As 2020 has come to a close, many have been thinking of it as (read in your best Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons voice) “worst year ever!” I get it. Almost all of our lives have been massively disrupted this last year. A pandemic, subsequent lockdowns, a major economic recession, social and political unrest, rising violent crime rates, a contentious election. But despite the constant refrain of hardship and horror, I keep coming back to an old Taoist story about the situations we find ourselves in.

There was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” replied the farmer. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “Maybe,” replied the farmer. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Maybe,” replied the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” replied the farmer.

If you say a year sucks because things changed, because new problems arose, because someone got sick, because someone said a horrible thing, because someone did a horrible thing, well, you would have to say that every year sucks not just 2020. Every year is filled with ups and downs. And your down year will be someone else’s up year. And I hate to break it to you, but 2021 will be no different. It, too, will be filled with all of its own challenges. And triumphs.

Personally, 2020 was more of a positive year for me. But just like the old farmer above, it was a mix of good and bad things. More interesting, was how seemingly bad things turned out to be good. And some good things turned out to be not so nice.

The year started on mostly sour notes. I had to put my boy Zeke down in January. The liver tumor finally destroyed him. In February I was laid off from my job at the distillery and my girlfriend broke up with me. Then Covid hit. Sounds great so far, huh? But many of these did turn out to be blessings in disguise, or had some positive aspect to them. With Zeke’s death, because it was kind of shared custody situation, I no longer had to speak to my previous ex and could finally put that part of my life behind me. While the more recent girlfriend that left me is still one of the best women I ever dated, it came to light that we really had no future. It was better to find that out before we really started trying to build a life together. Then there was the interesting combination of Covid and losing my job. See, I also officially started down a new career path in February and enrolled in school to be web developer. With the job loss, I now had more time to work on school. But this would still require me to essentially drop out of life while I pursued my certification, right when the whole world shut down. Couldn’t have been more perfect timing. The extra relief from Covid also allowed me to find the first degree of financial stability I’ve had in several years. So for me Covid was a savior, not a killer.

The middle part of the year has also been filled with much the same effects. I’ve steadily worked my way through school, but being technically unemployed, I had more time and started picking up more freelance work, including a brand new, long term client (the best kind to have). My other main client had more work than usual because Covid required a ton of extra communication efforts for both closing and reopening. In between jobs, I was able to build my first website from scratch, my first CLI app, and my first web app.

Things were going pretty smoothly. Then the protests turned riots hit. I live only a few blocks from where the main events were. And it really stressed me out. I suppose helicopters buzzing and flashbangs exploding until 2:00 am will do that to you. Being driven inside by tear gas surrounding your apartment doesn’t help. Neither does watching all the cool shops and restaurants, who were finally able to open, being boarded up in a vain attempt to stop the rampant vandalism. However, one bright spot was that as the weather warmed, many of my neighbors and I formed a bit of community, and the riots helped cement that bond. So my summer was filled with impromptu stoop parties and cornhole games in the courtyard. A welcome relief from the riots and sitting at a computer for ten or twelve hours a day, six days a week. Again, pandemics and protests could have some pleasant results.

When August hit, I helped a friend move out of state. While I hated to see him leave, I did inherit his weight machine. I vacillated on taking it, but after trying the dating scene again earlier in the summer and being rejected by three women in the same week because I smoked, I figured it was time to get healthy again. So I started working out. I’ve been a bit spotty on commitment since then, but still get some workouts in. I also cut out Dr. Pepper from my diet, my last real sugar source, although I still treat myself once in a while. But most importantly, I started my quit-smoking plan. My plan was to cut out actual cigarettes gradually and replace them with a vape pen. Then I would wean myself off the nicotine via the vape pen. I would be cigarette free, or only vaping, by the end of the year.

It went a thousand times smoother than I thought. It only took a few weeks to completely cut out cigarettes, and I had my last smoke the second week of September. I’m fully on the vape now and have already gone down one nicotine level. My next order will be the next level down. I am months ahead of schedule. The benefits are already apparent. The cough I had developed is gone. I went through the standard lung clearing process (I think I went through an entire box of tissues in a week from blowing my nose so much.) And I could start to smell things better. I am breathing better. But I’m most optimistic, because, I’ve tried this method before and failed. But this time I have not had a single craving for a cigarette in months. In fact, I’ve craved Dr. Pepper more than cigarettes. So, I’m pretty sure I will finally kick it this time. And again, I’m reminded of Taoist farmer logic. Being rejected by women and having Covid, school and unemployment reset my entire routine has helped with this.

Through the fall, I finished up the backend development portion of my schooling, and I built my first Rails web app. It’s an app I’ve wanted to build for years, but never new how until now. I built it for a school project, but I plan to release it commercially. I only have the main functionality done for web only. I need to add some functionality and add a mobile interface, but it’s well started. But while I’ve made great headway on the project, it proved to ultimately be a bit more than I could handle as from a school perspective. It took almost an entire extra month to build what I have so far, it’s put me way behind on schooling. I also got some extra freelance work from that new client, including my first professional website to build. However that too has hindered my school progress. So just like the farmer, even good things can have bad side effects.

November and December proved to be trying months. All told, my dad spent almost all of November in the hospital and rehab. His extended stay caused the agency which provided him some at-home caretakers to cancel his services. Then during one of my last trips down to the rehab center to get my dad some things he needed, the engine in my car went out on me. I ended up using my dad’s car after towing mine to the repair shop. When he finally went home two days before Thanksgiving, my dad had no way to get anywhere and no more help around the house. So I spent most of December driving him to doctor’s appointments, the grocery store, and helping him clean his place, along with some cooking. Combined with the holidays, I’m now more behind then ever on everything. I finally got my car back right before Christmas, but the money I had to spend on a new engine forced me to break a promise of paying back a personal loan that helped me start my schooling. (They were understanding and we worked out a new deal.) Yet I’m still reminded that if the same thing had happened two years I ago, I would have been ruined. My dad also got his helpers back, so I’m now back to being able to hit the ground running.

So how should I sum up the year I just had? Worst year ever? Hardly. And I’m not alone. When I have bothered to pay attention to the outside world, I’ve found friends and acquaintances who had a ton of good things happen in 2020.

• A good friend finally made a move to Alaska, which he had delayed for several years, and is beginning the process of building his dream business.
• Another friend started her own business, which she had been dreaming about for years.
• Several friends found the time to write books.
• A friend who had been lonely and had trouble finding a good man got engaged.
• Someone who was laid off at the same time as me several years ago and also couldn’t find work, was forced to move to Australia for a job, but his family could not follow. Because of Covid and remote working, he was able to move back and live with his wife again.
• Several friends have been able to finish major home projects.
• A couple great people I know found organ donors and, and as I type this, are still with us when they would otherwise be gone.

Now I don’t want to dismiss the hardships people have experienced in the last year, including people who had someone close to them die. But honestly, there was just too many good things about 2020 to call it the worst year ever. Now I’m not peddling some “look on the bright side” bullshit. I can’t stand those ultra-optimistic, manifest-reality-via-positive-thinking people. I usually want to slap them with a rusty rake. But I also can’t stand the doomsayers. Neither live in reality. And that’s the point. The truth is every year is filled with failures and successes. Happiness and pain.

And while the examples I listed above point out the big accomplishments of people I know, I wonder how many others who have complained all year bothered to stop and think about all the little good things that we always seem to forget, many of these little things also resulting from lockdowns and conflicts.

• How many people were able to rediscover the joy of a board game or a puzzle with their kids?
• How many more miles were hiked on the trails and in the parks instead of drinks consumed at the bar?
• How many more books have been read?
• How much money has been saved from not eating out so much and commuting less, which can now be put toward a better retirement or paying for a child’s education?
• How many people have rediscovered the joy of cooking?
• How many people rediscovered discarded hobbies?
• How many people are in the best shape of their lives?
• How many shelter pets have been rescued?
• How many potential suicides have been saved by shelter pets?
• When denied by social distancing, how many people now know the true value of a loved one’s hug?
• When denied by masks, how many people now know the true value of a stranger’s smile?

I think, if you take a moment to really reflect, you’ll find that 2020 wasn’t the worst year ever. It was the most typical year ever. In fact, there’s no such thing as a horrible year. There are only years, each following another, like a trail of ducklings following their mother. Each year swims by, filled with the good gliding along a refreshing, rippled pond in soft, down coats. Each year is also filled with the struggle of furiously flashing feet under the turbulent water’s surface. Each good passing into bad that in turn passes back to good. The good makes you happy but weak. The bad makes you fearful but strong. On and on. And that’s the true constant. No matter what, people find ways to keep chugging along. Humans are really damn good at that.

So when New Year’s Eve hit, I didn’t celebrate the end of 2020, nor will I be celebrating the beginning of 2021. I refuse to rest my hopes on the numbered label of an arbitrarily carved up chunk of time. As the old Taoist farmer knew, a year is not filled with good or bad. It’s filled with maybe. So as 2021 gets underway:

Maybe I’ll find my first real job in the new career I’m working toward.

Maybe I’ll find a woman worth my time and thinks the same of me.

Maybe that app I’m building will be a hit.

Maybe I’ll take home the new best dog I ever had.

Maybe some poems will get picked up by some publishers.

Maybe we’ll learn that our personal pain does not create a blueprint for others to live by.

Maybe we’ll start cutting each other some slack again.

Maybe.

But honestly, this coming year will be much the same as the last. And we’ll respond the same way we always do. We’ll find a way…or die. Just like last year.

The post 2020: The Best Worst Year Ever by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

The post Epifunny #∞ by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

A Small Question with Big Implications

Last month, I stumbled upon a tweet that got me thinking. It was from Kevin Simler whose main background is in computers, language, and philosophy. He has a provocative blog, Melting Asphalt, where he posts sporadically, but all his essays are interesting to read. (Warning: they will make you think.) His tweet that inspired this article was an expansion on the thought of another person, David Laing, who I’d like to say something nice about, but I have no idea who he is.

Let’s break down the original tweet from Laing into its main propositions.
1. Observation — musicians cover other songs
2. Observation — writers don’t “cover” other books
3. Explanation — books are considered sacred, implying it would be wrong to create cover versions

As both a writer and a musician, I feel somewhat qualified to address these points. And well, to put it bluntly, Laing is simply wrong.

Before we test this sacredness hypothesis, we should first ask if Laing’s observations are true. This is the question that Simler poses, because as I said, he’s good at thinking things through. Covers of songs are obvious and common, but do we have examples of books that are “covers” of other books? The answer is also yes, but we don’t call them covers. We call them retellings. The first examples that come to mind are Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, which can be seen as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, and Joyce’s Ulysses, which is a deliberate retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey. There are also numerous examples of fairy tales and biblical stories re-created to fit modern times. Since the observation is false, there’s no point in coming up with an explanation. This seems simple enough. But, in my characteristic way of overthinking things (and why it took a month to respond), I found another way to approach this.

As you can see, covering another artist’s work is common in both literature and music. So the question isn’t why “covers” of books don’t exist but why we think they don’t. The real issue is that literature retellings aren’t as easily recognized as such compared to music covers. I started wondering why that is. And this is where we start to turn down a more interesting path. To understand this lack of recognition, we need to understand the nature of music and writing and the inherent differences between the two art forms.

How and Why We See “Covers”

Let’s first address the purpose of creating covers. There’s an underlying assumption in Laing’s tweet that covering another work of art is primarily a learning mechanism. He doesn’t directly state this, but it’s implied when he mentions that covers are something to be undertaken by both “novice” writers and musicians. It is true that copying another artist’s work can be a way to learn the craft. But this is true for both music and writing. So, stating that “novice writers never write ‘covers’ of their favorite books” as a method of practice is simply wrong. One assignment in college I specifically remember was copying We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks. I had to copy the rhythm exactly to learn how it affects not only the feel but also the meaning of a poem. Add in all the sonnets and villanelles I had to practice, all usually derived from the works of other famous writers of these forms, and you can see that writers do indeed copy the masters as a way to hone their craft.

Granted, I wasn’t copying Brooks’s poem word for word, while as a musician, I would learn a song note for note. There’s a reason for that, which we’ll get to, but for now, the important thing to remember is that when an artist copies another’s work as a learning method you’ll never see it. Artists don’t release their practice work to the public. Musicians don’t get on stage and run through scales for the audience. By the same token, no one will ever see my copy of Brooks’s poem. This is because the whole point of creating art is to come up with your own work. (There is one exception to this in music, which I’ll address below.) So any covers you find must be more than practice exercises. The cover has to deviate from the original to be worthwhile for a musician to go through the trouble of releasing it. Therefore, any cover that you would actually see is a variation of the original, not an exact copy.

From this standpoint, publicly released covers need to satisfy two criteria in relation to the original:
1. Recognition — similar enough to be recognized as a cover
2. Expression — different enough to be a new expression, not simply copying or practice

The clearest way to examine the first criteria is to break down the art forms into their constituent elements and examine which change and which don’t between versions. Then we’ll explore how those changes affect our ability to recognize different versions.

To Recognize Music Covers, Melody Must Stay Same

We’ll start with music. (Note: the following is a bit oversimplified, but I’m trying to not get too detailed into music theory here. I’m just going to ask you to trust the musician about music.) The most commonly and simplistically stated elements that make up music are rhythm and melody. But songs are also made up of a chord progression, time signature, key, arrangement (instrumentation), and tempo. All of these work in conjunction to turn sounds into a song. Now if you examine covers, you’ll see that only one element is required to stay consistent between versions to make them recognizable as covers — the melody. To demonstrate this, pick a song, any song. Now hum or whistle that song. You’ll hum the melody line. If anyone hears you, they’ll also recognize the song, assuming they’re familiar with it and you can hum in tune.

All other musical elements either define or support the melody, or they simply function to keep all the parts together. Definitional elements consist of the chord progression and time signature. This means they must also stay the same between versions but only to keep the melody consistent. It would be impossible to change these without changing the melody. Rhythm is the main supportive element. This gets a little tricky as technically every part (melody, harmony, etc.) has a rhythm. For our purposes, I’m including the melody rhythm and the rhythm of the chord progression with their respective elements. So when I refer to rhythm from here on out, I mean the overall song rhythm underlying the melody, which is usually established by percussion and bass instruments.

Because rhythm plays a supportive role to the melody, there is much leeway in changing it around, and as our humming illustration above demonstrates, it can even be dropped entirely. However, because each part’s rhythm has to coincide to some degree, certain accented beats need to stay the same between versions. But outside of these specific rhythmic moments, you can pretty much do what you want as long as you stay with the time signature.

Key and tempo mainly function to keep all parts playing together. So it’s true that if these change, everything else changes, but these changes don’t affect the overall recognition of a song in any way. Changes in arrangement are pretty easy to see as having no effect on song recognition, whether it’s played on a piano, guitar, kazoo or anything else.

Overall, the melody defines any song from a recognition standpoint. This makes the melody a quasi-independent element, so it must stay consistent. The other elements can change, but due to their supportive nature, they are somewhat limited in their variability. If they change too much, it’s not that the melody will be unrecognizable, it’ll just sound like shit. To see this in real life, let’s listen to a few musical versions of the song, Hurt.

Hurt, Nine Inch Nails (original)

Hurt, Johnny Cash (cover — with vocals)

Hurt, 2 Cellos (cover — instrumental)

Through the three versions, you’ll hear how the melody (and therefore time signature and chord progression) remains consistent, while everything else varies. Even when the melody goes from being delivered via vocals to a cello, the melody line itself remains the same. It’s all the other elements that change, some more than others. All three versions are in different keys and played at different tempos. But if you weren’t listening to these side-by-side or not specifically paying attention to it, you’d never notice. The most drastic changes are in arrangement and rhythm, with the latter somewhat necessitated by the former.

Overall we have two distinct rhythms in this song. The verse rhythm revolves around arpeggios (chords where the notes are played individually instead of together) that flow then hold. The sustained notes hold on the second beat of every other measure. In the pre-choruses and choruses we have pulsing quarter notes. Now these general rhythms remain consistent between versions, mainly because they keep the melody sounding “right.” But if you listen closely, the way these rhythms are created is quite distinct between versions.

In the NIN verse, the arpeggios, played only by a guitar, use more tied notes and add additional passing notes to give a more meandering and complicated rhythm. In Cash’s version, again on guitar, the arpeggios are more regular, which produces a more flowing and less disjointed feel. In the 2 Cellos version, the arpeggios are stripped to their bare essentials with no passing notes and the most regular feel. Combined with the low sustain of a cello, when plucked, this rhythm creates the most space and airy feel of the three. In the NIN pre-chorus, a guitar and bass play only quarter notes, and as we move into the chorus, the guitar drops out, and the bass and added drums play eighth notes that are still accented on every beat, continuing the established quarter note dominant rhythm. In Cash’s chorus however, the guitar begins playing a mix of quarter notes and eighth notes and uses added piano to keep a quarter note accent. Again this makes the overall rhythm less choppy. There are no additional rhythmic notes in the 2 Cellos chorus — it’s all quarter notes and nothing else.

As you can hear, these rhythmic and arrangement differences effect the feel of the song but not our ability to recognize each as different versions of the same song. We’re still left with the melody, which defines any song from a recognition standpoint, as the only truly consistent element.

In Literature Retellings, Everything Changes

Now let’s break down literature into its constituent elements and examine how they affect our recognition of retellings. We have a narrator/point of view (POV), characters, a setting, a narrative/plot, and themes. Unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as pointing out which of these elements must be kept between retellings. As we’ll see, all of them usually do change between retellings.

Take A Farewell to Arms as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, as mentioned above. The narrator changes from third-person to first person. The characters have some similarity, but there is a bit of a gender reversal — Catherine is more similar to Romeo and Henry is closer to Juliet in many ways. The characters in the two stories also vary in personality and temperament. The two settings are similar as taking place in a conflict-ridden Italy, but the two time frames create obvious differences. The most consistency between the tales is their narrative arc — two people fall in love by chance, they begin a clandestine affair, they make plans to run off together, the plan is thwarted and they are separated by the conflict, they reunite. However, the ending is completely different. Only one of them dies, and the circumstances of her death are different, most importantly it’s not a suicide. Both stories also deal with similar themes, especially the idea of renouncing conflict to pursue love. But in A Farewell to Arms themes such as masculinity are added and others like familial obligation are dropped.

In terms of meeting the recognition criteria for covers, you can see everything is similar enough that we can call this a retelling, but nothing stays consistent either, at least not in the way melody remains consistent between song versions. This begs the question though, can’t authors simply change things less? Not really. Compared to music, not only do more elements change between retellings of literature, they must change. The reason for this gets us into satisfying the second criteria for creating a cover — new expression. And now we’re getting to the good stuff. As we dig deeper, we’ll find that changing all elements in literature but not in music is necessitated by the inherent differences between the art forms in expressive capabilities and how the audience understands those expressions. Grab a shovel.

Artistic Building Blocks and the Difference Between Music and Language

Notice that I didn’t list musical notes as a constituent element of music, nor words for literature. These are building blocks. They provide the raw material for their respective art forms. Elements are structural. To see the difference, if I simply played a random set of notes, you wouldn’t have a song. In the same way, picking random words from the dictionary wouldn’t create a work of literature. However, it is the differences between notes and words that create the inherent differences between music and literature and, in turn, their expressive capabilities.

The main fundamental difference is that music is experienced sensually while literature is not. This means we experience every aspect of a song directly and exclusively through our senses (hearing). We don’t need any additional mental processing to understand a piece of music as music. This should be self-evident. You don’t need to know anything about music theory, what key the song is in, what notes or chords are being played, etc. to enjoy a song. The sensory experience alone creates an understandable expression.

However, when we experience literature, it is expressed through language, which requires an extra level of abstract cognition to understand it. This might not be obvious because language does produce both an auditory and visual sensory experience for speech and writing, respectively. Also, this extra cognitive step is so automatic that we’re not usually consciously aware of it. So to illustrate this effect, I’m going to rewrite the first two lines of a famous poem and keep the auditory experience as close to the original as possible.

Yet fuss dough Zen, ewe sand eye
Hen duh Steven sing fizz sped route condensed duh spy

The rhythm matches the original exactly. Each word rhymes with the original. A few are homophones. Where I had to add a sound to make a different word, I tried to use softer, less noticeable consonants. Where I changed a sound to make a different word, I tried to use a similar phonetic type. Now ask yourself, does this rewrite express anything?

Compare it to the original lines. They’re from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

As you can see (hear?), simply re-creating a similar auditory experience in language won’t re-create the expression of the original. In fact, it destroys it.

Variations in the visual experience of language are common. You always see words in different fonts, sizes, and colors. We also have capital and lowercase letters. Changing these aspects has no effect on our understanding of what the words express. Taken together, it’s obvious that understanding an expression in language is independent of our sensory experience. So let’s try one more thing. If I rewrite the lines to maintain a similar meaning and ignore the sensory experience, we should get something that is recognizable to the original.

Ok, you come with me
As this night stretches on endlessly

The reason that maintaining the sensory experience also maintains the psychological effect (expression) in music but not in literature is due to the different natures of notes and words. The building blocks of music, notes, do not have meaning. Notes don’t refer to anything else. They simply are. Middle C is middle C and nothing else. Creating an organized collection of notes (a song) doesn’t change this. Contrastingly, the building blocks of literature, words, do have meaning in and of themselves. They are symbols that refer to something else, namely conceptions of things in the world. So to understand a word, you have to know what the word refers to and this is independent of the sensory experience of the word. And this fundamental difference between notes and words gives us our fundamental differences between their two respective art forms. Listening to music is experiential, while reading literature is cognitive.

Music Expresses Emotions, Literature Expresses Ideas

This difference between art forms has profound implications. Most importantly, it creates necessary expressive limitations unique to each art form. All expression basically boils down to two types: ideas and emotions. Emotions do not require a level of abstract cognition. It requires cognition to name the emotion, to say “I feel sad” or “I feel happy”. But it doesn’t require cognition to actually feel those emotions. You simply feel them.

Ideas are made up of multiple concepts associated together, influencing each other. The way concepts influence each other is what we call context. Context is essentially the prior knowledge and assumptions of the audience when confronting a new concept. Change the context and you change the understanding of the new concept, which ultimately shapes how an idea is understood. This means that both expressing and understanding an idea require additional cognitive processing versus feeling an emotion.

Now let’s apply this analysis of expression types to music and literature. As highlighted above, musical expression is delivered purely through sensory experience. And just like emotions, you don’t need cognition for sensory experience. If you heard a trumpet playing a note, you would need cognition to understand that the note is being played by a trumpet. But if you had no concept of trumpets, you would still hear the same note, and it would be bright and loud and the same pitch. Since musical expression is delivered and understood strictly through non-cognitive means, music cannot express ideas. An easy way to demonstrate this would be to try explaining the theory of relativity or how to fix a car through music. All that’s left for music is non-cognitive expression. In other words, music can only express emotions.

As shown above, words can only express concepts due to their referential nature. And when you collect the words in different combinations, the meanings can change individually (but not always), but also add up to a larger meaning for the work itself. This is the effect of context. The interplay between theses individual meanings creates the aggregate meaning or idea, which requires cognition to understand. Therefore, literature primarily expresses ideas.

Now it’s true that literature can also express emotion, but it’s not expressed the same way as music. Any emotional expression is indirect. It’s derivative from the expressed ideas. To see this, notice how it’s possible to create expressions via language that are absent of emotional content, i.e. legal documents, instruction manuals, etc. It’s not possible to create a song that doesn’t have an emotional effect. (If you can think of an example, I’d love to hear it.)

So in a nutshell, we have a model of how both art forms are built and how they operate on the audience. Both art forms use their individual building blocks to create an expressive work. The work creates a sensory experience in the audience. Both art forms ultimately create a psychological effect in the audience. With music, this effect stems directly from the sensory experience, which also limits the effect to an emotional understanding. In literature there is an added interpretive step to create the psychological effect, which limits the immediate effect to understanding ideas. Any emotional effect becomes secondary.

Musical work → sensory experience → psychological effect (emotion)
Literary work → sensory experience → symbolic interpretation → psychological effect (idea) → psychological effect (optional emotion)

Finally — Why Literature Retellings Are Hard to Recognize

Now we can address the original issue that got us to this point. With our understanding of the differences between art forms, we can truly see why literature retellings are harder to recognize than music covers. Our ability to recognize two things as similar or the same is largely based off our sensory experience. We tend to think things that look alike or sound alike are alike.

In music the sensory experience drives both recognition and expression. In other words, the sensory experience has a larger overall impact. In terms of the recognition criteria, if a musician deviates too much from the original, especially the melody, the song will be thought of as a different song. However because the expression is also driven by the sensory experience, a musician can create new expressions with smaller changes. The result — new expressions that maintain a high amount of similarity to the original song and are therefore easy to recognize as covers.

And since the musical expression is sensory driven, that expression is limited to emotion. So these changes to non-melodic elements should create different emotions, but within a narrow range. Our examples of Hurt above confirm this. The expressive differences between each version all fall into the emotional range of sadness. However, in the original we get more of an unraveling, desperate despair. In the Cash version, it’s more of a broken regret. And in the 2CELLOS version, the song expresses more of a quietly endured grief.

In literature, the sensory experience only drives recognition. Expression is independent. Here the sensory experience has a small overall impact. So to satisfy the expression criteria, the retelling needs to deviate from the original, and due to how ideas are constructed, changing one element necessitates changing others to keep the new expression coherent. In other words, context matters much more in literature than it does in music, and providing a new take on an idea requires changing the context. Since context is an amalgam of prior concepts, that means every element of a story can, and usually does need to, be changed. Narrative and narrator determines what information the reader knows and when. Different settings limit the available actions of characters, i.e. you can’t have someone taking pilot lessons if the story is set in the 19th century. Characterization influences our understanding because we recognize in both real life and stories that the words and actions of different people have different meanings (think of a character saying “I can do this,” — it means something different if the character is a young boy stepping up to bat in the big game or a suicidal man standing on the ledge of a building). This results in a larger degree of change in the sensory experience, which makes a literature retelling harder to recognize.

Because literature is cognitive, it means the identification of a retelling isn’t based on the sensory experience. Instead a retelling is based on how the respective works explore similar ideas via using similar, but variant, elements. Going back to our Farewell/Romeo and Juliet comparison, we can see this in action. The reason the stories, while similar, diverge so much is because Shakespeare and Hemingway were saying different things about the same topic. Simply switching from third person to first person necessarily effects the plot as only actions by the narrator or witnessed by the narrator can be related. Information gets dropped, i.e. the audience can’t know what’s going on with Catherine while she’s separated from Henry. This in turn refocuses the conflict on to the challenges faced by Henry. This explains some of the thematic variation, especially why themes like familial obligation disappear, as this theme was mostly represented in Romeo and Juliet through the plot elements revolving around Juliet. More conscious narrative changes, especially the deaths at the end, also affect the approach when dealing with similar themes. While both stories deal with love, their statements about love differ. In Romeo and Juliet, love is all consuming. The characters go to extreme measures to be together. When it turns out that they still can’t, love finally consumes them both as they take their own lives. In Farewell, Catherine dies a natural death. Henry lives on. In this case love is not all consuming but just one more way that life can turn to shit. The point is to keep going anyway. So in the latter story, the theme of love is used to elucidate another larger theme — the need to endure the hardships of life.

The Exception and Last Difference Between Music and Literature

So far, everything we’ve discussed has been premised on the idea that the purpose of an artist covering another work is not to recreate the original artwork exactly, but to offer a different take or expand on the original. But as I mentioned earlier, there are cases where covers are not new artistic expressions, but they are publicly released, so they’re not a learning tool either. Historically, this has only applied to music. It’s the phenomenon of the tribute band where the goal is to reproduce the original exactly. Classical music performances also generally fall into this category. Now the question is why do we see attempts at exact reproduction in music and not literature?

This gets us into the last fundamental difference between the art forms. Music is performative while literature is not. But this is also due to the differences in how the two are experienced and understood. It’s a production issue, really. Because musical expression stems directly from the sensory experience, producing music (the actual sounds) requires performance. The musicians need to be there, playing. Yes they could record their work, but if their goal is exact reproduction, what’s the point between their recording and the original? A recording in this case serves more as a money-making, marketing vehicle, not an artistic one. And this is why you see tribute bands and classical ensembles heavily emphasize live performances. Another commonality is that they are mainly covering musicians who no longer perform, either because the original musicians are dead or no longer practicing publicly. What tribute bands are doing is creating musical performances that are no longer available from the original artists.

Since literary expression is cognitive, the sensory experience is less important. Therefore performance is a non-factor. Think about what it would mean to witness a live performance of a writer reproducing a literary work exactly. You would be reading over his shoulder while he types out someone else’s words. The actual idea presented would still be the exact same as reading the original. And since you can always by a copy of the original work, there’s no value to a writer in exactly reproducing an original. About the closest we come to performance in literature is live readings and audio books. But even then, if the performance is done by someone other than the author, we don’t think of it as a retelling. You can see this in the difference in attribution. In our cover song examples, we attribute the Johnny Cash version to Cash, not Nine Inch Nails. But when you “read” an audio book, we still attribute the work to the original author. Basically, the ideas expressed in literature remain in the work itself. The writer doesn’t need to be present producing the text as you read it. Therefore, performance is not applicable.

Bringing It All Together

To sum everything up, Laing’s observation that writers don’t “cover” other works of literature the way musicians cover other songs is false. Writers do “cover” other works. This makes any explanation irrelevant. However, explaining this misconception allows us to better understand the fundamental nature of music and literature and how they differ. At the root of it all, musical expression is built by notes whose understanding is derived solely from sensory experience, while literary expression is built by words whose understanding is derived from symbolic abstraction. This creates all the other differences we see. Music is experiential, limited to emotional expression, and performative. Literature is cognitive, limited to expressing ideas (emotional expression is derivative), and non-performative.

These inherent differences between the art forms produce the misperceptions of Laing and Simler. From a cover-as-new-expression standpoint, smaller changes in music are enough to create an expressive difference between versions. This creates higher similarity between versions on a sensory level, so they’re more easily recognizable as covers. Contrastingly, larger changes are required in literature to create an expressive difference between versions. This creates more variation on a sensory level, so they’re harder to recognize as covers.

From a cover-as-exact-reproduction standpoint, this only has value in performative situations, which largely only apply to music. It could be that Laing meant this second way of looking at covers, in which case, it is mostly true that we don’t see literary “covers.” However, his thought of covers being produced by “novices,” implying that covers are learning tools, undercuts this benefit of the doubt. The musicians in tribute bands and classical ensembles are certainly not novices. But even if Laing was only referring to covers in this second sense, the reason for the lack of literary covers is still best explained by the non-performative nature of writing, which is also predicated on its cognitive nature. So no matter what, and as much as I’d like it to be true as a writer, any supposed sacredness of books has nothing to do with anything regarding covers.

The post How to Judge Books by Their Covers by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

Some days it takes an hour or two to simply write a paragraph. This isn’t necessarily bad writing. More often for me, it’s thinking writing. It’s when I don’t have a clear picture in my head of what I’m trying to say or I don’t have a clear path to saying it. So I simply write, barf it all out on the page. Slowly points emerge, phrasings, but no structure. But the points and phrases start to show how they should connect. Then I have to go back and pick out those points and reorganize, essentially create a new outline but with more material to pick from. I’m in the middle of that right now for two different pieces. They both became more than I thought they would. It happens.

But after happening twice in a row, I’m a little outlined out. Spilling thoughts that you know go together but you’re not sure how can wear you down pretty quick. Until you’re finally left with only wanting to bang out nice, semi-decent work on the first try. But nothing like that comes. You know you need to let the more complicated pieces ferment for a bit. And in the meantime…

Last night I reached my limit. I needed to write something else. But all my mind would do was jump between the other two pieces. Stupid mind. What good are you if you don’t make words? Maybe my mind just needed some help. A little nudge. I looked around. My setting was all wrong. The A/C wall unit roared. Too loud. My desk was far from the A/C. Too hot. It was also too bright. It was getting muggy outside under the grey clouds that had been promising rain all day, but they hadn’t kept their promise. The ceiling fan squeaked and chirped. I need to call the landlord to fix that. I can’t find my pen. Too early to eat. I decided to adjust my surroundings and make them more conducive to coming up with a new, simpler idea.

I cleaned the clutter off the counter. Laid out my notebook. Cleaned the rough drafts of the other pieces from my desk. Closed two hundred and twenty-six windows on my computer. The sun was still above the buildings but starting to edge down to the horizon. The clouds combined with the lower sun to darken the sky more than normal for that time of day. Good. I could adjust the indoor lights now. I can’t write if it’s too bright, or so I say when I simply can’t write. Lights turned down. Distractions gone. Pen in hand. Pen in hand. Pen in hand. Pen in hand.

I called the girlfriend, currently in New York. Good talk. Always is. During our conversation, it grew darker outside and the wind started to pick up. “I think it’s going to rain,” I told her. I opened the windows. It was quite cooler now. I turned off the A/C. Lights, noise, and temperature down. That should help. I hung up the phone, looked back outside.

The first drops started falling. Then they fell faster, harder. The sky darkened even more, but because of the clouds not the sun setting. Flashes started to light up the clouds. Small rumbles groaned through the city, grumbled around the skyscrapers, and mumbled down the alley. The rain picked up. Large drops of water slid down the underside of the powerlines strung between the pole outside my window and my building. They glistened silver as one by one they careened to the lowest droop of the cable, paused, then were nailed by another drop so they both fell to the ground. The neverending splash of water began to run from the building drain pipes. Crack-k-k-kack-boom! The thunder was getting louder and more frequent. The sky lit up here, then there, then here again, then over a different there. Hail joined the rain to add some snare cracks to the constant cymbals of slashing rain.

I grabbed a beer and stepped out under the covered walkway to look and listen. The same symphony met my ears but went from mezzo-piano to fortissimo. Now the wind brushed my face in between the rain splatter kisses. Another thunder clap made me jump; it hurt my ears. It scared a murder of crows from a nearby tree, and they flew off in the downpour like the silhouettes of souls unsure of their final destination. Pinks and clinks of hail bounced off the iron patio furniture in the courtyard below. I sipped my beer and enjoyed the storm. The lightening continued to close in. The flashes were right above me now. More thunder that felt more like someone clapping my ears than the clouds. I finished my beer and went back inside. The symphony dropped back down to mezzo-piano. My apartment was cool now. The lights just right. The mood was struck. I turned on some music. It couldn’t be more perfect when a song, called Nada, about someone riding into a desert storm, entered the room on a whining harmonica:

I see the lightning from the storm down in Mexico…
I cross the desert, disappear into the tumbleweeds…

I picked up my pen:
It was a dark and stormy night.
It was a dark, stormy night.

I hear the thunder from the storm down in Mexico…
I feel the dust coat my teeth and turn my sweat to mud…

It was a stormy and dark night.
It was a stormy, dark night.

There ain’t no moral to this story at all,
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie…
I’m just waiting for that cold, black…

The night was dark and stormy.
The night was stormy and dark.
The night was darkly stormy.

I feel the wind blow from the storm down in Mexico…
I cross the river, leave my shoes upon the other side…

The dark night was stormy.
The stormy night was dark.

There ain’t no moral to this story at all,
And anything I tell you very well could be a lie…
I’m just waiting for that cold, black, sun-cracked…

The night stormed darkly.
The night darkly stormed.

I feel the raindrops from the storm down in Mexico…
I walk through the desert, past a lizard and a rattlesnake…

The stormy night darkened.
The dark night stormed.

There ain’t no moral to this story at all…
And everything I tell you, you can bet will be a lie…
I’m just waiting for that cold, black, sun-cracked, numb-inside soul of mine…

Pen down. Fuck this. I’m grabbing a whiskey.

(NB: Nada is a song by The Refreshments. Great song, and surprisingly for most pop music, it also makes for a good poem. You can listen to it here if you’re interested.)

The post Notes on Nada by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

The post Epifunny #54 by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

I’ve got a piece I’m working on. It’s more working on me. But I’m late. I’m behind. I’ve got a deadline and nothing but crap to submit. And I remember an idea I heard. It was that ninety percent of everything you do is crap. And I’ve got nothing else at the moment. So in order to get something out, anything, at this moment, I offer a huge rationalization: here’s to the crap. Here’s to the shit. Here’s to the feces, the excrement, the turds with the polish worn off. Here’s to the brown stains that, two toilet paper rolls later, can’t be wiped clean. Here’s to the verbal diarrhea smeared across the page. This is all I can offer today.

I had something interesting. Something that would make you think. I know it would because it made me think. But then I started thinking. I started thinking it was convoluted. I started thinking it rambled. I started thinking it was too boring. I started thinking that people don’t like to think. That they want to be entertained, not think. I started thinking of how I could make it better. How I could make it interesting. I started thinking that if I had to make it interesting, that the topic itself must be boring. Or else it wouldn’t need to be made interesting. I scrapped the attempts to make it interesting. I started thinking I could make myself think it was interesting on its own. I started thinking it just needed to be better organized. It was missing connection between the points. It didn’t flow. I added connections. I added reasons. I added examples. I added becauses and buts and therefores. I added so much proof that I proved this interesting idea was truly convoluted. And nothing’s more boring than convolution.

So I cut. I cut the boring parts. The parts some writer I can’t remember but still more famous than me said I should cut. And I cut. And I cut. I weed whacked the shit. Macheted the crap until it splattered everywhere. No need for a fan. And when I looked at the splatter, I had achieved something magical. I had transformed the boring into the banal. I had nothing that hasn’t been said before. Damn you Plato and Aristotle for ensuring no one would have an original thought again.

And I know it was unoriginal and boring and convoluted because of a reader. So while we’re damning some dead Greeks, at the same time, damn the reader. If I’m to cheers the crap, those who damn the stench must be damned. It’s only logical. But there’s one reader that especially needs to be damned. A reader who looks for nothing but ways to tear down the writing. The most caustic reader. The most judgmental reader. The reader that thinks they know everything about the piece, every motivation and assumption, and especially how all those everythings work together to make the work crap. The most horrible of readers. The first reader of any work — the author.

Damn you, first reader. Damn your questions, your accusations, your accusations passive-aggressively made as questions. Damn you for damning the work for its imperfections. Damn you for pointing out what every other reader in the universe will point at — and laugh. Damn you for contradicting every word. Damn you for pointing out every inconsistency, every moment of ambiguity, of obsfuscation. Every spelling error. Every slip in logic. Damn you for revealing the overuse of logic. Damn you for making me talk to myself in public.

Yes, I will damn you, you damned first reader. Because I know something you don’t. I know that all work starts as crap. I even stated some unverifiable statistic to prove it. And I can flush that crap to the sewer, post it to the internet — it’s basically the same thing. And then this crap will also be flushed from my mind. Don’t ask me if that’s true, first reader; you’ve been damned. And I know something else you don’t. Sometimes, there’s a nugget of usefulness in the crap. An undigested corn kernel glowing in the bowl. So go ahead and tell me my piece is crap. Your critiques are just as unoriginal. There’s something edible in the crap. Quit asking me if I would eat it. I don’t need to. I just need to pluck it from the filth, clean it. Wipe away the feces, remove the crap words. Then sanitize, but not for judgmental pricks like you, first reader. Sanitize it in a way that leaves a gleaming thought for brilliant minds. I know I’ll finally get down to nothing but a pristine yellow kernel. And no one will know the difference when they take a nibble. Damn you for thinking otherwise.

Yes, first reader, this sounds disgusting. It is disgusting, a process made all the more disgusting by you. So damn you again. Yes, first reader, I know it’s a necessary process. Why are you still talking? Yes, you pointing out the crap of my piece is also pointing out what to fix and to cut and to clean. Yes I know it’s the only way to find that kernel and make it edible. And yes thank you for reminding me, as I look down at my brown, greasy hands stinking up the page, that there is something good and useful that will come out, sooner or later. But still, today I hate it, so damn you, too. And yes, fist reader, I’ve got the crap flushed out of me now. I can get back to work. And yes, I now have something to submit, which gives me the time to make the other piece what it needs to be. And yes, first reader, you’re damn right this piece is a cop out. I’ll make the next one worth it.

The post Damn You, First Reader! by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

The post Epifunny #1023½ by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

Six years ago, on July 20th, I received some of the best news of my life: my dog had worms. This may not sound like good news to most people, but when I found out, a long, frustrating day turned into a blessed one. For you see, when I learned of his condition, he wasn’t my dog yet.

Let me back up. A few weeks earlier, K and I had put down our fourteen-year-old, chocolate lab, Baxter. While the pain of the loss was still present, it had begun to subside. The emptiness in the house started to seem fillable. The unused leash, that unfilled food bowl, were becoming items wasting space instead of painful reminders. Plus, our other dog, Roscoe, wasn’t doing so well as an only dog. Getting another dog began to seem plausible. We started sneaking looks at the websites of local shelters.

Of course, it was too early to replace Baxter. As we surfed the websites, we told ourselves that we were only looking to get an idea of what was available. We were just trying to plan ahead. During our fact-finding mission, we learned that two shelters were going to hold a joint adoption event at a large park, a true meet-and-greet where we could interact with the dogs outside of the confined kennel environment. The best part — all adoptions would be half price.

“I’m not ready for a new dog,” K said. She still cried when she grabbed the leash to take Roscoe for a walk and the other leash fell down with it. I was about to start a new job and wouldn’t be working from home anymore. No one would be around to help the new dog adjust. What if he wasn’t housebroken? Who would let him out? What if Roscoe and the new dog didn’t get along? Who would help the new guy integrate into the pack? After discussing the situation in the most rational way and determining that this was not a good time for a new dog, we jumped in the car and headed down to the adoption event. We were only going to see what was available, to get a better idea of what we wanted. I’m sure alcoholics have the same good intention of only ordering water when they walk into a bar during happy hour.

We arrived at the park and looked around. We knew most of the dogs’ names already from the shelters’ websites. We met a few dogs and learned more about them from their handlers. None stood out. Then K found Bruce. He was a shepherd mix, about 70 pounds with a snubby nose. A quiet confidence surrounded him. He broke his stoic stance to greet K’s hand with a quick, wet sniff, then he sat back down and turned his head to give her fingers better access behind his ear. As I knelt down to pet him, he leaned into my leg, but he remained alert to his surroundings. He was a protector. He never barked once — just sat calmly, looking around. He was a canine Fonzie.

We started walking around again. “Remember, we’re only here to look,” I said.

“I know,” K responded while looking back over her shoulder at Bruce. We met a couple more dogs, but like the first few, none stood out. They weren’t Bruce.

I then noticed a yellow lab. A young married couple with a baby about to burst from the woman’s belly played with him. Something about this dog drew me to him — he had a constant, strange expression on his face. I wanted to investigate, but I held back. The married couple were already bonding with him, and going over now felt like butting in on a private conversation. I waited and looked at some other dogs. Finally the married couple moved on to browse through the rest of the bargain bin on leashes. I walked over.

His name was Hunter. He was preoccupied with some infinitely interesting phenomenon that only he could sniff from the air. But as he saw me approach, he dropped his big, floppy ears and wiggled his body. He apparently had heard the phrase, “the tail wagging the dog,” and took it literally. There were other backward things about him. Usually when dogs roll over to get the best loving there is, the belly rub, they lie down then roll over. Hunter reversed the procedure. He would roll over then lie down, contorting himself in a tumultuous thud as he flopped to the ground and waited for the inevitable hand to scratch up and down his undercarriage.

As I rubbed his belly, I noticed other oddities. Close up, I could see why he had such a strange expression on his face. His eyes were off-center. In fact, the entire right side of his face shifted back about an inch. A giant hematoma bulged from inside his right ear. When I pulled my hand away from petting him, a film of greasy dog stink coated my hand. His oily skin showed grimy and black from under the blond fur covering his body (except for a curious bald spot on his chest). The shelter had neutered him recently, and his large, newly emptied ball sack swayed between his hind legs with stitches poking out like over-ripe pubic hairs. He didn’t know his name. I told him to sit and he just stood there with a cock-eyed smile. I pointed to the ground and said, “Down.” He started sniffing the grass looking for the treat I was pointing at. I learned that he was a stray. No one knew how old he was or where he came from.

While I was petting Hunter, K had found her way back to Bruce. She was asking his handler everything about him and becoming more attached. She ran through a series of basic commands, which Bruce executed exactly. He never lost that calm alertness. He surveyed HIS park to ensure the event transpired in a dignified, orderly manner. I joined K and Bruce. As soon as I left, the married couple walked back to Hunter. He wiggled his way into their arms and melted into their embrace.

It was getting on one o’clock, and K and I were both hungry. We went to a nearby Burger King for lunch. As we munched on fries and flame-broiled burgers, we discussed the pros and cons of getting a dog.

“Did you see how cute Bruce is?” K asked.

“I thought we were only here to look,” I said. “Do you want another dog?”

She looked at me with a shy smile.

I pressed. “You want Bruce, don’t you?”

She hesitated and finally said, “I want Bruce.” She blushed as she said it. She explained how she still missed Baxter, but Bruce…

“Did you like any of them?” she asked me. “It seemed you liked Hunter,” she said.

I told her I liked them both, but that married couple had all but loaded Hunter in the back of their car. “I don’t think Hunter will be there when we get back,” I said. “Bruce is a cool dog, and I would be happy to have him. After we’re done eating, we’ll go back and take him home.” We hurried back to the event. So much for just looking.

Bruce was nowhere to be found. We asked a couple of the volunteers, but no one knew where he had gone. One told us that there were too many dogs to have them all here at the same time, so they ferried the dogs between the park and the shelters in shifts. Bruce might be back at the shelter. We asked a few more people. Finally we found one of the head organizers. She confirmed it. Bruce had been adopted twenty minutes ago. K and I looked at each other. She was heartbroken, and I felt the same for her. We lost Bruce in exchange for a Burger King Whopper.

I already knew the answer, but I asked the organizer anyway, “What about Hunter?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I believe he was adopted also. A couple with a pregnant woman took him home to see how it would work out. It looks like he found his forever home.” She could see the disappointment on our faces. “You know, there are more dogs at the shelter that are part of the adoption drive. You might be able…” We were in the car and headed to the shelter before she finished her sentence. We arrived at the event just to look, and we’d be damned if we didn’t go home with a dog.

Once we arrived at the shelter, another volunteer showed us to the kennel area. We wandered around the cages looking for another Bruce. None came close. A few seemed promising, and we arranged some one-on-one meetings. None of them were the right dog for us. The shelter started closing down for the day. Eight hours of ear scratching, belly rubbing and command testing, and we were about to drive home alone without a furry head out the window, ears and jowells flapping in the wind. We walked out of the private meeting room into the now closed shelter. The shelter workers could see the disappointment on our faces.

“Couldn’t find the one, huh?” a lady working at the shelter asked.

We told her no and that we had really liked two that were at the park, but they were adopted while we discussed it over lunch. She asked which ones, and we told her about Bruce and Hunter.

“Wait a second,” she said. She walked around the front counter and punched a few keys into the computer. “Hunter’s not adopted yet.”

“But we thought this couple took him?”

“They did,” she said. “But they’re sending him back.”

“We’ll take him!”

As the lady at the front counter started preparing the paperwork, I headed to the bathroom. I couldn’t believe our luck. Then I started thinking. Why were they bringing him back? I thought of his deformed face, his injury, his skin. Exactly what were we getting ourselves into?

As I was walking down the hallway, another volunteer walked in the back door. Behind her was the scrunched up, off-center face of Hunter. He instantly started wiggling as soon as he saw me. I got the low-down from the volunteer holding his leash. After the married couple took him home, they found worms in his poop. They were afraid the worms could hurt their baby, so they sent Hunter back. I couldn’t believe it. For the first time in my life, I was thankful for stupid, fearful people. (Anyone thinking this is a harsh assessment, trust me, the worms can only be spread through ingestion. If that mother was going to eat dog shit, worms were the least of that baby’s worries.)

We signed the paperwork and cut a check. (Half price!) As soon as the door closed when we walked out with Hunter, a raucous cheer erupted from the shelter. We like to think they were celebrating the end of a long, successful day and not because they had just unloaded one of their problem dogs. We weren’t sure, especially since we had to sign an extra waiver acknowledging that our new dog likely had neurological problems because of his messed up face. They were basically telling us, “he’s your problem now.” But it didn’t matter. Hunter was coming home. With us.

We decided to re-name him, since he didn’t know his name anyway. Despite my air-tight arguments, K would not let me christen him Quasimodo. We finally settled on Zeke. The worms were gone within a couple days. The hematoma faded. The off-center, wrinkly face had nothing to do with a neurological problem; it’s because he’s mixed with another breed (Bassett hound is our best guess). Some allergy meds and regular baths eliminated the greasy skin and keeps his fur soft.

K and I have since split up. We split custody of Zeke, so now I only have him a week or two every month. A year ago we learned he’s slowly dying of a liver tumor. It’s not causing him pain and should be a painless way to go, so we’ve decided not to put him through a major operation. He’s slowed down considerably since the day we brought him home, but for years, his tail would still wag his whole body. He would still flop onto his back out of order. And for the first time, I saw a creature without wings defy gravity by falling UP the stairs (he would trip over his front legs while his back legs continued to propel him upward). He’s actually caught two dastardly squirrels and a chicken, been sprayed by a skunk, and given me endless laughs when he would try to catch a Frisbee with his paws instead of his mouth. And although many of his antics have subsided due to age and disease, every morning I’ve had him, I would wake up with him curled against my leg. And as soon as he saw that I was awake, he would slide up along my body and put his head on my shoulder to say good morning. And I’ve been able to enjoy all the antics, smiles, and snuggles because he had worms.

The post Scratch-and-Dent Dog by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

The post Epifunny # -148 by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.

You know the poem.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

This poem has spread through movies, ads, memes, hell it’s probably on some fortune cookie message somewhere. It’s become a testament to blazing your own future, asserting your own individuality, bucking the status quo and becoming your best self. This poem serves as inspiration to probably millions. At least these last three lines do. Too bad no one reads the entire poem. Because if they did, they’d realize that this poem has actually become one of the best jokes ever played on the English-speaking public. And if you use this poem as inspiration to live an amazingly unique life, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the joke’s on you.

Let’s actually read the WHOLE thing.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Do you get the joke yet?

It hinges on the concept of the speaker taking the road less traveled. Yet read the descriptions of the two roads. They’re the same. The first stanza describes our speaker walking through the woods and coming to a fork in the road. He looks down one path until it bends and he can’t see any farther. Then he decides the second path is better because it’s been less traveled.

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear.

But he instantly takes this statement back in the next four lines.

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.

So how does our speaker get from acknowledging that the two roads are pretty much the same, yet at the end talks about how much of a difference it’s made by taking the one that is less traveled? It’s called a post hoc rationalization. We rationalize all sorts of things. Sometimes we convince ourselves that bad decisions were really good ones at the time we made them with the information we had. Other times, we’ll come up with a better reason later and pretend that was our rationale from the beginning. Sometimes we just don’t want to admit that our actions were based on a whim and concoct a reason after the fact. It’s much more comforting to think we’re in control and mapping out our futures. But in this case, Frost highlights another way we rationalize things: we crave meaning in our lives and often attempt to turn the trivial into the triumphant. We seldom realize we do this. But by giving us the before and after of the speaker’s decision, Frost is able to show us this rationalization process, and he does so in a masterful way.

Structurally we have a consistent rhyme pattern of ABAAB and each line consists of four rhythmic feet. But despite the regular cadence, this consistency is thrown off kilter by the use of irregularly added anapests within mostly iambs. A scansion for the first stanza is below. The accented syllables are bolded with the iambs in blue and the anapests in red.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

As you can see we have just enough consistency to suggest a pattern, but it’s never truly realized.

Also note that the first two-and-a-half stanzas are actually one long compound sentence consisting of three independent clauses supported by a slew of parentheticals and drawn out adverbial phrases. Your high school English teacher would call this a run-on sentence. Combine this irregular rhythm and meandering syntax with the constant thought reversals, and you have the perfectly presented, disjointed thoughts of a dithering speaker.

Now contrast this with the ending everyone loves to quote. The speaker tells us how important his decision was, yet he’s actually quite indecisive. This also helps explain the title. The decision the speaker sees as instrumental in his life is about which road he took, but the title focuses our attention on the one he didn’t. There’s a constant back and forth (the rhyme scheme helps accentuate this feeling), the same way he tries to look down one path then the other, and later he also looks both forward and backward in time. It reminds me of a couple lines from Prufrock by T. S. Eliot: In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

But it’s in the shifting tone that we can see Frost is presenting a speaker that’s meant to be laughed at. While the speaker is hemming and hawing about the path, he makes one definitive statement: And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler… This is an unimportant truism, but the speaker presents it as some profound truth that isn’t easily grasped by a four-year-old. (You mean you can’t split your body and take two paths at the same time? Really. You don’t say!) But the real tonal shift in the poem comes in the third line of the third stanza with Oh, I kept the first for another day! Here we switch from the largely descriptive language of the paths to a grandiose wistfulness. Ironically, it’s at this point when the speaker reveals his decision of which path to take by focusing on the other one. Indeed, we’re not even told exactly what path he’s chosen, which only highlights the sameness of the paths and how trivial this decision really was. Yet it’s at this point where the speaker begins to present this decision as important, while lamenting that he’ll probably never get the chance to see the results of deciding the other way.

The next two lines take this wistfulness into the realm of true hyperbole.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

The speaker tell us (with such a deep sigh) that this decision will have effects not only on his future life but for ages and ages, long past even his own lifetime. This level of melodrama would choke a daytime soap opera. Is anyone else reminded of someone who’s smoked too much pot and, while gazing at his midsection, ponders the profundity of an infinitely deep navel?

So now that we’ve reached the last three lines that everyone is so fond of, we have a completely different context in which to understand them, by which I mean a context. A dithering speaker chooses between two equal options with all the significance of flipping a coin. But now, one path is the better one, the one less traveled. And now it makes a difference. Interesting that we’re never told what that difference is. If the difference is so important, you’d think the speaker would focus on that instead. But this would get in the way of the cosmic moment.

Now do you get the joke? This poem is making fun of the type of people who think they’re making a heroic decision when pondering what color socks to wear. Anyone who takes only the one small part of this poem and magnifies it into a grand statement on striking out on your own unique path are doing the same thing as the speaker. These are the people that Frost is mocking, and they don’t even realize it.

Look. There is a serious side to this poem. We’ve all sat and wondered how our lives would be different if we had made some alternate decision. We’ve all been paralyzed with indecision at times worrying about which is the right path to take. But the truth is that sometimes these decisions really don’t amount to much. Not everything is a sign from the universe. Many of our actions are completely inconsequential. And we can laugh at that. There’s nothing wrong with recognizing how silly we can be. But sometimes we need someone else to point out those moments to us. And this poem works wonders toward that end. And if you can get over yourself for a moment, you’ll see that what we really have here, despite the popular wishes, is a poem that shows us a person trying to turn the mundane into the monumental. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if the speaker succeeded or not. But if you think he did, I bet Mr. Frost is chuckling in his grave. I am too (not in my grave, of course). But we’re laughing with you not at you. Really. I swear. You might as well share a laugh with us.

The post Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken by Mark Stabler first appeared on Truth Told Slant.