Poetry corner: Paul Simon
I got a Nikon camera …
This post is dedicated to two blogsters who both have recently acquired fancy new digital SLR cameras and who are now learning how to get the most out of them: Gerald, who spent the Christmas gift from his grandparents, and then some, on a really cool camera and who has been taking cool pix since then; and Captain JP, who is taking his digital SLR on an adventure from which I hope to see lots of other cool pix (or sure shots or whatever – I don't know what brand his camera is).
The technology may have changed, so now the pictures are recorded as digital bits on a memory chip as opposed to being the result of a chemical reaction of light-sensitive substances on film, but there's still resonance with the song "Kodachrome," the song by Paul Simon that he recorded with Art Garfunkel many years ago.
Kodachrome
Paul Simon
When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of edu---cation
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
my sweet imagination
everything looks WORSE in black and white
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Leave your boy so far from home
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Thanks to SING365.com for the lyrics. Interesting note … when I first arrived at the site, because I have a slow dial-up connection, the advertising wasn't visible. By the time I got to the point of pasting the lyrics into this post, the advertising had showed up for … yeah … Nikon cameras.
Labels: family, geeks, music, observations, poetry, pretty pictures
posted by Carol Anne | 12:34 AM
3 Comments:
Love that song. Always reminds me of the first few weeks of 1978. My wife was in hospital due to complications with her pregnancy and I was working all day, visiting hospital every evening, and then going home to a lonely house. I think I played the Paul Simon LP with this song on every night.
And then in early February my first son was born, my wife had a birthday, and I baked a cake for her and took it to the hospital. Happy days.
The lyrics of the song have nothing to do with what happened in our family during that time (apart from all the Kodachrome 35mm slides I took of the new baby - no digital SLRs back then) but still it always brings back the memories.
Glad you liked it. Strange how events converge ... Gerald's first baby pictures were taken with the same 35mm SLR that was used to take my first baby pictures; my dad had bought it just before I was born, and it had been handed down to me. It's good that the old thing still worked; aside from the pictures, I have almost no memory of the next two and a half years.
Meanwhile, a programming note: I am compiling the results of the light bulb project. I hope to get results up before Monday is over.
I don't think I know what a Kodachrome is, but it certainly sounds precious!
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