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If you wondered and half hoped that the “Carlin” being “met” was comedian George Carlin, then you are in luck.
Here’s a link to a review of the screen biography now out, George Carlin’s American Dream.
Here’s a link to a respectful essay in my old blog, George Carlin and Diversity.
Here’s the connection: To use a musical term, a fellow-comedian, in the above movie, noted that Carlin used “fugue” in his act, as in, he interweaved his topic. For my Friday Free Fall piece, from the prompt “chicken soup,” a fellow-writer said my writing was like a constellation in the sky, with pretty spots of light I kept returning to. Perhaps that’s a poetic way of saying fugue.
Often, as we are free falling at our Friday morning meetings, we manage to write with a linear structure, but a fugue is acceptable too. Our fast writing, like a comedian’s first creative draft, is a chance to get creative, and get confident that we can break free of rigid “fix it as we go” writing. After all, beyond Friday, we have six other days to write in our usual way, whatever that way might be.
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Prompt- chicken soup
I remember a science fiction story where if an expedition was in trouble they would signal help by sending back a can of chicken soup. Well, if you are in a hurry to use the transporter, and have no clip board and sharpie handy, then yes, send a can.
The symbolism was not that the explorers were chicken, not like how pinwheel pilots in Nam would call themselves chickenhawks; but rather they wanted the comfort of Mom’s chicken soup. Nobody’s ever too old for a bit of comfort.
When some artist decided to paint a big can of something or other, for some reason or other, it was, you guessed it, chicken soup. By Andy Warhol. A big photograph would not have been as comforting, as Andy well knew.
A comfort when you’re sick, a comfort when you are watching the television set and Timmy has fallen down a well—Remember? Lassie was “brought to you by Campbell’s soup.” For nearly every commercial: Money well spent by the company, back when Lassie and Collie were interchangeable.
As a boy I read Lassie Come Home about a collie that herded sheep. She got lost. Like how we are losing our language. As a boy a collier was a barge carrying coal, at Christmas we sang “four Colley birds,” as in black birds. Now the kids sing “calling birds.” Not the same.
My adult mind, the same one that sees no nutrition in Kool aide, or white bread, wants me to eat chunky soup, hearty soup, the man handler. Yes, but sometimes some emptier soup fills the soul, especially on dark evenings when I have a cold and my dear mother is nowhere around.
I miss the days of telling my mother about Buck Rogers and Star Explorers, during the commercials for Lassie, as the whole family gathered at the hearth. Come home, Lassie, come home.
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Sean Crawford
One planet in from Mars
June, 2022
Footnote:
Using a chicken soup can to signal help was by Robert F. Young, “known for his lyrical and sentimental prose,” in Eridahn.
The novel, from a short story, was about a lone time explorer, studying dinosaurs, who meets a pair of human siblings from the Mars of our far, far past. The gimmick was that all the adults in the kid’s society had been “adjusted,” as the siblings were soon going to be. That adjustment meant that none of the grown ups on their world would ever make a frivolous campfire with the kids, or frivolously roast marshmallows, or frivolously tell fantasy stories.
Blog note:
I don’t suppose I’ll post again until the next “15th,” which will be in July.
