Friday 27 January 2023

Harry Chapin


            On Thursday morning I finished running through singing and playing "I've No Regrets", my translation of "J'ai pas d'regret" by Boris Vian. Tomorrow. I'll upload it to my Christian's Translations blog. 
            I memorized the fifth verse of "C’est rien, je m’en vais, c’est tout" (It’s nothing, I’m done, I’m gone) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are two more verses left to learn. 
            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in sixteen days. 
            At the beginning of the new year I started a new exercise. It's not one I've never done before but I haven't practiced it in years. In yoga it's called the Warrior: I stretch one arm over the same shoulder and down my back while bringing the other arm up my back to try to bring my hands together. I used to be able to shake hands with myself back there but not anymore. But doing the exercise must have changed some alignment, because recently while doing another exercise of stretching my arms apart my right shoulder popped a bit and I was in pain. I can still do it but I have to be careful how I ease into it. Today the shoulder was in more pain than usual. It might be just a matter of adjusting to the new motion. 
            I've been listening to the Harry Chapin discography. I've heard a lot of his songs before and was expecting him to have more interesting songs than he does. He was certainly a good songwriter and even a not bad literary writer and his lyrics were often funny but it's not the kind of artistic writing one needs to listen to more than once. Most of his songs have only one meaning and while each message has important face value, after you get it there's no more need to listen, so it becomes boring. As my Jamaican neighbour said when he overheard me playing Harry Chapin, "his voice has no colour". He certainly had a versatile band and his backup vocalist Big John Wallace had a four octave voice. So far his only really interesting song is "Taxi", which to some degree was an inspiration for the movie Taxi Driver. 



            I read another 28 pages of David Copperfield. David's boss finds out from Jane Murdstone that David is engaged to his daughter because Jane swiped his letters to her. He forbids the engagement. Shortly after that David's boss dies and it is discovered that he's left no will and it seems that he's not as rich as he seemed to be and is only worth about a thousand pounds. 
            I weighed 84.2 kilos before lunch. 
            In the afternoon I ventured out for a bike ride. I decided not to ride further than Bloor and Ossington because the bike lane was a bit slippery in places. Riding down Ossington I wiped out as my bike slipped out to the right and I landed hard on my left knee. I'm assuming that I only bruised my kneecap but it's pretty sore right now and probably will be for a few days. So much for riding a bike for my health. 
            I stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of grapes, two packs of blackberries, one pack of strawberries, and some bananas. 
            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:00. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 18:08. 
            I read another 45 pages of David Copperfield and got up to page 608. Dora has moved in with her two elderly aunts and David has requested an audience with them. They invite him over and offer him to come only twice a week, once for dinner and once for tea. He agrees to their terms. David runs into Mr. Peggotty who has received a letter from Emily postmarked somewhere in Germany and so he's heading there. 
            I had a potato with gravy and my last three pork ribs while watching season 4, episode 13 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 
            Mrs. Drysdale's father is still interested in getting money from the Clampetts. Granny thinks that he's courting her. He wants her to come to Las Vegas with him to gamble but when he uses words like "proposal", "engagement" and "partnership" she can't help but get the wrong idea. Finally when she learns what he really wants it's no dice. Then Farquar asks Jed if he wants to go to Vegas and Jed thinks the man is desperate to marry anybody. 
            For the second night in a row I found no bedbugs.

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