I am beginning this, my third blog, at the start of a new year, which is entirely unintentional. To be honest, I only started it because of Dylan Moran. Mr. Moran, a sardonic Irish comedian perpetually sipping wine while surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke, has had an unexpected effect upon my life. One of his stand-up specials, Like Totally, has become one of my favorite rainy-day things to watch. In the special, Mr. Moran, among other things, says these three words: "the surrounding befuddlement." And for whatever reason, these words kept rolling around in my head. What a lovely phrase, I thought, for all the celluloid drizzle of existence. Plus, it sounds cool. How often do you get to say "befuddlement"?
Of course, this is not the only thing that rolls around up in the old cranial cradle. Like every other humanoid, my cerebral cortex is usually playing a loop of Billy Joel, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Elton John, and the It's A Small World song. But unlike many, a very strange series of things bounce around in my brain. Like lines from The Mummy. In Egyptian.
As a child, I thought that my thoughts were the most important thoughts in the world; and I thought that nobody else could possibly have thought anything that I thought. I thought. In the first grade, I ran up to my teacher, tugged at the hem of her dress to get her attention and whispered, "I can hear music in my head!" This was a problem that I held for a while, and I also continued to believe that humming was something that only I could hear. I finally realized this was false in a most interesting way. It was the fifth grade, my class was walking down the stairs to gym class, single file, and I was humming The Who's "Baba O'Riley" to myself. But my father always played me and my little brother this version of "Baba O'Riley":
So there we were, walking down the steps, and I all of a sudden hum "FUCK OFF!" really, really loud. Everybody stopped suddenly and whipped their heads back at me. The guy in the front of the line, the only other kid who listened to The Who, poked his head past everybody else and gave me the world's most meaningful nod as if to say "Aw hell yeah!" I turned the color of a sunburned tomato, but looking back, I could not be prouder of my musical upbringing.
Anyway-- what was I talking about? Hmm? What? Oh, yes, things that get stuck in my head. So anyway, as I said, the phrase, "the surrounding befuddlement" kept spinning around in my head, reminding me of a simple truth: the vast majority of our daily experiences are ephemeral and insignificant; we should always keep perspective and attempt to see through the haze of the surrounding befuddlement.
This blog is my attempt to flush out the surrounding befuddlement from my brain space, much like Albus Dumbledore with his Pensieve (a Harry Potter reference already? Tut-tut, how stereotypical of me). What I will post will be whatever the Hades seems to be perched at the ends of my neurons, ready to fire. On the vast stretch of paper that is the Internet, this blog will merely be doodles. Doodles of the surrounding befuddlement.
Please enjoy! (Or, at the very least, please do not assume that I am insane...Please and thank you.)
As a first offering, I present to you some lyrics. For some background info, this is the finale to Albert Lamorisse's Le Ballon Rouge. For those of you who hate spoilers (I am the same), the film is only 34 minutes short-- if you can spare it, you can find the film here. As a brief summary, the movie is basically about a little kid who befriends a red balloon until a gang of boys pop it. And then the finale happens. I always loved the song that plays over the finale, but I thought some lyrics might suit it. Enjoy!
**These lyrics start at around 2:27, when the boy starts to gather the balloons.
Forget the fears of yesterday.
Hold on to me, we'll fly away
Above the fields, above the streams,
Where life's as grand as in your dreams.
If you are not afraid come fly.
We will be kings of cloud and sky,
Above the earth, above the sea,
Just you and me, eternally,
Come, grab on tight, we'll be free...
All of your troubles will be passed
And you can breathe, can smile at last.
Smile with the moon, smile with the stars...
Forget the fears of yesterday.
Hold on to me, we'll fly away
Above the fields, above the streams,
Where we will fly,
Where we will soar,
Where we will live
Forever.
I hope you enjoyed that. If you, fellow befuddled traveler, have better lyrics to suggest, please submit them in the comments section. Or however that works. (Sorry, my brother got the Ferris Bueller computer skills).
That's it for today. Probably. I hope I post again but my track record indicates that I will have finished posting in about three to six months. Hooray for statistics and hooray that you came to this page for those pictures from The Mummy. Speaking of The Mummy, this needs to be shared:
Srsly. Gah! I'm not sure if I'm afraid of being cannibalized or if I'm aroused... that's not normal, is it?
Ah, well. Normal is significantly overrated.
