Max Lugavere, founding producer and host for Current TV, the Emmy winning cable network started by Al Gore, started a column on Psychology Today and came up with this gem.(1)
He writes that he saw a piece by Nick Cox, a writer living in Cambridge, MA, called How To Be Emotionally Stable Without Getting Bored and liked it so much he...put it to music.
Well, sort of to music. He plays a guitar with it but the piece he is singing is over 1,300 words long. In a verse/verse/chorus/verse/chorus world, this is more like what would happen if Shel Silverstein, Tom Waits and Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies got together to see who could flip out the most without breathing. Who is Cox? Is he famous? Is he flattered Max spent 6.5 minutes of his life putting his thoughts to song? Does he even know? That's 3 words per second while playing guitar - for over 6 minutes. Cox's other piece on Thought Catalog was a one-sentence love story that clocked in at 1,700 words.(3)
First, try and follow along. You won't be able to but you will feel contextually like you are getting some of it. Then give up and go read his article for the lyrics. You still won't be able to sing along. He told me he laughed when he knew I tried so he is sure going to be laughing at you too.
NOTES:
(1) I started a correspondence because we have a mutual friend and I wanted to see if he was attending the Being Human conference March 24th. We are one of the media partners for the event. Tickets may still be available if you want to go, I am not sure. If I knew how marketing worked or how tickets get sold, I would not be writing on the Internet for peanuts.(2)
(2) I totally would.
(3) So the next time my editor says something along the lines of, "Hey, E.E. Cummings, a 400 word paragraph is too long" I can show him that baby.
How To Be Emotionally Stable Without Getting Bored - The Musical!
Comments