In another shortened classic, Chicken Little doesn’t think the sky is falling. What a relief!

A setting of part of Il Vendemmiatore, by Luigi Tansillo, which I encountered quoted by Giordano Bruno in his dialogue La Cena de le ceneri. The part I set is:

Lasciate l’ombre, ed abbracciate il vero;
Non cangiate il presente col futuro.
Io d’aver di miglior già non dispero;
Ma per viver più lieto e più sicuro,
Godo il presente e del futuro spero:
Cosi doppia dolcezza mi procuro.

Leave the shadows, and embrace the truth;
Do not exchange the present for the future.
I do not despair of having something better;
But by living more gladly and more calmly,
I enjoy the present and hope for the future:
And so I obtain double sweetness.

It was based on randomized four-pitch diatonic chords, like the “Nine Settings.”

The syllabic constraint of haiku calls for the additional constraint of rhyme. Here are seven examples:

Look at all the salt
Sprinkled on my frosted malt
It’s the waiter’s fault

You thought it great sport
To commit a grievous tort
I’ll see you in court

What is this I found
Just lying here on the ground
It must weigh a pound

Consider the mole
It spends its life in a hole
That’s its only goal

In the afternoon
You will seldom see the moon
Because it’s too soon

This is just a hunch
That was not a wholesome crunch
In my bite of lunch

Everybody dies
Then we get our ears and eyes
Full of baby flies

A song about the miracle of human reproduction. Here’s how it begins:

I’ve drawn a few pages under the rubric “Shorten the Classics.” Each is four panels, and abbreviates a famous work of literature, usually by nipping it in the bud. Tragedies are averted, murders prevented, adulteries blocked. Derek Pell of Black Scat Books urged me to draw a book of them, so that’s what I’m doing now, redrawing the old pages and drawing new ones. Here, for example, is that classic book for horse buffs, Black Beauty.

Tom Bowden has posted a review of my translation of Charles Cros’s Principles of Cerebral Mechanics, along with an interview with me, over here (it’s the second review in the batch). Get your copy of this fascinating work today, from Wakefield Press!

I made this arrangement of Satie’s cabaret song “Je te veux” (published in 1902, but probably composed in 1897) for my ukulele students. It’s the only piece I’ve written out in tablature.

“Selby Yarrow’s Private Diary” can be found in The Snowman Three Doors Down. Poor Selby Yarrow starts a diary, but runs into difficulty with both his intentions and his materials. He also decides to keep it in code, only to realize that anyone can crack it, since he described it before using it. Here’s how it begins:

SELBY YARROW’S PRIVATE DIARY

January 3: I bought a diary today, and I plan to use it to record my thoughts, observations, and emotions, as well as the ongoing history of my daily life. I meant to start on January 1, two days ago, but I didn’t get around to it until today, January 3. It’s a nice looking diary, with a plain green cover. Some of the diaries that I looked at had various pictures on the cover, but I decided against them, because the picture might not suit my mood or thoughts on a given day. There was one with a rainbow on the cover, for example. But what if it was raining or snowing, and I wanted to write about how I felt in the foul weather. A plain green cover, like this one, is more likely to suit my mood on a given day. Not much happened today, but tomorrow I’ll take a walk, and I’ll probably have a lot to write about. Goodbye for now.

January 4: I took a walk today, and a car almost ran me over. What an asshole! And I had the light, too. I’m lucky I wasn’t killed. This brush with mortality put me in a bad mood, and I felt angry and tense all day. My stomach hurt, and I walked around talking to myself, imagining that I was yelling at him for his dangerous driving. But then I realized that I probably looked like I was crazy, so I stopped. I had every reason to be angry, and talking to myself in that way was perfectly justified under the circumstances, but someone who was passing by might not know that. So I decided to remain silent, although my thoughts were still racing in indignation. I decided to write this diary in pencil, even though it’s less permanent than ink, because if I make a mistake, it’s easier to correct than it would be if I were writing it in pen, which is harder to erase. With a pencil, you can simply erase your error, and then substitute the correction in its place. This diary would look better if I’d started with pencil yesterday, but you can’t have everything.

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