Caravan

And the caravan is on it’s way
I can hear the merry gypsies play
Mama mama look at emma rose
She’s a-playin with the radio
La, la, la, la...

And the caravan has all my friends
It will stay with me until the end
Gypsy robin, sweet emma rose
Tell me everything I need to know
La, la, la...

Turn up your radio and let me hear the song
Switch on your electric light
Then we can get down to what is really wrong
I long to hold you tight so I can feel you
Sweet lady of the night I shall reveal you

Turn it up, turn it up, little bit higher radio
Turn it up, turn it up, so you know, radio
La, la, la, la...

And the caravan is painted red and white
That means ev’rybody’s staying overnight
Barefoot gypsy player round the campfire sing and play
And a woman tells us of her ways
La, la, la, la...

Turn up your radio and let me hear the song
Switch on your electric light
Then we can get down to what is really wrong
I long to hold you tight so I can feel you
Sweet lady of the night I shall reveal you
Turn it up, turn it up, little bit higher, radio
Turn it up, that’s enough, so you know it’s got soul
Radio, radio turn it up, hum
La, la, la, la...

--van morrison

What a successful party. Whether you got sick, or you just made a whole heapin helpin of trouble for yourself, you've all said that you enjoyed yourselves, and for that I'm glad. Cuz as I said many many MANY times saturday night, all you girls are darlings, and all you guys, are solid. hehe god i dont know what year I thought it was, but suzanne says I can get away with it. I feel like there were faces at that party that I didnt get enough of. (Probably because I was smashed by 9) I want to hang out with these people in a more sober state if it's manageable before summer is out. Cuz the one thing i got from everyone this weekend is a good feeling that there's something great just waiting for someone to tap into, and it's nothing that fits inside a keg, or makes you wanna boot.

I've been reading 1984 by Orwell, and it's awesome. I'm only 5 pages and an appendix into the damn thing and already I'm in love with the idea of newspeak and duckspeak. I've been reading it with the idea lingering in the back of my mind that I should be scanning it for a kool name for a band. I told Joe he should start a band called duckspeak. It's really a kool name. He thinks it sounds ridiculous, but it reminds me of radiohead.. one of those names that makes you wonder if you don't know where it comes from. Plus he'd have a following of the most awesome people. Maybe it's pretentious, but I think it'd be neat even if he just wrote a song in newspeak and called it duckspeak. god i'm a nerd, but i'd be all over that. plus it'd be a fun thing to try. Maybe I'll give it a go. ;-)

Here are a couple excerpts to put you on the same train as me.

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible..."

"The greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak dictionary was not to invent new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure, that is to say, what ranges of words they canceled by their existence..."

"The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not idealogically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets. His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument, and the texture of the words, with their harsh sound and a certain willful ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further..."

"Newspeak, indeed, differed from almost all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning "to quack like a duck." Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise..."

"One could, in fact, only use Newspeak for unorthodox purposes by illegitimately translating some of the words back into Oldspeak. For example, All mans are equal was a possible Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense in which All men are redhaired is a possible Oldspeak sentense. It did not contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a palpable untruth..."

those few excerpts totally expressed some of my own wonderings of the past year... about the use of the word "something" the vagueness of language and thought wrestles between the magical abstractness of language, and the ugliness that can become of language when thought is lazy. He touches on the misuse of language for the purposes of power and thought control, which was a different angle than I was coming in at, but he does recognize the ugliness which ensues when language is broken and mechanized in such a way that is ceases to be an fluid and intricate art and becomes a thoughtless instrument of control. To be forced to quack, reduced to the feather-brained fowl creatures witless against the plastic orange gun of the hunt. (ok so maybe i ruined this train by an allusion to a game of my childhood, but my mind goes where it will. =-)


call me, i'd love to hear from you before i leave for london and paris on sunday the 17th!