Jabberwokabout: Travels with Nonsense

Alleged second printing of The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense

2011-05-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's 2011 and you're not sure where you left the can of whatsit. Don't worry, though, because World Nonsense will always be there for you--and now with added whatsit!

It has certainly been a long slime since my last update, and I regret to say that I didn't complete the Africa trip blog--though I was very close. I hope to get to that soon. This entry is about the ur-Anthology of World Nonsense, The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense. And while I won't bore you with pulling out every item stuck in my slime, I should inform you of two flings:

Fling One:

I am hoping to create a children's nonsense anthology that will include material from The Tenth Rasa but also (hopefully) a few new things (depending on whether the folks whom I've commissioned will actually write something--you know who you are!!), including a guide for children on how to write nonsense. It will be fully illustrated and sanctified by the Nine Vestal Vultures. I'm currently talking to the folks at Scholastic about this... and I shall certainly keep you informed on developments.

Fling Two:

I recently had to replenish my stock of The Tenth Rasa (aside from providing "pure reading pleasure,"™they also serve as analgesics, fodder, and bituminous bumf), and so yesterday I received a brimming boxfull. When I inspected the included volumes, I immediately noticed a change on the back cover. The ISBN patch is all tricked out now, and lo and behold, the price has gone up from Rs 295 to Rs 399! This in itself is not so extraordinary (for the volume is worth its weight in bumf), but what IS extraordinary is that it seems we are now into a second printing!

The new printing (left) and the old (right). Also, for sake of scale, a ruler and a lollipop.

Upon closer inspection, I also discovered that the volume is now printed in Navi Mumbai, rather than Noida (where it was originally done)--also now noted on the page that notes such things. Of course, you are witnessing my clever deduction from the presented evidence. I have heard no word from Penguin about such printerly activities. Regardless, though, I'd say it's high time that all of you fans out there order an edition from the alleged second printing, because even though the content is exactly the same, there is that highly collectible new ISBN patch on the back. Also, when do you ever get a chance to buy an "alleged reprinting"? It's worth every paise of that extra 104 rupees! Don't miss out!

21 July: Voi to Nakuru

2010-08-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

We awoke in the morning, elephants sadly departed, and hit the road again, all the way back to Nakuru. Not much to report, but I did manage to find a sort of nonsense reference in the following:

Groundnuts = peanuts

For any who don’t know, our own familiar “Yankee Doodle” is American Revolutionary nonsense and always delightful to encounter in the mom-and-pop shops of Kenya. And in the same shop, this delightful parfum de l'homme:

Made with extract of ???

My only regret is that I didn’t purchase this, as I’m dying to find out more about Obama’s odiferous nature. Many more hours on the dusty fusty rusty road brought us back to Merica Hotel, and looking forward to the next day, when we would do some field work at a local school…

20 July, 2010: Mombasa to Malindi to Voi

2010-08-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

Adrian, Beatrice, and I left Mombasa early in order to make our appointment in Malindi, a few hours up the coast. I felt as if I had made the best of the ISOLA conference, even though my time there was somewhat brief. At least I hadn’t heaved my huts into the Indian ocean the day before, so all was not lost. On the way out of the city, we happened to pass by a critical tourist shopping stop:

We are headed to a section of Malindi known as the first village in East Africa (so I’m told), and I politely decline seeing the coral pillar set by Vasco da Gama (a noble name referring to his mother’s varicose veins), to mark his “discovering” it. We have come here to witness a traditional dance and to sit on the performers firmly until nonsense oozes out from their prepostulators. As we wait for them to dry their drums (for the rains are coming and going), we visit the nearby butterfly farmers’ collective, a project that pays villagers in the local forest to farm butterflies rather than to cut down the trees and make charcoal, or some other less-than-lepidopterrific activity.

We return to the compound, where we suck down some coconut water and watch the show. They begin with traditional dances, but once they are through, we ask about children’s games, trying to edge them ever onwards to nonsensical activities.

They demonstrate a few games, including the following one that seems fairly common throughout Kenya:

The leader of the group goes to great lengths to explain various games, songs, traditions, and old stories.

Because Adrian and Beatrice don’t speak the local language, much of the material has to be roughly translated on the spot into Kiswahili, making our selection process more difficult. By the end of the afternoon, though, we have much footage and a lot of translation work ahead, to see what gems may be within.

After giving us gifts of medicinal plants and flowers, the performers see us off, and we tootle our way (that’s about 6 hours of tootling, making my tootler a bit sore) back to Voi, our resting stop before going back to Nakuru. We end up, after much driving around, getting rooms at the Red Elephant, a game park hotel. In the darkness, about 30 yards from our hotel-hut doors, on the other side of a substantial fence, and standing placidly by a watering hole, a family of elephants slurps us to sleep.

Sunday-Monday, 18-19 July, 2010: ISOLA conference

2010-08-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I was up early for the first session of the ISOLA conference, hoping that perhaps I could give my paper if a delegate did not arrive, since a scheduling snafu had slated my paper to arrive before I did. I went to one of the panels that included Mubina Kirmani, an Indian Kenyan who had written a book on the large Indian population in the country—a topic that I thought might dovetail with my own research. The panel members were all there, unfortunately for me, but they were kind enough to let me give a brief, 10-minute spiel on the Anthology. Immediately after, I was called away by a conference worker because they had, at the last minute, found a spot where I could do my whole paper—a dollop of goop fortune on this, the last day and the last panel. I was escorted to another open-air hut-like building, with a session already in progress. After papers on music and dance, and the nature of conflict (not a bad preamble to nonsense), I was able to give my paper. All went well, though there was an odd moment. Just after I performed the throat singing piece, “Dürgan Chugaa” (from the group Alash), a whole troop of monkeys descended from the roof area and gathered on the rafters, looking on curiously. The audience members found this most amusing, claiming that my grumbly kargyraa style of throat-singing had called the monkeys, which might very well be true. It was certainly a conference-first for me!

Yarn-artist's rendition of Mombasa monkey
mesmerized by throat singing. Note: the mesmereyes.

After the session, and over the next couple of days, I was able to meet many oral literature scholars from different countries, many of whom were interested in our project and may be able to contribute.

The sessions having finished around noon, Adrian and I declined the conference trip to Mombasa in order to orchestrate our fieldwork material from the Osiri Beach area and even begin a little translation. We sat in the lobby as the monsoon-like rains fell and darkness settled, finally able to look back on our long hours of recordings.

On Monday, I went on the conference excursion to the “marine park” and Wasini Island. After an hour and a half rough boat ride, during which many folks got sick (not I, with a steely stare at the horizon and a steady chew of my South African biltung (jerky)), they cast out the anchor in the open sea and told us to don our swimming costumes—for the marine park turned out to be under water! Most of us, dressed in our conference casual, were not quite prepared to go snorkeling—and besides, our green pallor would have made us difficult to distinguish, and pluck out, from the heaving seas. We headed to Wasini Island for a lovely lunch, a tour through the village, and a look at the coral gardens, a green plain bordering mangrove swamp, dotted with jagged coral boulders in fantastical shapes.

Saturday, 17 July 2010: Voi to Mombasa and ISOLA conference

2010-08-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

I didn’t want to make the first pizza from the last blog entry too obvious, but I have tell you now that our hotel last night was called the Silent Resort, and true to such a topsy-turvy adventure, it turned out that all night long, I listened to the dulcet thumping of a delightfully repetitive African pop bass line. And when I say all night, I mean all night…music still pumping as we left… Whence the beat, you might ask? No doubt the natives in the secret underground caverns that stretch from Egypt to the Grand Canyon, via Voi and surely a right (or wrong) turn in Albuquerque.

Adrian, Beatrice, and I packed ourselves back into our trusty car—which has by now had a flat tire, a punctured gas tank, and alignment perfectly calibrated for Moon craters, and hit it bright and early for Mombasa and the 8^th conference of the International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA). The terrain went from scrubby des(s)ert to coconut cream pie as we hit the coast, where the heat and humidity are fairly staggering (though they’ve got nothing on a Delhi summer).

We arrived in the afternoon at the conference hotel and venue, called the Leisure Lodge, which, despite its name, is not a retirement home in Florida but rather a lovely beach-hut-turned-circus-tent kind of resort, complete with monkeys inside and outside the main structures. Because we had arrived after the start of the conference, Adrian and I had to slide into conference mode immediately, as we attended papers, meals, and schmoozing sessions. I was fortunate to be able to meet with Judith Jefwa, a professor at the University of Nairobi, with whom I had been in touch via email a few month earlier, and who had expressed some interest in contributing to the anthology. I also briefly met Dr. Peter Wasamba, chair of the Literature department at Nairobi and head organizer of the conference, who was kind enough not only to insert me into the conference late, but also to distribute among the delegates the Call For Papers flyers for the anthology. The sessions on this day and the following were fascinating, especially for a scholar very much of the page such as myself. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the performative aspect of oral literature represents a whole new dimension to art, and it was eminently and elementally edifying to be among top scholars in the field.

What better way to top off a day of oral literature scholarly discourse than to enjoy the massive hotel buffet while listening to a local musician’s Casio goodness renditions of John Denver?

I would have preferred the Beatles, or at least this Beetle.

Friday 16 July, 2010: Nakuru to Voi

2010-08-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

Note Bene: For all those who have tried to post comments in the past, I believe I’ve fixed the problem—so please do post your comments!

Baobob

Today was another slog of driving, from Nakuru to Voi, a town much closer to Mombasa and also where Adrian and Beatrice’s son, Paul, goes to college. The drive was long, but completely rewarding. We went away from the green climes of western and central Kenya and were moving into the eastern part, which is much dryer and hotter. The grassy plains, with waves of tall brown grass hiding, no doubt, many a lion and lesser quangle-wangle, are dotted with gorgeous acacia trees which soon gave way to baobobs. I realize now that the trees that I’ve been drawing all my life have actually been baobob trees, even though I’ve never met one.

Baobill

Baoscott

Massive, sectioned trunks that narrow dramatically into branches twisted fantastically. After a long drive, with Adrian bravely taking on the endless random speed bumps and bribe-baiting police, and overtaking the black-cloud-spewing overloaded trucks moving 20 miles per hour, we arrived in Voi, where we immediately met with Paul, who introduced me to a young man and two elders from a local tribe, from the hills nearby. We went to our hotel balcony where our guests recited nursery rhymes, game rhymes, and my favorite (even if not nonsense), the “beer blessing,” a ceremony performed by the father to the son when the son is to have his first beer. It involves the father spitting/spraying beer on the son’s forehead and rubbing the beer into the scalp in long massaging motions, all the while warning him of the dangers of drinking. We found one interesting nonsense piece that seems to be in many versions throughout Kenya, a rhyme recited when the children are going through the crops with sticks to kill the locusts (locusts which, by the way, I saw today… apparently quite a delicacy, as well). Many thanks to all participants, especially those who came from the hills…

After the session, we had dinner, only to encounter these pizzas:

If anyone can explain the naming of any of these, I would be most appreciative. I know you have all missed the menus from last summer in Eastern Europe, so I hope this begins to satisfy you… Suggestions in the comments, below??

Thursday, 15 July, 2010: The legend of Gor Mahia

2010-07-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

It was time to leave dear Homa Bay, and none too soon, for my life surely was in danger. Forget the lion, the leopard, the buffulated buffalo, and the homuncular hippo—the most deadly African beast is surely the Four-Post Jellyfish.

It seems that this particular specimen had roosted over my bed, and so I had no choice but to vacate, seeing as I had left my jelly-extraction kit back in my leopard-skin pillbox hatbox box. I escaped unslimed, and we headed out to the next adventure, to learn of Gor Mahia, the famous Luo hero, known for his bravery, wisdom, and diplomacy, not to mention his magic. He was most certainly a real person who, in his youth, had led the Luo in successful battles against neighboring tribes. His did this, so it is told, sometimes by transforming himself into different creatures and objects, his favorite shape being that of a termite mound. When the British arrived, Gor Mahia, then the leader of his people, saw the hard reality of the situation and collaborated with them to save his tribe. Other tribes fought back and were easily slaughtered by the British. Over the years, many stories were told about his different adventures, and it was Adrian’s field work that gathered these legends into a grand retelling, The Epic of Gor Mahia (Pangolin Publishers, 2003). This day, we were to drive to the burial site of Gor Mahia in order to listen to one of the elders tell us some of the stories.

We were headed into the most remote region of western Kenya yet, from pocky pavement, to dirt road, to dirtier road, to roads where we had to stop the car and move large rocks out of the way, and finally to little more than a foot trail. Adrian warned me that if it rained, we would be stuck, all while the clouds were gathering in purple piles to the east. We finally parked the car just amongst the tufts of tall grass, below the hill that contained the burial site. A short walk up brought us to a clearing, with a group of locals led by one of the descendents of Gor Mahia. The site was no more than some mounds of dirt, demarcated by stones, but the interested parties were hoping to build a proper monument in the near future. As we were shown the site, our storyteller arrived, an old behatted man who had much trouble navigating the dirt, stones, and trenches. Eventually, the men were all seated on top of the grave site, thanks to a collection massive wooden chairs that had been dragged from who knows where, while the women sat on the ground on the outskirts of the area. Just as our master storyteller began, a few thick raindrops fell, and we were told that this was naturally Gor Mahia’s blessing. The clouds passed, and we listened, under the baking sun, to the legends of the great Luo hero.

Even Adrian, who has done so much research on Gor Mahia, learned a few new stories, and while the nonsense was most likely hiding under that rocks and stones, the stories we heard added much to our knowledge of Luo people, their history and culture, not to mention their vivid imagination.

Osiri Hill, Kenya, Part 2

2010-07-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 14 July, 2010

I spent another day in the company of the Luo around Osiri Hill. We arrived a little earlier than yesterday since we had so much to do, and this was our last day here. As happened yesterday, a group of dancers and singers met our car. This time, it was a group of women, in fact, an organization headed by Hellen Akinyi Kanda Nyakobiero, that benefits local women and children. They hopped and popped and helped bring some of the others out of their shyness throughout the day.

No more opening ceremonies for this day—we got right down to it, having performances throughout the day of stories, riddles, history, quizzing on traditions and customs, and proverbs. It seems that, thanks in part to Hellen, but also to the general vibe, people were a bit more relaxed today, which led to some wonderful interactive oral literature. I should perhaps mention that performances here, and also generally in Africa, involve the audience in ways that would seem downright inappropriate to a western audience. The performers often go through a ritual call-and-response greeting and then, throughout the performance, entertain the audience’s comment, jibes, often incorporating them into the whole. There is a kind of willing participation—active rather than passive reception—that enlivens the performances here and makes them unique to the occasion. Of course, I will be exploring how nonsense may play a role in this distinctly African way of performing.

In our break from performances, we walked down to the shores of Lake Victoria, where I could, if I so desired, walk in the steps of the hippo, their tracks sunk deep in the mud.

We walked through the fields of wild ongongo, tall and strong arid wildflowers, to return to the hut.

And now it was time for my performances… Because most of the audience had little or no English, I chose the more performative pieces, “The Bathing Hymn” from The Tenth Rasa, and “The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles” (from Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play—and by the way, thank you Mrs. Quinto, not only for the leather trousers but for allowing me to perform this in Oral Communication in the Year of Dour Gourd, 198XX).

"This is the story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles!"

Towards the end of the day, we were able to ask the participants to give some of the children’s rhymes they knew, which of course are often brimming with nonsense (and this is why people are reluctant to perform them, sadly). And then, as an experiment of sorts, we actually asked them for nonsense. Of course, the word for "nonsense" in Luo, in its literal meaning, does not designate a literary genre, although there is a different word, oyuma, that implies a kind of silliness and stupidity of speech that has some semblance of structure. Adrian tried to explain a little, but we left the rest up to the group as to how they might represent a performance of oyuma. The result was hilarious:

This film is of Hellen Akinyi Kanda Nyakobiero, the leader of the dance group mentioned above. A few people arose and performed this kind of piece, ones mostly involving sounds, laughter, wild gestures and facial expressions, and audience engagement. Few words were spoken, and the audience loved it. Most interesting to me was that it seemed that this kind of performance was an accepted part of their repertoire—a kind of nonsense performance that even Adrian, who has done significant research and field work, didn’t know (note bene: Adrian’s field work has mostly involved the story of the Luo hero, Gor Mahia, which is distinctly non-nonsensical). As texts, these are mostly just sounds and gibberish, and so my western scholarly brainbean wants immediately to exclude them from the nonsense cannon. As performance of oral literature, however, they have structure, sense implication, and other goodliness that my students will recognize as hallmarks of the Real Thing. As I try to consider concepts of performance nonsense, which would have to be the main mode of African nonsense oral literature, I can see how these “texts” could indeed be considered nonsense. Certainly fodder for future floundering.

By way of a croaking goodbye, I performed one last piece, “Dürgen Chugaa,” the Tuvan fast-talking nonsense chant by the group Alash, in my best counter-counter-baritone kargyraa throat-singing.

After a long, leguminous day of nonsensical proporpoises, we had to say our goodbyes, with an array of speeches and much goodwill bubbling up and reaching from Lake Victoria to the top of the Inspiration Tree. One of the men said to the crowd that these performances reminded them of the richness of their own oral literature—something that, with “developed” cultures continually encroaching on the “developing,” they tend to forget. I was told to bring word of the Luo to Obama himself, and I promise that if I ever meet him, I shall.

Imagine spiritual ostrich feathers on my head

Cape Town to Nairobi to Nakuru to Osiri Beach

2010-07-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

Kenya

Sunday-Tuesday, 11-13 July, 2010

My dear, patient penultimate penguins, I’m sorry it has taken so long to get to Kenya… I have frequently been sans internet, and I’ve also been so very busy with our field work, conferences, and the snark infested waters of the Indian Ocean. I also must apologize, because it seems that, at least for now, I can’t post film clips (that is, without sitting here in the lobby of this hotel for a hour, for each to upload--which is what I did to get the one below!). I have some great footage, though, and I’ll post various things when I return to the Land of Broadband, or at least the Land of Brobdingband, which is slightly more beefy and has better sausages.

And so… from Cape Town, I managed to maneuver my pith helmet bark around the Cape of Good Hamhock and up the east coast. I took a left before the Horn of Slapricow and rode a tumultuous typhoon to Nairobi, where I met, after much correspondence and anticipation, Adrian Onyando a scholar of oral literature at Egerton University, a poet and storyteller, a gentleman, a man of much muchness, and One Good Egg. Adrian had gone to great pains in creating an extraordinary 2-week field work and research program, the details of which I will, presently, be playing out on this here blogbone. Adrian and I immediately drove about an hour and a half to Nakuru, and the Merica Hotel. Thankfully, it being a singular institution, it is not a Merica Hotel.

Anyway.

Adrian, his wife Beatrice, and I left Nakuru early on Monday to reach Homa Bay. It is a long drive, and towards the end, the roads degenerate considerably. Along the way, we passed through rural Kenya, with fields of corn, sorgum, sugarcane, and in the highlands, endless stretches of tea plantation, a lucrative legacy of colonial days. We made a stop at a honey-making collective, where one may buy a special honey mix, including—all smashed into a brownish, lumpy sludge—bits of comb, semi-solid mystery-blobs, plenty of honey-mummified bees--oh--and some honey.

We did not arrive at Hotel Hippo Buck (Yes, what else?) until night, where Adrian, Beatrice, and I thankfully fed ourselves with fish and ugali (the ubiquitous cornmeal cakes… think gritsbricks), and retired…

The next day was the first real day of field work in the Homa Bay area, home to the Luo people (though they are spread out through many countries in Africa). We drove the dirt path up Osiri Hill, past the small houses of corrugated iron and thatched roof, and ended up at Adrian and Beatrice’s compound, which features the beginnings of their organization, the Osiri Beach Education and Career Forum (with the rather unweildly acronym, OSBECARF). Through OSBECARF, they have built the only library within many miles of this location, and they also have various education and counseling programs for the villagers in the area. It is an enormous undertaking, and they have done some amazing work, getting the local children funds, which are combined with the parents’, to put them in schools--and then making sure they stay in school.

When our car entered the courtyard of the compound, we were greeted by a group of performers drumming, singing, and dancing to welcome me. Ostrich feathers flying, drums drumming, they made me feel positively ostrichish, or perhaps just ichish. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference. The area elders came down the hill, and I went down the line, shaking hands, receiving their blessings and well-wishes, to which I replied in my limited Luo, ero kamano, thank you. Also, when they really mean it, they have a hip, three-part handshake: the normal, then the cool thumb-gripper, then normal again. As I was filming, one of them stepped boldly out, grabbed my hand, and led me up to our gathering place. I have the film clip to prove it, but it will have to wait until I can post these… In the scorching sun, to the accompaniment of drums, feathers, and a shofar-like horn, I stomped and kicked, clomped and shook and booked and jumped and, finally, schlumped, as they played that funky music. After wowing the crowd with my moves (and also removing the last shreds of doubt in relation to my ability to get down and shake it with a ceremonial fly-swatter), we had some speeches, and then I was taken around back, to a garden area, to plant my welcome-tree. Now, I have had some affinity with the Lorax for some time (notwithstanding the moustache), but never did I imagine that I would have a tree not only planted in my honor, but also named after me. Michael the B, meet Michael the Tree. I put the sapling in the ground, threw in a few shovels of dirt, and watched as they watered and filled in the rest.

I gave my namesake a firm leaf-shake and was escorted up Osiri Hill, for a view and storytelling. The land is dry, with strange cactus-like desert candelabra trees and magic wildflowers. At the top, I was able to see all around, including a piece of the enormous Lake Victoria below, with all the hills and valleys around. I was told the history of the area, about the original tribe of magicians who lived on this hill until other tribes drove them out. When the magicians left, they scattered their remaining seeds, where their magic plants prospered, but now the plants were cursed. Since then, Osiri Hill has been avoided by some, who fear the bitter magic of the plants, and who say that the magician tribe occasionally sneaks back, to gather plants for their magic brews.

On the way back down, we stop by the “Inspiration Tree,” a lovely sculpted tree with thick foliage creating a cool chamber below, where a ring of rocks marks the performance space around the trunk.

I’m told a story of magic and hippos and led back down the hill, over mysterious ancient stone configurations, to the main hut where everyone is assembled.

Now that all of the welcoming ceremonies have been attended to, the next step is introductions. Starting with the elders, each person introduces him or herself to the group, but this is no simple howdy-do. The Luo people prefer to introduce themselves with far more than their names; they also give their nonro, or background, and then they often deliver their pakruok. There is no direct translation for pakruok—it is a unique form, that has, by the way, had little scholarly attention—but it includes nicknames, very short stories, and/or what is like a brief narrative, compressed into a form that also resembles a name itself. For instance, Akwany son of Otieno, gave this pakruok: “the-behind-of-a-ship-is-white-as-it-starts-off.” The pakruok utterance is distinguished from normal introduction and storytelling by a certain chant-like intonation, pacing, and musicality. The pakruok can also include one or more siguia, an original musical composition that acts as a personal song. Part of the nature of the pakruok is that it should be unusual and interesting… and thus, when the Luo combine artistry, humor, wild creativity, and a strong sense of identity, they sometimes end up with literary nonsense, from carnivalesque gender games to logic-bending images and non sequitors. The following is one of the more animated fellows in the group, who identifies himself as Odira:

And so once again, we find new uses of nonsense—in unexpected and extraordinary ways.

Here is the text from one of the pakruoks (though not the one above), from Ong’ete Marembo, a Luo man (who, by the way, also uses the name, "Wilkista," below, which is a woman's name):

I am the Smoke that overlooks the illness of the sheep;

Wilkista* Agutu son of Marembo.

Let-me-see brings Give-me, the brother to Onyando

Let-me-see brings Give-me:

‘Why do you pull this cloth,

Since I started pulling it, you too have been pulling it?’

I stop there.

Through the afternoon, the audience members performed various kinds of oral literature, including songs, stories, riddles, and tongue twisters (which, as I suspected, produced some nonsense). We managed to gather some children to perform, as well, though most were at school.

One of the problems with this kind of gathering is that people tend to want to perform only those pieces that they think are fit for a guest—pieces that give their history or have some otherwise didactic or “high” artistic value. Of course, what I want is their nonsense literature, and while they usually have it, they are reluctant to deliver for fear that it is not worthy of the occasion, that it has little value, hearkening back to the accursed dictionary definition. This is, in part, why we are doing this; just as Sukumar Ray created the tenth rasa to legitimize the genre of nonsense, so we try to elevate its status wherever we go.

My high horse has grown long in the trooth, and so I shall take him out behind the barn with handcuffs and a baguette. Beatrice and some of the other women provided a huge feast, that was taken in a separate hut with Adrian and several of the male community elders. There were a few more performances before we had to go home in the gloaming. I promised the group before I left that I would repay them, in my own small way, by performing the next day…though what exactly I would do, I wasn’t sure. Still, their interest was peaked, and we all retired looking forward to another day of stories and nonsense. I place a white stone on this day.

By the way, anyone wishing to donate to OSBECARF and/or sponsor one of the local children can write to Adrian at: addyonyando@yahoo.com or adrianonyando@gmail.com. It takes very little money to make a huge difference here.

Greeting From the Library of Congress

2010-07-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Nonsensical Readers of Sonzenbia,

Kevin here.

So, Michael has been traipsing about Africa hunting for nonsense without me. I’d give my left tongue to be with him. But this is not to say I’ve been idle. Admittedly, for a while there, I was just resting in my hammock in Virginia. But one day when I was resting in my hammock I started to feel guilty that I was not hunting nonsense in Africa. The following is a photo of me at the exact moment when I was resting in my hammock and started to feel guilty that I was not hunting nonsense in Africa:

With guilt in tow I drove through the jungles of Virginia (three whole hours) to the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Something about Washington, and something about something named after Congress, made me think there might be nonsense about in this place.

I began my search.

My main search was for nonsense in Africa, naturally. But along the way I was surprised to find nonsense catalogued at the Library of Congress for Israel, Turkey, Germany, The Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, France, The United States, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and Colombia. It was a treasure trove. Who’d ‘uv thunk it? As the Library of Congress is a non-lending library I spent about 100 dollars making copies… but that’s neither here nor there.

The following is a picture of me there (or here):

About Africa…

The Library of Congress had almost no leads at all cataloged for “nonsense” and “Africa,” and none by any particular country name, i.e. “Kenya” or “Uganda.” I did have one hit from South Africa… “Gillian’s Nonsense” but the “nonsense” here was not nonsense, as we here know and define it. I also pulled up a small collection of African American street rhymes, which did indeed produce a couple good results. This one's from Texas:

I wish I had a nickel
I wish I had a dime
I wish I had a boyfriend
Who kissed me all the time
My momma took my nickel
My daddy took my dime
My sister got a boyfriend
And gave me Frankenstein
He made me wash the windows
He made me wash the floor
He made me wash his underwear
And he kicked me out the door

Back to Africa… I searched under various languages as well, such Lou, Bantu and Swahili. Nothing. I knew in this moment that Mike had his work cut out for him in the field. But I kept digging and searched instead under the wide umbrella term “folklore” to see if any likely suspects might turn up from oral traditions.

In the end I think I did find a few things.

The following is somewhat nonsensical, and is a translation of a Kenyan folksong collected by Gichuhi Ngugi in 1984. The title is “Wagacuki.”

Bee, let us fight.
If you will fight with me, I’ll slaughter you.
The meat will be taken to the blacksmith ;
The blacksmith will make knives ;
The knives will stab the clouds :
The clouds will give the rain :
The rain will water the grass ;
The grass will be fed to the calf ;
The calf will marry a wife ;
The wife will cook porridge ;
We will drink the porridge.

And here's another Kenyan folksong, titled “Lililio" which was collected by Joshua Eshiokhunjira in 1984. It is a comprised of a string of nonsense words with a couple of random objects thrown in for seemingly no reason. With the “sensible” objects translated to English the song runs:

Li-li-li-o
li-li-o
Li-li-li-o
Ka-mebee-ka
Bitter meat
Ka-mebee-ka
Bitter fish
Ka-mebee-ka

Turning to a slightly different genre, Mike and I have learned that prose-folk-nonsense is one of the rarest types of nonsense—always a surprise when it’s found. The following is an African folktale/riddle, that if read simply as is, is pretty nonsensical:

A man and his brother were on the way to sow their millet. The younger brother went on ahead, carrying the millet seed on his head.
As they walked along, the younger brother suddenly stopped and said, “It is sweet!”
They sowed the millet, cultivated it, harvested it, and then passed a season until the rains came again.
One day the man and his brother started out again to sow the millet.
When they came to the same place where the younger brother had spoken the year before, the older brother asked, “What is sweet?”
The younger brother answered, “Honey!”

Kind of funny I think.

I also found some other examples of folksongs that will have to wait for transcription for now—beer drinking songs, naming songs and coming of age songs--And there were a few longer modern poems that may make it into the anthology… works such as “J. Oreng” by Lucas Odote or “Msonga Odhil” by Ogwang Okoth... both of whom were writing in the Lou language.

In all The Library of Congress nonsense holdings proved pretty enlightening.

When my Africa search dried up I turned my attention to collecting some great material from New Zealand, Canada, France, Italy and Germany. Alas, the Turkish, Israeli and Japanese material was not made available to me on this visit. Another time. However, I think that my favorite find at the Library of Congress was a rare book published in New York in 1825. The title? “Aldiborontiphoskphorniostikos.” Aldiborontiphoskphorniostikos is a collection of mind (and tongue) numbing nonsense phrases and tongue twisters. It was, ostensibly, published as an alphabet “game," but apparently did not catch on. Perhaps the page representing “N” will explain why:

“N, Never were such Times! said Nicholas Hotch-Potch, as Muley Hassan, Mufti of Muldavia, put on his Barnacles to see little Tweedle gobble them up, when Kia Khan Kreuse transmogrified them into Pippins, because Snip’s wife cried illikipilliky, lass-a-day! ‘tis too bad to titter at a body, when Hamet el Mammet, the bottle-nosed Barber of Balsora, laughed ha ! ha ! ha ! on beholding the Elephant spout mud over the ‘Prentice, who pricked his trunk with a needle, while Dicky Snip the Taylor read the Proclamation of Chronohotonthologos, offering a thousand sequins for taking Bombardinian, Bashaw of three tails, who killed Aldiborontiphoskphorniostikos.”

Time to get back in my hammock.

Dr. Kevin Kelley Shortsleeve, July 2010

Anachronous update: Nakuru, Kenya, after and before

2010-07-15T13:50:00.001-07:00

Hello everytoady! Apologies for disappearing for a little while... you see, after leaving Cape Town, I went directly to Nairobi, then Nakuru, and then out into some remote places around Lake Victoria. Adrian Onyando and I have done some amazing field work, and I will bring it to you soon. Unfortunately, the internet in my current hotel is also quite substandard, so I'm going to have to wait longer before I can post things. Do not despair! Our adventures continue is several more areas of Kenya before I go to Uganda on the 24th.

Three Men and a Stone

2010-07-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

Cape Town
Saturday 10 July, 2010

I woke up to the sound of rain, a perfect beginning to my one day of touring around Cape Town. It didn’t matter, though, as I was to be in the indubitable, redoubtable, and redubitable company of Philip de Vos and Niki Daly, who had generously offered to guide this poor sybaritic sinner through the Things and Thongs of Cape Town. Due to the weather, we visited a couple of used bookshops, where my nonsense hunter’s instinct didn’t quite lead me to anything South African. As I had read in the studies of children’s literature, many of the books were British and American, including Spike Jones, Thurber, and the ever-present, ever-blyted Enid Blyton. As my grandpappa used to say, one doesn’t always bring a kudu home from the veld. Grandpappa was, in fact, more likely to bring an impalatable ipecacish impala strapped to his strop.

We had a lovely lunch by the sea, where we gained one passenger on our trip, making us the carbon copy (or at least the molybdenum copy) of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, although instead of a dog, we adopted a white stone.

Philip and I left Niki and went to Chapman’s Peak, a high point from where we could see the mountains all around...

These peaks are a part of the so-called Twelve Apostles. The ones pictures above are Paul, Peter, Timothy, Sidney, and Charo (with the cloud-clinging boa).

Below, the blue, blue water:

A sumptuous dinner in the company of the whole passel of Consistent Compotators topped off the day. Such a lovely leaving of Cape Town, thanks to the kindness of nefarious newts. It was, in more ways than one, a white stone day.

Cape Town, Days 4-5: Slugs, thugs, and mugs

2010-07-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

Thursday, Friday, 8-9 July, 2010

I headed down to the National Library again on Thursday and Friday, but before I talk about my continued research, a photograph of two of Cape Town’s main attractions:

The so-called Wheel of Excellence, right next to the Mound of Indifference.

My remaining time in the National Library was spent going through children’s literature and oral literature. I’ve made a few discoveries along the way, including a terribly racist Alice in Wonderland imitation, but nothing too dearth-shattering. As Mrs. Baba told me, the indigenous material is rarely published, and as I have found out reading about children’s literature in South Africa, most of it only sees one printing and then disappears or is eaten by toothy children. Just as the India market for English books has been dominated by books from the UK, so English-speaking South Africans have been only too happy to import their books from abroad, and so native publishers rarely would solicit more indigenous material. Jay Heale writes that before 1985, there were so few children’s books published in South Africa as to be “derisory,” and he gives the grim statistics for post-1985:

Year Total books for children’s published in South Africa
1985 26
1986 59
1987 134
1988 121
1989 109
1990 105
1991 84
1992 78
1993 102
1994 92
1995 76

(from Heale, Jay. from the Bushveld to Biko: The growth of South African children’s literature in English from 1907 to 1992 traced through 110 notable books. Grabouw: Bookchat, 1996. p. 3)

Things have been getting better since then, thanks to writers and artists like Niki Daly, Gus Ferguson, Philip de Vos, and Piet Grobler, but there is still (as there was in India) far too much Enid Blyton on the shelves.

On Friday, first thing in the morning, I met with Gus Ferguson, who, in addition to being a pharmacist, a top-notch poet, and a cartoonist, is the Cosmic Life President of the Snail Liberation Underground (SLUg?), and the erstwhile publisher of Slug Times, a magazine of slimendous proportions. I thought that perhaps it would only be fitting for an upright member of the Society for the Prevention of Sense (SFPS) to collaborate and conspire with the SLU(g), and so, to make our First Contact as smooth as possible, I set out to liberate a snail (and to document it fully). I scoped out a colony of indentured snails toiling away in the park near the library, and, while pretending to be one of the Hairytrees that inhabit this land, I swooped in and liberated the snail. But, as I have learned from The Herding of the Snail, it is not enough to liberate a snail. One must tame the snail, take it home, play with it, and by these processes, transcend the snail and self to achieve Enlightenment. And this is what I did.

As you might imagine a meeting between two self-less and snail-less beings can only be harmonious, and so it was. Gus was kind enough to bring many of his books, and we talked much about this and that, nonsense and Fook Island. I also discovered that there is a “Slug Award,” a shining beacon of slugness, given by his august Underground movement, and that Niki had in fact won it. I can only hope, some day, to be worthy of the Slug Award.

Cape Town, Day 3: Meetings and bleatings

2010-07-07T00:54:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 7 July, 2010

Today, on the way to a meeting at the Centre for the Book, a division of the National Library of South Africa, I happened down Dorp Street, happened down Dorp Street, dorp dorp dorp. You must forgive me, but if there were ever a Dr. Seussian street, it must be Dorp Street, happened down Dorp Street, dorp dorp dorp. One day when I’m older and twenty pounds colder I’ll cycle to Berklee down Dorp Street. And when one bikes home in the dusky alone it then naturally turns into Prod Street.

Well, my dreams of Dorp Street (happened down Dorp Street, dorp, dorp, dorp) will have to wait for another day, for this morning I had a meeting with Mrs. Nombulelo Baba, the Project Coordinator of children’s literature programs at the Centre.

But I almost turned away from this charming old building. You see, after climbing the outside stairs, I was confronted with this sign hanging in the door:

How odd, I thought, since the weather seemed quite nice, if a tad chilly. Could these South African winters really be considered so bad as to close buildings? It was unlikely, but the sign seemed clear enough. Still, I had to look inside, just in case. Sitting at two reception desks were two receptionists receptioning receptively (respectively). I walked in and made a little joke about the sign: “I thought you were closed for the weather… so cold! Heh heh.” Receptionist number one replied, “No, only the doors are closed.” Well I’ll be a boer-sausage strudel! If there is one thing Kevin and I learned last year, it was never to take anything for granted when traveling hitherward and thitherdorf!

In our meeting Mrs. Baba and I talked nonsense for quite a while, and I was able to get a better understanding of the children’s book scene in South Africa. Apparently there are still precious few books that record (let alone translate) indigenous oral literature, particularly that of children—nursery rhymes, lullabies, game rhymes, etc.. The Centre tries to encourage those who might not normally publish to do so, but because it is underfunded, this task is challenging. Still, from what I saw, they are doing excellent work so far. Mrs. Baba was kind enough to spread the appeal for nonsense to her colleagues and to the greater group at the Centre. Many thanks for her kindness.

I spent the afternoon at the National Library, continuing to go through whatever literary and native oral literature I could find—and I did make a few interesting discoveries, including one nonsensical mathematical limerick from the 1920s (the nonsensical nature now having been confirmed by my redoubtable numerical neighbor Eric, whose mathematical chops are deeply fried and served with applesauce).

I walked back home to prepare for the big meeting, one I had been anticipating for two years. It just so happens that, in 2007, I thought I would have the opportunity to meet Niki Daly, author of A Wanderer in Og (which he writes under the perplexing pseudonym “Nicholas Daly”) one of the finest nonsense books to come out in recent years in any country. We were not able to meet at that time, and I was lucky to have this second chance. To make things all the better, Niki was able to rope in Philip de Vos, a very fine South African poet (both in his native Afrikaans and in English) and another one of those rarest of birds: a nonsense artist. Interestingly, and as is often the case with nonsense artists, both Niki and Philip have significant experience as musicians. I was positively atwitter. When I walked up to Time-Out Café (which, appropriately, has a wall painted in melting clocks and mincing, nightmarish forks), I saw Philip sitting, and even though our eyes met for a few seconds, it seemed as if I wasn’t at all what he was looking for. It turns out that I wasn’t at all what he was looking for. Apparently, when he had googled me, the first photos to come up were that of my eternal name-nemesis, I. Michael Heyman, the ex-director of the Smithsonian Institution. Ira Michael Heyman is probably around 80 by now, and so, once I introduced myself to Philip and learned of the confusion, I understood perfectly.

[Not me]:

We sat down and began to sink our teeth into the nonsense when Niki came in, and sure enough, he also looked somewhat strangely at me. As I soon learned, he was, in fact, expecting to meet a brightly turbaned, extravagantly mustachioed India man (which admittedly, I almost am sometimes), as this was my profile picture on Facebook.

[Also, not me, but certainly closer historically, spiritually and follically]:

And so, despite the initial disappointments (for my true appearance, especially since I shaved my own extravagant whiskers from last summer, is not nearly as inspiring), we managed to salvage the evening with much merriment and discussion of nonsense, its relation to music, footballies, and operatic sunsets. Philip gave me some of his nonsense books (like gold to me) and a few CDs of his poetry and music efforts, some public and some not (like double gold). Niki gave me a copy of The Herding of the Snail, a brilliant work which I’ll talk about later, and a pile of his A Wanderer in Og, which I can distribute to those who eat all their peas and, rather than being naughty or nice, are particularly ogfull. It was a great pleasure and an honor, and I floated away in a cloud of sudorific sand…

Cape Town, Day 2

2010-07-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 6 July, 2010
Cape Town

I had heard tell of the Fearsome South African winter, but rather than my usual habit of chewing the facts to gluey pulp and spitting it up for your easy digestion, I present to you photographic data with which you can make your own decision:

Today was the day I had tried to avoid far back into my trip-planning: the World Cup semi-finals game in Cape Town. There was nothing for it however, and so I would have to face to vuvuzelas.

In the morning, after some writing and various business backflips, I walked into town (no longer backflipping, but occasionally backflapping) and, after some awkward soccer banter with the bag-check fellow (despite my lack knowledge, I faired fairly fair, all told), I plopped myself down at the National Library.

Over the next several hours I poured through everything that the various librarians and I had picked out: various books on oral literature, some meek and mild non-indigenous nursery rhyme collections from the early twentieth century, folktales, and several books by Niki Daly and Gus Ferguson—but more on them later (the next day I was to meet Niki and Philip de Vos—stay tuned!)

I managed to crawl out from beneath the pile of books as the library was shutting down and walked back to the center of town, where I met the orange and blue mobs. For those un-hip enough not to know, it was Holland (orange) vs. Uruguay (blue), but the fullest flocks were by far the orange. Marching down the main streets, orange wigs, face paint, bright orange safety overalls, and of course, vuvuzelas blaring, the glowing mob moved like an engorged channel of nuclear waste. For a little while I followed along the flatulent parade, but when the crowd bottlenecked at one of the bridges, I took a northerly turn, back to the Waterfront and my hotel. Just before the game, I took a walk one more time with the crowds down to the stadium (which is not even a mile away), thought for a moment about buying scalped tickets, and then went back to the hotel bar to watch the game. In honor of some very fine VanBronkhorsts I know, I routed for Holland…

Cape Town, Day 1

2010-07-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

Monday, 5 July 2010

I woke up, in the darkling July winter, to my first true view of Cape Town, with Table Mountain brooding nearby. My hotel is an ex-prison in the Victoria & Alfred (Albert’s dentigerous second cousin) Waterfront area, and after walking the ramparts, I descended to the docks, which have been transformed, in many ways, into a giant mall. This accommodated my most mundane monotonies and inspired me with a profound sense of itch. The only saving grace was the absence of US Ubiquities (GapSmear1,TargetPetSmart,TubbyRuesdays, etc.). I stumbled upon the following performance, no doubt an entirely authentic tribe that forages and hunts around Stall #49 of the nearby crafts mall.

My mission this day, aside from exploring some of the local fauna and flora, was to hit the National Library of South Africa, who had (perhaps understandably) not replied to my earlier inquiries concerning their nonsensical potential. After walking through the Company’s Gardens, a mini-Central Parkish greenspace covered in giant bamboo, bulbous arboreal artichokes, and tropical turnspits, I stopped by the Centre for the Book, a sprig of the National Library that promotes literacy and indigenous publication projects. The children’s book coordinator was busy, so I went to the main National Library building and started making inquiries. When one of the librarians heard me asking about Alice, dongs, and Travels through Og, she said, “Ah, you’re the Nonsense Person!” While acknowledging the capitals (but not the title), I asked her what she could possibly mean. “We got your inquiry a while back and have been working on it—but it’s not so easy!” Apparently, a team of them had banged their heads against this wall, but the one who had done the most had left for the day. With the librarian’s help, though, I was able to order a stack of promising books and was able to begin to troll through them before they shut their doors for the day.

Back in the park as the winter afternoon faded, I walked around the Jewish section, the “Old” and “Great” (I couldn’t find the “New” and “So-so”) synagogues, and frolicked among some springy grasses that bounced in the fountains. I happened to be a witness to the following scene… the mounted policewoman’s horse seems to sniff something strange about his compadre:

Can a horse lift a quizzical lip? Considering that this horse seems to have discovered the most nonsensical part of the park, I realize that I might change my research plan. Forget these dusty scholars and libraries… I wonder if Berklee might not mind if, rather than return from my sabbatical as required by the contract I signed in blood, perhaps I should enlist in the Foreign Mounted Nonsense Corps.

The last bit for you all today is a shop I passed on one of the main shopping drags in Cape Town.

Now, either they don’t know what “Funkadelik” means, or, even more frightening, you might not want to get near these strawberries.

I ended the day at the Gold Museum restaurant, where they bombarded me with fifteen courses—each one from one of the African countries participating in the World Cup. Along with the singing, dancing, and puppets, it was quite an extraordinary adventure. Onward, Funkadelik Strawberry Soldiers!

Arrival in Cape Town

2010-07-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

Cape Town, South Africa
Monday, 5 July, 2010

Welcome! It has been a long time, almost a year ago, since Kevin and I brought you the stylings of our nonsensical peregrinations. For those of you who may be new to this blog, you might want to peruse the entries for July through September 2009 to see our last major excursion into the Fields of Nonsense (Elizabeth Sewell notwithstanding). Last summer and fall we traveled through Eastern, Western, and Northern Europe where we met with a full host of nonsense ministry: scholars, librarians, stenacious stentorians, and artists willing to help us find, translate, and transubstantiate nonsense literature, and our rectory has since been overflowing.

Of course, we have not been entirely idle since then, as you can see from the various and sundry postprandial-peregrination blog entries. We met some fellow nonsense searchers, such as the Most Noble and Magnifulgent Juana Inés Dehesa Chritlieb, whose knowledge of Mexican nonsense was one small force in baffling and snaffling the Redneck Brigade Patriotic Brotherhood whose erstwhile gunslinging still echoes in amber waves of pain across our southern borders. And then there was the most delightful Nonsense Tour of Harvard (which, to my discredit, couldn’t hold a dandle to the nonsense tour of Lund given to me by Frederick Tersmeden) with Daniela Almansi, a not-quite-tonsured nonsense non-monk who breezed in from London, and who has opened doors French, Russian, Italian, Zingbangian, Zoroastroturfian, and possibly other Z-languages in her ample bouquet. Our working manuscript has swollen to over 150 pages thanks to the kindness of all of those willing to selflessly fling themselves like the Dart of Harkness into the Anthology of World Nonsense.

It is time once again to shake the dust of the West off our shoes, to pursue the Land of Snod and the ever-elusive Moustache Island (despite my no longer being a member in good standing-on-end)—this time, in Africa. Thanks to the Newbury Comics Berklee Faculty Fellowship, I am able to spend the last gasp of my sabbatical here, in Africa. Unfortunately, Kevin is not able to join me, and he will not only be much mussed but also mulch missed. I begin here in South Africa, mosey on over to Kenya, and end in Uganda, which will take me to the very end of July. As I mentioned in my last entry, there are some incredible nonsense adventures awaiting me, and I will faithfully be blogging with my regular irregularity.

Late last night I arrived in Cape Town and shall spend the next week poking asnout in libraries, having meetings with local looninaries, including Niki Daly, Gus Ferguson, and Philip de Vos, some of the brightest nonsense stars of South Africa, and assiduously avoiding the footballie follies. My hotel is a vuvuzela’s call away from the stadium here, and come Tuesday night I expect the vuvuzela flock to descend fully upon my window sill. Until Wednesday, then, I shall be keeping under cover, scouting out the less-flocked features of this fair city. Stay tuned!

Africorn! Africapricorn! Africapricornponepie!

2010-06-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

Greetings and bleatings to everyone from Nonsensicapricorn to the Sibilant Sea! My Africa nonsense-gathering trip has been gathering bream and will be baking many a Boston bream pie soon. Thanks to the efforts of some Very Solid Persons in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda, plans are being pronged and nonsense beasts chummed (I believe they chum such creatures with amblongous artichokes and veal cutlets, though things have changed since my father's time as a Boer Bear Baiter, 2nd Class). I am preparing a Perfectly Perpendicular Pith helmet, from which I will sail round the Cape of Good Hamhock and hopefully come back home by way of The Horn of Slapricow. Along the way, I should be meeting with various luminous nonsense noses, including nonsense writers and blighters, media mudpie masticators, scholars of children's literature, folklorists, musicians, mad mudpie makers, and librarians. If they don't ride me out on a snail, I will be giving a paper at the conference in Mombasa of The International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa. I shall be attending oral nonsense competitions, observing cultural crampon rampages, and various and sundry other nonsense-gathering-related activities that I can't begin to list right now. To find out the delicious and deliquescent details, you will have to tune into the blog come July. I will be blogging faithfully, fragrantly, and flafricantly, whenever I am able to tie one on to the Interknot. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile,
I shall remain,
your 3rd Class, Petty Bear Baiter,
Michael

ps. Thanks to Grimm_Cild for the refugricated drawing above!

Around the dial... the Anthology of World Nonsense hits the radio

2010-04-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

With good reason, discussing our project of questionable reason, Kevin Shortsleeve featured, on April 10th, in the Virginia Public Radio show, "With Good Reason," interviewed by Sarah McConnell. Click here to hear his discourse, articulate as an artichoke (minus the choke) on our Own Dear Anthology of World Nonsense. His part of the interview is the latter third, so you may want to fast forward a bit... Enjoy!

Storytelling Night in New Delhi

2010-02-17T00:43:00.000-08:00

Hello all in Nether Neighborhoods of Nonsensabad! I write to you from the bosom of Gurgaon, where I have been ensconced for nigh two plus weeks. I've been checking the nonsense gauges and baubles here, twiddling and tweaking the twoddlemeters...strictly procedural, you understand. I can safely report that the underground reserves of nonsense are still burbling blatantly, and that there will indeed be a gusher coming soon to a well near you. As long as you live near New Delhi. That is to say, I will be participating in the Scholastic India Storytelling Night this coming Friday, to read from "The Moustache Maharishi" and other nonsensical nodes. If anyone is around, please do stop by! Info below!

Scholastic India is happy to announce that Storytelling night will now be held in ten cities every quarter!

The ten cities where these fantastic sessions will be organised are New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Pune, Jaipur and Chandigarh.

Schedule for the first storytelling night in your city!

New Delhi - Friday, February 19, 2010
Storytellers: Samina Mishra, Anita Roy, Bubbles Sabharwal, Michael Heyman & Devika Rangachari
Venue: The HUB, DLF Promenade, 3 Vasant Kunj Malls, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi - 70

The next step... Slaprica! or.. Africow! or...

2010-02-01T06:06:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time, my nefarious nodes, since our last communication. Since then we have been undertaking something of a nonsense hibernation, with drifts of neologisms piling up outside our cave. Still, all is well, and we are about to emerge! The grandest news is that I have been awarded the Newbury Comics Faculty Fellowship, a Berklee/Newbury Comics joint venture of mysterious proportions, that will enable me to pursue the nonsense beast, as in the days of fjord, with full vim and wigor in Africa. Many thanks to Berklee for this honor... and now it is for me to make my plans... which should include South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and perhaps other countries. I will go where the winds of whipple take me, and where I can find kindred nonsense spirits. Are you one of them?

I reach out with my noodly appendage to all out there... asking if you have the ability or the desire or the artichokes to help with the search for nonsense in Africa. Please get in touch, if so!

Meanwhile, I'm off to India for a little nonsense reconnaissance... to make sure The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense is still a towering force of flan. Any nonsense doings shall appear here in three part harmony in dude time.

Until then,
I shall remain,
your nonsense niambic neepameter,
Michael

Is this the end? Malmö and beyond!

2009-10-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

28 Sept-1 October
Lecture at Malmö University and home...

It is most good, most very good that I should be going back to Malmö for my final talk and my goodbye to Scandinavia. Malmö had been my home base for over a week in August, from where I made excursions to Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Lund. It’s also home to Björn, one of my most scroobious partners in nonsense crimes.

I took the train down from Rättvik, about a 6 or 7 hour stretch, and went this time to stay with the Sundmarks, who kept me happy and stuffed with Viku Bröt (the hard bread that is made, by the way, right next to the northerly Sundmarks). The lecture at the university was the next day, and after a leisurely morning, Björn and I headed down from Genarp, where he lives, to Malmö. The lecture was at 1pm, in a fair-sized lecture hall, and Björn’s PR blitz brought in a good crowd, including his children’s literature class and folks from various departments. I was able to give the longer version again (though I still didn’t get to everything) and I made it through the throat singing this time… We capped the day off at The Bishop’s Arms, a fine establishment, and the whole day was an excellent conclusion to the many talks over the last few months.

The rest of my time in Malmö and Genarp was spent primarily rubbing the belly of Gimli, the Sundmark’s black lab, and taking walks around the Genarp countryside. How strange to be going back home... how strange to be away from July to October…

I now write to you from beneath the fake stuffed dolphin fish that welcomes visitors to my home in Somerville, and it is good to be back. It is time to look in two directions: first, we have to follow up with the many folk we met over our trip, collect more texts, and solidify the representation from these countries. Also, we have to pursue knowledgeable and nonsensical people in other locations: Africa, South America, East Asia, and beyond...

Worry not, dear Reader. While this trip may be over, it will certainly not be the last. Kevin and I plan to get out and about, hopefully to more nonsensical locations around the world. Meanwhile, we will be keeping you updated on any other news related to our work and travel for the Anthology. Stay tuned!

Rättvik, Sweden, Part 3; 21-28 September, 2009

2009-10-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

In my last entry from my month in Rättvik, I shall deal with a few scraps. During this time, I was able to make some progress on my various writing projects, but most significantly, I began to become an amateur mycologist.

Mycology Made Easy

Dangerously armed with the little knowledge I gleaned from Ylva and Göran, I began to scour the local hills for mushrooms. Thanks to meticulous attention to sensory detail, and careful deductive reasoning, I am able to impart to you the best and safest methods of mushroom identification. This first method is called “chomp-and-wait” and involves uprooting any suspect mushroom, making sure to get as much of the fleshy foot as possible, using your trusty mycologist’s brush to clean off any nasty debris, and then taking a massive bite.

Here I am, having a taste of the fly agaric, the mushroom supposedly eaten by Vikings to inspire their berserker sprees… At this point in your process of enquiry, ponder your situation. Are you feeling faint, vomiting, feeling the need to sack and pillage and/or bepelt yourself in bear? Can you actively feel your kidneys being eaten from the inside? These are generally bad signs and tell you that you should move on to other mushrooms. I actually found one of these “bad signs” near a trail.

The most failsafe method, however, is, as with quality cleaning products, to look at the label. Here, I demonstrate the inky cap (Coprinus Cominus) mushroom, also known as the lawyer’s wig. As you can see below, it earns its name, and it doesn’t take long to know that this one is A-Okay!

Follow the advice of Alice in Wonderland and Weird Al Yankovic, and just eat it. Here, you can see my mushroom harvest from one of my trips.

Graffitti

I also found one last bit of graffiti for the file: this, so simple, so friendly, on the main strip of Rättvik:

The Ladies

During one of my hikes out to the Bysjön, a lake not too far from my stugby, I came across these signs along the trail.

Finally, I would achieve my secret goal in going to Sweden: to find the mythical Swedish Ladypath, which would of course lead me to the mythical Swedish Ladies. Sure, we hear the tales, whispered over campfires when we are young; we joke about it in the locker room, belying our burning adolescent hopes; everyone learns in their History classes of Svenrige the Unwieldy, who withdrew Sweden from the Union of Kalamari with Denmark and Norway during the Great Squid Famine of 1523, to conserve his resources and and yet maintain the official policy that stands to this day, the right of all Swedes to roam the countryside freely, to camp wherever one is not being offensive, and on any land that is not farmland or someone’s garden, to pick berries, mushrooms, wildflowers, and mythical Ladies.

Well, after so much anticipation, I had stumbled across the mythical Ladypath. I followed the signs (while adjusting my coiffure) saw some footprints showing evidence of recent activity, checked the fewmets—nice and fresh—and knew the Ladies couldn’t be too far off. In and out through the winding paths, bouncing from spongy moss to spongy moss, over the liver and through the goods, I followed the signs…but all to no avail (I found out later from Göran that the occasional snickering I heard was probably the mythical deadly hooded snickering Swedish mushroom, not, apparently, a close relation to the mythical Ladies). Perhaps the stories I had heard were just that: stories, invented to placate itchy young men.

[note: later, the Sundmarks enlightened me as to the meaning of these signs. Apparently, this is the symbol for a mine, though why it is identical to the female sign was beyond our ken. Anyone? Anyone?]
[note #2: still later, I heard from Björn, who told me that the symbol was specifically for copper, and it is associated with Venus]

On 28 September, after a month in Rättvik, I had to say goodbye to my cottage, my mushrooms and lingonberries... On to Malmö for my last lecture!

Rättvik and Stora Skedvi; 11-20 September, 2009

2009-09-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

I returned to Rättvik from Växjö on Friday night, and soon thereafter tried to get back into the swing of monastic nonsense conkimplation. This would have to wait, however, for a brief adventure through the kindness of the northerly branch of Sundmarks. Björn’s parents (Göran and Britt) and sister (Ylva) live not too far from Rättvik, and they offered to take me on a tour of the Lake Siljan region. On Saturday the 12th, I was given the grand tour, starting with Dalhalla, the outdoor concert hall in the old limestone quarry. We proceeded around much of the lake, stopping in the villages that often each have their own artistic specialty, such as Nunas, where all the “Dala horses” are made. We did not get to go to the village that specializes in hair art (my fear of such a place is understandable at the moment). We lunched in Mora, had a picnic on a scenic overview, and generally got a feel for the place, the history, the culture. The Sundmarks were lovely and jolly, so much so that I took them back to Rättvik with me in a small plush pouch, from which I could produce them whenever I needed advice on mushrooms, berries, charcoal, art, mining, education administration, and quasi-yodeling—or when I just needed a good cup of tea.

Back in Rättvik, I got back to work on my various nonsense writing projects, correspondence for the anthology, and of course, getting to know the countryside. In particular, I'm writing a piece based off of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach." To achieve this, I am channeling a certain Walt D. Meathorn, who has titled the work, "Rover, fetch." Another piece, called "Do not clothe gentiles in hats of white," by Lady Hamsnot, is also progressing nicely. You'll have to guess the work that this one might resemble...

One of the highlights of this time, aside from channelling some of the finest poets who never were, was discovering lingonberries. I had heard about them in Växjö and actually seen them unknowingly before, but now after getting just enough extra information from Ylva, I was determined to find them, to use them, to eat them, to dance with them in the spinning sunset. The next day, my expedition to find lingon did not fail, and I came home with a nice store. I promptly made lingonberry råröda, which is just raw lingon stirred with sugar, a concoction I ate for the rest of my time in Rättvik.

The next weekend, I was invited out to Stora Skedvi and environs, where the Sundmark clan lives, to witness a charcoal pile deconstruction. How could I refuse? Ylva took me round to this very traditional activity, something that has recently been rescued from extinction by the younger generation. We arrived just after the pile had been decimated, but the rows of smoldering coal were there, along with a crew of men covered head to toe in black ash. I thought they might at any moment break out into the Swedish version of the Lumberjack Song, but instead, I heard the girls as they played in nearby, doing their strange Swedish yodeling, a back-and-forth singing exclusively for females and traditionally done from hilltop to hilltop as they herded the flocks and needed to communicate with each other. I wish I had a recording to share…

I also went on my first real mushroom picking sojourn with Ylva, who taught me the novice’s course in the arcane art of mycology.

We came back with baskets full of chanterelles, sops, glops, flops, and 6.5 other kinds of questionable fungi, all of which appeared in our chicken dinner that night and various omelettes. I stayed the night with Göran and Britt, spent the morning of the next day doing a more mushroom hunting, learning the trade from Göran, and seeing more of the area. Eventually, I had to take the bus from Falun back to Rättvik. Once again, the Sundmarks have been most hospitable, most welcoming, and most educational. Many thanks to them!

Växjö, Sweden; 9-11 September, 2009

2009-09-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Lecture at University of Växjö

There I was, ensconced in my Rättvik cottage, writing “All snork and no play makes Mike a dull toy” over and over and over, when I get an email from Astrid Surmatz, specialist in Pippi and of recent Amsterdam fame, inviting me to speak at her other institution, Växjö University (she also teaches at the University of Amsterdam, where we met her in August. A bit of a commute, eh?). I immediately dropped my hatchet and made my plans to spread nonsense like fungal tendrils to Växjö (pronounced, vex-shoe, sort of).

On 9 September, after a train ride with several changes, I arrived in Växjö to find that I was staying in Teleborgs Slott, a castle built by Count Gustav Fredrik Bonde as a late wedding gift and completed in 1900. It is an impressive, if a bit kooky, institution used for conferences, weddings, and to house guests of the university. The inside sports various stuffed creatures, steps made of stones with fossils in them, and some incredible antique furniture.

The oddest moment, however, came as I walked up the stairs, glancing out the windows. I could see the surrounding verdant countryside, the lake reflecting the afternoon sun, and the black swarm of satanic flies. I don’t think I’ve seen something like this since the Exorcist, or was it Amityville Horror? Here’s the proof of satanic influence within these walls:

I soon met up with Astrid and took a walk around the lake and into town, stopping off along the way for some blueberries and to dip a toe in the lake to check the temperature for swimming. We ended up at a café, sitting outside under the enthusiastic heat lamps. It was wonderful to see Astrid again, and over the next few days we had many a conversation about nonsense, especially as she got a better idea of my definition after hearing my talk.

The next day we had a quick lunch and then to the lecture, with an enthusiastic gathering, though we were missing a few folks to the swine flu, or the fear of it, of all things. I gave the longer version of my talk, going through the Anthology project and Swedish, Tuvan, and Indian examples, and we had some in-depth discussion about definition—always a contentious topic (even among the esteemed editors!). All went well, except I was not able to get all the way through the throat singing piece… probably the result of having recently gotten over a cold. After the lecture, I attended an informal gathering of faculty and met many professors. Some helped me source nonsense, including Megumi Tsuchida (Japanese) and Anders Åberg (film studies). Of course, there were also some suggestions for more Swedish nonsense.

Later that night, Astrid and I went out in town with a murder of historians (I believe that to be the correct term), where merry was made. The next day, I met Astrid one more time before climbing aboard the train(s) back to Rättvik. It was certainly worth the time and effort, and my axe was waiting for me when I returned…

Rättvik, Sweden. Part 1. 28 August to 9 September

2009-09-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

I took the Viking Line cruise ship from Helsinki to Stockholm from 27-28 August, an overnight cruise on a ship that is known to be a “Love Boat” kind of experience. The most heated activity I could find, however, was in the neon-encrusted “night club” area, complete with a strikingly cheesy band, playing unmentionable covers.

This was probably the section designated for the older folks, but for pure entertainment, it was by far the best area.

From Stockholm, I took the train to Rättvik, a small town on the edge of Lake Siljan, in the Dalarna province of Sweden, known for being distinctly and traditionally and emphatically Swedish. It is the home of the longest pier this side of Europe, the Dala Horse, hair art, and Dalhalla, the limestone quarry made into a concert hall. My cottage is in the “Four-leaf Clover Cottages” or Fyrklöverns Stugby, a set of variously sized units that perch on a hill overlooking the lake. Click below for a photo album of the cottage and the environs of Rättvik.

I set myself up here to work for the next month, with a few basic staples:

In terms of my time here, and my philosophy of nonsense hermeneutics, stemming from the perspective of Searle’s perlocutionary speech-act terminals and a Chomskian transformational grammatical chordata, I would like to be clear:

I went to the stugby because I fished to live deliberately, to front only the sequential tracts of life, and see if I could not burn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to fry, recover fat I had not fried. I did not fish with liver, nor knot tight, for liver is so dear; sordid, I fished to practice respiration—useless, though quite necessary. I wanted to sieve neeps and pluck out all the taro of life, to live so hurdy-gurdily and Pop Tart-like, as stupid trout call it; was not life a budding cod, to froth and rave close to driving your wife into a coronary; a dread dace from the lowest tarns? And if it proved to be bream, why then to vet the holy and genuine breamness of it, and publish its breamness to the world; or if it were a blind tuna hit by a spear, we wince, enviable, to give a tuna’s account of it in our next perversion. For coastal men, it appears to me, are in an estranged, uncertain sea, whether it is of the devil ray or cod, and have somewhat tastily concluded that it is the chef, friend of man, here to glorify cod, rending joy in the river.

This period in Rättvik was spent working in various ways. As you know, I’ve been catching up on blog entries, taking care of much nonsense business that had been collecting along the way in our travels, and also trying to get to some writing of my own nonsense, including my ongoing nonsense parody series (hmm, I wonder what those might be like… Note to the uninitiated: check out Thoreau's Walden, the chapter, "Where I lived, and what I lived for", paragraph 16, and compare with the above) and something about nonsense monks. Of course, I’ve also been spending some time exploring the birch and pine forested hills. The forest floor is often covered with a variety of thick mosses, creating a mottled, springy carpet.

I’ve also been aswim in blueberries, though I have realized, bemusedly, that I like blueberries in direct proportion to their likeness to Boo Berry cereal. Is this so wrong?

Lastly, I give you an item I found in the local Rättvik Co-op grocery store.

Apparently, Americans put some vaguely pinkish goo “dressing” on their burgers. If anyone has any idea what this may be, let me know. I haven’t been brave enough to try it, but I’ll take orders from anyone back home who needs an emergency tube of Amerikansk Dressing.

I’ll be writing more about my time in Rättvik soon, but my next entry will document my lecture at Växjö University and time spent there.

Anachronous Update 3: Rättvik to Malmö to Stockholm to... Boston!

2009-09-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

Greetings again, fellows nonsense nodules,

I interrupt the flow of time once again to let you know about my plans from here on out, and I do mean out. I will remain in Rättvik, Sweden until the 28th, when I head down to Malmö once again, this time to give a lecture at the university on the 29th, all thanks, once again, to Björn Sundmark. Check out this link for the sexy billing. On October 1st, I fly from Malmö to Stockholm, Stockholm to... Philadelphia (!) and then to Boston, where I shall set up a lingonberry shop on Newbury Street. It's hard to believe that this phase of the research trip is coming to a close...

Helsinki, Saturday-Sunday, 29-30 August

2009-09-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

A Moomin Day, sans nonsense

My work in Helsinki for the moment complete, I was able to explore more today. In the morning, I got a call from Sirke Happonen who asked me, in the quickest possible manner so as not to incur the outrageous AT&T international roaming phone tariffs, “Culture Island or Nature Island?” I did not have to think long, and as I have long been an enemy of culture, I opted for “nature island.” On my walk south, I happened across this car near my accommodation, a most unlikely near-replica of my 1976 sky-blue (but black, here) Plymouth Valiant, that I had adopted from my Zeide.

Taking that as a good omen, I headed to Sirke's side of town, probably walking right past Tove Jansson’s home of many years. As I was to learn from Sirke, who is one of the most impressive Jansson scholars, Helsinki was always home to Tove and her family, even though she often traveled abroad. She grew up in the Katajanokka neighborhood, an island that now has some docks of the major cruise lines, and lived thereafter nearby, not far from where Sirke lives now. For those who don’t know, by the way, Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is best known as the author and illustrator of the acclaimed Moomin books, originally written in Swedish (she was a Swedish-speaking Finn), though she wrote many other books and considered herself an artist as much as a writer.

Before continuing, I should probably explain my connection to Tove Jansson more clearly. When I was in about the fourth grade, I had read little else besides Dr. Seuss. During our 2-hour “free” period (yes, at Stedwick, my groovy 70s elementary school, we had these stretches of time on our own, in addition to not having walls), I would often go to the library and plant myself in the Seuss section. One day, after having seen me in the same Seuss spot, perhaps for years, Mrs. Dinsmore the Librarian asked if I might want to read anything besides Dr. Seuss. I happily said no thank you (and I sometimes wish that I had carried through on that impulse thereafter), but she convinced me that she had something I would like. She dislodged me and brought me to a different section, from which she withdrew Tove Jansson’s Tales from Moominvalley. I was skeptical, but I dutifully sat down and read this book—and was immediately bewitched. The Moomins and their fellow creatures were unlike anything I had ever seen (and have since seen, by the way)—they seemed merely cute from the illustrations, yet I found them to be strange, almost uncanny. Soon thereafter, I fell into all the books, and reveled in the free-spirited, rebellious, thoughtful, wicked, independent-minded inhabitants of Moominvalley. Now that I am a children’s literature scholar (cough cough), I find these books even more fascinating, and I teach them almost every semester, always discovering, along with my students, a freshness about them. Mika Pohjola once told me that Moomin was his religion, and I can think of no more fitting way of conceptualizing these works. Of course, Tove Jansson wrote other books, some for adults, and while I have not read everything, I find each to place one more mossy stone, one more creeping shrub in her philosophical landscape.

The Moomins and Tove Jansson would be constant motifs in the next two days, something I might have expected from spending time with Sirke. At her apartment, I found distinct Moomin evidence, including, notably, her detailed framed print of the Moomin house blueprints, not to mention an impressive collection of Jansson books. Soon, Sirke, Ilmari (her son), and I were off to catch the ferry to Pihlajasaari, which we did with no time to spare. It’s a small ferry and only about a 15 minute ride to Pihlajasaari, one of the many islands that are just the beginning of the Helsinki archipelago. This one is relatively close to the city and yet, once we had landed, felt isolated and wild. The island is named after the trees that grow thick clusters of red berries, trees that had been worshipped before Christianity descended upon this part of the world. The island itself is mostly pristine, a landscape of moss and lichen-covered rocks and blasted, wind-blown trees.

Near the dock are these brightly colored sheds, a scene drawn by Jansson, as she no doubt visited this island many times.

As we walked to Sirke’s secret places, I had a strange sensation of familiarity, and a somewhat deceptive one, I might add. I had read so much Jansson, absorbed her epic illustrations and, perhaps, the overall feel of the Finnish coastal landscape, that it seemed, impossibly, I was in a familiar place. It attests, I think, to the vividness of her portrayal, both literary and pictorial, but to me it was another uncanny experience, a kind of artistic déjà vu. I couldn’t help but look in the bushes for Creeps, to listen for Snufkin’s plaintive tunes, or to scan the sea for the hattifatteners’ tossed sailboats, drifting to dark, thundercloud-covered islands. Sirke showed me one of her secret rock alcoves, where she has spent many a summer day reading and writing.

We went swimming in the cold, cold Gulf of Finland—quite a shock at first but then I didn’t want to get out. Later, Sirke found and gave me this:

To those who know the Moomins, this curled piece of birch bark has great significance, for it is these which the hattifatteners seek as they sail from rock to rock. When Moominpappa travels with them on one adventure, he summons the courage to examine one. He uncurls the scroll-like bark, expecting there to be some message: it is only blank bark, but in its unfurling, it discharges a slight electric shock. These charged, empty bark scrolls are a kind of mysterious communication, a hattifattener life-force currency that only increases their mystery. Along the paths, by the sauna (for there had to be a sauna) we walked and finally to the one commercial establishment, a restaurant/café with tables set out on a jutting rock shelf, looking out to sea.

We walked a bit more around and finally boarded the ferry to Helsinki. In a roundabout way home, we passed an area dedicated to the washing of carpets in the sea.

This is notable mostly because it brings up another Moomin moment—this time the ever-fretful Fillyjonk dragging her carpets to the shore for their regular cleaning. For her, it is the beginning of a day of doilies, tea, and awkward polite conversation, that would soon turn to purposeful, destructive storms and waterspouts that leave her homeless and happy in the most un-Fillyjonkish manner. This is not unlike how I felt after the white stone day.

ps. Read Tales from Moominvalley, and you’ll understand all these references!

pps. The next day I met Sirke again before leaving on the Viking cruise to Stockholm, and then on to Rättvik. In the central park in Helsinki, she showed me this statue, created by Tove Jansson's father, Viktor, who often used his family as models.

Helsinki, Friday, 28 August 2009

2009-09-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

A café, the University of Helsinki, and beyond

This morning I had an appointment to meet one of those rare creatures: a fellow dedicated scholar of nonsense. When I started this trip, I didn’t realize just how many of us there were (look back through the blog in astonishment at our forces, growing daily in number!), and even though our collective mass would not fill the head of a pin, there is some comfort knowing that we are not alone tilting against the windgills (from which the obscure amphibious plum pudding flea breathes, alternately). About a block from my university accommodation at the coffee shop Entré, I met Sakari Katajamäki, an editor at the Finnish Literature Society and, as I was to find out, not only an expert in nonsense literature, but also a musician, teaching musicians how to read literature (of all the absurd things). If he had only had a mysterious mustache, I would have embraced him like a brother, but as things stood, I shook his hand warmly as we recited the secret Nonsense Semi-Fictitious Felicitations, known to only those who detract this dark art. Sakari has published several articles on nonsense, including something in the brand new Nonsense and Other Senses: Regulated Absurdity in Literature, a volume resulting from a nonsense conference at the University of Warwick in 2006 which, somehow, Kevin and I missed, dagnabbit. I haven’t been able to read the volume yet, but it is very international-minded and sure to be a significant addition to nonsense scholarship. Sakari has worked extensively on Lauri Viita and other figures, and we had a fantastic nonsense conversation for a couple of hours, until he had to go to another appointment. He has offered his continued services for the Anthology, for which he shall find, forever henceforwardly, a hallowed place in the Nostalgic Nether Regions of Nonsense Numenescence.

After the meeting with Sakari, I met up again with Kaisu Rättyä, and after lunch, we went to a different library, one that specializes in books only from Scandinavian countries, where we looked at some more possible material. Kaisu knows Finnish children’s literature inside and out, after having directed the Finnish Institute for Children’s Literature in Tampere for many years, and she was able over these two days to go deep into the many nonsense possibilities of Finland. She also was kind enough to show me around the city a little and make me feel at home in Helsinki. From Scotland to Canada to Finland ten years later, and here we are.

Helsinki, Thursday, 27 August 2009

2009-09-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

University of Helsinki lecture

Sadly, I parted company with Björn in Malmö and flew from Copenhagen to Helsinki, Finland. For many years I had been anticipating a visit to Finland, whether because of my deep connection to Tove Jansson from childhood (up to the present, teaching her in my Multicultural Children’s Lit. class at Berklee), the Finnish friends I met in 1999 at ChLA/IRSCL in Calgary (whom I would meet again, on this trip), or my newest Finnish friend, Mika Pohjola the talented musician and composer of Moomin music who has been kind enough to visit my classes in recent years. The lecture at the University of Helsinki was facilitated by Liisa Taino, the head of the department, but was initially set up by Sirke Happonen, with the help of Kaisu Rättyä, the latter two, as I mentioned, I met in 1999. We bonded back then when we all decided that, rather than go shopping during our brief outing in Banff, we would go for a swim in a glacial lake (little did I know at the time the fanatical swimming proclivities of the Swedes and Finns). The fateful party included Sirke, Kaisu, Björn, Sumanyu, and myself. We all got into a cab and asked to be taken to a lake, but the driver thought us crazy—he asked where our bathing suits were, our towels. We had nothing, and he just shook his head, dropped us off, and agreed to come back in a little while to return us to the city. After I averted an international incident by stopping my Scandinavian friends from striping down to nothing, we took a dip in our skivvies. The lake was cold. Cold. COLD. We survived, however, and the cab returned, but not empty. Our driver had gone to his home and loaded the cab with towels for us! Needless to say, we were bowled over by his kindness…

Little did I know that ten years later I’d have further professional (not to mention ablutionary) dealings with these fine Scandinavians. And so I found myself in Helsinki, with old friends, giving a lecture to a group of enthusiastic scholars who received me graciously. Afterwards, I was treated to a tea, where we proceeded to fill ourselves with Finnish treats and continued discussions of nonsense. One particular treat was the attendance of Jyri Komulainen, a lecturer in religion and an expert on Indian spirituality. Considering that a fair part of my talk deals with the spiritual aspect of nonsense in India, his input was most welcome. After tea, I went to a library with Kaisu and a new nonsense contact, Marja Suojala, who was also most helpful. We went through many books, talked even more about definitions and boundaries of the Anthology, and made selections and photocopies. Finland, of course, is full of nonsense, and some of the figures who might make it into the book are Kirsi Kunnas, Ilpo Tiihonen, Jukka Itkonen, Laura Ruohonen, Reetta Niemelä, and Mari Mörö. After so much of muchness, I went back to my university accommodations, noting the day to be a jab with a pointed stick in the eye of Sense!

Malmö, Sweden. 21 - 27 August, 2009

2009-09-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

I am writing one blog entry for my time spent in Malmö, Sweden, wherein I will combine a few things of note. There is little nonsense here, so if you are only here for the nonsense thrills, you might skip onward to Helsinki. Malmö had been my base of operations, of sorts, for around ten days. Björn was kind enough to set me up in the residence of the World Maritime University, an institution that, as you might imagine, trains people from around the world in maritime skills, from the business of international waters to the captaining of vessels. The students are all older, having worked in the maritime field in some capacity for quite a while. Governments from around the world send their most promising representatives, so the student body is by its nature entirely international and diverse. I chatted a bit with some of the boys on my hall, one from China and one from Bangladesh (whom I was able to greet in Bengali, to his amazement!), though I imagine our vastly different world made small talk a little strained.

During my time in Malmö, I was able to relax a little and become a resident, in a minimal way, having to shop and cook for myself, which, frankly was a relief after so much rich restaurant food. Of course, it just so happened that while I was there, the Malmö festival was happening, a huge street fair that went on night after night, and a place that I often went to sample some of the foods and bands. The food tended to be middling at best, but far better than the Swedish rap groups that populated one of the stages. Holy moly. I wish I had a film clip of some of those… I found the following food stall a cultural curiosity: it claimed to be a New Orleans-style foodery, and yet, as you can see from the extensive menu of burgerburgersteak&cheese, it was highly suspect.

Americans (non-natives, that is) may not have a culture that goes back thousands of years, but to shortchange one of our most culturally and culinarily interesting areas, New Orleans, makes me want to howl into my gumbo while gnashing my teeth against a shrimp po-boy, and wring my hands inside some crawfish etouffe.

Through the kindness of Carmen Browne, the friendly residence manager, I was able to borrow a bike and ride hitherwards and thitherdorf across the city and back. It was great to be back on a bike after so long, and even though my tires were mostly flat and I had those crazy backward-pedal brakes, I managed well enough. Here, I rode out to the most remote, rockiest, and skinniest strip of boulders I could find, on which there was a mini-lighthouse, a view of two nudities: the local nudist beach and the “Turning Torso,” a new architectural wonder in central Malmö.

In the water nearby, I found one of the most nonsensical of all flora, I mean fauna, I mean living goop, I mean seaslubberdegullion--the jellyfish. These had some exciting rings of colors...

I also found some interesting graffiti, and the culprits caught in the act:

One of the highlights of my time in Malmö was an excursion to Genarp, to visit Björn and his family. We had a lovely tea, and then Björn and I went for a walk through the Skäne countryside, looking for mushrooms along the way and, towards the end, taking a quick dip in a lake. Back at the house, I was treated to a rare and infamous tradition—that of eating surströmming, or sour herring. Surströmming is a kind of fermented herring that is so potently odiferous that it is rarely eaten indoors, and, so the urban legends go, has been the source of some stubborn Swedes being thrown out of their residences abroad. It is so powerful that the bacteria in the can are supposed to keep the “ripening” process going so that the can bulges with delectable rot (to my mother, who always warned me about bulging cans, you can think of this one as a kind of friendly Swedish botulism). Considering that it is so rank, its odor so persistently stealthy, and the bulging can's tendency to spurt when punctured like a spitting putrescent cobra, one should always open the can only when it is fully submerged in a bucket of water. Witness the film:

I can honestly say that it is the foulest-smelling food product I have ever whiffed (and yes, that includes Marmite), and yet (those who know me will not be surprised) I found it to have a certain charm. We ate it in a “wrap,” made of tunnbrod (a thin, quilted sort of bread), with onions, potatoes, and butter. We had to finish it all because the Sundmarks would not allow leftovers into their house. I gladly obliged and left Genarp resembling a can of surströmming: bulging, reeking, and happy. Thanks to the whole family for the day and the experience.

Anachronous Update 2: Rättvik to Växjö. Sept. 9-11

2009-09-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

Please excuse this interruption in the space-time continuum, but I wanted to update you on the most recent happenings. As you probably know, I have been firmly planted in Rättvik, Sweden, for the last week, where I've been churning out blog, catching up on work from our research, writing some nonsense, and exploring the hills around here. Something fortunate has just come up that will take me away from here briefly: in my attempt to visit the most unpronounceable locations in Sweden, I next shall visit Växjö. Astrid Surmatz was kind enough to invite me to speak at the University of Växjö, at a CHILLL seminar, a monthly gathering on childhood research in literature, language and learning (the acronym is indeed a little suspect). I'll be staying at the local castle and will blog it all to you soon... On Friday, I return again to my quiet Rättvik idyll.

Lund, Sweden; Friday, 21 August, 2009.

2009-09-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

Now I am able to relate a Series of Most Fortunate Events. You have heard tell of the mythical Nose Museum; you have heard of Secret and Not-So-Secret Nonsense Societies; you have heard of delinquent doctoral dissertations; you have heard of Shakespeare’s freewheeling Falstaff; you have heard of the ascetic and hirsute Indian holy man; you have heard of fiddle-de-dee, the ridicule of the French, and plaster of Paris… Well, you know what I herd?
Sheep.
Little could I have imagined that all of these components might combine together in my tour of the University of Lund, in Sweden, conducted by the esteemed Frederick Tersmeden, historian, archivist at the University, and ex-curator of the Student Museum and Archive. Björn and I met Frederick in the heart of the University grounds, where I had probably already trod upon one of the main sites I was about to see. We were here to take something perhaps never asked for nor given at the University, something banned by student guides, anathema to prospective parents, and only dreamt of in your philosophy—that is, a tour of the University’s nonsense.

We began with a survey of some of the more significant sculptures that had been erected in the last hundred years at the University by a special Society, a group dedicated to hokum and hobgoblinry, called Uarda Akademien. We walked the cobbled path, beneath aged trees, to a crossroads of sorts and stood in the center.

There, Frederick told me, on 29 April, 1984 a historic event took place. On this very spot, a massive tent had been erected, a crowd gathered, and a Society put on its very best, to introduce to Lund and the World its latest addition to the history of modern sculpture. Beneath the tent, a curtained area was revealed, housing the sacred site. When the curtains were drawn, there stood a smaller structure of opaque muslin, within which another set of shades guarded the secret sculpture. Having pulled these back, a smaller draped lattice revealed itself, under which stood, the last covered frame finally having been removed, nothing. Nothing stood, but there, at the center of the area previously curtained and muslined, shaded and draped and covered, a small plaque had replaced one of the cobbles in the walk.

It reads, “Here stands a sculpture of nothing.” I can’t say what the reaction of the crowd might have been, but such an ontological sculptural and spatial conundrum could evoke no less than awe. The value of this sculpture was such that, three years later, “nothing” was stolen, and the plaque above the original marks this sad event.

Since we had probed the concepts of space and being, the next stop on our nonsense tour was at a marker of time. It seems that, long ago before the invention of the digital watch, students had no independent way of knowing when to be at their classes on time. They had to listen to the clock tower chime the hour, after which they would have 15 minutes to get to class. Thus, a 10:00 class was actually a 10:15 class, an 11:00 class was not an 11:00 class but at 11:15, etc.. Even after we were ushered into the Age of Civilization with the Digital Watch, the tradition at the University of shifting time 15 minutes into the future continued, to the pleasure of snooze-slapping sluggards everywhere. In order to note this distinctive feature, and to mark exact spot where it must be true in a celestial, astrological sense, members of the Society erected a meridian marker one hour and fifteen minutes in advance of Greenwich Mean Time.

Note bene: to all those at Berklee College of Music, this should sound familiar, for we have been doing such gymnastics of time for many years… that is, until just this semester, when such time-warping turpitude has been discontinued. Berklee, of course, having been founded considerably after the Age of the Digital Watch, has had nothing to blame except that, man, we’re, like, musicians.

Our next stop involved a particularly Swedish concept: that of the lagom. In Swedish, a lagom is the exact right amount, whatever that amount might be in the mind of the speaker. One could have a lagom of sauz on one’s meatball (if one delights in sauz), or a lagom of humor at a ferret’s last rights; whatever the case, it is the “right amount.” Members of the Society decided in 1992 that they should settle the matter of how much, exactly, a lagom was, and the following sculpture demonstrates their intensive research and striking technical precision. Witness the area described by the half circle: ONE (1) carefully calibrated lagom (lgm). Now the world knows.

There is one more monument to describe, but it will have to wait until the proper context has been established. On then, to the thing I had been waiting for ever since Björn had described it to me: a visit to the Nose Museum. Yes, the Nasotek, an offshoot of the Esteemed Society, is a museum dedicated to that most upright member of our physiognomy, the nose. Hanging in its hallowed hall are the plaster likenesses of countless noses of various shapes and sizes, belonging to some of the most esteemed students, faculty, and starlets in Sweden. I offer my own nose for consideration:

And a rare honor: a nose captured with its nose. Here is Frederick, posing proudly with his nose.

Click on the photo below for a Picasa gallery of Nasotek shots. Notice that mirrors are set up in each nose box so that one may view the profile.

Nasotek 8/21/09

While the nose likenesses are the centerpiece and pride of the institution, there is much, much more going on. The Nasotek is a full-fledged academic institution, one that publishes a scholarly peer-reviewed journal. It has a Nasologiska fakultenten (Nosology faculty) that, naturally, awards the Doctor of Nosology. Frederick was most generous in gifting me a couple of the journals and two dissertations, one on the nose in heraldry, the other, the nose in music. This latter I shall take back to Berklee College of Music in Boston, put it in a jar with a cottonball soaked in ethyl acetate, laminate in a permanent position of posthumous postulatory perfection a la von Hagens’ “Body Worlds,” and enshrine next to the Stan Getz saxophone in the Berklee library.

The last feature of the Nasotek I shall describe is the final sculpture on the tour, found in the Nasotek itself. Now that you understand the depth of Nasologiska at Lund University, there is one more piece of the context necessary. The following “official” sculpture of the university lies outside in the leafy campus. It is a large block of stone, out of which a man struggles to emerge.

I was told that it might mean some kind of Struggle to escape calcifying Ignorance, or some such snobberdoodle. The Esteemed members of the Nasotek took it upon themselves not only to honor the original, but to honor, above all else, the Nose. In the following indoor (and scaled down) sculpture, you will notice that the block of stone is identical to the sculpture outside.

On the front side, we can see, not Man struggling to break through Ignorance, but the Nose. And only the Nose. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Because, it seems, that the man here has not quite made it as far through the stone as in the original, a certain fundamental part of him remains, revealed on the back side of the block.

I can only applaud the Nasotek for such an accomplishment, but the credit goes not only to them (and here, oh American University Administrations, take note!): I learned from Frederick that the importance of levity and humor within learning has actually been written into the mission of the University—that these statues are all sanctioned, nay, encouraged, that these and other nonsensical societies are a part of the institutional warp and weft, according to the University’s educational philosophy. Amazing.

The last leg of this tour took us to the Museum of Student Life, which had at one time been curated by Frederick. It is a storehouse of everything non-academic related to student life—the gags and photos, dramatic production scripts, notable clothing, props, and other ephemera, all pieces that probably would have been lost long ago if not for the museum. We saw various curiosities, including medals (which, in a way, mock the frequent bestowing of medals in Swedish culture), jerseys, statues, artwork, and other pieces, many of which came about because of the big festival/carnival that occurs every four years, full of pranks and carnivalesque nonsense. Of particular interest to us, however, was the material stored here authored by Axel Wallengren, otherwise known by his pseudonym, Falstaff, Fakir (the latter word being his “title”), one of the grandfathers of Swedish nonsense, and a Lund University student in the late nineteenth century. Frederick brought out a dusty box, and Björn and I had the privilege of looking through the original documents by the young nonsense artist. One notable document was titled “Lund Just Nu!” and is a parody of the Paris World’s Fair pamphlet. It has much nonsense in it, and Frederick used it as an example of how nonsense, even parodic nonsense, has a life well beyond parody (even though, it may be argued, all nonsense has some parodic tendencies). It is still funny today, even if we are not familiar with the original, parodied text about Paris—a sure sign of nonsense. Of course, Falstaff, Fakir’s text in some ways follows the model closely and has many inside jokes, but the humor and literary value hold because the parody goes beyond parody to nonsense.

Frederick agreed to read a particularly nonsensical passage from one of Falstaff, Fakir’s books, How to be a Scholar. In the first film, Frederick reads a parody of a schoolbook example of German phrases to be translated. You don’t need to know German to hear some of the nonsense and humor, but German speakers will find this especially good. The second film has the Swedish translation—which is completely nonsensical. (Note: If you look closely at these films, you should see in the upper right hand corner, a small statue that looks suspiciously like Frederick himself.)

Frederick introduced some other Lund University nonsensites, with their own pamphlets and ephemera, until we were up to our kippers in nonsense, but eventually we had to leave, took lunch at a beautiful old hotel nearby, famous for being a University institution, and took our leave back to Malmö. It’s hard to describe what an extraordinary tour this was, but I hope the length, at least, of this entry, begins to do so!

I was talking at a later point to a Finnish fellow, and when I mentioned Swedish nonsense he looked askance, but when I added some details about the University of Lund, he retreated, saying, “Oh, well of course in Lund such things may be so…”

Many thanks to Frederick (with whom, indeed, I have an affinity), and to Björn for setting this up.

Copenhagen, Denmark. 20 August, 2009

2009-09-05T05:38:00.000-07:00

Björn and I took the quick train from Malmö to Copenhagen, going over the long bridge that now spans the two areas that used to be under one Danish rule. We switched trains and went further out to the home of the Danish Centre for Children’s Literature, which is connected to The Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus. After some scrabbling to find the right building (for it had been some time since Björn had been here), we were greeted by Nina Christensen, the Director, and by Anna Skyggebjerg, an expert on Danish nonsense and the fantastic, among other topics. Unfortunately, Line Beck Rasmussen, a PhD student who has also specialized in nonsense literature, was inconvenienced by the fact that she was about to burst with baby (and has since had a boy, congrats with hats!). The Danish Centre is an organization that wears many hats in terms of children’s literature—from running a library, to encouraging serious scholarship, to holding creative writing and author workshops. Our small party retired to a conference room, where I went through the goals of the Anthology, but it was a comfortable, casual atmosphere. I also learned that a student-run nonsense conference had taken place here in 2001, but I couldn’t divine much more about it. I suspect that Nina was reluctant to say more since, so I hear, all its participants have become arterial actuaries and, aside from a one-act, off-Broadway debut, have not been heard from since. After much conversation, but not even getting to my talk on Indian and otherly nonsense, we decided to break for lunch, which we had in the cafeteria nearby. When we returned, I launched into my talk on various kinds of nonsense, and Björn also added significantly in terms of Swedish material. Much conversation followed, and I was able to have both of them recite some folk rhymes. Nina actually read a Halfdan Rasmussen piece, which for copyright reasons I can’t yet post here, but Anna’s pieces are all below. The first one, which she was careful to point out as very, and originally, Danish, is “Ene mene,” from the collection of nursery rhymes, Nikke Nikke Nambo. One might, if one were feeling one's goats, compare this with the piece that Wim Tigges recited in Dutch, in Leiden. The next two are from the same book, both nursery rhymes. The first is “Tju bong,” the next, “Oppe pa altern,” I believe, in two different versions.

We went back to the library area, where we made some copies of texts and discussed what would happen next. Both Nina and Anna were amazingly generous in giving their time during this session, but also for offering to help with Danish material as we progress in our work for the Anthology. They also gave me a few other nonsensical names to follow up on.

Björn and I left and visited an exhibition of artfully composed pedagogical posters, that is, posters that had been made for and used in schools, going back many years. It was an interesting study of what was studied and how, and a window into the creation of Danish (and, partly, other Scandinavian) identity. Here is Björn, proudly displaying a poster he had in his room as a child.

We then began yet another walking tour, starting with a large fortress on the northeast side of town, near the statue of the Little Mermaid, diminutive and damp, by the sea. We walked south, around the coast and took in many of the sights of the town. In the Black Diamond, the impressive new wing of the national library, Björn caught this rare and candid shot of me, emerging from the bathroom, and, from the bathroom balcony, as I am wont to do, breaking into a rousing rendition of “Evita.”

Later, I caught this photo of Björn, with a björn (figure it out yet?).

Back in the center of town, we had a quick bite and a beer, and went back to Malmö, aloft on the wings of Danish nonsense.

18 August, Stockholm, Sweden

2009-09-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

18 August, Stockholm

This is a quick entry to give a few details of Stockholm. Björn and I stopped for tea in this square in the old town section. This part of the city began in the thirteenth century, and it reminded me of sections of the Oxford warren. In this particular square (its diminutive size shows how old it is), at one infamous event of power-grabbing, many nobles were gathered and summarily slaughtered. In the corner of one of these buildings, you might see (if you had your microscope and me there to guide your view) an imbedded cannonball supposedly left from this event.

I present to you, next, my Great Aunt Ophelia and Uncle Rikkitikkitembo, standing by the Swedish Guard. I’ve been keeping them in a small brown pouch for most of this trip, but I thought they would particularly like to have their photos with the brave and honest Guard. It is true, by the way, what you have no doubt heard about the Swedish Guard: as an initiation rite, they are impaled upon a golden-tipped Swedish meatball spit, which they leave imbedded, poking through their caps, to show their piercing and pastoral powers of patriotism. See the photographs for clear evidence, as well as Great Aunt and Uncle looking quite well.

Lastly, a footnote to a trip Björn and I made to the Vasamuseet, the museum that houses the remarkably restored and mostly intact flagship Vasa, which, in 1628, sank soon after it was launched.

It is an awesome sight. Much carved decorative detail remains, as well, including this wonderful moment of cheek:

Here, you see carved and captive within the prison bars of the ship, the striking figure of the Polish king, enemy of the North, with a look a defeat in his eyes--but maintaining a remarkably fresh and defiant mustache. And thus a seventeenth century Polish king and his seventeenth century Polish mustache achieve a dubious kind of immortality.

Stockholm, Sweden. Monday, 17 August, 2009

2009-09-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

Stockholm, Sweden
Monday, 17 August, 2009

I said goodbye to Western Europe (having already said goodbye to Eastern Europe from Poland) and hopped a flight to Stockholm, where I met up with Björn Sundmark, our fellow nonsense panelist in Frankfurt, the only man who manages to associate nonsense and Scandinavian furniture design, and overall indispensable nonsense nugget. Björn has been critical in setting up the various lectures and meetings in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Lund, and Malmö, and has been a stellar host. I tip my hats, my spats, and my cousin’s catarrhal cats (gingerly) in his general direction—but more on all those places to come! Stockholm, then. City of levels, of cliffs and waterways, islands and bridges. After meeting up with Björn in our hotel, we headed to the talk, which was held at the Swedish Institute of Children’s Literature. Something like the Norwegian Children’s Literature Institute in Oslo, this is the main organization in the country for such study. The academic study of children’s literature is still somewhat in its early stages in Europe (though it varies by country), and organizations like this one go a long way towards creating awareness of the field, facilities and institutions that encourage it, and scholarship worthy of the topic’s importance.

We settled into the comfy chairs in a scene that, to our delight, looked a little like a talk show. The crowd was large (especially considering many people were still on the Sacred Scandinavian Holiday), and we launched into it, after having been introduced by Jan Hansson, the Director of the Institute. At the last minute Björn had had to retool his talk to be in Swedish, which meant that he mostly had to adlib from his paper that was written in English. He did a marvelous job, but when my turn came to speak, it did not feel quite right simply to read my paper after such an easy-going, informative talk (or what seemed so, since my Swedish is limited to “tak” (thank you) and “hej” (hello)). And so, I also tried to be “off book” as much as possible, and I think with some success. This kind of more casual presentation has always been my ideal, though I’ve never had the nerve to do it for real. I also included in the presentation, for the first time, nonsensical throatsinging—a piece which I learned from Alash, the stellar Tuvan musical group, and their manager Sean Quirk, in particular. When I heard the distant Swedish mountains reverberate (and one distinctly hiccupped), I decided this was a feature that I should keep. We had some excellent discussion afterwards, and at the very end, we were presented with tokens of appreciation: not gargleberry, chuckleberry, or even Chuck Barry, but rather, cloudberry jam (which sustained me mightily in the days following in Malmö). I suppose one can’t punch every hanging chad.

A select group of nonsense numina then headed to Wasa, a restaurant nearby, wherein there was a room, with plush chairs, bookcases, and a sepia nicotine patina, devoted entirely to smoking, though this was not so strange. What was strange was that one could neither eat there, nor, according to the explicit sign pointed out to me by Sonja, was one allowed to read any of the old books stacked neatly therein. This was indeed a restaurant I could believe in. Our group included: myself and Björn, Sonja and Conny Svensson, Christina Björk, and Davide Finco. If you have heard of any of these people it is with good reason: they are experts in what they do, whether it is scholarship or writing children’s literature.

After dinner, Björn and I were still full of adrenaline, and so we took a long, long walking tour of Stockholm by night. After many miles (for Björn can compete with Kevin any day in walking speed), we stopped off in the perfect pub (what more holy and appropriate event for such nonsense monks as we?) and toasted the successful day.

Amsterdam, Sunday 16 August, 2009, Meeting with Astrid Surmatz, Part 2

2009-09-02T09:33:00.001-07:00

Amsterdam
Sunday 16 August, 2009
Meeting with Astrid Surmatz, Part 2

Kevin will be writing about our first meeting with Astrid Surmatz, but I’ll take some time here to talk about the second meeting, two days later. In order to explain, I must begin even further back, to the meeting we had with Wim Tigges. During that meeting, we had mentioned Doctorandus P (Drs. P), a well-known singer-songwriter who often performed silly and absurd songs. Wim thought that perhaps some of the music, or parts thereof, might fit our definition. He also was not sure whether Drs. P was still alive, because if he were, he would be quite old. We tried to find some notice of his death on the Web but could not. Kevin and I tucked all this away and were looking forward to hitting a record shop to inquire. Meanwhile, the nonsense gods (T Wang dillo dee*) continued to shine resplendent rays of runcible nonsense on our pates: it seemed that, this very Sunday, the famous and most-certainly-not-dead Drs. P would be appearing at a concert in his honor (he being 90 and too old to perform now) about two miles from the hotel! Astrid thought we might make a day of it and so invited me to her house for lunch, after which we would go to the concert. I could ask for no better plan, and walked about 20 minutes to Vondelpark, where I took the tram out to their house (alone now, because Kevin had left the day before!). At the end of the line, I found my way to their place, a lovely house filled, tip to turnspit, with books. I met her husband, Jasper van Merwijk, and of course her children, Ingrid and Ebba, whom we had met the previous meeting. We had a small feast in their back garden, as we talked more nonsense. Jasper and Astrid brought down books from their collection that they thought might be suitable, and we discussed. As Jasper is a musician, I talked to him quite a lot about the musical possibilities of nonsense, whether there can be a musical form of it (music, that is, without lyrics), and what form it might take. This is a puzzle that I have struggled with ever since having talks with Mark Sylvester, the illustrious and illusty composer for NiX, Kendra Fanconi’s play of snow and ice. As the Dramaturkey (or dramaturge, to those sensenobs out there) of that show, it was up to me to discreetly inject nonsense, which I did through various means, but in terms of the music, we went round and round without figuring out what it might sound like. It couldn’t be “experimental,” i.e., John Cage-ish, or sound poetry, or mere silliness, or something too dischordant… it has to be beautiful, and yet off-putting, paradoxical, absurd, yet melodic. That’s not asking too much, is it? I still have faith that it lies out there, waiting in the wings of Walhalla to be discovered…
Well, back to my lunch, during which time Ingrid and Ebba did some more performances, two of which you can see below:

This piece, which I believe is called “Der Trichter” or “The Funnel” (though I’m not sure!) is by Christian Morgenstern (of this I am sure). The second film is Ingrid doing it alone, and faster!

I also recorded the children doing a Pippi Longstocking song (from the ur-Pippi, the recently published manuscript that includes nonsense that the publishers and translators were not bold enough to include) and an Ernst Jandl piece, both of which I’ll have to get permission to post.

I left their house happy and stuffed with various and sundry, as we headed to the park on the tram. The concert was held on a stage surrounded by two small sets of stadium seating. We just barely found room to sit as the masses poured in. It seemed that not only Drs. P would be performing but some other group, perhaps even more popular with the young set. As I sat with Astrid, we wondered if Drs. P would really show up, and when the show started without his appearance, we began to be consigned to a P-less show.

A few minutes later, in the middle of a song, the crowed rose and everyone cheered as the Great Man, pile of white hair bouncing in the breeze, shuffled into the stands, shaking hands and signing autographs. Make sure to click on this photo to enlarge. He is in the front of the stands in the middle (with white hair)

In a mere two days, he had gone from dead to dead-ahead of me, in the other set of stands, and it was a great moment. It is not often that we are able to see in the flesh some of the nonsense figures (as I have been able to do a few times in India, thankfully, with Vinda Karandikar and Mangesh Padgavkar, in particular). Even though most of the songs were in Dutch, I could tell from the one song that they did in English that we might very well find some material here. Jasper had been kind enough to give me some Drs. P CDs, so I shall make an effort to include something in the anthology, and possibly have the music in the book’s website. After the show, we squeezed our way through the mob and went back to the café in the center of Vondelpark, where the children went off to play again as Astrid, Jasper, and I continued to have in-depth conversations about nonsense—a great pleasure. As the park was closing, I said good-bye, with many thanks for being such kind hosts, and walked back home the long way around. I said my nonsense vespers, T Wang dillo dee, and laid down my weary noodle.

*This, according to John Keats, is the “amen” of nonsense.

Anachronous Update: Malmö to Helsinki to Stockholm to Rättvik

2009-08-26T09:27:00.001-07:00

Hello, all in the Nonsensosphere! I write to you from the future and the present. If your head is still in the timeframe of the blog, then I am a time-traveller, come back to klop kopf am vant (ask your Yiddish grandmother). If you head is in the timeframe of this current spaceship earth (as of now. I mean, now, as of now. Now. Oh, bugger.), then I shake your hand warmly (while passing you a surreptitious marble) and proceed:

I'm sorry to interrupt the flow, but I've just made my final plans for this leg of the nonsense research adventure. I'm in Malmö, Sweden presently (that is, August 26th, after having given lectures in Stockholm and Copenhagen--blogs to come!), headed for Helsinki tomorrow, where I will give a lecture at the University of Helsinki (many thanks, Sirke, Liisa, and Kaisu). I'll be in Helsinki until Sunday, when I hop on the Viking Cruise line for Stockholm. Monday morning I arrive and get on a train to Rättvik, Sweden, where I have rented a cottage for a month. Rättvik, I hear, is a lovely, distinctly Swedish town, on the shore of Lake Siljan and surrounded by forests full of bears (I'm hungry already). I'll be here on a writing retreat of sorts; many nonsensical projects are afoot, and so I shall lend ahand.

Stay tuned for Kevin's updates from the remainder of his time in Europe and my posts to catch us up to the present...

Michael Out

14 August, Leiden, The Netherlands

2009-08-25T13:27:00.001-07:00

Leiden
Friday, 14 August, 2009, Heyman at the helm

Today was a hallmark for us, as we were to meet with one of the icons of nonsense scholarship, Wim Tigges, now an emeritus professor at Leiden University. In order to explain the significance of this meeting, let me take you back into the trysts of mime, to 1993, when I was a wee lad snibbling my way through Oxford’s M.Phil program in English Romantics, of all things (by the way, Keats was a fine writer of nonsense, for those who might look askance at the Romantics. He invented the “amen” to nonsense: “T wang dillo dee”). During my readings of Locke, Hume, Burke, Wordsworth, Godwin, and Godknows what else, I somehow came across the name of Edward Lear and the phenomenon of literary nonsense. I had read Lear as a child, but I never imagined that one might study nonsense, that one might twists one’s Romantic M.Phil dissertation to write about it, or that one might actually get a doctorate in nonsense. Such a perilous course was unfathomable, unmentionable. I tucked such ideas into a corner of my noodle and looked to the immediate task: investigate the possibility of academic study of nonsense. Of course, I thought such an endeavor was unique: that I would be the trailblazer, bushwhacking my way with a sharpened flamingo through the forests of rhetorical rhubarb, to find the Golden Nonsense Nubbin. With fissures of grandeur and trailing clods of glory, I made my way to the Bodleian Library, for to make my Mark upon the World of Scholarship, plopped myself down in front of the three (or was it four?) different catalogues (oh the wonders of the Bod!), and promptly found that, wonder of wonders, I would not be the first. In fact, nonsense scholarship had started in the nineteenth century, and slowly gained ground and followers through the twentieth. While the field was not aswim in scholarship, as so many others were, it was still an established Topic. No mater, I thought, as I wiped off the figurative academic shaving-cream-pie-to-the-face, and promptly went on with the unmentionable course I mentioned above. My first real look at scholarship, then, came in the form of Wim Tigges’ seminal book An Anatomy of Nonsense, which defines the genre so sharply and so cogently, that I fell in love with it and decided to devote myself to it. That was sixteen years ago, and as you all know, I am as ever on the same swath of swag. I had limped my way into Romantics because, in the application process to Oxford I was forced to pick a time period, but now I had found my calling, an area of study that was both rigorous, hilarious, and, at least it seemed to me, two fingers up the snout of Academia. I went on to read many books of nonsense theory and criticism, but I always came back to Tigges, to his careful study that is indeed an anatomy, a careful dissection of a genre that desperately needed it, and an argument for its importance in literature, and indeed, life. You could say that I was a strict Tiggesian for some time, and while I’ve backed off somewhat from his hardline (something he, himself has also done, by the way), I still consider myself nestled against his theoretical bosom.

So! Enough background! Kevin and I found ourselves on our way to meet Wim Tigges, at his office in Leiden, a university town not too far outside Amsterdam. We took the train out there, had a quick breakfast, and proceeded to his office. We thought that he might be 9 feet tall, 90 pounds, and have 9-foot wild hair blowing in every 9th breeze, but he in fact turned out to be, well, quite like us: a fellow nonsense noodle. He graciously brought tea, sat down, and proceeded to tell us much about Dutch nonsense and to show us the many Dutch anthologies of nonsense.

I don’t think that in all our travels we have seen such a keen awareness of nonsense as here in The Netherlands. Poland, the Czech Republic, Norway, these and other countries did indeed have rich traditions, and keen awareness, yet to have so many anthologies, going back to the 1950s, shows an exceptional understanding and appreciation of the genre.

After much discussion, we went to the university canteen for lunch and then on a short tour of the town, with Wim as our guide. It is a city of canals, bridges, cobbles, and bikes all running through the narrow lanes of the old town.

We climbed the earthen mount and took in the cityscape, then hit some of the bookstores, where I bagged a copy of his very own translation of Edward Lear, whose title needs no translation: Babbels en crabbels van Edward Lear.

We went back to his office, where we had more tea and nonsense discussion on such topics such as the nature of Dutch nonsense and the potential aesthetic and political motivation behind it. He was incredibly generous not only in his offer to help us in various ways with the anthology, but also in giving us multiple copies of both of his nonsense books (the other being Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, an excellent collection of scholarly essays). These books are extremely hard to come by, and we will be distributing them to nonsense scholars around the world hungry for his work.

Lastly, as if he had not done enough for us already, we asked him if he might record some Dutch nursery rhymes. He was only too happy to do so. The first is a choosing rhyme and the second a song that is almost entirely Dutch gibberish—yet a piece that almost all Dutch people grow up knowing.

We left his office in a state of giddiness, bags full of books and photocopies of nonsense texts, had a celebratory beer by a canal (where we were not the only people in such a jubilant mood apparently),

and we made our way back to Amsterdam. As Lewis Carroll would say, it was a white stone day.

PS. I could tell you how to pronounce his name, but I would have to kill you. Hint: you'll find the answer somewhere in this blog entry.

11 August, Frankfurt, IRSCL Congress, Part 2

2009-08-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

11 August, 2009
Frankfurt, IRSCL Congress
Part 2, Heyman, DDS

Kevin will be giving you the full details of our spectacular international nonsense panel at the IRSCL congress (click here for a gallery), so I will delight you with a few Frankfurt fits. First on our tour of fits is a tour I was not able to take. I had signed up for the Struwwelpeter Tour of Frankfurt, it being a Heinrich Hoffmann anniversary, but there were apparently not enough cool people at the Congress to fill up the trip, which was canceled. Here is a little taste of Our Hero, in old and some new incarnations.

Over the years, Hoffmann has sometimes been mentioned in the same breath with nonsense and Edward Lear in particular, but, even though his work and Lear’s may both exhibit an impatience with the typical didactic, preachy, and boring eighteenth century children’s books, Hoffmann is not writing nonsense. There are many ways to skin an evangelical, apparently.

The next character we encountered was lurking about the Caricature Museum. He thought he might blend into the shadows with his trench coat, but luckily we had set up a moose hunter's blind nearby, from which we were able to spring out, shine the spotlight on him, and snap these shots.

Kevin and I had wanted to call a special nonsense meeting while in Frankfurt, but we had trouble finding a suitable venue. If we had only known, we could have met here, a stone’s throw away from our hotel (click to enlarge).

Getting to Frankfurt the hard way... 7 August, 2009

2009-08-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

Oslo – The Train Incident
Friday 7 August, 2009
Heyman

The above view of the city of Oslo was something we saw one too many times, as you shall see. Our last day in Oslo meant little more than going to the train station, catching the train to the airport, and sloping off towards Frankfurt for the IRSCL conference. But such simplicity often belies the prevalence of gremlins in the grill, of goblins in the upholstery, and gnomes in the gnapestry. We took the bus down to the center of town, where we figured we had just enough time to split up, go to the book stores, and look for some folk nonsense. After a quick search, we came up with nothing and headed to the rail station. At the ticket counter, I asked the young lady about the slow train to the airport, specifically saying I did not want the express (and priced double) airport express. She helpfully told us to take the train Lillehammer and gave us the track number and time. At the track, we watched as several express trains went off to the airport, but we were saving some money and waited patiently on the same platform, where the slow train (only about 10 minutes slower, really) would arrive. It did, and we were soon speeding off in Norwegian rail efficiency, past the seaside on the south side of Oslo, through the docks and by the neat, black-tiled roof houses. I sat looking out the window, in a vague haze, while Kevin began to sweat. He mentioned that he didn’t remember this scenery when we came in on the train, but then we figured that there might be multiple routes that went by the airport. We sat for a while, watching the scudding froth scud merrily (if scudding can be done in such a manner). At one point I got up to look at the stop, just to make sure we were not there. After about 15 or 20 minutes, Kevin could stew no more and asked a gentleman if we were on the way to the airport. The gentleman’s eyes bugged punctuation to his immediate “I’m afraid not.” Apparently, we had been heading in the exact opposite direction of the airport, towards Strömstad. And with a quick look at the map now, I can see that we were also not headed toward Lillehammer, and yet we were both in agreement on the track the ticket woman had told us. Where would we have ended up? Only the gremlins, goblins and gnomes know, but now with very little time, we were much farther away from the airport than when we had started. The kind gentleman was getting off at the next stop, and he walked with us off the train, to the platform, and checked timings. Another train would be coming in 15 minutes, so, after bidding farewell and thanks to our friend, Kevin and I plopped ourselves down on the bench, contemplating the fact that we were now quite unlikely to make our flight. Still, if we caught the next train and then an express, there might be a chance. The sun beat down. I pulled out my safari hat, consigned to the fate of the trains and the misery of the world. Kevin, however, was consigned to neither, and he went to check on the price of a cab. After a little haggling, Kevin got the cab driver to agree to a fee that would buy him not four platinum hubcaps for his cab, but certainly two, and as Kevin and I had both been platinum miners in our prodigal youth, we decided to cab it—an option, by the way, that we were not sure would get us there any quicker. At this point, though, having already spent a fortune on our stay in Oslo, we were fiscally numb, and so there we were, speeding down the highway, praying that we might just make our plane. Our driver was from Djibouti, and he had the habit of talking to us partly in Norwegian. He was jolly enough, but didn’t seem quite to know the way to the airport. After a wrong turn or two, some traffic, flow-impeding speeding cameras, and about 40 minutes, we arrived—and, yes, dear concerned reader, we just made our plane, with about 10 minutes to spare. The day was saved, and we were on our way to becoming Frankfurters.

Oslo, 3-4 August, 2009

2009-08-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

Oslo
Monday, Tuesday August 3-4, 2009
Heyman reporting

Our entry to Oslo, through the magic of airport scooters and Moomins in Helsinki airport, was smooth. We found ourselves in a large hostel/hotel on the northwest side of town, surrounded by all of the embassies and posh establishments of Sense. It was a perfect bunker from which to launch our usual assault. One of our greatest stumbling blocks had to be this location (pictured below), something so deviously sensical that we had to walk Plumpudding Flea’s spitting distance around it in order not to be ill.

The next morning, we arose from our cell, scrubbed and buffed our tonsures, said our nonsense matins (that is, ὄρθρος or oўтреня or oygeŵąlt), and headed down to the Norse Barnebokinstitutt, which translates not to the Norgegian Institutute on Books about Barns, but rather, the Norwegian Children’s Literature Institute. When Kevin had initially written emails to various scholars in Norway, he received an overwhelming and enthusiastic response, and since our time was limited, we arranged one larger meeting with seven souls, a nonsense gathering of Nordic proportions. The building which houses the Institute and children’s book library is also the university library and is a grand place with a large indoor courtyard café on the ground floor . When we found our way up to the children’s library section, we met Kirsten Ørjasæter, the Director, who took us on a short tour of the library. It is an impressive space, with ample collections, scholarly works, and beautiful spaces to work surrounded by stacks of Norwegian children’s books. We were given a short lesson on typical Norwegian children’s books from days of yore—adventure stories of solitary survival in the wilderness (think Jack London meets Robinson Crusoe, but with polar bears).

Our meeting was held in a conference room, and was attended by the following group of friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful souls. The following, in order from left to right:

Harald Bashe-Wiig, Lina Undrum Mañussen, Åse Marie Ommundsen, Anne Kristin Lande, Anna Beate Storm-Larsen,
Kirsten Ørjasæter, Asfrid Svensen

After we presented the basics of the Anthology, we had a quick-fire discussion where nonsense was being flung like squid. Kevin and I played squid-catcher as best we could, bagging many suggestions and taking furious notes. Our formal discussion broke up, but we continued to talk to individuals for some time, as they each had much to offer.

We came back to the Institute the next morning, to make copies of their many suggestions and gather bibliographical information. We were treated like gentlemen scholars, ensconced in the reading room with coffee and tea, and proceeded to reap the rewards. Here are a few shots of our workspace and some of the books we were looking at.

Note that some of these books are illustrated by Paul René Gauguin, the son of the Gauguin. We came away with much material and new nonsense friends. Many thanks to them!

Warsaw Poland (Part III)

2009-08-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Warsaw Poland (Part III)
Sunday, August 2, 2009

Kevin here.

Today we stopped into the Starbucks in Warsaw and met with Michal Zajac and Maria Kulik. Michal is a professor at The University of Warsaw, and Maria is the President of the Polish section of IBBY (International Board of Books for Young People). Michal and Maria, as a team, were a force to be reckoned with. They were full of advice, enthusiasm, and curiosity. Michael brought notes about the most important authors to produce literary nonsense for children in Poland. And Maria provided an impressive collection of publications in English created by the Polish section of IBBY, including including an almanac in English that covers Polish children's Literature from 1990 to 2005.

While everything Michal and Maria brought was helpful, it was probably Michal’s campaign to get us to go to Munich that will stick with me most. He’s right of course. Because our route this summer took us through eastern and northern Europe we had no stop planned in Munich, where there just happens to be one of the largest collections of children’s literature in the world, at the International Youth Libray (www.ijb.de.) Enticingly, because this collection in Munich is international, a quick search for nonsense for any given country or language might turn up results. Munich is high on our list of “Next-Time-For-Sures.”

A surprise for us was that Michal and Maria were so surprised at how much we liked Warsaw. Warsaw, apparently, does not have a reputation as a tourist hotspot. It’s famous more for business and industry, and isn’t known for its warmth or beauty. In fact, our guidebook, Lonely Planet, only gave a grudging recommendation for the place. But we found plenty of both warmth and beauty here. And the reconstructed old town is one of the most amazing testaments to the human spirit I’ve ever seen. Everyone should see this place.

On August 3rd, on our way from Warsaw to Oslo, Norway, we stopped for a few hours at Helsinki airport, where Mike stocked up on all things Mummin. He’s a huge fan of Tove Janssons surreal and quirky second world. I personally was tempted to stock up on Reindeer Jerky, but somehow just couldn’t do it. The temptation of the two wheeled push scooter was, however, too much for me. This is simply the most ingenious airport transportation system ever devised. Here is a film of my exhausted self, temporarily liberated from the shackles of my weariness by the fine flying sensation, a peculiar sensation that somehow felt like rule-breaking, of the most spectacular and inappropriate type:

Below is our one photo (so far) of Finland. Taken as the plane was approaching Helsinki:

Kev Out

The Return of Romanian graffiti and an update

2009-08-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

Hello devoted nonsensophiles out there--Michael here. I bring you good news: there is much to come. We've gotten a little behind in our entries, partly because we were at the IRSCL congress in Frankfurt for a week. Kevin left this morning from Amsterdam, so it's a bit lonely here in De Pjip, Amsterdam. I promise we'll update the blog soon, with all the details from Oslo, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam.

For now, just to tide you over, I include here some links to more of the wonderful graffiti from Romania, some of which we recorded here in our early blogs.

http://este-sudeste.blogspot.com/2009/03/streets-of-bucharest-graffitti-men.html

and the link there to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pereulok/sets/72157614631895530/

Hold on to your herrings--we'll be back with more soon.

ps. I'm proud to announce that today was the first day that I was properly recognized. I was walking through Sarphati Park in Amsterdam, and a group of shady guys on a bench called out "D'Artagnan!" to me. Not Doug Henning, mind you.

Warsaw Poland (Part II)

2009-08-06T13:39:00.001-07:00

Warsaw Poland (Part II)
Saturday, August 1, 2009

Michael and I have had a lot of good luck on this trip, ending up by accident in the right place, at the right time, and bumping into the right people. But on Saturday August 1, at 5:00 pm, our strange luck was turned up to eleven. We were seated in the middle of the oldest square in Warsaw, and two beers had just been delivered to our table. Hundreds of people milled about the square, tourists licking ice cream cones, young couples walking hand-in-hand, and vendors selling children’s games and flowers. Then, something very strange happened. At precisely 5:00 pm everyone stopped moving and fell silent. Those who had been walking stopped in their tracks. Those seated, stood up. And when I say everyone, I mean every single person stopped moving--at all. We learned later that even cars and busses and bikes on the roads had stopped.

And the whole city fell entirely silent except for the church bells, which rang for exactly 60 seconds.

I can’t begin to tell you how odd it is to see a city suddenly stop--freeze frame. People stood with ice cream cones, not licking them. People’s dogs stopped and sat down. Watching it was so surreal. At first I thought perhaps I was loosing my wits (what few wits I have left.) After one full minute the church bells quieted, and in an instant hundreds of people were moving again.

It didn’t take me long to ask the waitress what had just happened, and, as I supposed, the moment of silence was in reverence for those who died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. By luck, we had ordered our beers five minutes before the 65th Anniversary--to the minute--of the beginning of the Uprising.

The Warsaw Uprising began when Polish Resistance fighters in Warsaw rebelled against the Nazi forces that held the town. The Polish fighters wanted to free the city from the Nazi’s before the immanent arrival of the approaching Soviet army. The fear was that if the Soviet’s took the city then Poland would be abandoned to the Soviets at the end of the war (how right they were). This rebellion happened shortly after D-Day and Polish expectations of help from the West were high. But no help came from the West, and the Soviet Army camped peacefully on the opposite side of the Vistula River and watched as Warsaw was flattened. In the end Nazi forces killed 200,000 people in Warsaw and destroyed every building in the city. The entire city was quite literally crushed. When the destruction was complete the Soviets waltzed in, kicked the Nazis out, and claimed Warsaw as their own.

In reverence to the Polish resistance fighters, each year, at precisely 5:00 pm, the people of Warsaw stop moving, fall silent and stand up for one minute. It is a beautiful, moving tradition.

What was once a flattened pile of smoky rubble is now a Unesco World Heritage site. In the 1950s, with no support from the Soviets, the people of Warsaw rebuilt their historic city centre. Using old photographs and memories, the city was painstakingly reconstructed, brick by brick. Hundreds and hundreds of buildings were rebuilt from scratch. This is a photo taken near where we were. And when looking at this photo remember that the buildings you are looking at were reconstructed from rubble in the 1950s. (Click on the image to enlarge):

And Mike offers us this film of the same area:

Kevin

Warsaw, Poland 31 July-1 August

2009-08-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

As we rode the train, our last train, into Warsaw, Kevin noted (with the help of our trusty Lonely Planet) with some incredulity that there was a bar/restaurant in Warsaw called Sense, a few blocks from our hotel. Surely this must be some conspiracy. Bratislava denied us entry into Nonsense Club & Restaurant (see this blog entry for the ugly details), but now we were being handed Sense on a plate? Could Eastern Europeans be so protective of their nonsense, and so eager to orient the world (or propagandize it) towards their sense? The only solution to this would be for us to visit Sense. And subvert it.

After we settled into our hotel, we girded ourselves with all manner of potent nonsense paraphernalia, including the benevolent balderdash blunderbuss, two vintage bunko barettas (with plum pudding flags that shoot out the end), and a trained amphibious amphigory. None of these, mind you, are to be handled by nonsense neophytes. We headed out to Sense to do our worst. I present to you the exact moment of our assault:

Sense was not prepared for our hobgoblinry. With the help of some very tasty drinks, we proceeded to desecrate the establishment by creating all kinds of nonsense within its hallowed walls. I cannot describe the proceedings in detail because of the potential infringement upon the territory of certain secret Nonsense Societies, but I can say that nonsense pieces were produced, and a certain menu, that used to have the word “Sense” attached to various food items (as in “Sense Fries,” “Sense Pasta”), now has the word “Nonsense” as the descriptive moniker. When we left, we thought we heard the soft exogamous squish of Sense’s walls roiling and tumbling into a pile of quivering nonsensical noodles.

The next morning, perhaps not quite recovered from the Pastafarian Massacre, we had an appointment to meet at 1pm with Anna Fornalczyk, an academic who also works for a leading journal of translation in Poland. We were having a lovely relaxed morning at our hotel before the meeting, getting ready to depart, until we got a call from Anna around 12:30. I wasn’t able to receive the call, but suddenly a bat flew out of Kevin’s left ear as he said, “We were supposed to meet her at 12:15.” Somehow, even though he had written her the day before that we would meet her at 12:15, he had confused the times. To be fair, most of our recent meetings had been at 1… So we called her back, told her we’d be right there, did a quick primping (my switch-blade moustache comb is a delight--thank you AC!), and headed out. The meeting place, a bookstore closer in to the old town, was a bit farther than we had thought, so we hopped into a cab and were speeding our way through the streets of Warsaw… until we heard the marching band. As we sat in traffic, we could see ahead people marching in military uniforms and certainly hear the military bands. The cab driver drove around a little but then stopped on the side of the road, speaking a perfectly incomprehensible Polish to us and gesturing to the closed roads ahead. It seemed we were at a dead end. Back on the street, we realized that the cab had actually driven us slightly farther away than we had been at our hotel. Kevin switched into high gear at this point (and anyone who has walked beside Kevin knows his legs move with astounding velocity) as we wound our way through the city, past the parade of Polish military, and youth military groups. We had no idea at the time what the occasion might be, but there was no time to ask. We were extremely late, so we fast-walked our way about a mile in the hot sun, around the university, until we finally found Anna, waiting patiently in the bookshop. She was quite understanding, and as we gently sweat into the bookstore upholstery, she went through many texts that she had copied for us. She had a good sense of nonsense—a rare find—and had brought some promising pieces from both literary and folk tradition, from different time periods. She had also gone back to some very old volumes to dig out a few excellent folk texts. Lastly, she was kind enough to allow us to record her reciting two Polish children’s rhymes: click below to hear her.

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Anna was gracious and helpful, patient with our lateness, and promised to provide more material, overall showing us, yet again, the rich nonsense tradition of Poland.

ps. This is not related to our trip in Poland, but I have to pass on a link I was sent by one Belle Rudetha Prannyshake (a devoted philollower and phrend), a lovely example that includes mustaches and Spanish and nonsense. Click here for the video!

Krakow Poland, July 30, 2009, Part II

2009-08-05T03:42:00.000-07:00

Krakow, Part II, 29-30 July, Michael reporting...

One thing we were sure of in Krakow, it was that we were not on, nor were we interested in, nor do we ethically, morally, or florally support what this gentleman was advertising.

¡Viva Irregularity!

We also saw this small group of musicians, and a couple enjoying the music…

And then there was this… not only have we seen a rash of Michael Jackson biographies in bookstores throughout Europe, but even the puppeteers are getting into the spirit:

One notable event which we were happy to see was a long-standing Krakow tradition. Every hour, a trumpeter opens a window in the tower of the Basilica of the Virgin Mary and plays a melody, the same one since the Middle Ages. The trumpeter stops abruptly, to commemorate when a bugler was shot in the throat during the Mongol invasion of 1241. This same melody, by the way, was played on Radio Free Europe at the beginning of every broadcast.

After our meeting with Monica, we had a little time so headed to the south side of Krakow, to the old Jewish quarter. In a sadly familiar pattern, the Jews were kicked out of Krakow proper in the fifteenth century and forced to live in the Kazimierz section, a far less grand area. By the early twentieth century, however, Krakow had become a thriving center for Jewish cultural and spiritual life, where they were even given their own house of parliament. When the Nazis occupied Poland, they also forced the Jews out of the city and into a ghetto, this time on the other side of the river, but then of course most were sent to the worst of the death camps, which happen to be close to Krakow: Auschwitz and Birkenau. Oscar Schindler's factory is near the Nazi Jewish ghetto. Kazimierz, which now holds very few actual Jews, is now a quaint and fashionable area with comfortably dilapidated buildings, large leafy courtyards, and an obvious cashing-in on the Jewish past. We walked around, exploring the small streets, noting that many of the cafes and shops had Jewish names, displayed in huge letters on the storefronts. A few of the grand old synagogues still stand, where a tiny population of Jews still worship. We skirted the edge of the Jewish cemetery, but could not find a way past the high walls, so high we could not even see inside. Our problem was solved when Kevin cleverly spotted a bar/café bordering the cemetery that had a terrace section on the roof. We promptly went inside and up, planting ourselves at a table high above the street allowing us to see down fully into the cemetery. The tombstones were all inscribed in Hebrew, and many of them had metal “hats” that allowed visitors to deposit the customary rocks (out of respect, for you non-Jews out there) without damaging the tombstones. The graves were quite crowded together, particularly in some sections, reminding me a little of the Prague Jewish cemetery, where the bodies are stacked fourteen deep and tombstones crowd the hillocked earth so tightly that earth is barely visible. For some reason, though, in Krakow the area in the center of the cemetery is just a blank green hill… perhaps an area where the stones had been removed or destroyed (it is amazing the Nazis left anything standing here at all), but judging from the crowdedness of the rest, it is probably still an area with many souls.

Krakow Poland, July 30, 2009

2009-08-05T03:09:00.000-07:00

Krakow Poland
Thursday, July 30, 2009

Kevin here.

Mike and I have seen a lot of beautiful town squares on this trip, but nothing compared with the majesty and elegance of Krakow’s central square. It was huge and colorful--and I’m pretty sure Mike will put up his traditional Cinema-360-Pan of it in the next blog. This city, so beautiful in every way, has an especially sophisticated and cool edge to it. The cafes where we rested, and sometimes wrote, were relaxed, shady, hip and chic. The lighting and lamps were often distinctive--indirect--and from unusual sources. In a number of bars and cafes there were hanging gourds, from which a thousand tiny holes had been drilled, and filled in with colored glass. Here’s a couple:

On Thursday the 30th we met Monika Wozniak in one of these ultra-relaxed urban bookstore cafes. Monika does academic work for the journal Przeklładaniec, which is dedicated to the academic discussion of translation. Her specialty is Italian-to-Polish translation and she is doing research currently on children’s literature. Monika confirmed for us some of the leading names in Polish literary nonsense and introduced us to a few new authors as well. She told us a few fascinating things about the connection between politics and nonsense in Polish literature. She described, for example, the communist attempt to introduce a new way of talking about ‘things’ in the 1950s. In what sounded like a very Orwellian plot, the Soviets required that writers in this era use, what the communists referred to as, “New Speak.” What exactly “New Speak” was, was difficult to describe. I asked Monika if “New Speak” was something like political correctness, or was possibly manifested by an Orwellian insistence on euphemisms. She said it was like those things, but that it was MORE than them too. According to Monika, New Wave Polish writers in the 1950s, such as Mrozék and Baranczek created what they described as a “new special language” and this new language rebelled directly against “New Speak,” and the result was often a rather sophisticated nonsense. In this Communist era, Monika explained, “Either you drink vodka, or you write nonsense.”

Monika also introduced us to the Polish nonsensical cabaret acts of Olga Lipinśka, which, in the 1970s, were also directed against communism. Lipinśka’s productions were carnivalesque, and reflected folk tradition, classics, New Speak, and slapstick. She noted that after the revolution of 1989, the nonsense featured in the cabarets lost its edge, because the oppressive government, and its oppressive language, was out of power.

I mentioned dragons before in this voyage, and I need to return to that subject briefly, because no visit to Krakow would be complete without mentioning Krak, the great flying lizard-beast that, tradition tells, lived in a cave beneath Wawel Castle in Krakow. If you go to the castle today you might notice the drainpipes, which are shaped like dragons: (click to enlarge)

From the castle’s edge there is also a mysterious entrance into what is known as, “The Dragon’s Den.” This spiral staircase leads down along the outer wall of one of the highest ramparts, and then disappears into the bowls of the rock below. Bravely following this dizzy staircase you are eventually emptied out into a surprisingly chilly and gloomy/roomy natural rock cave, far far below the castle. There is a creepy dungeon here, and more than enough room to park at least two mid-size dragons. Because there is a light at the end of this tunnel, you follow it, and eventually you break out into the open air under a small grove of trees nestled along the banks of the Vistula River. Then, just when you think you are now safe from dragons, there is the sound of a flame thrower, and you look up to notice that, yes, in fact there is a statue of Krak here, and yes, the statue is shooting great balls of orange flames out of its mouth. The maw of the dragon bursts forth flames for about five seconds, once every couple minutes. Quite remarkable. Remind me not to climb on this statue. Here is a picture of it:

Although it was tricky, Michael managed to catch a quick movie of the statue actually breathing fire:

Kevin

Wroclaw Poland (Part II)

2009-08-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

Wroclaw Poland
Sunday, July 26 to Wednesday, July 29 2009

Of all the countries we have visited so far on this trip Poland promised to yield the most overwhelming crop of literary nonsense. Unlike other countries we have visited, where we met one or two scholars, we already had three appointments scheduled in Poland when we crossed the border--and three more introductions on top of that by the time we would leave. Poland would bring us much good stuff.

I’ve always harbored a special reverence and respect for Poland, and a deep regret that the U.S. and other allies in World War II left Poland to the Soviets after the Polish had fought alongside the allies throughout the entire war. My wife’s grandfather, Wladeslaw Iwanowski, was killed at Monte Casino, fighting the Nazis in one of the last battles of World War II. And then his country was given away to the Soviets.

So while I have a soft spot for Poland, and while Poland promised to offer us more nonsense than we could handle I must yet report one mind-numbing incident in Wroclaw. Poland ostensibly left communism, and its inherent inefficiencies, behind twenty years ago. Poland is a modern nation, the most prosperous and advanced of the countries we visited in Eastern Europe. But all this progress seems to have missed one official office--The Post Office. By the time we arrived in Poland we had been collecting nonsense for more than two weeks now. We had simply no more room for the nonsense we were collecting so we decided to mail a box home. When we told Majka that we had to mail a box from the Post Office her brow furrowed, and she murmured, “The line can be long there.”

I should note that in this post office there is only one window (and one person) that handles packages, and every citizen in Wroclaw who has a package to be mailed must go to that one window and see that one lady, whom I shall from here-forward refer to as The Post Office Marm. We got in this line with our two boxes all packed and when we got to the window we were handed two forms, printed helpfully in Polish and French, and we were whisked away. I’ve got some French, so after a while we managed to fill in the forms. By this time the line had grown, and we had no choice but to get in again, at the back. The line moved more slowly now. When we finally got up to the front the Post Office Marm looked at our forms and noticed that we had used return addresses from the United States--because that’s where we live. “Nie Nie Nie,” we were scoffed at. It was made to clear to us then that we must have a Polish address in order to mail the box. “But we don’t live here,” we exclaimed. Then she pointed at the form and said “Hotel.” And she took our original forms and threw those away and gave us new ones and sent us away.

A short while later we had refilled in the forms so that it looked like we lived at our hotel in Wroclaw. We stood up to get back in line and at that moment a woman appeared in line before us, scooting in with her little cart. Fine, she can go first. Well, it turns out this woman had twenty-eight small packages. And then came the real surprise. Much to our horror we watched as the Post Office Marm began to process the first of these twenty-eight small packages... and it is a sad tale. Fifteen minutes later this first of the twenty-eight packages had been processed. And then the Post Office Marm reached up and took the second package and started in on that one. And yes, fifteen minutes later the third... etc.

By the end of this ordeal we had spent about three hours in the Post Office mailing our two boxes. Feeling emotionally numb, and as Michael put it, “flattened,” we removed ourselves to a pub.

Below are a couple pictures of some of the books we mailed back to the States:

Kevin

Monday, 27 July, Wroclaw, Poland

2009-07-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

Wroclaw, Poland
Monday, 27 July

We arrived in Poland with some anticipation: for Kevin, he is in the land of his wife’s ancestors; for me, the ancestral land of most of my family before the wars. It is strange to “come back” to a place with such a mixed and difficult history, a country that never gave up the struggle against the Nazis and yet a place where some of the worst atrocities occurred. I feel little connection to this country, though, probably because my grandparents never considered themselves Polish; their identity was strictly Jewish, an attitude common where the Jews were forcibly separated, going back to the middle ages. Despite the anti-Semitism and wartime atrocities, though, my Bubby used to speak positively of her childhood in Bialystok, the youth meetings they had in the forest, and the Polish friends who hid her and her family from the pogroms. When I look into the faces of the old people here, the ones who may have lived through that time, I think of such complexities of history and humanity.

We arrived in the evening and found ourselves comfortably ensconced at the HP Park Plaza Hotel, with casino attached, a lovely place overlooking the river, with its little bridges and islands, and the spires and squares of the old town across the water. In the morning, we met with Marek Oziewicz, who kindly brought with him Majka Tarnogórska, a philologist and expert, of all the most unlikely and ombliferous of things, on Polish literary nonsense for adults. She is currently working on a book about Polish limericks, but her initiation into the Grand Art happened three years ago, when she decided to dedicate her life to scholarship in nonsense. After picking up our collective jaws from the floor, Kevin and I listened intently as Marek and Majka sifted through the nonsense scene of Poland and Wroclaw (pronounced “Vrots-wov,” of course). Majka provided a comprehensive bibliography of many kinds of Polish nonsense, including some of the most exalted Polish poets who also, by no accident, were nonsense writers, including Barańczak, Tuwim, Gałczyński, and Słonimski. We learned that the political situation in Poland, a country that has been under one occupation or another for hundreds of years, necessitated the development of nonsense art, a kind of subversion that is almost impossible to confront or quell. We also learned of the “Orange Alternative” a movement of dwarves against Communism. Yes, that’s right, because people were not allowed to congregate for any kind of organized political activity, members of this group dressed as dwarves, held dwarf meetings and dwarf protests, advocating dwarf rights and the freedom of universal dwarfdom. It was not uncommon in the late 1980s for these dwarves to be seen, pointed hats flopping in the breeze, as they ran away from the police. Today, as one walks the cobbled streets of Wroclaw, the dwarves appear everywhere, as little statues on top of mailboxes, hiding on window ledges, simultaneously pushing and pulling a large metal globe. Here are two particularly disreputable dwarves :

Here, one of the dwarves participates in graffiti subversion.

It is a city steeped in a carnivalesque tradition of nonsense resistance.

One of the new aspects of nonsense that Majka introduced us to was the Polish proliferation of new nonsense genres. That is, many Polish writers were not only creating nonsense, but also inventing new sub-genres. For example, the “Gulliver limerick” is a limerick that deals with only a very small point. She said that once these genres of nonsense were created, other writers of nonsense took them up and wrote within them. Edward Lear, with his nonsense alphabets, recipes, ballads, botany, and limericks, was perhaps the greatest English example of such creation of nonsense types, but it has been extremely rare since then.

After lunch, we went with Majka to several local bookstores, where she helped us buy some of the most important Polish texts. Bookstore browsing is an exhausting and throat-parching activity, so we tipped our elbows at perhaps the oldest restaurant in Europe, in the town square. She was then extremely kind enough to invite us back to her apartment, to see her nonsense library and continue the elbow-tipping on what we were promised was her nonsensical balcony. We walked about 25 minutes, stopping at some shops to pick up food and beer, and landed at her lovely, airy apartment overlooking a courtyard filled with flowers and a small river nearby. We spent the rest of the evening, and into the night, going through her library, talking nonsense in its most sublime and lugumbrious aspects, and writing the following pieces “exquisite corpse”-style, each of us writing alternative lines.

Balcony Types

With sparrows and umbrellas down,
You will attack the nasty town.
They may defend with crows and crabs.
And now, my guys, we stop surprised
At all the weapons n’er surmised:
The blunder-boost! The flinging pies!
The screaming wasps and sacri-flies
Of first-born frogs, flung in abandon
“Be careful, guys, of what you stand in.”
Fastidious maid lies in the sun,
The maid makes lace for battles to come.
With sparrows and umbrellas down,
We stay in the walking gown,
We pace, we splay, we join the fray,
We justify the First of May.

and the following limerick:

There was an old man of Niger
Who encountered a nine-legged spidger.
He told it a story
About an Aunt in the lorry
That loquacious old man of Niger.

Majka is a true kindred nonsense spirit, and our connection will surely continue into the mists of the fuliginous and misty-fisty future.

PS. I wonder if nonsense poetry written by a Pole, a person of Polish ancestry, and a man married to a Pole can be included in the Polish section of the anthology…? Vote on it in the survey, in the left-hand panel!

Prague, July 25-26, 2009, Part II

2009-07-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

Prague, Czech Republic, Part II
26 July, 2009

Kevin has given the bulk of our fortuitous Prague adventures, but I wanted to add a few nibs, nabs, and slabs.

First, a prime scenic sweep of the main square in Prague, with a rare sighting of an Officer in Good (and sometimes Wobbly) Standing of the Ministry of Silly Walks.

Next, a bit of nonsense graffiti. A "fourier transform" of a cat?? Remember, click on photos to enlarge them...

Lastly, a menu that was just too good not to capture in its entirely. Click here for the series of shots, and be sure to read closely. Be on the lookout for the Beer Plate (including “drowned man”), “Heel to be,” “Duck Season” (Wabbit season?), and other gems.

Prague Menu 7/25/09

Extra-double lastly, something oddly familiar, found in our last Prague hangout...

Prague, July 25-26, 2009

2009-07-30T15:53:00.000-07:00

Prague, Czech Republic
Saturday/Sunday, July 25-26, 2009

Greeting Earthlings,

Kevin here.

When we were planning this trip I kept assuming that we would find an expert in Czech children’s lit in Prague. In the end we did not, but the information Nadezda Sieglova gave us about nonsense in Czech was fresh on our minds, and so as we entered the old capital we immediately ducked into a few bookshops hoping to find a few old classics in the genre. But the publishing situation we found in Brno was the same in Prague. In both places there were only new works available—no reprints of older classics of children’s lit. Truthfully I don’t think we know enough yet to really make the claim that there is a problem in republishing older material in Czech, but we did bat zero trying to find any reprints of several of the best regarded works of nonsense published in the 1960s.

This is not to say, however, that we weren’t lucky in Prague. Indeed, we were. Somewhere, as we ambled through the medieval maze that is Old Town Prague, I stopped Michael and showed him a listing in my guidebook that talked about an unusual theatre production company. The Divaldo Fantiska (or Black Light Theatre) is the brainchild of Jiri Srnec, who uses a variety of special effects, such as black lights, puppetry and shadows in his productions. I just thought it sounded interesting. Several aimless turns left and right later found us completely by accident staring at the outside of this very theatre. And what was playing there? “Aspects of Alice,” a production that uses Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as a jumping off point for an exploration of coming-of-age stories and, simultaneously, the history of Prague. Kind of a wild idea really. As we looked at the poster that advertised the show we learned one other thing. The next show started in ten minutes. No, they did not take credit cards, but after a few minutes we’d found an ATM and were sitting in our seats, just two minutes before the curtain raised.

Although the story was intentionally a bit surreal, one did yet get the impression that the narrative was intended to be more clear. As a professor of nonsense I consider these things with care. Is it just sloppy, or is there an intentional, skillful, push and pull from reality at work in the writing? Czech art and literature is known for its commitment to surrealism, so our hopes were high for this production. In the end, however, I don’t think the play was intentionally very surreal, and I can safely say that there was not much nonsense at all. The connection to Lewis Carroll and his characters/stories was very slight. The visuals were stunning, however, from the black lit images of Prague steeples swimming through the night sky, to the creative use of playful candle flames that seemed to have minds of their own. It really was a memorable thing to watch and if they hadn’t warned us not to in four languages we probably would shot a clip for the blog.

That play will linger in my mind for some while, but, truthfully, like most tourists of Prague, it was the Old Town area that left the deepest impression. As others may have told you, or as you may have seen in your own travels, Prague’s Old Town is just simply beautiful and impressive. At one point we climbed the tower that looks over the Charles Bridge. We took a few photos from there of the Charles Bridge and of Old Town. At the top of the tower there is graffiti on the wall that dates back at least a couple hundred years. I read one carving that was clearly dated 1830. This apparently immortal version of ‘tagging’ immediately brings the present into the past and the past into the present. This graffiti feels strangely modern. As with nonsense, the reader of such a tag is pushed into a continuum, if not an indeterminate space and time. For just like graffiti today--whether it be under a bridge, or on building by a railroad track—such tagging is inspired by the need to leave behind a silent mark that proves you were there, a mark that stays there, and lives there long after you’ve left there. The ritual seems to suggest that existing in our own time and space is simply not enough.

Kevin

Brno, Czech Republic (Part II); July 24-25

2009-07-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

July 24-25, 2009, Brno, Czech Republic

After our meeting with Dr. Nadezda Sieglova (described by Kevin below) we went on another hunt for nonsense within what we were told was a fairly crazy and humorous Czech folksong tradition. Two independent sources from Brno (which, by the way, is pronounced “Burr-no”), sent us to the folk museum in the center of town, where we struggled to communicate with a woman who was trying very hard to help us—in German and Czech. My handy iPhone translator (who dares scoff at its necessity??) gave us a few key words, and she contacted a researcher/worker somewhere in the building, who was very busy but came down to talk to us. Apparently, they didn’t have folk music there (curses to our sources!)—but she gave us an address for the Ethnology Institute a little outside of town. Another cab ride brought us to the doorstep, and we once again were faced with someone trying to help us, but with no English. She was able to find someone in the building to help us, and a few minutes later, a man in his 50s, looking like he just came in from gardening, came barreling down the stairs to meet us, large dirty beaker containing some mysterious clear liquid, in hand. He promptly informed us that we were in the branch of the Institute that dealt with chemistry, and the chances of finding folk music there were slim. However, beaker sloshing, he gleefully led us outside, down a path or two, to another building. Kevin’s curiosity got the better of him, and he had to ask what was in the beaker. Water, of course. He was thirsty. We soon approached a locked door with a panel of buttons. He pressed one, spoke briefly with the woman who answered, and got us buzzed into the building. We all walked up to an office where our friendly beaker man introduced us to Dr. Jana Pospisilova. We struggled with language, but she seemed quite interested in our project, and it quickly became apparent why: we seemed to have found, after two false leads, two inappropriate institutions, and one chemist, a real-live Czech scholar of children’s folk culture. She began to pull books down from her shelves full of folk songs and rhymes, many which we couldn’t read of course, but also some English translations from Finnish that were excellent. We all sat down and talked, as well as we could, about our work, about folk culture, and our great luck at having come together.

Kevin and I left delighted, with quite a few references to pursue in Czech and other languages. On our walk back to the city, we passed by this establishment, which I present here for your perusal.

We celebrated back in the town center, with a couple of pivos and a lovely view of the square.

I shall leave you with two more nonsensical nuggets of the day: a little graffiti as we wandered in Roma neighborhoods looking for a Laundromat.

And lastly, a menu, the last item of which we were not quite brave enough to order.

Brno, Czech Republic (Part I)

2009-07-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

Brno, Czech Republic (Part I)
July 24-25, 2009

In making our plans for research in the Czech Republic I was somewhat surprised to learn that the experts on children’s literature are not working from the nation’s capital, Prague, but from Masaryk University in the city of Brno, in Moravia, where the scholarly journal Ladeni, on Czech children’s literature, is published quarterly. The head of the department of Czech Literature there is Dr. Naděžda Sieglová. I knew her name from some articles on Czech children’s literature that were published by the Oxford University Press.

When we met with Dr. Sieglova in her office we were greeted very warmly, and, as if we had come to her home, she offered us an overwhelming plate of homemade Czech desserts, pastries and candies. In order to encourage our appetites Dr. Sieglova pronounced that the desserts “would not last in this weather” so we had to eat them all now. The gesture was very kind, and the desserts were delicious. I had one big chocolate thingy shaped like a steeple from an Orthodox church—with cognac inside. The only problem with the desserts was that I did end up getting chocolate all over my notes and on the handouts she gave us.

Concerning nonsense Dr. Sieglova gave us a thorough history lesson on Czech nonsense, starting with folk material. One thing that struck me as we started to go through the material, was that violins seemed to be a popular recurring motif in Czech nonsense. There were simply a lot of violins, and even a joke about Strativarias. Considering this fact I was then struck by something I'd not seen in any other country; nonsense in Czech often (or nearly always?) comes with sheet music in the back of the book. Nonsense rhymes are supposed to be sung in Czech--simple as that. And even when new nonsense is produced and published the cover will give credit for the author of the text, the illustrator, and the person who wrote the music in the back. Amazing! This surprise led me to think about English nursery and nonsense rhymes. When English Mother Goose poems were first published in book form in c. 1765 the title of the book was not "Mother Goose," but "Mother Goose's Melodies," and the fact was that English nursery and nonsense rhymes nearly always had music that was supposed to accompany them. A few publishers around 1800 tried to publish Mother Goose poems with the sheet music included, but these music books did not catch on, and mostly we of English tradition have forgotten the original melodies that went with our nonsense. Not so in Czech, where it is apparently taken for granted that sheet music must usually accompany nonsense.

When Dr. Sieglova moved on to the 1960s I was of rapt attention. Shea explained that “There was a lot of nonsense in the 1960s.” There was, in fact, a flowering of the genre at that time, as exemplified by the popular nonsense books of Pavel Šrut, Emanuel Frynta and Jiri Žacek. However, when the communists clamped down in 1968 and 1969, books of nonsense were forbidden. Nonsense then remained forbidden until the Revolution of 1989. For me personally this was a riveting piece of history. My dissertation was written directly on this topic. Working from a theory proposed by the Russian theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, I basically proposed the idea that nonsense flourishes during times of social unrest—and that authoritarian movements are led by people who are easily threatened by nonsense. It was satisfying to learn of a concrete historical example that backs up what I’ve been preaching about nonsense for a while now.

Just during and after the Revolution of 1989, nonsense flourished again in Czech. And today, while there are not too many contemporary writers of nonsense in Czech we were introduced to one truly remarkable author, Petr Nikl, whose books are surreal, absurd, nonsensical and extremely well crafted and beautiful. His book, Jelenoviti, is dedicated to Christian Morgenstern, the German nonsense author. Below are a few photos from another of his texts, Za Hadky. The pages in this book actually come sliced, so that the reader can create a myriad of different creatures by flipping the top, middle and bottom panels. Note that in the two photos below the top and bottom panels on each page have not changed, only the middle has: (Click on the photos to enlarge them).

Before we left Dr. Sieglova she was kind enough to allow us to record her reciting a favorite nonsensical rhymes she knew as a child. At first we’d asked her to find one in one of the books she’d copied for us, but in the end she preferred to recite from memory. Her assistant, Tasa, was called in and the two of them worked together to be sure they had the lyrics correct. Dr. Sieglova made one recording, then, enthused, Tasa jumped in as well, recording two rhymes she recalled from her youth in Brno. Click here to hear these Czech nonsense rhymes.

Having finally gobbled up many of the desserts Dr. Sieglova offered us Michael and I were somewhat alarmed toward the end of the conversation when were suddenly handed five sandwiches and told to eat them too. I couldn’t really, so I gave mine to Michael and he ate all five.

Bratislava Slovakia (Part II)

2009-07-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

Bratislava Slovakia (Part II)
July 22-23, 2009

Michael has described the fab luck we had meeting up with Jana and Hana at the Bibiana library/museum. We owe them a great debt for dropping everything to help us.

As Michael alluded, we went to Bratislava on a couple of fairly flimsy pretenses. The first flimsy pretense was that we might meet a couple experts on children’s literature if we were lucky. We were lucky there. The other flimsy pretense was that I happened to know that there was venue in Bratislava called “The Nonsense Restaurant and Bar.” The mere name of this bar was enough to get us to book tickets to this city. We needed to know why this restaurant had this name, and what kind of nonsensical drinks they might serve us. Obviously then, we were pretty excited to go there--like a couple of dweebs, really.

Anyway we did go this bar. Here is a photo to prove its existence:

However, after following the signs down a back lane we were confronted by a locked door and this sign:

The place was clearly closed, but we couldn’t read the sign, which was frustrating. So I went and got a waiter from a nearby pub and asked him to translate the sign for us. He read it to us: “The Nonsense Bar is closed… due to technical difficulties… and I don’t know.” We thanked him. Disappointed, we wondered what “technical difficulties” a nonsense bar could have? Perhaps they had a problem with their puns? Or perhaps everything in the pub was suddenly working backwards? If only they’d known we were coming. Perhaps we could have helped them with their nonsense problem.

It then occurred to me that perhaps it was a communist plot… that, perhaps, the people from the Bibiana had called the authorities and told them “There are two strange fellows in town and they are gathering our nonsense”—at which point the authorities might have immediately closed all nonsense bars due to ‘technical difficulties… and I don’t know.’

With this paranoid thought we readjusted our focus and picked an appropriate venue to mull the theory over. We went immediately to the “KGB Pub,” which comes complete with posters of Stalin and statue of Lenin. I took this photo of the very ambiguous back wall of this cavern-like drinking hole:

Note that the image of Stalin appears to have been slashed with a knife at one point, while the American flag has cigarette burns in it.

On the way home we were accosted by a thinly disguised con man who wanted some of our money. We did not give him anything, but he persisted in conversation. He wanted to know whether I was a “communist” or a “republican.” He also wanted to know what we thought about socialism and religion. Hoping to get him to go away I explained to him--in no uncertain terms--a few things about my views on these subjects. He listened, aghast, and after a few more steps he pronounced that I was an “abnormal man.” He said so twice. “You are an abnormal man.”

Cheers to that.

Kevin

Tuesday to Thursday, 21-23 July, 2009 Bratislava, Slovakia

2009-07-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Bratislava, Slovakia on the late side, after having made several connections along the way, all of which, amazingly, were on time. We were there not so much for our research, but rather for a meeting of the Ancient and Honourable Society for the Prevention of Sense, to be held at one of Kevin’s most illustrious discoveries: an establishment called the Nonsense Restaurant and Bar. Kevin will discuss this in more detail in his entry to follow. After taking a cab costing approximately three times the appropriate price, we were welcomed to the old town district by a raucous klezmer band (click below for a small video clip).

The old town district of Bratislava is a concentrated hive of the eighteenth century rococo buildings common to these old European districts, with some broader avenues lined with cafes, small medieval alleys snaking off, and hidden courtyards containing venues of uncertain repute. Cilck below for a short tour of the main square.

Our self-serve, Ikea-snapshot apartment was right in the middle of everything.

In the morning, our first task was to visit the Bibiana: International House of Art for Children, which was just a stone’s throw from our apartment. Kevin had had no luck in contacting Slovakian scholars via email, so this would be our last desperate attempt to find nonsense (that is, nonsense not self-generated) while in Slovakia. We first went to the museum part of the Bibiana, and after talking to two people, were led outside and around to another part of the building, to their library, where we were greeted by Jana Michalová and Hana Ondrejičková, who listened to our slightly embarrassed appeal, without any sort of forewarning, for nonsense. I shall summarize it thusly: “Citizens of Slovakia! We bring good tidings! Now, bring us your nonsense!” Jana and Hana seemed a bit overwhelmed by the task, and although Jana immediately lunged for their stacks, a nonsensical spark in her eye and finger to her lip, they decided that it would be better if we came back in a couple of hours. This we did, after having a lovely lunch pilsner. When we returned, we found books spread out over tables and couches; retiring to their library room, we dove in. During our two hour lunch, they had arranged a stunning selection of literary and folk nonsense, which they proceeded to present to us verbally and on photocopies, authors such as Štefan Moravčik (and his Our Dog Has a Chicken’s Head), Daniel Hevier (and his work, “Maoeoeoeuááááá,” which seems to speak for itself), Boris Droppa (Beetroots On a Bicycle) and Milan Ferko (whose work, Šalabingo, sounds promisingly effervescent). They also made phone calls to some experts on Slovakian nonsense, who were not available at the moment, and provided us with some excellent leads on further knowledgeable folk to contact. Lastly, Jana provided us with most excellent performances of nonsensical Slovak folk rhymes. Click here to download the audio file!

One interesting fact mentioned by Jana and Hana, and something that helps to explain not only their easy ability to zero in on nonsense literature, but also the deep Slovak understanding of nonsense, is that apparently in Slovak, the literal word for nonsense, “nezmysel,” is not used for the literary genre. Rather, they use the English, “nonsense,” thereby creating convenient and, importantly, separate categories. Such a distinction is one of the real hurdles to the perception of literary nonsense in English, as most people are not aware of the difference between word and classification of genre, and, understandably, get them mixed up. Such confusion has existed in the English tradition from the seventeenth century at least, but a particularly well-documented moment occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, during the new-found popularity of nonsense in England and the United States sparked by Lear and Carroll. In one of Lord Alfred Douglas’s volumes, many of his texts are merely inconsequential, thereby confusing the dictionary definition with the emerging children’s genre. Of course, he also wrote in the Preface to this volume, “Writing nonsense rhymes has no effect one way or the other on one’s ability or desire to write poetry. It simply has nothing to do with it at all,” so his authority concerning nonsense is dubious at best. This inevitable confusion in English continues, and probably will as long as we use the word “nonsense” as a part of the genre’s name. It is around this very issue that Kevin and I recently wrote an article that will appear in the volume Keywords in Children’s Literature, edited by the gracious and honorable Phil Nel and Lissa Paul, to be published by the New York University Press some time soon.

Incidentally, a couple of days later in Brno, Czech Republic, Kevin and I learned that the distinction made by Slovaks was also true with Czechs. We also wonder if the English word being used betrays some debt to the English tradition of Lear and Carroll that has spread far and wide, or if it might be traced to Christian Morgenstern’s reluctant use of the word. The latter possibility may have even more weight owing to the close connection between this region of Europe and Germany.

Kevin and I were overwhelmed by Jana and Hana’s generosity. We waltzed into their office unannounced, asking for the most unlikely of things, and they proceeded to drop everything and give us far more than we could have asked for. We walked out of their office and Slovakia in amazement, with an armful of potential nonsense, a list of promising contacts, and a most spirited recording. The next morning, I crept out of our apartment early to pick up one orange and one yellow gerbera daisy (the most cheerful of all flowers), which we dropped off for them as we left the old town district.

Monday, July 20, 2009 (Part II)

2009-07-25T07:07:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 20, 2009 (Part II)
Ljubljana, Slovenia

Kevin here.

Michael has already described the main focus of the day, which was meeting Barbara Simoniti and learning about her own personal ‘voyages’ in the world of nonsense. So I’ll write about a few other things.

First, some good news for the project; we received an email this morning from Dr. Mavis Reimer, Canada Research Chair in Children’s Culture, and my colleague at the University of Winnipeg. Mavis wrote to inform us that the Center for Young People’s Texts and Culture (CRYTC) at Winnipeg has pledged some financial support for this voyage. Many thanks to Mavis for that. This support along with two other grants from U Winnipeg have helped to make this trip possible.

Moving on to other things—When I’m not making a movie of my eye I try to keep at least one eye open for images of dragons in Eastern Europe. I think I mentioned the dragon that was apparently attacking our train bound from Romania to Bulgaria… Fact is, lots of dragon tales and fairy tales about dragons come from this corner of the world. Dragon lore is all around us on this trip.

According to one legend Ljubljana was protected by a dragon that guarded, in medieval times, what was the one bridge leading into the town. Thus today Ljubljana proudly displays fierce statues on the four corners of what is now known as “Dragon Bridge.” It’s interesting that the legendary dragon of Ljubljana was a protector of its people, and not a tormentor, as is usually the case in European folklore. Normally European dragons are good only to be hunted up and beheaded. Thus we have the legends of St. George and the Dragon in England, and the related tales of St. Patrick and the snakes of Ireland and even St. Columba and the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. All these stories position dragons as evil, as representatives of the pagan belief system that Christianity was struggling to erase. But in Ljubljana it’s different. Here the dragon protected the people from invasion, like a patron Saint, really. In this way the Ljubljana dragon is a lot more like Asian dragons, who were often wise and served as protectors of the people. Dragon carvings and sculpture were everywhere in Ljubljana. Below are a few examples that I snapped photos of.

Click on the photos to enlarge them:

One of the Four Dragons that sit on the corners of Dragon Bridge

Dragon carrying off sheep (pub sign)

Wrought Iron dragon in the entrance to the castle above town

A poster advertising a play

There are, no doubt, more dragon legends that will come our way. In Brno, in the Czech Republic, there is a story about a giant alligator/crocodile-like-thing that ravaged the town. And I know that once we get to Krakow in Poland, we will see plenty of images of the famous dragon, Krak, for whom the city is named.

Kevin

Monday, 20 July 2009: Day 2 in Ljubljana, Slovenia

2009-07-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

After meeting with an unintentional kielbasa for breakfast, I joined Kevin in front of Stari Tisler, where we met Barbara Simoniti, novelist, translator, poet, and, yes, nonsense scholar. We believe, of all the improbable things, that she is the only scholar of nonsense literature in Slovenia, having written her doctoral dissertation on Slovene translations of Alice in Wonderland, as well as a monograph called simply “Nonsens” that deals with certain astute theoretical issues concerning the mechanics of nonsense brought up in her dissertation, in addition to the manifestations of nonsense in Slovenia, particularly in terms of fool’s tales. We sat down at a table in the back of the open courtyard, ordered coffee and tea, and dove straight into our shared passion. Barbara was boiling over with tales of her entry into the nonsense world, her graduate work and seminal scholarship. We eased into easy shop talk only found with those who Know—with those who have breathed nonsense, and found it Good. She gave us a copy of her book and told us about her further discoveries in, as Wim Tigges puts it, the “anatomy of nonsense,” such as the idea of serial addition, and the constant use of “thing.” Because Slovene translators have not understood some of these (and other) basic components of nonsense, they have failed to produce solid translations. As opposed to many whom we have met who think that nonsense is impossible to translate, Barbara was confident that, with a proper knowledge of how it actually works, particularly in its performative aspects, nonsense translation was quite possible. Music to our ears! We talked about the Slovene fools’ tales, world turned upside-down folktales, and certain jokes without punch lines (like the one I knew as a child: Two polar bears were taking a bath. One said to the other, “Could you please pass the soap.” The other said, “Are you sure you don’t mean the radio?). She thought there might be some nonsensical graffiti in Ljubljana, as well. Lastly, we asked if she might write her own nonsense piece for the anthology, which seemed quite appealing to her. Overall, she seemed delighted to re-immerse herself in this passion that she had let rest for quite a few years, since the publication of her book.

Time passed quickly, and we had to part after a couple of hours, but we planned to meet the next morning to give her all the material we had received from Milena. After going back to our room, however, we thought it would be an Excellent Plan to continue our conversation later that same evening, so we called her and set up a time to meet in a city center bar.

One significant regret that I shall perhaps always have is that I did not make a recording of the band that was playing near the café where we waited. It included, of course, a keyboard’s synthesized drums, a four-piece boyish band that oozed the most insipid ooh-ahh Europop imaginable. The only mercy was that we could not understand the lyrics. Barbara arrived, saving us from the music and weak drinks, and we settled amongst the ice cream eaters in another riverside café, where we continued to talk about how we all came to run with wild nonsense. When the staff seemed willing to close the table umbrellas on our heads, we sloped homewards.

In the morning, as I avoided all giant kielbasas who seemed to have a design on me, we met again briefly with Barbara, when she showed us her doorstop dissertation, an incredibly thorough comparison of Slovene translations of Alice and where they went tragically wrong. We talked about plans to come, received a copy of her book that we will deliver to Wim Tigges, encouraged her yet again to send us her own original nonsense, and said our farewells. Meeting Barbara was, for me, a little like meeting Anushka Ravishankar, at the time the only published writer of nonsense in India, all those years ago: an improbable yet incredibly fortunate nonsense confluence. As we parted, Barbara summed it all up perfectly: “It is a very great occasion to be both stupid and clever.”

Sunday, July 19, 2009, Ljubljana, Slovenia (Part II)

2009-07-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Barabara Simonitti told me and Kevin that one possible source of nonsense in Slovenia was in graffiti. The best nonsense graffiti we have seen so far was, hands down, in Bucharest [click here], but here is a sampling of the noteworthy graffiti in Ljubljana. Our slight difficulty with colloquial Slovene puts us at some disadvantage… If we do get any real nonsense graffiti, we’ll be sure to post it!

To enlarge any photo below, just click on it!

The owlery, perhaps a mocking representation of the downfall of the Earl of Gormenghast, in the Tower of Owls. Or perhaps a statement on the mass media, and the capitalist urge for more and ever more owls.

This is the Dreaded Lacrosse Boot of Communism, stepping on the Twisted Tooth of Capitalism. Or perhaps a frog with a mustache.

We think we found one of the graffiti culprits, betraying his surreptitious tale-method of wall painting. He seems to be leaving a tag here…

Surely the bluebird of happiness.

Who dares mock me? I bite my thumb at you, sir. I twist my stache in your general direction.

Next we have series from Zmaug, a pub in the student section of Ljubljana. Some of these are on the outside, while some are framed inside.

Ljubljana Graffiti July 19-21

The perky fellow seems to have had an encounter with a carrot (who looks rather nonplussed).

Okay, so this isn’t exactly graffiti, but it was posted up on the wall in the café at our inn, Stari Tisler. Before we left Ljubljana, were made sure to stock up with a heaping helping of malice, for the low, low price of only 5 Euro.

Note: Kevin, being a Man of International Mystery, has already had the opportunity to eat horse, but for me, this was my first horseburger, at the Hot Horse restaurant. Spicy good!

Nonsense note:

In accordance with Barbara Simoniti’s theory of nonsense devices, that includes the “styleme” of using the word and concept of “thing” repeatedly, we think we have found a stellar example in the Maribor, Slovenia train station. Observe Exhibit D, my receipt from the snack kiosk, where I purchased three different kinds of drink, and two different snacks. The receipt, of course, lists only “Blago,” which we assume means “thing.” And so, I walked away from the kiosk with blago blago blago blago blago.

Sunday, July 19, 2009, Ljubljana Slovenia

2009-07-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Ljubljana Slovenia

Kevin here.

Today, after sleeping late and missing breakfast, Michael and I met with the scholar, Milena Mileva Blazic, Professor of Children’s Literature at Ljubljana University. Milena, it turns out, is also a City Councilor and so our first meeting took place in City Hall. Entering City Hall in Ljubljana is like entering an old castle. Marble columns. Red carpets. Brass railings.

Generous does not begin to describe the reception and the information that Milena gave us throughout the day. She had, in preparation, translated something like sixty nonsensical count-out rhymes from Slovene folklore. She also gave us books with English translations of Slovene children’s literature and an anthology of Butalci tales, a type of absurd and sometimes surreal fools tale typical of Slovenia. And then there were the items she had requested from her friend, the folklorist, xxx, who prepared for us fifty or so pages of Slovenian folk tales and other texts. The list goes on and on. We were overwhelmed. If you’d like to hear Milena reading us some nonsensical Slovene count out rhymes, just click here:

Click here, and then click again to download.

While we were unprepared for the lavish resources handed to us today we were yet even more unprepared to encounter--as we had in Bulgaria--an entirely type of nonsense (new to us, that is). This might sound strange, but it is true. In Slovenia it was traditional in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to decorate beehive huts with a certain type of decorative board. Each beehive could be opened like a drawer, and each drawer was about the size of a license plate. On the outside of this piece of wood/drawer end, it was traditional to paint scenes from Slovenian folktales or religious scenes. If a beehive hut had twenty drawers, then there would be twenty tiny scenes depicted, one on each drawer. Often enough the scenes depicted on these drawers were of the above-mentioned absurd fool’s tales--and several of these tales are important in the history of nonsense traditions. One such classic tale, known throughout medieval Europe, is the tale of the World Turned Upside Down, where all order is reversed in the human and animal world, a story that was told and retold in a hundred ways and in a hundred different folk songs. One consistent aspect of the World Turned Upside Down tales is that animals that are usually hunted in real life, such as rabbits, turn the tables on the hunters and it is the rabbits that hunt the men, etc. Slovene beehive artwork has preserved images of several variants of this tale. Below is an example of one such piece of folk art. We purchased this beehive board in the marketplace in the city square in Ljubljana:

Milena’s generosity did not cease with her translations and research. She took us out to a traditional Slovene restaurant where the waiters were dressed in traditional costume. I ate venison and drank a Union. Mike had a large platter of traditional favorites including black sausage and buckwheat-mash. Later in the day Milena energetically led us up the hill to the castle that overlooks the city. From here the view of the city and the Julian Alps at sunset was excellent.

Milena insisted that the party continue from there and she took us to a favorite pub, and would not let us pay for anything. We tried.

Conversation eventually moved from children’s literature and nonsense to politics and history. Milena discussed the ins and outs of communism, and described the time the Yugoslavian army bombed the radio and TV tower behind the castle. She was not nostalgic about communism, but she said that she did miss the free health care and education that came with the socialist system. The move to democracy and capitalism has been natural, and successful, in Slovenia, (Slovenia’s democratic traditions date back about 1300 years) but these changes do not come completely without regrets. A slice of graffiti spoke volumes in this regard. Note below that while the message is sincere, the voice is gently humorous:

One image I will never forget from this night was the genius invention of an open-air concert, performed by a string quartet, playing in the hold of a small boat, as it gently floated down the Ljubljana River in the center of town. The sound of these musicians was amplified majestically by the white stone walls that line the river. Ljubljanians and tourists alike gathered at the stone railings along the river to watch, and kept shifting their locations in order to follow the boat as it drifted aimlessly down river. Thankfully Michael was able to film a short clip of this inspired performance. Click below to have a look:

Late that night, as we said goodnight to Milena, we tried to tell her how overwhelmed we were by her hospitality and generosity. She waved it all away with a parting smile. “It is a Slav tradition,” she said simply. And then she was gone.

We were left with a warm feeling and a pile of nonsense texts that will take us months to catalog and absorb.

Kevin