dancin in the dark

At a Paul Simon concert in Toronto on May 7th, fan Rayna Ford screamed out a request for the song "Duncan," calling out that she had learned to play the guitar on the tune. Paul heard her and pulled her up on stage to have her sing the song. I dare you to watch this and not choke up a little:


Thanks to Sammy Jane Allison for linking me to this great story about it on NPR.

You can feel the soaring joy and trembling disbelief as she straps Paul's guitar on and starts strumming along. She finds her rhythm as she goes, but her performance punctuated with irrepressible moments of giddy gratitude. She can't believe it. Paul Simon is watching her play "Duncan." She brings the house down with tears streaming down her face.

It's hard not to imagine yourself in the same position. Admit it. You've been fantasizing over it ever since the first time you saw Bruce Springsteen pull Courteney Cox onstage in the "Dancing in the Dark" video.


How impossibly young and gorgeous are they in this video??

It's so easy to imagine it. I'm a few rows back at a Lil Wayne concert, wired on sheer excitement and squinting through the plumes of smoke issuing out of the fog machine. Between songs, I scream out SWIZZZZZZZYYYYY! PLAY SWIZZY! Weezy squints out at the audience with his hands shielding his eyes from the stage lights, wondering who has requested such a deep track--a true fan. He catches sight of me and grins, the rainbow of pulsing lights glinting off his grill. Out of nowhere, the helicopter-chop crescendo of the beginning of the track booms out of the wall of speakers. Weezy points at me and gestures for me to join him on stage, laughing. I point at myself (who, me?) and then laugh, shaking my head (no, I couldn't) as my friends push me up towards the stage.

I jump up on stage with the help of a few refrigerator-sized security guards. I give Weezy the most effortless hip-hop hand-clasp-then-hug greeting with a familiar smile and a wink, and then like magic a golden mic appears in my hand. I'm a little taller than Weezy, so I throw my arm around his shoulder, resting on his dreads, as I furiously spit the opening lines:

You know me I just be chillin in the Phantom
Listenin to opera
Gun is my bodyguard
Call it Kevin Costner

Weezy laughs in disbelief at my unexpectedly tight flow. He slugs me on the shoulder jovially to indicate his appreciation, mouthing the words as I rapid-fire spit them like I've been practicing for this every day of my life. (Which I definitely haven't.)

When I reach the final lines (WEEZY THE BEAST! KATIE THE MONSTER! And we're gone.), Weezy lifts his chain off of his neck and places it around mine. There are so many diamonds on it that it actually makes a soft bling blingbling sound. The crowd loses it, nearly knocking us backwards with their adoration. Weezy and I forget the encore and head straight to his bus to start working on my album.


Bonus: scroll up and watch Bruce and Courteney dance to "Swizzy."

Discussion Question::
Which musician would you most want to be pulled onstage by?

the poetics of Lil Wayne

As I mentioned in my bibliophilia post, a great deal of my undergraduate research was dedicated to invective poetry. Specifically, I wrote a lot about the connections between Roman satirist Juvenal and popular rap artist Eminem.

Since I spent my undergraduate years in New Orleans, I spent a lot of time fielding questions about the difference between Juvenal and Juvenile.



Juvenal. Juvenile. Ianus?

But I digress. My undergraduate days might be a distant memory, and my years in New Orleans may be long gone, but I still spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about the poetics of hip-hop.

I've actually been working on a blog post about hypallage, but I popped Lil Wayne's incredible 2007 mixtape The Drought is Over Pt. 2 (download it free + legal here) in my CD player today at lunch and I was like damn! That's a lot of puns.

Eight clever uses of double-meaning in a single verse of a Lil Wayne song today. This, I thought, would make a great blog post. I apologize in advance for the formatting--this is tricky to lay out in a way that is easy to read.




Lil Wayne "I Know the Future" [Tha Carter III Sessions]

Straight from the bottom of the cut
I give it to these b*tch n****s like Mama taught me
One man with no weapon at war, but I'm an army
My flow is capital, attention! Lieutenant, you're penny-pinchin'
And they demolished that invention
You better get your dollars up
And guess what, I was up
I get my cheese like Mickey Mouse
or else you better Donald Duck
Like a shooting range target
I get all kinda bucks
Be my shooting-range target
N**** I got good luck
N**** bye bye good luck
Got your momma shook up
Lil bad *ss n**** who thought Popeye wasn't tough
I'm on that lala twist it up
I'm on that syrup slow it down
and I like four freaks too, and I ain't Yung Joc but its going down
I buy that marijuana field, then I just mow it down
Big Bad Wolf yes I just blow it down
(no homo) and to Holly Grove I will hold it down
Like a circle of knives I got the sharpest flow around

My flow is capital - His flow is capital (adj, excellent, important), but his flow is also capital (n, a source of profit). The addressee of the song has a flow that is weak by comparison ('you're penny-pinchin').

I get my cheese like Mickey Mouse - He accumulates a lot of cheese (slang n, money) much in the way beloved cartoon Mickey Mouse gets cheese (n, dairy-based food product)

you better Donald Duck - You'd better duck (v, crouch) (referring to popular pantsless Disney character Donald Duck (n, waterfowl)

Like a shooting-range target / I get all kinda bucks - In the almost effortless way that hunters shoot at plastic bucks (n, deer) at a shooting range, Lil Wayne accumulates bucks (slang n, money).

I ain't Yung Joc but its going down - It's going down (slang phrase, something is about to happen), despite the fact that Lil Wayne is not Yung Joc (ATL rap artist who performed the incredibly quotable 2006 hit "It's Goin Down"**)

**Hilariously, there is a Wikipedia disambiguation page for the phrase "It's Goin' Down"

I buy that marijuana field, then I just mow it down - Lil Wayne mows (v, cuts down) the marijuana field and mows (v, destroys) it down by smoking it

Big Bad Wolf yes I just blow it down (no homo) - A beguiling three-part pun! Like the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, Lil Wayne blows (v, sends forth a current of air) the field down and blows (v, exhales) the marijuana smoke. Lil Wayne throws in his signature (and controversial) three-syllable caveat "no homo" so that we don't consider a third meaning of blow--one that refers to a sexual act on a man.

Like a circle of knives I got the sharpest flow around - An interesting dual pun. Lil Wayne has the sharpest flow around (n phrase, the most incisive rapping skills), which is similar to a circle of knives (which are sharp and arranged in a round shape)


...This is the kind of thing I think about all day.


Discussion Question:
What is your favorite poetic device? Here's a handy glossary to jog your memory.