"I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker."
– Stanley Kubrick
What I'm listening to right now.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Blinded By The Light."
Lyrics.
Madman drummer bummers
Indians in the summer
With a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps
As the adolescent pumps
His way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder
Feeling kinda older
I tripped a merry-go-round
With the very unpleasing
Sneezing and wheezing
The calliope crashed to the ground
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce
Another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tight
She's gonna make it through the night
Some silicone sister
With her manager mister
Told me I've got what it takes
She said, I'll turn you on sonny to something strong
Play the song with the funky break
And go-kart Mozart
Was checking out the weather chart
To see if it was safe outside
And little Early Pearly
Came by in her curly-wurly
And asked me if I needed a ride
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce
Another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun
'Cause mama, that's where the fun is
Some brimstone baritone
Anticyclone rolling stone
Preacher from the east
Says dethrone the dictaphone
Hit it in the funnybone
That's where they expect it least
And some new mown chaperone
Was standing in the corner
Watching the young girls dance
And some fresh-sown moonstone
Was playing with his frozen zone
Reminding him of romance
The calliope crashed to the ground
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce
Another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
What's funny is that when this song (originally written by Bruce Springsteen) was young (and I was young, too), I was convinced that the line "Another runner in the night" was "The rohner in the night." Now, you might wonder: what is a rohner?
Well, near my hometown in Humboldt County, California, there is a town called Rohnerville. We used to go there a lot when I was small, because my best friends lived there. There was a small airport near the town – not a commercial airport, just a landing strip, really – and in my mind, due some ambiguous highway signage at the turnoff to Rohnerville, the concept of the town and the airport merged. "Rohnerville" merged semantically into "Airportville" in my mind. Then, the existence the alternating green/white/red runway beacon was always very salient, as it was quite eerie to drive past on the highway on foggy nights (which are the most common type of night in Humboldt). Because of that, I developed one of those misbegotten ideas that the airport's runway beacon was called a "rohner." I never bothered to find out if this was true or not from any adults. A couple years later, as I neared adolescence, I heard this song on the radio and I simply imagined a "rohner in the night" as being your typical airport runway beacon, and I thought that was a major theme of this song. Furthermore, due to that misunderstanding, the song became wrapped up in my mind with memories of fun times playing with my sister and our friends Steven and Jeannine at their house in Rohnerville – thus it became one of those nostalgia-anthems many of us have, but in this case a sort of ex-post-facto one.
[daily log (10 pm): walking, 1 km]