There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth.
(An expert in alethiology might question this statement. I would agree that whenever two people are involved, there is a "my truth" and a "your truth," and rarely are they exactly the same. I'm not sure that there really is a "the truth" -- but if there is, it is probably different from either "my truth" or "your truth.")
(From his 2006 hit, "What You Know." Later in the song, T.I. says "all that attitude's unnecessary, dude." But T.I. probably has more attitude per cubic inch that any other rapper out there. One final note: my bitch does like T.I., and it really pisses me off.)
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
(From her greatest novel, Middlemarch. A few years ago, 125 of the world's most celebrated authors were asked for their "top 10" lists. Middlemarch ranked #10 -- behind only Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, War and Peace, Lolita, Huckleberry Finn, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Remembrance of Things Past, and Chekhov's short stories.)
(The Cure's "Boys Don't Cry," which appeared on the US album of the same name, was released in 1979. The song inspired the title of the 1999 movie starring Hilary Swank, who won the Oscar for best actress for her performance as a trangendered male who was raped and murdered after his acquaintances discovered he was biologically female.)
[Arcade Fire's] search for salvation in the midst of real chaos is ours; their eventual catharsis is part of our continual enlightenment. . . . It's taken perhaps too long for us to reach this point where an album is at last capable of completely and successfully restoring the tainted phrase "emotional" to its true origin. Dissecting how we got here now seems unimportant. It's simply comforting to know that we finally have arrived.
(From his unbelievably overwrought 2004 Pitchfork review of Arcade Fire's first album, Funeral, which scored 9.7 on Pitchfork's 10-point scale -- one of the highest-rated albums in the e-zine's history. Almost singlehandedly, the Pitchfork review turned an obscure Montreal band into the darlings of the indie music world and helped them sell half a million copies of the album in the first year after it was released. Arcade Fire's most recent album, The Suburbs, won the Grammy for "Album of the Year" in 2011, beating out megahit albums by Lady Gaga, Lady Antebellum, Eminem, and Katy Perry.)
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part with all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name, who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is the best to celebrate this most high day.
(From George Herbert's 1633 poem, "Easter," which was set to music by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams.)
From his 2010 hit, "Beamer, Benz, or Bentley." The Bentley Continental GTC convertible has a V-12 engine that produces 552 horsepower and has a top speed of about 200 miles per hour.
This post inaugurates "Friday Night Rap" on 2 or 3 lines a day. Until further notice, every Friday night's post will feature rap lyrics (with an explanation, if necessary).
BTW, rappers LOVE Bentleys. If you plug "Bentley" into the search box on www.rapgenius.com, you get 138 hits. There are 15 songs by Lloyd Banks alone that mention a Bentley.
To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed . . . there is nothing sweeter in the world.
(Joseph Stalin wrote these words to fellow Bolshevik Lev Kamenev in 1915 when they were both in exile in Siberia. In 1936, Kamenev was one of the 16 "Old Bolsheviks" accused of plotting to kill Stalin and and other Soviet leaders. After being found guilty in the first of the infamous "show trials," all 16 were executed. In other words, "Uncle Joe" not only talked the talk, he walked the walk.)
("Never Been Any Reason" is from their album, Flat as a Pancake. The band originally recorded and issued the album themselves in 1974. After the initial edition of 5000 LPs and 500 eight-tracks sold out and this single became a regional hit, A&M Records signed the band and re-released the album in 1975, and it eventually went gold.)
That when you left, I died
When I look in the mirror,
My face is too white
When I check for a pulse,
I'm afraid of the quiet
(From her 1998 song, "Winter," which I heard her perform last night in a small jazz club in Chicago. It was the first time I had heard her perform live. I sincerely hope it will not be the last.)
The last thing I think the [UK government] expected when they hit us with super-super tax is that we'd say, fine, we'll leave. We'll be another one not paying tax to you. They just didn't factor that in. It made us bigger than ever, and it produced "Exile on Main St.," which was maybe the best thing we did. . . . We didn't know if we would make it, but if we didn't try, what would we do? Sit in England and they'd give us a penny out of every pound we earned? . . . And so we upped and went to France.
[From Keith Richards' autobiography, Life. Over the past 20 years, with the help of some very smart tax lawyers, the Rolling Stones have paid just 1.6% on their earnings of 242 million pounds. Sic semper tyrannis!]
From "Taxman," which was the opening track on the Beatles' Revolver album. George Harrison wrote the song after realizing that the Beatles' earnings placed them in a 95% marginal tax bracket -- meaning that the "one for you, nineteen for me" line was literally correct.
I thought income taxes were due yesterday -- April 15 -- but because it was a holiday in the District of Columbia yesterday ("Emancipation Day"), the deadline this year in the next business day, which is April 18. (Although Emancipation Day was officially yesterday, it is being observed today. Go figure.)
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
(Thomas Jefferson was born on this date in 1743. He is not my favorite Founding Father -- I much prefer Aaron Burr -- but he sure got it right this time.)
(Uh-oh . . . the dreaded "we can still be friends" kiss-off line. From their 1990 song, "Kool Thing," which featured a guest appearance by Public Enemy's Chuck D. That same year, Public Enemy released Fear of a Black Planet, which is generally considered to be one of the greatest rap albums of all time.)
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
(Vonnegut -- who died on this date in 2007 -- is someone I took very seriously when I was young. How could I have been so clueless? But this statement hits the nail squarely on the head.)
Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern -- why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
(Hazlitt was born on this date in 1778. He was a master of English prose -- ranked by some critics with Dr. Johnson and Orwell -- but he is little read today, and many of his works are out of print. It's hard to argue with the logic of the above quote, but it is not very satisfactory advice.)
(From his 1965 song, "I Ain't Marching Anymore" -- arguably the greatest antiwar protest song of the era. The attorney for the "Chicago Seven" attorneys called him as a witness during their criminal conspiracy trial and asked him to sing the song in court, but the judge would not allow him to do so. Ochs committed suicide on this date in 1976. He was 36.)
When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then the painting is finished.
(Renoir was one of the great Impressionist artists, and his paintings remain very popular today. Many of his works celebrate female beauty and sensuality. He began to suffer rheumatoid arthritis when he was about 50, but continued to paint even when wheelchair-bound despite the fact that the arthritis limited his range of motion and progressively deformed his hands.)
There is but one art -- to omit! O if I knew how to omit. I would ask no other knowledge.
(Robert Louis Stevenson was an extremely popular writer. But he was also admired by great writers as diverse as Kipling, Nabokov, Hemingway, and Jorge Luis Borges. I once stayed in the room in the Hawes Inn -- an inn that stands at the foot of the Forth Bridge in Scotland -- where Stevenson got the idea for his book, Kidnapped. The Forth Bridge is arguably the most beautiful bridge in the world, and certainly the most distinctive in appearance.)
(Country-western singer Woodrow Wilson "Red" Sovine died on this date in 1980. "Teddy Bear" -- a song about a crippled boy who talks to truckers on his late father's CB radio -- was a number one hit for him in 1976. It's as maudlin and mawkish as anything you will ever hear, but I'd be surprised if you listen to the whole song without being affected by it.)
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
(From his 1927 book, Possible Worlds and Other Essays. Haldane was a British geneticist who was once asked by theologians what could be inferred from the biological world about the mind of God. "The Creator, if he exists, has a special fondness for beetles," he famously replied, referring to the fact that there are over 400,000 species of beetles and only 8000 species of mammals.)
(Leon Russell was born Claude Russell Bridges on April 2, 1942, which makes him 69 years old today. So for him, the answer to the first question above is 25,202 days. For Leon and all the rest of us, the answer to the second question -- if not the ultimate question for us, certainly the penultimate question -- is unknown.)
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