Two Bar was a name they gave a certain view of the Paris Basin, from their side of the river looking north past the clumps of muck and stranded flood wrack which would later host St. Chappel, Notre Dame and, just upstream, the citydwellings of the anciently and permanently rich of present day Paris, but seeing then, instead, the place where by the wrestlings of chance and design it would become.
The controversial Barry Coat of Arms
residue n. [OFr. residu, from L residuum, a remainder, neut. of residuus, remaining, from residere to remain.] 1. that which remains after a part is taken, separated, removed, or designated; remainder; rest. 2. in chemistry, (a) a residuum (sense 2); (b) the remainder of a molecule after a portion of its constituents has been removed: used frequently in the same sense as radical. 3. in law, that part of a testator's estate which is left after all claims, charges, and bequests have been satisfied. 4. in mathematics, any number differing from another given number by a quantity which is a multiple of a given modulus; thus, when 9 is the modulus and 29 the given number, the numbers 2, 11, 20, etc. are residues. Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary Deluxe Second Edition Dorset & Baber 3000+ pp. gen. ed. Jean L. McKechnie ©1983 by Simon & Schuster, N.Y.; Maps ©1972 by Simon & Schuster, N.Y.
orward into the everpresent moment the Barry Family conversation pursues its immemorial ends.
The argument over the Naming, the bitter elixir of long simmering retorts decanted through the millennia finally finding their sublime and fitting subject (the name of them on every one of their lips at once) in the hard contentions of that summary era when the Name of them was first made, when came the perfect time in Ireland for that odd-collected crew attending the Norman invasion of its southern parts with all their continental talent for talk and talk and talk turning into the very English language itself among them there as they went on and on and on about the overriding thing it had become, with the some of them opposed on certain principle to the adoption of a name at all, and the others split between those who quite favored the move and those who, consumed by other cares, attended not at all to the question, but instead obtruded their own concerns directly into the culminating conversation of it, necessarily precluding a direct and immediate resolution of the thing which it so sorely wanted by interposing some ancillary matter in its way.
The controversy of the Naming was the hard long grueling thing, and they had their good long go at it, the arguing of it, among those about to be "Barry" in that southern part of Ireland, fully complemented by their own otherwise deprecated capacity for furthering argument itself which they had honed by regular usage in their many millennia in the Paris Basin.
The controversy of the Naming well-suited the needs of their arguing, too, for they had those innately, those needs; the need to argue independent of the matter at hand being one of the salient characteristics of their kind, consistently among the first to be noted by such other people as might happen by them throughout the ages there in the Paris Basin, for example. The pigs, of course, were always thought their greatest fault, and though querulousness never went unmentioned in such visitors' reports, complaint per se was always sensed as a subsidiary if complementary theme in the overarchingly argumentative dispute.
Bachelard groped in Roupnel's words for the moorings of a historicity his philosophizings so sorely needed. Flying off always toward some perfect point of view, his words, Bachelard's, needed a little starch to keep from rolling completely off the plate.
Roupnel's words he raked for the plump aphoristic potatoes of the historicity he required, did Bachelard.
Lot of good it did him overall in the current evaluation of his estimators, no champions at all of his offerings they've proved to be.
Still, he managed to retrieve from Roupnel, Bachelard did, the following phraseology as cited in Robert Hunter's introduction to Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip DK 2003:
"…what remains of the historical past, what lasts from it? Only that which has reasons for beginning again."
From the Barry Family view, the full brunt of the indifferently disposed months following December must be held to account before the completed measure of the year is given. Under these circumstances, the idea of "beginning again" just now is premature: the residuum presently adhesive to hoof and hide drips forever palpable proof of all the unavoidably entertained continuities which make the idea of "beginning again" at this time so problematic.
In the boglore the residue is signigficant. Hinderment to hoof, the residue, by addendum. The Barry Family, with its millennia of practical experience of the bog in its standard step (ponderously gaited thing meant to meet the equivocal meaning of the "land" it gathered on), gave ground gradually to that Roman proclivity for ending the calendar of the year with the finality of its December.
Here at HCE we give due credence to the Roman view as so forcefully enunciated by the nuns of our schooled aquaintance. When asked, we will readily testify it ends today, the year of it, 2003, just as we've been taught to say.
By underlying temerament and training, though, we see the "year" as moving subtractively toward its properly exhausted ending some distant months from now, following that meanest distance of days around its sun to the planet's better vantage for beginning at the equinox.
Understandably our heartfelt enthusiasm for the words, "Happy New Year," so freely offered and received in this season, is tempered, and only as sincerely given, as these considerations will allow.
In America (however unbeknownst to Beckett) the renowned regional champions of American college football collide each year on the first day of the calendar, to sort out among the assembled brutes of them the question of the superior team.
All explicit acts of humanity harden in the doing, in the Barry Family view. In acts, all previous built acts are in their new doings reauthorized, repurposed, or revoked by their serial perpetrators among the humans over time, all inventive acts added to or detracted from or left quite to themselves by that instant's reimaginative expression.
In the boglore, "Story," of course, encompassing what was said, and "House," containing the ongoing remains of artifact in any well-designed argument in the matter: these two categories long believed sufficient to the task of analytical distinction, should such be required in the ongoing Barry Family Conversation, regarding any of the explicit acts of humanity under review. The done thing itself has its hardy heft; it has what's said of it and the artifacts it's offered up, it has its "Story," and it has its "House."
But of course it is only in the properly understood coordination of the two categories that any sense is made of passing acts at all (as the Uncle's ever-ill-founded ire so complemented the arc of his unfortunately artifacted cane in the Barry Family boglore, the palpable result of artifact and ire draw together a lore regarding him, a lore bouyed by the ruefully displayed cane, rafted down the ages to us here at HCE, curators we suppose now of its material continuance as a guarantor of the broad outlines of the telling the Barry Family has chosen to retain of it).
All said and done, the year 2003 nears its conclusive end, exhausting its capacity for continuance. Its telling details of story and artifact remain, hardened residue of the starchy gatherings of chance and design in the moment. So like a potato in that respect, once manifest, in the Barry Family view.
"The potato has landed, eh?," they say among themselves, the Barrys, referring the the year just past.
Beckett barely suggests any taste at all for American Football, which in its collegiate mainfestation tends toward a grand good go at it on the first day of the new year in the Roman calendrics familiar to us here at HCE.
Long the Barry Family sneer at the devoutly named "Gregorian" calendrics to refer to them archly as "Roman," its unmitigated previous label, as if nothing of the corrective Christian design could obscure the undergirding 12 Roman bricks of it.
Severally the Barry Family observed the orbiting of the planet ceasing its decline's increase (which is to say, the solstice or perihelion or the Christmas or Boxing Day or Channukkah or Ramadan, or sure, a shout out to the youth, Kwaanzaa, too, gosh darn it, welcome all to spread their tablecloth under the celebratory permissions of the Saturnalia) by its own convocation acknowledging the reversing just then back along previous track of the motile planet, back toward the ordinal optimum of its equinox, itself adopted start date for any proper year, however contrary to popular design, in the Barry Family view.
In England they have Boxing Day, a name easily enough misheard by the more pugnaciously inclined members of the Barry Family, the strain of which was forever best demonstrated by its Uncle.
Ever acute for an opportunity to argue over number, the Uncle neverthelelss with good cheer waded into to any another commonly entered argument in his time, willingly giving up the odd jibe of tongue or jab of stick to the proper continuance of the given thing when it came his turn. Although disposed to a more ad hoc technique in the matter, he did not disdain at all boxing as formalized by its noble rules whenever it came to that class of argument, pallette of tools limited to the paws (however mean a limitation in the aesthetic of the Uncle), as required by the art, being the aspired standard of behavior.
Misunderstanding, really, as it turns out.
Boxing in their other sense in England the same as that sense gathered in the tumbrel, the collecting container for the soon to be given thing.
Oddity of their culture that they didn't wander down that other path of meaning with the Uncle and set aside at least one day a year for a grand good go at it, the whole nation of them, in active accordance with the rules.
In the eternal tail-chasing of chance and design this was not to be, globally captivating entertainment it would have been in the event, with all due round the clock coverage on ESPN and Court TV and all the special pleadings, plays of the day and breathless commentating so entailed.
The Barry Family will celebrate in its own way.
By rounding error perihelion instead of winter solstice may be observed, or some other day nearby. There is an inexactness inexticable from the Barry Family standard of measure in this respect. Such inexactness is inevitable in the Barry Family estimate, however strictly speaking avoidable.
When the Romans chanced on the Paris Basin they brought with them a festivity for this time of year which had locally till their arrival been without appreciable festivity at all. For the Barry Family, it was a season given mostly to sodden ungenerous grumpiness on their part, and the organization of a rollicking good time was a startling if not unwelcome innovation.
Not that the Barry Family lacked a marker of the occasion. They had of course, until the Romans, only their own elusively expressed bogknowledges to get them through the long glum repetitions of winter among their kind for all those many millenia in the Paris Basin.
They had among them fashioned gradually by then, consistent with their overwhelmingly deliberate speed in most matters, a not near-full-formed phantasm (oh, actually more of a sketch of fellow, in point of fact, just an idea about what it would be like to have someone show up, arrived from out of eslewhere with it, and throw down irreffagable optimism among them, chortling that way), meant to suggestively symbolize by animated acts for the purposes of story, or at least as much of a story as their mostly elliptical references allowed, an intrusive and unanticipated surplus of happiness.
The unlikeliness of the arrived actor was a great part of the story's charm, equalled by the unlikeliness that anything approaching such good cheer might be self-generated among them, given conditions.
For the purposes of the rough telling they'd made of it, there must be a sullen crowd of them of unspecific number gathered for the act. Endemically so disposed in winter, the Barry Family could easily imagine such a group.
Enters, we're told then, quite by surprise, a stranger bearing the greatest good cheer, with his intrusive unlikely happiness, expressed in the unarguably attractive phrase, "Ho, ho, ho."
That's about as much of a story as they had, spare enough to barely qualify as one, in the long ages until the Romans came: a vistor, you see, a vistor at this time of year of all times of year, brings great good cheer.
More of a concept than a story per se, is what they had.
In the bog the tendency is toward repose; down the cardinal direction, in the boglore. Down go the days and years of it, collecting there in the luiquescent self of the bog, pooling, clumping, settling in: ever interacting with, ever interferred with by all acts viscous and adhesive of near neighbors.
And on inspection green the going goo of it, in the Barry Family estimate.
Jazz musicians don't "cover" songs. Here's Monk exploring the territory opened up by "April in Paris," or maybe "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."
And here's, oh, Frank Sinatra, say, doing what he can with the same song. There's a completely different sensibility at work on the material. Frank's covering a standard as only he can, drawing out all the emotional resonance the composer intended. Monk's trying to wrest something else from it, something compatible with the injunction Ezra Pound gave to poets: "Make it new!"
In a similar reckoning, the Grateful Dead never covered "Not Fade Away." They played it countless times (pace deadheads, who probably have the exact count at hand), but "covering" it wasn't part of their scheme. The Rolling Stones, on the other hand, did in fact record a fine driving cover of it early on in their career.
Garcia did a number of covers in his collaboration with Grisman, particularly a sweet version of Irving Berlin's "Russian Lullaby" and an ideal version of "Rockin' Chair" just as casual and relaxed as Hoagy Carmichael could have hoped for.
Hoagy Carmichael wrote "Georgia on My Mind," covered so masterfully by Ray Charles that we can't help but think of it first as a Ray Charles song, can we?
There are any number of other singers who've done the same, making some song their song, becoming its prime reference by their rendering. When this happens we can't really think of their work as a "cover" anymore, can we?.
A cover is another version, but not the definitive (by which we most often, though not always, mean the original) one.
Here are some likeable covers:
"The Man Who Sold the World," by Nirvana and "It's All Over Now Baby Blue," by Them."Louie, Louie" by Toots and the Maytals.
"Stormy Monday Blues" by Bobby "Blue" Bland.
"Walking the Dog" by Run C&W, or any old thing by them, really: "Superstition," I Feel Good," "Hold On, I'm Comin' " (Old timey bluegrass soul music covers. Yes.).
"The Weight" by the Staples Singers, and "Wade in the Water," too.
"Ida (Sweet As Apple Cider)" by the Light Crust Doughboys
"Memphis" by Link Wray, or by Sandy Bull, for that matter.
"Dust My Broom" by Elmore James.
"Boogie Woogie Country Girl" by Bob Dylan, and "Deliah," too.
"Atlantic City" by the Band
"Mother Earth" by Mother Earth, Tracy Nelson vocals, Michael Bloomfield, guitar.
"California Uber Alles" by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (Jello? Jello? Call Rewrite! We need an update, STAT!!)
And:
"Funny How Time Slips Away" by Al Greene and Lyle Lovett
"Please Bring Me Somebody to Love" by Fred Neil
"The Other Side of This Life" by Jefferson Airplane
"Clap Hands" by John Hammond, and "Jockey Full of Bourbon," too, from his album of Tom Waits covers, Wicked Grin
"Watermelon Man" by Mongo Santamaria
"Working on a Building" by the Holy Modal Rounders
"Guns of Navarrone," by the Skatalites, and for the sweet loopy mirth of it, "Sentimental Journey," by Anson Collins
Occasionally, by which admittedly we mean often here at HCE, we find ourselves mistaken.
Discovery of our error may be brought to our attention by some visitor to our miserable mistake, irritating enough pleasure they get of pointing the thing out in most instances.
Or we may happen upon it ourselves, no less underjoyed by its revelation than if it had been brought to our attention by that other's notice, who at least enjoys a minor sip of schadenfreude at our expense, a drink so often offered in the presence of a Barry, instead of the crisp debt of rue that settles in when found out among ourselves, as we like to call staff here at HCE.
As to perihelion and the winter solstice, we think them close enough for horseshoes, in the main, if looked at on some intergalactic scale, though plainly we confuse the two terms utterly by our recent words, such that the entire drift of our thought on the matter, by entertaining the label "winter solstice" for what was so clearly a discussion of the condition of "perihelion" instead, makes our words void and worthless on the given subject. Sad rue it is.
The winter solstice must necessarily occur instantaneously, because of the bald sure declarations of its definitions, to all the people conversant with its meaning, wherever they are scattered on the surface of the famous near-spherical container of us all which has long been known to those of us here at HCE as planet Earth.
Certainly a Singaporean, expectantly anticipating the event (when the Earth, its annual cycle of the sun bringing it nearer and nearer, comes closest it will come to the great central consuming thing that year: that instant in Earth's cyclic progress around that great grand influential thing when it is as near as it will be for one whole year), and a San Franciscan, and a Sowetonian, each in their own way as attentive to its approach, would all and each experience its actual arrival at the same moment, by definition, however poorly they were able to synchronize their measurements of its occurrence latterly. At one point in its annual circuit the Earth is as close as it will get, and at some other point it is as far away as it will go, and we leave it at that, and call the nearer one, by common convention, the winter solstice.
Winter solstice occurs this year at 7:04 UT on December 22, 2003. Because the coursing planet spins as well as circulates, the moment "7:04 UT" will be experienced nearer midnight of December 22-23 in Singapore, which has already spent much of its December 22 already, but in San Francisco, lagging behind in this respect, it is yet by common measure still the day before: December 21, 2003.
"7:04 UT on December 22, 2003" in local San Francisco time is 11:04 at night on December 21, 2003. As the world turns, it is expected that all the days doled out to Singapore, or Soweto for that matter (which this year greets the solstice on the morning of December 22, 2003) will be made available to San Francisco in due course.
But this does point out that given the necessary deliquencies inherent in the doling out of dates, it can only be stated with any certainty that the winter solsctice happens by rounding error on December 21 or 22, and leave it to local authority to sort out what sense to make of such equivocation.
By common practice the measure of the winter solstice makes no allowance in its calculations for the distance of these supposed citydwellers from one another. These distances aren't added to or subtracted from the sum when speaking of where the closest point may be. In that event perhaps the Singaporean would have the advantage over the San Franciscan, arriving sooner at that nearest point by the distance of a diameter of Earth than would that dweller on that trailing continent's western shore.
But it is the distance of Earth, of course, aggregated thing itself, that is our reference here, and (as a point is as much as nothing more than location, and as the Earth is baldly taken for such a point by definition) as our desired location is the very closest Earth does come, it is readily seen that the Singaporean, San Franciscan and Sowetonian, arrive at once along with Earth at that place where the planet is measured to be closest it will get.
It would make a nice gift this time of year, we suppose, to have a little individualized trinket which would, by constantly measuring the distance of its bearer from the sun, track that bearer's passage around it, and by suitable notification (although given the advances in technology we would hope for something more bearable than the discordancy of buzz, boink, bleep, bleet or beep so common to devices in this age) , signal that the bearer's personal solstice had arrived, that the bearer is at that moment, for whatever it's worth, as close as it is possible to get under the circumstances to the grandiloquent destructions and dispensations of that monstrous central thing.
What's poured off or decanted from one year to the next? Where rest its dregs?
December profers its finalities.
What remains? What's left behind?
Does the residue remain with us as we reach for the new year's numbering? Or is it past now, with only its astringent juices carried forward into the newer year, left behind a poor crusted remnant of its livelier self, the dessicative thing never to be properly reconsitituted however suitably storied?
Such are quite naturally the strains of thought attending us here at HCE at this time of year, required as we are forever to accomodate our first impulse, which would be to align end of winter with end of year, such that the poor stunted month of February in its decline gave goodbye to the sad stunting stay of winter, and in doing so, exhausts the year itself, to that other impulse entirely of the ascendent system of Roman calendrics which we have come necessarily to adopt as our standard here (following the practices of the Barry Family in that regard), by which the end of December ends the thing instead.