I’ve been learning some new words today, the first of which popped up in today’s Friday poem by Annie Freud (I can’t find a link to the poem but here’s the author) and the word is Mondegreen. OH will probably pop up in the comments and say I already knew this from a conversation years ago but if so I have forgotten it. As you probably already know, mondegreen defines a misheard song lyric which is better or at least funnier than the original: examples include ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy’, ‘just a bit of stockwater tea’ and ‘there’s a bathroom on the right’(from Purple Haze, Evita and Bad Moon Rising respectively.)
Trump has been learning some new words too. True, they don’t include the much-needed words ‘sorry’ or ‘concede’ but they are significant nonetheless. Late, inadequate, self-serving as it was, in his latest video he condemned the riots he himself incited without claiming responsibility for them, and acknowledged that there would be a peaceful transition without actually admitting defeat. Well, it’s not great but it’s something and hopefully now his supporters will stand down to allow that peaceful transition. Whatever his motives – and I imagine the threat to invoke article 25 and remove him from office will have concentrated his mind wonderfully – he has moved out of the way, at least for now. He seemed to signal that he would come back in 2024 but we’ll see. I think he’s dished himself but I may yet be proved wrong.
Another new word I’ve learnt today is apocalypse. Well I did already know this word of course but what I didn’t realise was that it doesn’t mean disaster so much as a massive upheaval, one which leads to a revelation. To put it in the words of Elizabeth Bishop:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master/ though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art
So there are my new words for today. And on this auspicious Friday I invite you to practise the art of losing… Trump!
Joy!
Kirk out
PS Oh, and I nearly forgot – I’ve had a short story accepted by those wonderful people at Stand magazine. It’ll be out later in the year.
Sarada Gray 