From: "Jim Tourtelott" <aristides1791 at hotmail.com>
To: johnny at charm.net
Subject: Re: New York, and a propos of nothing . . .
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 11:00:59 -0600

>On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, Schneider wrote:
>
>>	Gillis:
>>
>>>Nobody just up and bursts into song like that ...
>>
>>	Yes, we all do.  My gosh, yes.  Constantly.  But we do it *inside*, and 
>>metaphorically.
>
>I agree with Mr. Schneider in part and disagree in part. We don't only do 
>it inside, metaphorically. A propos of nothing (well, sometimes a propos of 
>*something*), and multiple times a week, my mother, may she sleep with the 
>angels, would burst into, with her southern accent, "just you wite, enry 
>iggins, just you wite."
>
>Bill Fant A 1979

And part of the reason that we sometimes burst out loud into snatches of 
show tunes is precisely the "realism," in the heightened theatrical sense, 
of those songs.  They encapsulate, at their best, the longings and emotions 
and thoughts of our internal monologue.  Maybe cowboys in the early morning 
don't start belting out, "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow," but 
that song has lasted six decades because we damn well know the feeling of 
that bright golden haze, and we have awakened to the sense of "oh, what a 
beautiful morning."  And maybe you and your beloved don't routinely serenade 
each other with the thought that tonight there will be no morning star, but 
if you have never experienced the feeling of romantic transcendence that 
Tony and Maria express on that fire escape, Heaven pity you.   My 
grandmother and her sisters were fearsome old gossips who didn't ever start 
singing, but I have heard the strains of "Pick a little, talk a little" from 
The Music Man in their conversations more than once.

What the hell is this "people don't" argument, anyway?  18th Century ship's 
doctors didn't retreat to stables to talk to horses.  A century ago, fat 
Irish Jews weren't wandering around Dublin rewriting Marie Corelli novels in 
their heads while accompanied by boyish schoolteachers who saw the whole of 
life as a recapitulation of the Odyssey.  Nor do Danish princes chat with 
themselves aloud, as both Dr. B and Mr. T have usefully noted, about the 
advisability of suicide.  Tubercular girls don't sing arias immediately 
before expiring. wind being at a premium at the time.  There aren't 
doddering old earls staring at pigs in Shropshire, and there never was a 
cocaine addicted consulting detective given to waking his roommate in the 
small hours with the words, "Quick, Watson, the game's afoot."  Somebody 
invented them all, like Voltaire's God, because we needed them.

Jim Tourtelott