Click to play Do you have a 'Grasshopper Mind?'
When I was around 12 years old, there was a recurrent advertisement—Japanese readers, think A/XA Direct!—placed on the lower right column of the front page of the Daily Telegraph, one that caught my eye whenever I would pass it on the news agent's shelf. (At the time, I had no idea of the conservative politics of this paper, which I later shunned, and now accept as not much worse than the best British print journalism can offer, and a damn sight better than most—God protect us from the Daily Mail: all I knew then was that it was English politics and therefore moderately foreign: for the same reason—my xenophilia started early—I was attracted to the paper, and especially to its advertisements. I also read the Irish Times for good measure, but never the local papers, on either side of the sectarian divide, even though my own father had started his career as a journalist on the Belfast Telegraph, and would, I believe, have been happiest had he stayed there.)
To the point, Nigel: the advertisement claimed to offer a cure—or at least some self-help therapy—to those plagued by a Grasshopper—should that have been locust?—Mind: the chronic inability to stay focussed, the constant desire to flit from one topic to another, from one half-finished project to the next, hopping cheerfully and somewhat rapaciously across the intellectual landscape, feeding on bright green leaves...
As should be abundantly clear by now, I have that Grasshopper Mind to this day: I didn't send off £2.75 plus P&P—I really can't remember how much it was, but it was post-decimalisation—but I doubt it would have done any good at all. Even then, I was too far gone...
In retrospect, my Grasshopper Mind has stood me in good stead, all these years. Though it almost certainly has held me back in academia—where the (open) secret of success is to publish a thousand variants of the same damn paper and not to encroach on anyone else's micro-plot "over a distinguished career"—the irrational desire to follow a trail of information wherever it might lead, has kept life interesting, and brought me to places and people, ideas and tastes, that I might otherwise never have encountered, and been so much poorer for it.
So today, my wandering rewarded me by introducing me to the American singer/song-writer, Tim Hardin, whose best-known song If I were a carpenter will be familiar to many, most likely through Bobby Darin or Johnny Cash cover versions. Tim Hardin, like Bobby Darin, died tragically young. Neither made it to 40, both had much more to give the world; in Hardin's case, death was the result of an accidental heroin overdose. Listening to his songs now, and his singing voice—which is reminiscent in tone and content of the much underrated Ron Sexsmith—is to realise how great American popular music can get beyond the cliches of country. Misty Roses is just brilliant, lyrically and harmonically.
So, how did I end up here? It's been an interesting trip. Yesterday, you may recall, to wish Julian Happy Birthday I posted a link to Les dates anniversaires by Yves Duteil. This song comes from a compilation album that also contains Si j'étais ton chemin (If I were your road). As I listened to that song, I was struck by the structural, thematic and tonal similarities between it and a great little song by the German singer/song-writer Frank Viehweg (remember Nicht mehr als), called Alles was ich kann (all that I can), but also by the contrasts: though both entertain a similar hypothetical—if I were the most important person in your life—the Viehweg song is wittier and yet at the same time more conventional, concerned as it with domestic romantic love, whereas Duteil—as so often throughout his career—is expressing a different kind of love, parental love, agape, empathy with children and childhood. His sincerity lacks a little humour, though, comes across a tad sanctimonious at times. Mea culpa, too. And all this put me in mind of If I were a carpenter, which is where today's journey began, and where all the time goes in...
It will be 2am again before I get all the links sorted out: these days I'm averaging three hours' uninterrupted sleep, which is not good, as I found out in reading another paper this morning by St. Clair and Monaghan on grammar abstraction during sleep, but that's a whole nother story, as they say [hops off...].
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