WMC#42: To shake memories into the air

This post rhymes with air

She threw back her hair
Like I wasn’t there
And she sipped on a julep.
Her shoulders were bare
And I tried not to stare

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHEBa6Xx48&]

“Summer (The First Time)” (1973) by Bobby Goldsboro

A Hemisphere in Your Hair (French: Un hémisphère dans une chevelure) is a poem by Baudelaire collected in Paris Spleen.

Laisse-moi respirer longtemps, longtemps, l’odeur de tes cheveux, y plonger tout mon visage, comme un homme altéré dans l’eau d’une source, et les agiter avec ma main comme un mouchoir odorant, pour secouer des souvenirs dans l’air.
Long let me inhale, the odour of your hair,
into it plunge the whole of my face, like a thirsty man
into the waters of a spring and wave it in my fingers like a scented handkerchief,
to shake memories into the air.

In the film Withnail & I Richard Griffith’s character recites the line “Laisse-moi respirer longtemps, longtemps, l’odeur de tes cheveux” (Eng: Long let me inhale, the odour of your hair).

4 thoughts on “WMC#42: To shake memories into the air

  1. georgy

    Reminds me of the sort of link between two of my favourite songs :

    The Police – Bring on the night
    The afternoon has gently passed me by
    The evening spreads its sail against the sky
    Waiting fot tomorrow, just another day

    The TS Eliot work it borrows from (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
    Let us go then, you and I,
    When the evening is spread out against the sky

    The Mike Brant song, penned by Jean Renard – Mais dans la lumière
    L’ombre étend son manteau
    Et ton corps est déjà bien plus chaud.

    ok… I do agree it is a bit far fetched… but I think it connected inside my head.

    Loved the post.

  2. jahsonic

    far fetched ?

    The farther the better.

    Loved your comment, this is the scholarship I am after.

    BTW, are you familiar with the Gatochy juxtapositions? You’d like them.

    Jan

  3. georgy

    I loved the Gatochy juxtapositions, as you guessed. It is now part of my “open first” bookmark folder, Arbogast and Cinema Styles too, as the path led to them.

    I was toying with the idea of creating a mashup of The Police vs Mike Brant and – voilà – I stumble upon a few rap records that have sampled the exact song I was talking about in my comment.

    Articles on Sampleur / Samplé (a site you might like) :
    http://www.ultragraphik.com/blog/
    and
    http://www.ultragraphik.com/blog/index.php?2007/07/21/2177-mike-brant-del-tha-funky-homosapien-aesop-rock

    On a totally different subject : there is an opera version of David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” in preparation. Actually it is a Howard Shore opera, directed my Cronenberg and conducted by Placido Domingo. Opening in July at Le Châtelet, in Paris.

    Because it’s late and I’m lazy, I’ll just repost a comment I made elsewhere :

    To put it simply, the kind of neighbourhood I work in is called “la zone” in French. Like in “dead zone”, “sinistered zone”, not “residential zone”. The pavement leading to the high school at the end of the road is littered with tiny cubes of securit glass from all the broken car windows.

    There is also an old “shoelace and eyelet factory” (“La manufacture des oeillets”), a few blocks of red brick and gray glass that have been transformed into a studio/soundstage/rehearsal facility.

    And since monday morning, my co-workers whose windows open on that factory, have been bothered by some guy singing opera in a very loud voice, all day long.

    At lunch today, in the little restaurant at the end of that same hellish road, there were bunches of artistic types and, among them, the voice : Placido Domingo, and next to him, the director conducting these rehearsals : David Cronenberg. They are here for a few weeks to rehearse the opera version of “The Fly”, and we are going to be neighbours for some time.
    (end)

Comments are closed.