid using the same word, the identical lexeme, the matching term, too often.  I believe that this is the result of literacy being the new kid on the conceptual block.  It's still struggling to assert its independence against a background of sound which is as old as the landslide.  The simple and obvious is deemed puerile while the cynical and ironic is oh so grown-up and worthy. 

There's a lot to be said for a complex line of poetry which can be pored over - multiple meanings being drawn from the crafty juxtaposition of ideas.  Yes, sometimes I want a poem to come to me brimming with philosophy.  I'll bring my own perspectives, the light and shade which dresses it to my pleasing on that day, at that time.  There's a balance between poet and reader.  If the poem has a clear agenda, for example Kipling's If, then the ratio is 75% poet to 25% reader.  You have your own perspective but the general sense is clear cut.  In more chewy poems, such as Jean Sprackland's Ice on the Beach, I feel the ratio is closer to 50-50.  The reader can make of the poem what they wish - there is no explicit philosophical stance.  And then there are the umbrella-ella-ellas.  The memes, the expressions, the refrains which are so familiar that the reader/listener can bring whatever meaning they wish.  The poet/writer is, effectively, dead or irrelevant.  The words can be re-contextualised, re-quoted, re-blogged, re-tumbled.

The meaning might have become muddy.  The metaphor might have popped its meta-metaphorical clogs.  Think 'Roses are red, violets are blue'.  Think 'If music be the food of love'.  Think 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'.  These phrases have become common.  They have been ingested into orality.  Once they were hard won with pen (quill), paper (parchment), and midnight oil (tallow).  Literacy has its moment to shine.  Complex chains of thought can be pieced together in a way which orality alone struggles to allow.  But once those words are freed, once they are read and shared, performed and reiterated.  Then they belong to us all.  The words are ours to use whenever and however we please.  Sure, they lack something of their early pizazz.  The shine of the newborn gradually becomes the charm of the ancient.  An entire play is whittled down into a single phrase: 'My kingdom for a horse'. 

This desire we have to break things down into manageable chunks, like so many leaf-cutter ants, is why we can enjoy a single word (or sound) chorus repeated day after day.  Whhhhhyyyyyyyyyy?  Asks Anne Lennox.  Disregard the verses of that song and you've got a chorus which can apply to anyone on any day of the week.  A plebeian tourist walks into the road in front of your car...'Whhhhhhhyyyyyyyy?'  A thunderbolt strikes the roof, of a church, which had just been replaced after 15 years of fundraising... 'Whhhhhyyyyyy?'  The snails consume every last marigold you planted in one night...'Whhhhhhyyyyyy?' 

Entropy.  Universality.  Globalisation.  Call it what you will.  It's me driving the car, with the window down, singing Aaaaooooooooooooooaaaaaoooooaaaaooooaaaaabumbawehhhhhhh, and remembering a moment.  That's why I'm smiling.

 

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