An Uncommonplace Book - A Work in Progress

These are a series of phrases I’ve collected and strung on thread (using the colorful letter-beads sold usually for kids to make name bracelets and such), planning to arrange them embedded in resin, as I’ve done already with a few others.  (See the section ”Objects in Resin“ already posted on the website proper, for a few examples of other resin pieces using letter-beads.)  Commonplace books were a popular activity in the 18th and 19th centuries, in which readers would write down the more memorable passages of the books they read - sort of like scrapbooks for words.  Pithy or provocative remarks, wise sayings, watchwords, words to remember and live by.  (The opening page of this website features an image of a similar object, the baby bracelet that was put on my wrist as a newborn.  I scanned this bracelet at least ten years ago, before ever considering the pieces I’m involved with now.  But maybe there was some unconscious, informative influence.)

Uncommonplace Book, 2023.

The image appears rather small here, but click on it and it will enlarge and you’ll be able to read everything easily.  Since most are not self-explanatory (several are in languages other than English), or require some comment or historical context, I have provided a list of the  phrases, a key that goes from the top to the bottom of the photo.  I still have to work out exactly how to resolve these pieces.  Probably I will arrange them in circles or spirals as I’ve done already.

Like the sound of one hand clappin’ - I don’t think it’s liable to happen.  From Bob Dylan’s song “We Better Talk This Over”, 1978.  I like his answer to this Zen chestnut - more Zen than the original. 

Living a lie will lay you low - the truth will make you high.  From the song “Dear Old Battlefield” by The Incredible String Band, 1971. 

No reason drives us, but the plank of love we (choose to) walk.  Mariquita Platov, Sonnet Sixteen.  Initially I elided the “choose to” but I think I will put it back. 

Bravery - Kindness - Clarity - Honesty - Compassion - Generosity.  Mantra from “Forgetting”, from Philip Glass’s Songs from Liquid Days, sung beautifully by Linda Ronstadt and The Roches. 

Alles kacke deine Emma, alles Scheisse deinen Franz.  “Everything crappy, your Emma, everything shitty, your Franz.”   Humorous post-card message from a German couple on a dismal vacation to their friends back home. 

Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.  Francis Picabia, artist associated with the Dada and Surrealist tendencies.  I made myself a bumper sticker with this slogan.

Surely a man will love his wife with salt, or not at all.  Mariquita Platov, Sonnet One. 

I should mention how I came across this line, and the one above also by Platov.  A friend of mine, who was friends with Platov years back, gave me a marvelous book, 17 Sonnets, by Platov.  The book is practically hand-made, printed with hand-set cold type on folded rag paper, such that each sonnet is printed on a page that has another page (blank), right behind it.  I suppose it’s the way books were once printed, when one needed a paper knife to separate the pages as one read.  Not necessary here.  Anyway, as an object, the book is certainly the most beautiful book I have.  And the content is entirely worthy of the package. 

The sonnets are wonderful - the language flows like Shakespeare, so melodious and dense with meaning that one must read two or three times before beginning to grasp the sense. (Who has not attended a performance of a play by Shakespeare and not thought, after a particularly fine speech, “That was beautiful!!  But what was it all about?”)  

Platov herself - who died in 2000 at the age of 95 - was from an illustrious and privileged U.S. family.  (Her great-grandfather was the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.)  Her mother was Costa Rican (thus the name Mariquita, or just Quita as her friends called her).  She followed a spiritual path that took her from Orthodox Christianity to Buddhism and pacifism.  She was “held for questioning“ in 1969 for passing out antiwar leaflets at West Point, and so wound up on Nixon’s enemies list.  When she learned that, she answered, “Why, I haven’t an enemy in the world.  Not even Mr. Nixon is my enemy.”  A great lady.

To the most patient farmer, the best harvest goes.  From Buffy Sainte-Marie’s song “Sometimes When I Get to Thinking” (1966).  A line that gives me goosebumps. 

The bell still rings if Quasimodo really humps it.  My invention, a little joke, a sort of riddle, not too difficult.  Quasimodo of course is the bellringer of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or rather Notre-Dame de Paris, of 1831.  He was named for “la domenica quasimodo”, the first Sunday after Easter, and the day he had been abandoned.  There’s a great John Prine song (The Sins of Memphisto) mentioning Quasimodo, whose love for Esmeralda is requited in the most passionate and unrestrained way (with a little hump joke):  “She whispered in his ear, ‘exactly-odo - Quasimodo!’”  (By the way, the name should be pronounced “kwa-ZEE-mo-do”.  But never mind.)

I contain multitudes, but they just don’t fit.  From Walt Whitman’s 1855 Song of Myself, 51, extended by Allen Schill.  My lament about having too many passionate interests. 

The idle brain is the devil’s playground.  I know this best from The Music Man, the classic musical from the 1950s, which adapted the situation of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” to the River City, Iowa (I-o-way), of around 1900.  The line comes from the song in which the Music Man is trying to persuade the locals to establish a boys’ marching band to keep the young folks moral after school.  Some say it comes from the Bible, Proverbs 16:27, but there are many similar sayings elsewhere in the Bible and in the writings of  long-ago theologians.  Chaucer used a variation of the saying.  Mere Protestant propaganda, if taken uncritically.  I take a different view - an idle brain, properly prepared and with the right attitude, can yield great art by liberating the imagination. 

Nolites te bastardes carborundorum.  Latin for “don’t let the bastards grind you down.”  From Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale.   I have never studied Latin, but when the phrase appeared in the book, I had no trouble understanding it, as my brother had come up with a very similar one from when we were about 17:  “Illegitimati non carborundum”, with the very same meaning. The protagonist of Atwood’s book, one of the very few women who have remained fertile in a dystopic future (after unspecified environmental degradation and radioactivity), lives to provide a womb for the men of the most powerful class so that they may procreate.  

She is constrained to live, reasonably comfortable and with some prestige because of her position, but essentially a slave, in a complex with other such women.  In an obscure corner of her cell, she chances to find this message scratched in the dirt - perhaps with a fingernail, as the women are not allowed any writing materials - left by the previous inmate of the cell.  A message of:  Courage, hang tight.  This situation follows a takeover of the United States by a religious cult; the country is now called the Republic of Gilead.  Read the book! 

Arbeit macht shveys - kempfn macht frei.  My response to the Nazi slogan over entrance gate of Auschwitz, part German, part Yiddish.  “Work makes you sweat - fighting makes you free.” 

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.   From Robert Burns’s poem of 1791, which soon became a Scottish folk song, performed by the band Steeleye Span in 1973.   Burns was referring to the members of the Scottish Parliament who signed the Act of Union with England in 1707.  Rogues!  Traitors! 

We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire.  From Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49, and the basis of the acronym W.A.S.T.E., stenciled on rubbish containers that really served as post boxes for an underground conspiracy that used its own clandestine postal delivery system.  Talk about The Deep State!  By the way, Tom, what’s up?  We haven’t had a new book from you in quite some time!

Lo posible es para los tontos.  Spanish for “The possible is for fools.”  From Sigizmund Khrzizhanovsky’s short story The Unbitten Elbow, and the answer of the protagonist to a journalist who asks why on earth he is determined to bite his own elbow, an impossible task.  In Spanish in the original Russian, and in the English translation. 

Rats begin to chew the sheets.  From John Adams’s opera Nixon in China, from 1985-87.  A repeated line from Nixon’s twisted, paranoiac train of thought.  A derailment was inevitable, and we didn’t have long to wait. 

No man is an island - he’s a peninsula.  The famous line from John Donne’s poem of that name, extended in an ad lib of probably lysergic inspiration by the Jefferson Airplane, followed by some crazy giggling.

Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.  Gaelic for “I told you I was sick”, which British humorist Spike Milligan wanted carved on his tombstone.  (Oscar Levant asked for this too, I hear.)  It seems there was a long contestation about it with the Chichester Diocese, who finally gave their consent provided it was written in Gaelic. 

Jesus saves, but Moses invests.  Graffito, anonymous.  Apparently some staunch Christian believer wrote the usual “Jesus Saves” on a wall, to which some clever wag added below “but Moses invests”.  Eventually someone added “But only Buddha pays dividends.” Cute. 

Blizok lokot, da ne ukusish.  (Your elbow is near, but you can’t bite it.)  Sigizmund Khrzizhanovsky, The Unbitten Elbow.  A rough English equivalent is “so near, and yet so far”, but the Russian is much richer a phrase. 

Die Gedanken sind frei.  “Thoughts are free.”  Chorus of a famous German song of the revolutionary era of the 1800s.  Its origin is clouded in antiquity, going back as a song to at least the 12th century, in a version by a minnesinger. I’ve known the song since the early 1960s, from a record by The Limeliters, “Folk Matinee”, which I still have today.  They sing in both German and English.  Pete Seeger performed the song as well.  A rousing song, from when the idea of republicanism meant something quite different from what it does now, at least to the yahoos of the US Republican Party.  (Historian Eric Foner has, on a shelf in his office, a bobble-head doll of Abraham Lincoln, with the motto on the bottom, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to”.) 

Quick Watson, the lighter.  Sherlock Holmes’s line for when he started to experience withdrawal symptoms, adapted by Allen Schill. 

Then, starting at the middle of the right side: 

Aoxomoxoa.  Palindromic title of the Grateful Dead album, with no meaning. (“It just sounded cool”, said one of the members of the band.)  It’s the little horseshoe shape in baby blue. 

Ephphatha.  Aramaic for “Be opened”, spoken by Jesus when he healed the man who was deaf and dumb (Mark 7:34).  More precisely, to be opened to the Holy Spirit. 

Ka ya ma kan.  “It was, and it was not”, formulaic opening of many tales from 1001 Arabian Nights, something like “One upon a time”. 

Feed your head.  What the dormouse supposedly said in Alice in Wonderland, although this is an invention of the Jefferson Airplane in their song “White Rabbit”. Although most people assume (not entirely without reason) that this advises us to take drugs (especially LSD), singer Grace Slick emphasizes that it means as well to read, to learn, to cultivate ourselves. To be able to go beyond the mental ability to say “Far out, man!” and such.  Who but a highly literate person - sadly uncommon in the world of rock music - would fill a song with musings borrowed from James Joyce’s Ulysses, or write a song entirely in German?  (The hilariously ironic “Nicht sprechen mit einem Duetschen wenn Sie müden sind”, that is, “Never argue with a German if you’re tired.”)  Smart gal, Grace.  Thanks for everything.  By the way, I heard a performance from several years ago by former Airplaners Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy.  They did an audience participation - the people were asked to sing along on “White Rabbit”.  Jack just  kicked it off with that unforgettable bass line, and the whole crowd sang the entire song - flawlessly.  When it was over, Jorma said, “We gotta tell Gracie about this”.

Suma bin ciapá.  (In Italian, Siamo ben messi.)  Common phrase in Piemontese, meaning, we’re in a really good situation - but ironically, meaning the opposite.  As Ollie often said to Stanley, “We’re in a fine mess!” 

Private Buddha.  Buddhist term for one who is selfishly content to reach enlightenment on his or her own, rather than to help others to reach enlightenment. 

Open the Kingdom.  Song from Philip Glass’s Songs from Liquid Days (1986); lyrics by David Byrne, sung magnificently by Douglas Perry. 

XJPXSDZGTSSHZYSX.  The abbreviated form of “Xi Jin Ping Xin Shi Dai Zhong Guo Te Se She Hui Zhu Yi Si Xiang”, or “Xi Jin Ping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”.  This is the recently adopted encyclical - practically papal - of the Chinese Communist Party, whose title even many party functionaries have trouble remembering correctly, or to finish saying without having to take a breath.  So they usually just abbreviate it to “Xi Jin Ping Thought”. 

War on the Palaces.  From German dramatist and poet Georg Büchner. ”Peace to the shacks!  War on the palaces!”  A German translation of a motto of the French revolution.  In 1834, when this was published, along with an accompanying polemic, it was considered treasonous, and Büchner had to escape to France.  One of his collaborators was arrested and jailed, dying in mysterious circumstances. 

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.  “I devote myself to the Mystic law of Cause and Effect through Sound.”  The main prayer or mantra of Nichiren Buddhism.  “Renge” refers to the lotus flower, which represents cause and effect because it seeds and flowers at the same time.  “Kyo” has a complex web of meaning:  it means the long dimension of a bolt of cloth, which by extension comes to signify both Sound and Time. 

There’s one piece not here in the main photograph, as it’s already done: 

Why do police guys beat on peace guys?  A song by Arlo Guthrie.  A lament sung in a descending major scale, eight even quarter notes.  One of the first pieces I did with resin, hoping to use a shallow metal dish as a mold.  (It’s actually the top of a cylindrical cardboard container for whiskey.)  But even though I had oiled the metal lightly before pouring the resin, the thing remained stuck fast to the metal lid.  So I glued a few pieces of flat magnet on the back, and it now graces my refrigerator. 

Police Guys and Peace Guys, by Arlo Guthrie, 2022.

I’ve done a few more since that photo was taken - I got out my letters and sewing box.  My routine is to arrange the letters on a piece of cardboard covered with double-stick tape.  These five have since been threaded: 

My bruddah from anuddah muddah.  First heard from my Cruzan bruddah-in-law, Chico Bob, when he greeted a good friend.  It’s English with a Cruzan pronunciation, but it could just as well be Jimmy Durante.

Fire the hearts of men with the Word!  A phrase that derives from the Bible and other sources.  I found it in a story by the above-mentioned Sigizmund Khrzizhanovsky.

I’ve been in your shoes.  I heard this on a very moving podcast of This American Life on the subject of emergency rescues for people addicted to hard drugs, who have a hotline available, over which they can stay in touch with a hotline operator when they fix:  in the event of an overdose, the operator can dispatch help immediately.  The comment is what an EMT volunteer said to a woman who had overdosed when she thanked him for the rescue.  The EMT volunteer had been an addict himself in the past and once overdosed, but his life was saved by quick intervention.  When he got clean, he trained and became an EMT.

Ego nunquam in Arcadia.  Latin for “I was never in Arcadia”.  It’s adapted from the more familiar ”Et in Arcadia ego”, a frequent subject or theme of artists, most famously Nicholas Poussin.  Arcadia is a part of the old idea of the mythical Golden Age before civilization, when everything was peaceful and always bathed in the gentle Mediterranean sunlight - something like an ancient Greek equivalent of the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Man.  The mythical story concerns two shepherds who, while wandering and tending their sheep, happen to find a human skull.  There is a motto inscribed on the skull:  ”Et in Arcadia ego”, meaning that Death existed, somewhat surprisingly, even in this idyllic land.  My response is on behalf of all us modern people who have never known Arcadia, and yet Death is with us just the same.

Cui malo?  Latin for ”Who suffers?“  The better-known phrase, ”cui bono?”, or ”who benefits?”, is one that lawyers and detectives often ask themselves to try to determine who may be guilty of a crime.  The logic of course is that the person who benefits is a likely suspect.  My variation’s purpose is to cast light on who gets the shitty end of the stick in, for example, matters of public policy, such as voting rights, abortion access, pollution, gun permissiveness, etc..  The answer is usually plain enough.

Plus one or two more that I hope to do:

Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.  Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923. 

Thirty years since I’ve seen you and I still see you getting on the boat.  From Eliot Weinberger’s The Life of Tu Fu. 

Allen Schill, September 2023