by Peter Berryman
AN ASSIGNMENT FOR YOU
My mom -- the very same one whom I drove down to visit in last month's Whither Zither -- is a diehard clipper and sender of articles. Today, with "Song potential?" written in the upper margin in BiC pen, came one from The New York Times, in the CONNECTIONS column by Edward Rothstein, called Finding the Universal Laws That Are There, Waiting...
His article is actually a review and discussion of a website with the strange title of Edge: The World Question Center, so this Whither Zither is a column about a column about a website about a question. I can see Rothstein opening an email from HIS mother, with "Column potential?" typed above the link.
Edge: The World Question Center, according to their website (http://www.edge.org/questioncenter.html), was begun in 1988 as a spinoff from something called The Reality Club, the link to which I'm afraid to click. John Brockman, frontal lobe of this brainery, sends out a yearly question to his favorite smart people. This year his question is "What's your Law?" He explains: "There is some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some law-like pattern, either grand or small, that you've noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you." He's referring to such Laws as "Nature abhors a vacuum," and "Fish and visitors stink after three days" [my examples], though they wouldn't stink as much if you had a vacuum, I suppose.
He received over 150 replies. Some are funny, some are long winded, some are fantastic. All are thought provoking, and all are posted on the website.
Edward Rothstein admires the courage it takes to release a "Law," with your name on it no less, because they supposedly deal with truths not merely applicable to the person making them, but to everything everywhere. But he also wonders why this collection has "an aura of modesty, tentativeness and skepticism," and if this indicates "an uncertainty about science itself."
Maybe it does, but it was asked of people constitutionally fascinated by questions. To ask them to wrap up a Universal Law, tie a knot around it, and Sharpie their name on the package goes against their braingrain, I would imagine. This wise hesitation is even evident in some of their Laws, like the Second Law of Sapolsky's Three Laws For Doing Science: "It's okay to think about nonsense, as long as you don't believe in it."
But I also think the question is vague (probably on purpose), particularly in its explanation and examples. If Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion ("#1: Planets move in orbits that are ellipses") and Murphy's Law ("If something can go wrong, it will") are in the same category, as suggested by Mr. Brockman, then anything goes, really. When the question invites folks to contribute Universal Laws which are "either grand or small," where do you draw the lines between a Universal Law, a maxim, a truth, a theorem, a proposition, an aphorism, a bumper sticker? Can there be a "small" Universal Law? As a matter of fact, many submitters seemed so intrigued by the nature of the question itself that their answers were self-referentially funny (even though contributors were advised to "avoid flippancy"):
Golomb 's Law: Everything in biology is more complicated than you think it is, even taking into account Golomb's Law.
Kai's Exactness Dilemma: 93.8127 % of all statistics are useless.
Anyway, I began wondering if any such Laws exist in song lyrics. I thought about pop songs, and show tunes, and I pawed through old folk songbooks. I was amazed at how few examples I found, particularly in folk songs, of statements that could be called Laws, even given a fairly broad definition. Maybe I wasn't looking at the right songs; maybe contemporary singer songwriters come up with more truisms, or country songwriters, or polka poets, all of whose work is not well represented in my book piles. But I did come up with a few possible candidates from various genres, though they may stretch the definition of "Law" even further:
When you're up you're up, and when you're down you're down, and when you're only halfway up you're neither up nor down. Girls just want to have fun. The times they are a-changin. Nobody knows you when you're down and out. Spanish is the loving tongue. You can't hurry love. Life is but a dream. Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.
Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. The bigger is the pickup truck, the smaller is the head. Everything is beautiful in its own way. Mud: nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. Love is a many splendored thing. When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you.
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. The answer is blowin' in the wind. Love is all there is. Courting's a pleasure and parting is grief. If you like a ukulele lady, ukulele lady like you. Something's gotta give. There is nothing like a dame. The stars at night are big and bright. There's less toil with Lestoil.
And now, your assignment: Go through your memory banks, your iPods, your vinyl platters, your Disco 8-tracks, your Dictaphone cylindars, your camp songbooks, your TV Jingles cassettes, and your own original lyrics, and help me find some more Universal Laws within songs. They can be goofy or serious. Send them to me, and I'll put them in next month's column. I'll give you full credit, of course. My email address is berrymanp@aol.com or peter@louandpeter.com, and my mailing address is Peter Berryman, Box 3400, Madison WI 53704. Please send by the 15th of February. And remember, you can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd.
Thanks to my sources: