From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

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*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Hurtin', Leavin' and Longin' (40)—Culture and Memory

[a] Horticulture and memory RF
If you read the news (or watch television or check the internet) you know why I have moved our scheduled entry to next Sunday. I am leaving today to a classic country song that was sung in a transcendent way...way beyond country. We don't do tributes on Round and Square (we're too boring for that). We do work with memory, though, and it would be hard to have lived the last forty years without knowing this song and two really, really big first names associated with it.

Check out the classic opening line in the third verse about "bittersweet memories." The point is not so much whether you liked the music or identified with an artist or songwriter. The point is shared cultural experience. And memory. Unless you have been drinking goat milk alone in a yurt since 1973, you could not have missed the shared cultural experience of this little song or its singers. Other than that, even plenty of people in yurts watched The Bodyguard.

Let's listen to two versions of a classic. We don't need a "juxtaposition" at the end (the kind we usually have in this series). Not today. The world itself is a juxtaposition, and it does not take a historian or anthropologist to see it. Take a listen.



I Will Always Love You
(Original Lyrics—1973)
Artist: Whitney Houston
Songwriter: Dolly Parton
[b] Swirls RF
If I should stay,
I would only be in your way.
So I'll go, but I know
I'll think of you each step of the way.

And I will always love you.
I will always love you.

Bittersweet memories
That's all I am taking with me.
Goodbye. Please, don't cry.
We both know that I'm not what you need.

And I will always love you.
I will always love you.

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope that you have all that you ever dreamed of.
And I wish you joy and happiness.
But above all this, I wish you love.

And I will always love you.
I will always love you.
I will always love you.
[c] Juxtaposed RF

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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 12, 2012 at 2:04 PM

    If memory is the greatest tribute, then Ms. Houston certainly deserves it. I was thinking about why her death was so sad to me, because I was more of a fan of her mother's and her cousin's supple, beautiful voices. I suppose it's for many reasons -- the waste of a beautiful voice, the inability of rehab to fix someone so broken, the very public messes, maybe even the inevitability of her death. Broken singers with breaking hearts fall hard, and in the end, we still have the music.

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