Auld Lang Syne and Farewells as old as Time

January 12, 2024January 12, 2024 ~ cwirka

Chromolithographic print from 1905 titled “Auld Lang Syne”

While the flipping of the calendar year is often met with celebration, it is typically done while looking at hope and dreams of the future. And that makes sense – the past few years have been weird and rough for… (searches the internet) huh – everyone! Surviving another year inevitably feels like a victory. Even if we’re not sure what we’re looking forward to, we can at least say we got through what’s now behind us. Which is the standard order of things.

Because of that, there isn’t much celebratory “farewell” within our end of year bashes. But, in a lovely example of… irony? No. Self-reference? No. Circular something or other? Whatever… In a lovely example of being an example of itself, Auld Lang Syne, THE New Year song, is sung enthusiastically about remembering the good times and people that got us here. I’m not the nostalgic sort, but it’s great to have a very old song about remembering the past being used to remember the past. Was Auld Lang Syne ever a new song? It works so well as a farewell song because we haven’t said farewell to IT. How many people have sung the half-remember and hazily-understood lyrics and thought of a loved one? And now we all share the memory of using the very same song to connect with our very singular pasts.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend!

And give me a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll take a right good-will draught,

for auld lang syne.
(Standard English remix of the Robert Burns cover of Auld Lang Syne)

To be fair, it’s also a drinking song. That’s why we sing it. And perhaps the lyrics aim to fight the memory damage wrought by drinking.

It’s not an uncommon hear the song at graduations, weddings, and (obviously) funerals. It looks backwards, not with longing and regret, but with love and appreciation. A perfect way to enjoy a first/last moment of the year; the past celebrated, the present enjoyed, and the future unconsidered. And when you cast your mind back to times worthy of recollection, think of all the people in the past centuries who you’ve now shared a moment with. For auld lang sine.

Well la-di-da…

April 26, 2022 ~ cwirka

*The Comet* (Johnson City, Tenn), December 26, 1901

Always be prepared to do undertaking in first-class style.

That’s a mantra. Way better than Metallica’s “My lifestyle determines my death style” line, which makes me laugh just thinking about it.

The Crying of Label 139

April 26, 2022April 26, 2022 ~ cwirka

If you want to travel affordably with a real potential for adventure, you could do worse than waiting until you’re ashes – and get an insider view of the US Postal Service in the process. This opportunity could be yours with the purchase of Label 139. Cremated Remains.

(“Label 139” is a great name for a goth record label)

Amid covid and general changes in attitude, cremation (and the shipping of created cremains), has become much more common. Common enough that the USPS has had trouble keeping up with demands for the packaging.

USPS’s guide explains that the ashes must be packed in a “sift-proof container” – lest you risk having an inadvertent Aerial Scattering, the technical term for throwing ashes from a plane. Also, my second entry into the “death terms that should be band names by now”

As for adventure, there probably won’t be any. But you never know! The podcast Last Seen has an episode about the very roundabout journey one particular urn took.

It’s a great listen, no doubt because it’s a fascinating mystery. But it also shows how personal and biased we can be when it comes to the remembrance and memorializing. Every culture, every family, every person has a unique way of confronting grief and loss. And each person has their own idea of how they want to be remembered.

We rarely have control over our own memories, so it’s quite audacious to believe we can control others’… but we always try.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
Sir Thomas Browne

Rag against the dying of the light.

April 13, 2022April 13, 2022 ~ cwirka

What is a rag?

(Musically speaking)

Initially I just wanted to post Sarah Cahill’s performance of “Be Kind To One Another (Rag)”. It’s a beautiful peace that I’ve listened to a fair amount recently, the world being what it is. I think it does a beautiful job of carrying multiple moods at the same time. It keeps moving forward steadily, while also hovering over unexpected notes of grief or joy or hope. And as the pace seems to slow, there is a liveliness to the music that never entirely dissipates.

And sometimes the mood and the pace and everything else click together in brief unity, before separating again and revealing the complexity of emotion. It gives brief form to feelings that are hard to grasp.

But I realized that I don’t quite know what a rag is. I could confidently say it was related to (or maybe the same thing as) ragtime. Which is jazzy. And old. Definitely old. Other facts about it were less clear and mostly just words and names … Joplin … Maple Leaf … syncopation … fixin’-to-die … The Sting … player pianos? Maybe?

So I did a little research and promptly got overwhelmed. It is the precursor to Jazz. That’s for sure. And Scott Joplin was the king of it. The rest gets blurry, partly due to my lack of musical understanding, partly because it’s just not all that clear.

So I reached out to a friend who has the enviable skill of being able to understand and explain music. I asked him – What is a rag? (Followed by – Is Country Joe & The Fish’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” a rag? Short answer – not really*)

He explained ragtime as best as anyone can, with words like “duple” and “antecedent/consequent phrases” – I won’t trouble you with it, but it made enough sense when I was reading it.

More importantly, he made the point, “it’s one of the issues when a kind of music is made in the vernacular world. The same thing happened with Bill Monroe and Bluegrass. He made this new thing and then spent the rest of his life saying other people’s bluegrass wasn’t really bluegrass and that he doesn’t know why not except that he knows it when hears it.”

Poor guy.

So it can be hard to put your finger on. If only because the music evolved in many different directions, but it all retains this feeling of movement. And the best pieces can contain great depth of emotion. A somber piece can can contain notes of joy, while a very spirited piece can have a undercurrent of sadness.

Any effort to really hold on to a feeling is bound to be unsuccessful – the music keeps moving. It doesn’t care if it’s ragtime.

Perhaps there is something within the form that speaks to our efforts to grasp that which is beyond us – Terry Riley has another piece called “Premonition Rag” and William Bolcom has the absolutely beautiful Three Ghost Rags: Graceful Ghost, The Poltergeist, & Dream Shadows.

Emotions, music, mood, momentum – it can be hard to really grasp these things in a concrete way. But you don’t have to! Just Be Kind to One Another. Rag or otherwise.

*The word “rag” seems to have been thrown around a lot in the 60’s, with a variety of meanings. Country Joe’s song was recorded specifically for a magazine he produced called Rag Baby which was not about ragtime, unless ragtime’s definition now involves the 60’s leftist counterculture. Searching the internet for “Is ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’ a rag?” is tough. There is also a chance that nobody cares.