Dragons Above and Other Wonders

There are certain things in life that really can’t be explained. I’m sure you could give a few examples of your own, but here’s one of mine—and I admit that I was reticent, actually reticent, about posting this when it happened because it seemed too fantastic to be believed, and I thought people might think I was making it up. I didn’t get a photo, you see, and thought I might be accused of exaggerating. I was having trouble believing it, and I was there.

However, as you know, Wordplay strives ever to tell the truth, and if we left this out, it would be a dereliction of duty, I think. What happened was this: I’d spent some time one afternoon putting together a photo essay about dragons trending in the culture. As I recall, it was right after that, as I was leaving the coffeehouse, that I walked out into a brewing storm. I drove over to the grocery store, marveling at the big mess of clouds swirling overhead.

While I was on the way over there, I started to notice that one cloud in particular had a shape to it. It was a long, black coil, like a snake, or, actually, a dragon, with a dragon head, a long, long body stretching and twisting across half the sky, and a mouth open as if ready to spew fire. I have never seen a cloud shaped like that and am sure it has something to do with one big air mass meeting another along a fairly uniform line. I know there had to be a scientific reason for that gigantic, rolled-up carpet shape, but it was still jaw-dropping, like other sights in nature you come across once in a great while. I wish I had taken a photograph, but lightning was striking in both the far and middle distance, and for safety’s sake, I stayed in the car until it all passed.

Besides thinking people wouldn’t believe me, I admit that I was so amazed by the appearance and timing of this cloud dragon that I started to wonder if it was some kind of a trick. Now, I know I once posted a blog about wild weather events I’d been caught up in and my speculations about whether someone (AKA the government) might be experimenting with cloud-seeding, etc. Even if someone is working on that, in some obscure bureau or other, I can’t imagine that anyone’s weather experiments have advanced to the level of cloud-sculpting on that scale, even if they know how to make precipitation fall.

I suppose I was trying to put the whole thing out of my mind, but I saw a program on The Weather Channel about “The World’s Wildest Weather Events” in which various phenomena like this were documented and discussed. One of the meteorologists was discussing the very rare phenomenon of straight-edge clouds, something she herself had witnessed, and she said that she had a difficult time believing the evidence of her own eyes even though she could explain the science behind it. It was, truly, an incredible sight, but no more so than what I had seen. I have to thank the meteorologist for sharing her story, which gave me the impetus to think over what I had seen and decide that, no matter how fantastic the event, not sharing it because it seemed unbelievable was precisely the wrong tack. After all, this blog exists as a forum for exploring the presence of mythology in everyday life, and if a cloud dragon appearing over your head is not an irruption of mythology into everyday life, I don’t know what would be.

When something like this happens, I’m tempted, as possibly you are, to try to come up with an explanation. I’m not sure there is one. Of course, Jung called this type of thing synchronicity and believed that it was evidence of a sort of dialogue between the human psyche and nature. Even if this is true, how it all works is still a mystery. I consider myself a capable writer, but I’m not at the level of conjuring up castles and dragons in the air, no matter how in tune my brain waves may be with the atmospheric vibe on a given day. Maybe it’s just a matter of having your eyes open and noticing things. The more active your imagination is, the more there is to see. And then, of course, you have to remember to look up.

Ballad for Summer’s End

Well, it happened again. I heard a song on the Starbucks playlist whose artist I didn’t know. This time, I was fast enough to ask the barista while the song was still playing, but the app wouldn’t open. Another pleasant baritone, another catchy melody, but the names of both elude me, and all due to a computer slowdown. I’m not sure if it’s the same slowdown we’ve been having at work, but it’s really no matter—the point is, if I don’t like a song, it will probably play ad nauseam. If I do like it, and ask someone about it, I’m just a little too late to find out what it is, and they won’t play it again for another three months at least.

You’re probably thinking, “Wordplay, can’t you find anything else to write about?” And the answer is, “Not really.” There’s a real end of the summer feeling here: it’s hot, but very still; students have started to appear here and there, but at the same time, there’s a feeling of absence, as if quite a few people are out of town on vacation. It’s neither here nor there, just that typical August feeling of vacancy. If you’re in a university town and are neither a student nor a professor, you sense the pause in the academic calendar, but since it doesn’t affect you, you have neither anxiety about getting everything done in time nor the anticipation of a brand-new academic year. It’s just a hot, drowsy lull. It still looks like summer, there’s no hint of fall yet (some years the nights have started to cool a bit by now, but not this year), and if you work in retail, you’re probably unpacking things for a Labor Day sale. You’re still thinking ice cream; apple cider hasn’t yet entered your thoughts; and winter is still as a distant dream.

This is not going to be the lyrical “changing of the seasons” post I did a couple of times in the past. Not really feeling that elegiac Wordsworth melancholy right now; it’s more of a heat-induced stupefaction. If I could encapsulate what I am feeling, it would be more along the lines of, “If only I had my own front porch, and my own pitcher of iced tea, so I could sit and sip and listen to the crickets in peace and look up at the stars once in a while.” I’ve never had that in my entire adult life, which seems like a shame, but the next place I live will have at least a balcony, if not a porch, if there’s any justice in the world. I lived in Lexington for many years with barely a glimpse of fireflies and certainly no place to sit outside and enjoy the long summer evenings that are one of the best things about Kentucky, but maybe that will change some time.

With nothing else going on, this seems like a good time to entertain idle questions, in lieu of falling asleep in the heat and ending up down some rabbit hole. So here’s one: if you were in the same predicament as the people in the movie Groundhog Day but actually got to pick the day that keeps repeating, what day would it be? For me, it would probably be a day in early summer, a day of bright blue skies and puffy clouds. I don’t think it would be August—although if I ever get that porch swing and glass of iced tea, I might change my mind about that. Spring is gorgeous here, but it’s not quite summer. Fall is also quite nice much of the time, but it means summer is over with for another year. And although winter has its own beauty, it’s possibly enjoyed best of all in small doses—at least, that’s my opinion.

So this is my end-of-summer post, and we’ll dispense with all the Persephone and Demeter references and Keatsian ode-to-autumn rhapsodies this time around because I’m afraid I was starting to repeat myself a little bit. I will report to you with a hint of disapproval that since I work in retail, I’ve already spotted the presence of “seasonal merchandise” and am dreading the moment, which will probably be next week, when I walk to the front of the store and see Halloween yard decor and animatronic ghouls. Not because I’m scared of those goobers, but because it interferes with my seasonal clock. Werewolves in August? Sheesh, whose idea was that?

Extra Limbs and Other Burning Issues

The other day, I posted an item I’d seen in The Atlantic’s “Photos of the Week” of a little girl in a city crosswalk being followed by a dinosaur from the Australian theater company, Erth. Erth was performing at Underbelly’s Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, when the photo was taken, and until you notice the pair of very human legs underneath the puppet, the illusion is quite enchanting, like something from a children’s picture book.

By coincidence, I was looking at a picture of Drogon, one of the dragons from “Game of Thrones,” the other day, trying to figure out why there seemed to be an extra pair of legs underneath it. We seem to have a minor trend of extra pairs of legs under large reptilian creatures, extinct and/or fantastic; Wordplay is unaware of the origin of this trend, but now that we have seen it in the culture, we feel obliged to point it out. If we don’t address it, someone might become alarmed and wonder, “What can it mean?”, unleashing a tsunami of unintended effects in his or her efforts to find out. Besides, I’ve been casting about for a topic this week, and this will do just as well as anything else.

While my former opinion on mythology in the culture was that everyone should try to be knowing observers, I’ve come to believe that this isn’t a pastime everyone excels at. In fact, some people are downright disasters when it come to “seeing through” and should probably be placed under house arrest for their efforts—but that’s someone else’s department. I’ve got my hands full with dragons and dinosaurs, am an observer only, and hope to be nowhere within a hundred miles of any round-ups that take place. Of course, I make no claim to always being right either, and my observations are strictly my own.

What about these extra pairs of extra-large reptilian legs, though?

It’s kind of weird. In the photo from the Underbelly Fringe program, you can clearly see the legs once you know they’re there. I didn’t notice them at first, probably because my eye was so charmed by the illusion—in other words, I wanted to see a dinosaur in the crosswalk, so my brain edited out the extra pair of legs. I was seeing what I wished to see, falling in with the illusion, which is exactly what you do when you go to the theater. The photo is an example of what happens when theater spills out of the theater house and into everyday life. It’s something unexpected, a little bit of magic in the midst of mundane reality. If you were on your way to work or running an errand and saw that scene, it would probably make your whole day.

Now, the image of Drogon is a bit more problematic. The more I look at it, the less I can figure it out. One of the legs doesn’t even look like a leg, because it doesn’t seem to have a foot: it’s more like an enormous paddle. And are there three legs on the dragon’s right side, including that claw hanging down? What’s become of all the legs on the left side, because all I see are one leg and a wing. Of course, we’re talking about a creature of fantasy here, but it’s a dragon, not an amoeba, so is a symmetrical arrangement of arms and legs too much to ask?

Maybe, after all, it’s just the angle. Wordplay does not wish to manufacture a crisis. Because no other explanation comes to mind, other than the possibility that this camera angle is meant to imply that there’s something freakish about this creature, we will take it that this is simply not Drogon’s best side. Since a dragon is already kind of a freakish thing, we see no reason to double down on this idea . . . But we were not writers or special effects crew for “Game of Thrones” and have no particular insights into their reasons for crafting this scene as they did.

I guess what this really demonstrates is that there isn’t always a clear answer to everything. Where things are unclear, the mind will often try to provide clarity by manufacturing a credible explanation, but it’s often little more than projection. Entertaining perhaps, revealing certainly, but at the end of the day . . . something you made up. If you’re good enough at it, sometimes you get paid for it.

Music as Soul-Stirring and Music as Wallpaper

Speaking of music (as we were last week), Wordplay has had plenty of interesting listening experiences with playlists in public places, including Starbucks. Our official stance on music in public places is that, if it isn’t really, really good, it should at least be unobtrusive. Many places today play whatever they’ve got at such earsplitting volume that whether or not it’s to your taste, it forces itself on your attention. Since people are usually in coffeehouses to read or talk, this doesn’t seem designed for the customer’s comfort, but whatever. Customers only keep Starbucks, Panera, Kroger, and other places in business—no need to worry about what they like and don’t like.

However, it’s not all bad news. Starbucks, in particular, can apparently switch from one playlist to another with ease and occasionally does a good job of mixing it up. It’s been a while since I got really discouraged with one of their playlists, but it did happen recently when they decided to play all Elton John 16 hours a day. It’s not a slam at him to say any playlist does better with variety, and a steady diet of anything can get old quickly. My understanding is that they were commemorating the release of the film biopic of his life, but I would have done this by throwing a few extra songs of his into the mix along with some of those of his contemporaries—just enough to give a flavor of the era.

It’s quite possible, though, for me to hear the same songs many times without really hearing them, because for me, they’re just the background to whatever else I’m doing. Once in a while, I’ll realize that I like a song that I don’t know the name of, or I’ll wonder who the artist is. If you want to identify the song or artist you’re listening to in Starbucks, you can do so with the Starbucks app and Spotify. If you don’t have that, you have to do it the way I do, by typing into Google whatever you can decipher of the lyrics. Most of the time, you’ll find it on the first try, but not always. There is one recent indie pop song by an unknown artist whose plangent melody I really like, but since I only know one partial line, I haven’t been able to track it down. The chorus is either “All I heard was silence” or possibly “All I had were filings,” and the only thing I can come up with is a very different song that isn’t the one I’m looking for.

The other day, I heard a song that’s drifted through Starbucks several times recently, Noel Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” which is, of course, a classic from the Great American Songbook* (actually, the Great British Songbook; see the note below). This version has a particularly powerful and expressive vocalist, and I became curious to know who it was. I was too late to ask the barista, who could have looked it up while it was playing, and the suggestion I got to check the playlists on Spotify didn’t work because there is apparently a new (and entirely different) song by a newer artist that pops up on playlists in its stead. I spent an hour that morning listening to various versions of the song—not a bad way to while away an hour—before coming across Lena Horne’s version. I’m not certain the one I heard is the same as hers, but the vocal is similarly powerful and almost, one might say, life-changing.

Starbucks is hit and miss with its music, but sometimes they strike gold. Although there is a tremendous variety of music on the playlists, it manages to sound corporate about 75 percent of the time, at least to me. There are exceptions that make you sit up and listen, but otherwise, it’s music as decor—which I guess is exactly what they have in mind. If I wanted to hear opera one minute and “The Streets of Laredo” the next, I guess I’d have to move to San Francisco and hang out at Caffe Trieste, if indeed it’s still there. Many things that once were seem to be fading with the times.

*Although Lena Horne was American, Noel Coward was British. Wordplay regrets the error.