my death
This is why I don't get much done at the office.
Yesterday I was writing a trust amendment for a client. Her husband recently died, and I was tweaking her trust to reflect that. (It's actually not necessary, as wills and trusts are usually written to cover all contingencies, but there were a few other things that needed cleaning up.) There were a lot of places where I was changing "the death of the second of us to die" to "my death".
I had been working on the document for quite a while when I thought, gee, isn't there a Jacques Brel song called "My Death"? So I stopped what I was doing and did a quick google search for "my death brel lyrics" and, after going to one dead link, found a site that had a side-by-side comparison of the "official" translation with a literal translation. I printed it out (I'm too old to be able to absorb information on the screen as well as information on paper) and enjoyed seeing how different the two were. (I've got to print it out in French, too.)
Some things got changed so they would rhyme, and some were substantive changes, probably to make the song more palatable to/comprehensible by English-speaking audiences. Both kept the device of ending each verse with the same words, "the passing time".
I think I bought a Brel compilation the last time I was in Paris. Maybe the French lyrics are there. And where's that compilation that has the original version of La Mer? What a great song! Who wrote that one? Better make a note look it up....
Anyway, after that little detour from my lawyerly duties, I roughed out this entry, but I got home too late last night to write it up.
Lucky thing, because this afternoon, when I took a little break to take a look at the news, after checking out the latest developments in Gaza (free Alan!), I read the story about the gorilla escaping from the Dutch zoo. Like Warren Zevon said, gorilla, you're a desperado. I paused to briefly mourn Zevon's death and resolved to read the bio written by his ex-wife.
Then I clicked on a "related" link to some animal story in the Guardian, not for the story, but to take a gander at their latest music and film stories. I read a piece about how tiring it is the way so many bands plan their sets so as to save some of their best songs to play during the encore(s), rather than scrape something up when, surprise, surprise, the audience wants more because they were so good. And then I scanned the 20-30 comments, and someone mentioned a Waterboys show in Liverpool earlier this month where, for the encore, they played Brel's song, My Death.
I hadn't thought about that song for a long long time when it came to mind yesterday, and there it was again.
* * * * *
After work today, I took my father and his caregiver out for dinner and then to the library. I happened to have the last Silkworm record in the car, and I played my favorite tune from it, a beautifully sloppy version of Dylan's Spanish Harlem Incident, as we drove past the site where Silkworm's singer/drummer, Michael Dahlquist, met his maker almost two years ago, in a vehicular homicide. And I briefly mourned his death.
I didn't know Silkworm at all until that accident. But when I saw Bottomless Pit, who are basically Silkworm without Michael Dahlquist, play as the opener for another band last year, I was so taken with them that I gave Silkworm a try. Now I have a new hobby - finding the old Silkworm albums at used record stores. They have a very masculine - but not macho - sound that I find very appealing. I'm sorry I never saw Silkworm live, but I'll go to any Bottomless Pit show I can get to.
On the ride back from the library to my father's house tonight, I tuned in to the beginning of Live from Mountain Stage on the radio, to check out who was on tonight. They mentioned Elvis Perkins (who I saw four times in the course of a few months last fall, as the opening act for World Party, two Okkervil River shows, and one more - I want to say Gob Iron, but I'm not sure). I told Iwona about how Elvis' parents had each died tragically, his father from AIDS and his mother in one of the 9/11 planes. I paused to remember my crush on the father, Tony Perkins, when I first saw him, as the son in Friendly Persuasion, while I was babysitting for some kids on the other side of the block.
After dropping my father and Iwona off and heading towards home tonight, I put the radio back on. I had gotten tired of Elvis' material, hearing it too many times in a short period. But the songs I heard on the radio tonight sounded great, like old friends. They had some lines that really captured some things I'd been thinking about recently. I thought about how I'd work Elvis' tragic story into this blog entry. I really liked all these things about death converging in such a short time.
And I resolved to download Elvis' album off eMusic when I got home. Then the set ended, and it turned out I had been digging, not Elvis Perkins, but Howie Beck. I didn't realize I knew any of his stuff, but I definitely knew the tunes he played on Mountain Stage. And it turns out they're on eMusic, too.
That reminds me. I also need to download a version of Oh Death.
-- 1360
Yesterday I was writing a trust amendment for a client. Her husband recently died, and I was tweaking her trust to reflect that. (It's actually not necessary, as wills and trusts are usually written to cover all contingencies, but there were a few other things that needed cleaning up.) There were a lot of places where I was changing "the death of the second of us to die" to "my death".
I had been working on the document for quite a while when I thought, gee, isn't there a Jacques Brel song called "My Death"? So I stopped what I was doing and did a quick google search for "my death brel lyrics" and, after going to one dead link, found a site that had a side-by-side comparison of the "official" translation with a literal translation. I printed it out (I'm too old to be able to absorb information on the screen as well as information on paper) and enjoyed seeing how different the two were. (I've got to print it out in French, too.)
Some things got changed so they would rhyme, and some were substantive changes, probably to make the song more palatable to/comprehensible by English-speaking audiences. Both kept the device of ending each verse with the same words, "the passing time".
I think I bought a Brel compilation the last time I was in Paris. Maybe the French lyrics are there. And where's that compilation that has the original version of La Mer? What a great song! Who wrote that one? Better make a note look it up....
Anyway, after that little detour from my lawyerly duties, I roughed out this entry, but I got home too late last night to write it up.
Lucky thing, because this afternoon, when I took a little break to take a look at the news, after checking out the latest developments in Gaza (free Alan!), I read the story about the gorilla escaping from the Dutch zoo. Like Warren Zevon said, gorilla, you're a desperado. I paused to briefly mourn Zevon's death and resolved to read the bio written by his ex-wife.
Then I clicked on a "related" link to some animal story in the Guardian, not for the story, but to take a gander at their latest music and film stories. I read a piece about how tiring it is the way so many bands plan their sets so as to save some of their best songs to play during the encore(s), rather than scrape something up when, surprise, surprise, the audience wants more because they were so good. And then I scanned the 20-30 comments, and someone mentioned a Waterboys show in Liverpool earlier this month where, for the encore, they played Brel's song, My Death.
I hadn't thought about that song for a long long time when it came to mind yesterday, and there it was again.
* * * * *
After work today, I took my father and his caregiver out for dinner and then to the library. I happened to have the last Silkworm record in the car, and I played my favorite tune from it, a beautifully sloppy version of Dylan's Spanish Harlem Incident, as we drove past the site where Silkworm's singer/drummer, Michael Dahlquist, met his maker almost two years ago, in a vehicular homicide. And I briefly mourned his death.
I didn't know Silkworm at all until that accident. But when I saw Bottomless Pit, who are basically Silkworm without Michael Dahlquist, play as the opener for another band last year, I was so taken with them that I gave Silkworm a try. Now I have a new hobby - finding the old Silkworm albums at used record stores. They have a very masculine - but not macho - sound that I find very appealing. I'm sorry I never saw Silkworm live, but I'll go to any Bottomless Pit show I can get to.
On the ride back from the library to my father's house tonight, I tuned in to the beginning of Live from Mountain Stage on the radio, to check out who was on tonight. They mentioned Elvis Perkins (who I saw four times in the course of a few months last fall, as the opening act for World Party, two Okkervil River shows, and one more - I want to say Gob Iron, but I'm not sure). I told Iwona about how Elvis' parents had each died tragically, his father from AIDS and his mother in one of the 9/11 planes. I paused to remember my crush on the father, Tony Perkins, when I first saw him, as the son in Friendly Persuasion, while I was babysitting for some kids on the other side of the block.
After dropping my father and Iwona off and heading towards home tonight, I put the radio back on. I had gotten tired of Elvis' material, hearing it too many times in a short period. But the songs I heard on the radio tonight sounded great, like old friends. They had some lines that really captured some things I'd been thinking about recently. I thought about how I'd work Elvis' tragic story into this blog entry. I really liked all these things about death converging in such a short time.
And I resolved to download Elvis' album off eMusic when I got home. Then the set ended, and it turned out I had been digging, not Elvis Perkins, but Howie Beck. I didn't realize I knew any of his stuff, but I definitely knew the tunes he played on Mountain Stage. And it turns out they're on eMusic, too.
That reminds me. I also need to download a version of Oh Death.
-- 1360
posted by lsg at 5/18/2007 08:57:00 PM
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