Backbone > Quarter to Three

Bongo Deferment
By Sparrow Illustration by Thomas McDonough

Dadaji,
Last Thursday my wife and I were in the Boiceville Market, a large fluorescent-lighted food store seven miles from here. They always play Foolish Old Songs on the radio. That day we heard a song by the defunct band America from 1977:

This is for all the lonely people
Thinkin' that life has passed them by
Don’t give up until you
Drink from the silver cup
You’ll never know
Until you try.

As you may recall, this is a cheerful song with a harmonica piping in the background.
I had forgotten this hit, but suddenly its buoyant 1970s mood conquered me. No one writes generous songs like this anymore—songs that reach out to the loneliness of our American brothers and sisters, with consoling phrasing.

What does “Drink from the silver cup” mean? Does it refer to a trophy one wins bowling? Is the song from a long-lost movie? (Isn’t “Silvercup” a brand of bread?) The mystery of this line imbues the song with literary value.

I have been walking around five days singing this melody to myself, feeling happy, bumptious—nearly clicking my heels!

Information I learned from the review of “Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga” in The New Yorker:
1) The Viking era lasted from 750 to 1050ce.
2) They never wore horned helmets.
3) The Vikings invented ironing boards (which they made from “whalebone slabs”).

Bands I recently saw:
We Are Scientists and Fit (those are two different bands) at Otto’s Shrunken Head, on East 14th Street. I call Fit “garage pretentious”. Sometimes they sound like The Eagles (they have one song titled “California”); their first tune began with David Bowie-style funk, then alternated with faux-Nashville. They didn’t rock, they weren’t funny, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying (though I suspect it was dumb). The young crowd loved them.

We Are Scientists did a Shirelles song—(I forget which, maybe “Jimmy Mack”)—really well! There were three of them, and they swept along. Hearing them, not only did you want to dance, you felt you were dancing. True, everything they do already existed in 1965, but they didn’t mind (and perhaps I didn’t, either).
Namaskar, Sparrow

A List of Blind Elves
Finnial • Plessy • Trempet • Jasper Jane

An Essay on “Cool”
I mourn the demise of “cool”. This word has come to mean the opposite of its original, true meaning. “Cool” once connected to its literal meaning: cold, aloof, uninvolved. When Miles Davis played Carnegie Hall, his back was to the audience.
When they applauded wildly, he walked offstage. Miles Davis was cool.
He was unconcerned about success and achievement.
In Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” the (nameless) heroine
Knows there’s no success
Like failure
And failure’s no success
At all.

She was cool.
Today, any success is greeted with the word “cool”:
“Your track team won the semifinals? Cool!”
“You got a Lexus? Cool!”
“You’re going to Club Med? That’s so cool!”
“Cool” once overlapped with mysticism. Alexander the Great, when he reached the River Ganges, met a yogi. “I have conquered the world,” explained Alexander. “What can I do for you?”
“You can step out of my way; you are blocking my view of the sun,” replied the ascetic.
This yogi was cool (in the original sense). He was above a concern for worldly power.
Today, Alexander the Great himself would receive that adjective:
“You conquered India? Cool!”

On The Subway
whistling, he reads the Chiropractic News

Caren,
I had a dream I was eating tofu. I was terribly hungry, and when some of this food
fell on the floor—mixing with pieces of plaster—I ate the plaster and tofu together.
The chalky texture woke me.

Yesterday, at the Village Green in Woodstock, I noticed the flag was at three-quarters mast.
I had never seen this before. Rather than halfway up, or at the top, it was directly
in between the two options. Was this a political statement?
As I stood there, the only person on the Green, I noticed a guy walking toward me.
He had shoulder-length hair, and nodded to me. He came closer; I saw his deep-set bloodshot blue eyes, and lined face. “I’m angry,” he announced, “and when I’m angry I kill someone.”
Love, Sparrow

Proof
You can wander the world
and never meet a Mayor.

Sully Grove Contest
Ahoy, multiple contest aspirants! Here is your task: use a country in a sentence.
For example: My back Pakistan. (“My backpack is tan.”)

Send your complete entries to: Sully Grove Contest c/o Chronogram,
Post Office Box 459, New Paltz, NY 12561, or e-mail info@chronogram.com

100 periods
Open a magazine.
Find a sentence with a period.
Cut out the period.
Find another period. Cut it out.
Continue until you have 100 periods.
Place the 100 periods
in a folded handkerchief.

Bongo Deferment
In the early 1960s men could be excused from military service for constantly
carrying a set of bongos. This was known as the “bongo deferment”. n