Mischmasch & Me (Part 1)

This sentence should align with the "collage" of paper scraps and album liner notes.

All is blogpost fodder, and then some.

A quick click on that photo should enlarge it with enough clarity so that everything is legibly readable.


Clockwise from the top:
Liner notes from a BEST OF NINA SIMONE compact disc...Hand-written directions containing the word LaTex...A folded typewritten sheet referencing "Mr. Christ with some ostrich feathers"...Magic Marker scribble related to Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris.

The un-clockwised blue note is a direct quote from a George Harrison-penned song. For the Former Beatle–and his endless quest to be curiouser and curiouser about spirituality and life in general–I will boldly quote verbatim: Everyone has a choice: When to and when not to raise their voice.

The folded typewritten page is a work in progress dedicated to Robby Ravenwood.
LaTex is a link to the universal language necessary for serious math research.
If all goes well, it will enable me to publish a paper begun in 1992, long before I did
the Fibonacci Quadruple thingy.

Unlike everything else in the bottom collage the Midnight in Paris notes has an extremely important connection to the collage above it. (The picture of the pipe in the first row has a reasonably important connection to the collage below it.)

The twelfth track of the Nina Simone album is entitled DON'T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD: a Sixties Rock&Roll song most often associated with The Animals. It was a follow-up hit to the British band's gold-standard folk rock cover of HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN.


The Nina Simone CD was purchased less than an hour before this post began. I paid $2 at a garage sale because the garage sailors loaned me their ears into which I poured some of my treasured Nina Simone anecdotes.

I already had every song in my iTunes file but what truly inspired the purchase was that all-important paren-
thetical statement below the title


DON'T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD.
I already knew the song was written for Nina but I did not know it was composed by Bennie Benjamin. Bennie has been enshrined in the Songwriter's Hall of Fame.
But if you link to the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame, you will find a shrine for Benny Benjamin.

Surrealist Rene Magritte's THIS IS NOT A PIPE is featured in the top row of the top collage and also on the home page of this blog. Posthumously, Mr. Magritte said

Tomatos may be tomatoes but Bennie Benjamin is not Benny Benjamin.

I was already to tell you otherwise but the y Benjamin was the fabled drummer of Motown Records and a drummer is Father Time's alter ego. Everytime I ever danced to the Temptations, Supremes, Four Tops...I was foot-stomping in time to Benny Benjamin!

Before mischmasching my way to Part 2 of this post, I must comment on the little guy in the middle of the third photograph posted above. That is Eric Burdon, lead singer of the Animals.

According to MisInformation Anonymous, John Lennon was thinking of him when he sang about the Eggman in I am the Walrus. Why?
Eric Burdon was partial to eating raw eggs poured over the cleavaged skin of his paramours.

But it was fellow Lewis Carroll alum, Robby–with a y, not an "ie"–Ravenwood who re-enlightened me as to who the Original Eggman is.
That would be Humpty Dumpty.....with two y's.
Such is human perversity.

Please note: I said that Robby re-enlightened me. I had been taught so many things–probably including the blockquoted Magritte–at the Lewis Carroll School of Logic. But my five-star inability to remember all of them inspired the following verse whose title is long forgotten.

If forgetting were an art
I'd be Van Gogh
Then forget where my ear was
And cut off my toe.

To be continued...Please note: The Animals recorded House of the Rising Sun on May 18,1964, a/k/a my fifteenth birthday. But Mr. Dylan & Ms. Simone both recorded pure folk versions of the same song in 1962.