Posted on 10/13/2015 8:11:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Sometimes I know why an earworm has lodged in my brain. I hear it on the radio or over a store's sound system or someone sings it in my vicinity. Maybe I stumble across a mention of it in a book or an article. Or it wells up from the depths of memory to function as a mini-soundtrack for whatever's going on in my life.
Other songs stick around for less explicable reasons. Some of them hang out for a few days, weeks, or months before moving on. But a select handful circle back again and again, sometimes for no discernible reason at all except that their melody is catchy and their lyrics memorable. “Ask” has been hanging around my mind since the late 1980s, when it was first released as a single by this odd little U.K. band known as the Smiths, fronted by some guy named Morrissey and his guitar-hero pal Johnny Marr.
My first college was located in a small neighborhood in a big city, and it had a central casual eatery that absolutely everyone patronized sooner or later. It was and is particularly famous for the erudite and intricate graffiti layered over the walls and tables – years and years' worth of accumulated carvings, scratchings and occasionally famous signatures. For many years, the wall of the women's bathroom sported the lyrics of the first verse of “Ask” prominently on the wall. They may still be there for all I know. I was always comforted by the fact that this simple little song was compelling enough to an anonymous graffiti artist that she scrawled the lyrics in thick Sharpie just above the sink. And, of course, seeing it would inevitably kick off the sonic loop in my head.
The melody of “Ask,” enhanced by a harmonica vamp, is simple and upbeat. The tempo is brisk, and the overall effect is cheerful and light – not a sentiment one always associates with the Smiths' body of work. The subject matter of the lyrics, however, is firmly within the band's wheelhouse. The first verse straightforwardly states that “shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you'd like to.” Morrissey was open about struggling with his own shyness. But for once the crippling self-doubt and awkwardness is swept aside with a bouncy chorus admonishing, “if there's something you'd like to try, ask me, I won't say no, how could I?” As a shy person myself, having someone musically promise to hold my hand when venturing out of my social comfort zone is impossible to resist. It brings a smile to my face every time.
After that, the threat of nuclear war, very '80s, makes a cameo appearance – “if it's not love, then it's the bomb that will bring us together” – along with the rather frustrated admonishment that “nature is a language, can't you read?” The combination of arch disdain for the world as it is, the earnest yearning for love and human connection, and the grim doubt that such things are even truly possible made the Smiths catnip for Goths, queerdoes, and intelligent and disaffected teenagers of all stripes, and the appeal has hardly faded over the intervening decades. Part of the charm of this particular song is that it's not merely earnest, it's downright sweet. Quirky, blunt, and lacking social grace, perhaps, but lively and cheerful despite obstacles large (“the bomb”) and small. A big cross-eyed puppy of a song.
My favorite line in “Ask” is the one about the “buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg” that the singer writes poetry to. The consonance of the line itself is pleasing to the mouth, but I am also won over by the idea of having a glamorous international pen pal who is actually a homely teenager in a country many people cannot locate on a map. Lest anyone think I am projecting a little too hard, I would like to note that I had an underbite rather than an overbite, thank you very much. Also, I did all the writing; nobody ever sent me any “frightening verse.” I did manage to scare my grandparents into thinking I might be suicidal because my teenage poetry efforts were so dark and disaffected, though. No wonder I still have a soft spot for the Smiths.
When i first hurt my head, the last song i heard would the one that stayed in my head until the next song i heard and so on.
then it just started to go away.
very odd.
wonder what happened to the brain to cause it, and what happened to stop it mostly.
Did it fade away, or stop all at once?
fade away. haven’t noticed it past few weeks. it didn’t start right after injury. years later.
maybe started 18 months ago. learned to live with it, like the pulsatile tinnitus.
but glad it seems to be coming much less frequently,
pulsatile on the other hand, will drive you insane unless you control your mind. and it’s not going anywhere, lol, so i live with it.
Homosexual, ulta-liberal, fruitcake, lunatic.
dont talk about me till i sign off :)
Interesting. The brain is a funny thing. Scientists haven’t even begun to understand it.
no kidding, at 47 that doesn’t bode well :)
when i first wake up, spine and brain feel like they’re trembling, takes a few minutes to realize last dream was a dream. insomnia. pulsatile tinnitus. hearing loss :)
but things have gone away or gotten better too. WAY after the doctors’ 2 year recovery period. dolts.
head pain NOTHING like before.
used to wake up with eyes burning and tearing. That’s gone.
dizziness gone.
went from typing 15 wpm back to max of 100 over the years :)
memory pretty sharp :)
but i’m a very curious person and even though i wont know it, i want my brain dissected thoroughly to see what was damaged :)
i’m a strange FReeper :)
But not any time soon, I hope.
me too! :)
"I don't think the so-called royal family speak for England now and I don't think England needs them. I do seriously believe that they are benefit scroungers and nothing else. I don't believe they serve any purpose whatsoever"
"It was a celebration of what? 60 years of dictatorship. She's not [my Queen]. I'm not a subject."
I think he is an intelligent, gifted, introverted, painfully shy, sexually confused person who also happens to hate monarchies, stated that he wished GW1 died instead of Reagan (can't say I agree with the phrasing but I would support that trade), and has criticized Hillary Clinton. No one is perfect but he does have some redeeming characteristics.
Suddenly I’m listening to “Street Life” by the Crusaders.
Never heard of the band or song before.
Good song.
Would have expected to hear it in dance clubs i went to in the 80s.
Here I was thinking the website “Slicing up Eyeballs” had shut down. It definitely had a weird Smiths fetish.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love me some 80’s alternative music myself (Smiths included). But they left “shut up and play” behind long ago, so I make sure not to throw them any loose change if I can help it. Big Country was my weak spot though, and I managed to purchase just about anything musical they offered.
Well, if nothing else, he’s the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar...
You shut your mouth. How can you say I go about things the wring way?
“After that, the threat of nuclear war, very ‘80s, makes a cameo appearance”
Hysteria.
Except the Russians almost launched a Mutually Assured Destruction attack on the West in 1983 because of a faulty signal reading. In response to the missile launch operator’s refusal to launch, the Russians put in an automated system (possibly still active). Wired wrote about the Russians’ ‘doomsday device’ but Wired does not permit FR to link to their articles (not even a ‘no excerpt, titles only’ use).
Even Morressissy has publicly expressed reservations about the open borders immigration policies of England and how England is no longer English.
He’s liberal but a number of British singers (mostly aged 50 or above) have come to this realization.
By Oliver Duff |
Thursday 29 November 2007
“England is a memory now,” he says, in an interview with the NME published yesterday. “The gates are flooded and anybody can have access to England and join in.”
He goes on: “Although I don’t have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous. Travel to England and you have no idea where you are. It matters because the British identity is very attractive. I grew up into it and I find it very quaint and amusing. Other countries have held on to their basic identity, yet it seems to me that England was thrown away...
A method to jog memory for me is to slowly recite the alphabet.
Sometimes when I come to the letter for a name or word I need; the name or word comes to me.
that never works for me lol.
since my head injury i am SO paranoid about dementia etc. :)
i forget names and will think for days if necessary to remember them.
It took me 3 days to remember Gwyneth Paltrow, or however you spelled it. I was so angry after her party for obummer and couldn’t remember her name lol.
then i recite the presidents backwards to the 30s. i have to study the rest :)
I’m a nut. but a conservative nut :)
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