The Kick-About #61 ‘I Remember’

Our last Kick-About together was a celebration of the idea of tea-making, tea-drinking, and its various rituals. Without this activity, with its powers of comfort and displacement, I wonder sometimes how we would otherwise negotiate some of life’s disappointments, large and small. Disappointment is one of the themes of Molly Drake’s I Remember, and it is Drake’s delicate, if devastating song that has this week inspired us to produce new works in a short time.

Marion Raper

“My story begins with our family holiday to Dorset. It was probably early 60s and I think we were staying in Swanage. We were usually quite lucky with the weather, but it was not to be this time. As we had no car then, my parents decided on taking a nice coach trip to Lulworth Cove which was a famous beauty spot not far along the coast. My sister and I wore our summer dresses and warm hand knitted cardigans, as it was getting a bit chilly, but when we arrived at our destination the heavens opened and rain looked likely to be set in for the rest of the day.

‘Quick – let’s run up to that beach shop’ said mum. ‘We’ll buy something waterproof there for you both.’

My heart sank, as I could see at a glance it was a typical seaside shop that sold everything from buckets and spades to thermos flasks, and Mary Quant it was not!

So in we went and the kind lady behind the counter said, ‘I have the very thing – plastic macs!” My heart sank even further. She proceeded to pull out a white one for my sister, which had a small plastic headscarf, and as she was 4 years younger than me, it looked quite cute. However, despite a long search, there didn’t appear to be another in my size. Hooray!

Then just as I thought I had escaped, she found another bigger mac tucked away beneath the rest and, horror of horrors, it was luminous pink! I mean ‘day glow’ and ‘get your sunglasses on’ pink. (I know the sixties fashion was all about these bright colours, but this must have been very much a forerunner!). Even worse it had a matching hat, rather like an upturned flowerpot, that tied under the chin.

‘That’s just the job!’ said mum.

I spent the rest of the day skulking along the shoreline, trying desperately to hide amongst the overturned boats, but there was no way I could disguise myself; if I had stood on some rocks, I could have done a turn as a lighthouse beacon!

So that is my memory of Lulworth Cove, which is a place of peaceful serenity and muted beauty to many, but all I remember is psychedelic misery!“

Charly Skilling

“The source of much pain (for the individual) and much humour (for the group) lies in the gap between one’s aspirations (or expectations), and one’s achievements. This is particularly true when we are young and in love. We want to be ‘soul-mates’ with our loved one – to share the same experiences, the same emotions, the same memories. Alas, it is rarely achievable. We recognise Molly Drake’s pain, because we have felt it too. But it also raises a wry smile. For we have learnt, as we grow within a relationship, that no two people experience any shared event in the same way. So we adjust our expectations accordingly.

By the time we have aged within that relationship, we come to recognise that it is an achievement for any shared experience to be remembered by both of us at all, without several minutes of dispute over location time of year, weather, and reason for being there. And why is it that I find I cannot remember the name of a place, I cannot remember how to get there, or why – but I can remember exactly what we ate and the colour of the waitress’s nail polish? What’s all that about?”

Colin Bean

“This one was a bit of a late starter for me. Having given some early thought to it and tinkered with water colour washes as a response to the words, the result didn’t quite live up to my expectations . Initially I was thinking in terms of printed textiles based on the stanzas and 1950’s, but a few scribbles and doodles confirmed that wasn’t ready to work for me. So it rested until almost the deadline and, as a final go at it, I tried cutting up the original into sections and rearranging in an effort to express the ‘you and me ‘ idea. That practice put me in mind of putting together a shade card.

In this one, ‘me’ is represented by colours for Molly’s words. ‘You’ are the stencils that stand separate until used on Molly’s colours, and that combination can be read as the ‘we’… though here, as in the poem, the two together do not represent a happy ‘we’ of Molly’s expectations.

The card is done from scratch and the colour swatches are gouache and then laminated. The script is traced from the text using a Word font. The miniature stencils are handcut and pierced oiled card. Yet another very interesting Kick-About for me and a real challenge to express an ‘abstract’ visually.”

Vanessa Clegg

“Both of these pieces come under the headings of love / regret / romance and memory, all of which are sparked off by this prompt…”

“Goodbye to all that” oil on gesso on board. 60cm X 60cm

“Always” Stitching on old handkerchief and oil paint on waxed paper

vanessaclegg.co.uk

Graeme Daly

“Molly Drake’s words brought a tear to my eye, how such a poet can write something so striking about the melancholic juxtaposition of both light and dark. It brought back memories of people that have come and gone out of my life but also the places where those memories and faces come bubbling up when passing in a car or walking past a particular patch of land, like reveries of times I will never forget.”

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

Phil Cooper

“What a wonderful song by Molly Drake, and so beautifully sung. This piece of music is like a faded old photograph, looking back at a bittersweet time, the little vignettes of holidays and days out are achingly nostalgic.

I’ve been on both sides of the dynamic expressed in this song at one time or another and either position is just grim and sad. I did some sketches this week in response to the prompt about a weekend trip with one of my first boyfriends over thirty years ago. We stayed in a guest house and went for a walk to a beautiful waterfall nearby, It should have been a carefree, loved-up, fun few days, full of laughter and lovemaking, but I’d reached the point when I realised I didn’t want to take the relationship much further but my boyfriend did and we separated soon after getting home.

This waterfall makes me think of that lost weekend. I wasn’t really mature enough at the time for a serious relationship; it would be some time before I was emotionally grown-up enough for that . I hope that boyfriend is happy now, wherever he is. He was a lovely guy.”

instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com

Phil Gomm

“You might consider this a sequel of sorts, as back in March 2021, when Ole Worm’s cabinet of curiosities was our collective muse, I photographed and catalogued a selection of my own keepsakes, the emotional importance of which I couldn’t actually remember. Molly Drake’s ‘I Remember’ isn’t so much about the fallibility of memory, but rather the different ways in which we remember the same thing. Drake’s song also captures very truthfully how the significance of something can be quite wasted on someone else – even those closest to us. With this in mind, I turned my attention to some of the objects with which I share my home, but with which I have no emotional association, but which resonate very powerfully with my husband. I see a rather retro-looking glass paperweight, while my husband experiences a Proustian rush returning him at once to the comforts of his grandparents’ home and all the love he found there. There are objects collected here the provenance of which is still unknown to me, and their emotional heft as mysterious, but ‘he remembers firelight’.”

philgomm.com

Gary Thorne

“Back to jugs. Hoping a narrative might be staged within a shared space, in order to portray intimacy and separation and where the suggestion of alternate ‘points of view’ (that which each jug points to) draws a parallel to Molly Drake’s poem. Respecting the natural linen and pencil line seemed the right approach in order to deliver something feeling a little more natural than a paint saturated canvas at 30x30cm.”

linkedin.com/in/gary-thorne

Kerfe Roig

“I wasn’t aware of Nick Drake’s heritage, but Molly’s song immediately made me think of ‘River Man. I took the feeling I got from both songs, and made a prose poem, then some art to accompany it.”

Fragmentations

She did not remember the way, but she remembered the times, the place. She wanted to connect present to past. She did not know how or where to begin, and yet she needed to try to construct that bridge. Words were all she had now.

Two ways, really, even though she always pretended they were the same. Or maybe it was only her longing that failed to understand that they were two, not one.

She had been dreaming of a river. A man, a boat. Trees, weeping, or was that her own voice, crying on the wind? It had been summer once. Flowered. Sweet.

But here was the river again, littered with fallen leaves. What magic word would turn back the seasons, dispel the haze, repair a lifetime that had already disintegrated into dust?

Was she coming or going? In her dreams a voice kept repeating you have to choose. But between what? Who? Did she get to choose who would be waiting on the other side of the river? Or was she to be the one left waiting?

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

With thanks to regular Kick-Abouter, Tom Beg, we have our latest prompt, the short 1977 film Powers Of Ten, directed by Charles and Ray Eames.

Throwback Friday #96 Little Things (2004?)

For this week’s rummage through the archives of ‘stuff wot I’ve done’, it’s an airing for another of those sad little songs written all the way back in the early-mid 2000s, when I was licking wounds of one sort or another. I can just about recall the melody for the chorus (a few lines of it anyway), but other than that, only the words remain, and also the feelings that gave rise to them.

little things

I admit I’ve got some cheek and I admit I’ve got some nerve
now wanting your attention after so successful a body-swerve
after insisting it was over. after insisting on meaning it
after announcing plain and simple, our so called-love, I’m leaving it
and it’s not that I regret one word or would reverse the hands of time
or contest my intuition or that common sense of mine
but there’s something gone awry in our story, though still true
details inadmissable because I needed to hate you
so forgive me this confession. I’m not re-attaching strings
when I tell you, like a thirst I just miss the little things

chorus

‘cos you were also a warmth, you were a sound in my head
and you were the way particular words got said
you were the smell of the soap on the palms of my hands
that bemused concentration whenever I told you my plans
you were pub-smoke, you were cinnamon on our one christmas eve
that distraught little boy when I said I would leave
you were the hand leaving mine, you put these breaks in my heart
our sum sure wasn’t great, but I still love you in parts

I won’t come knocking on your door, won’t be waking you from sleep
won’t be finding how to justify now some ill-advised repeat
won’t make believe I was passing or stand before you wet from the rain
won’t forget the whys and the reasons, won’t waste more breath trying to explain
and it’s not that I’m not torn or sometimes mourn those days with you
but how to even tell you and keep my promise true?
I know I’m better off this way because I’m stronger now and free
how I had to hurt you back this once to finally stop us from hurting me
so forgive me my confusion and any grief it welcomes in
when I tell you, like a thirst I just miss the little things

chorus

the point on me is lost of my simultaneous default
of now confessing joy when it’s not a ploy and i’m content with our result
when the way things are still suits me and I’m as pleased as punch I had my say
I lie awake less, my bed emptied, no longer rueing our worst of days
but it’s not that i’m at rest, I am, at best, a man who knows
a little less now about love-stories, about the way they’re supposed to go
but I do know you deserve somehow more now than what got said
neither crumbs or guilty gifts but the truth of it instead
so understand me, this annotation, around you i’m not running rings
when I tell you like a thirst, I just miss the little things

chorus

Throwback Friday #84 There Was A Man (2003)

Another old song dating from a downbeat, if highly creative, period of my life, and another break-up song at that! I actually remember the melody for this one, which moves me towards doing something constructive with some of these out-pourings, if only to ensure against forgetting them completely.

there was a man

there was a man and the world was his oyster
woke up with the sunlight still dreaming of choice
the things he would do just given half of a chance
the songs he might sing and the dance he might dance
there were some who believed he could fly
there were some who believed he had wings
here was man, most people said
a man with a talent for just about everything
only here’s the mystery. Here’s the part I don’t understand
because he vanished one day, and the world went away
and I know this because I was that man.

chorus

(and I think) that man left my life the way you did
and not late one night or by the slam of any door
but like a warmth slowly cooling, like some thread in me unspooling
like conviction becoming much less sure
I think the man that was me left alongside you
and just like a ghost I think he’s following you still
but if I wait here maybe he’ll come back
because, maybe, just maybe you will

there was a man and the skies were the limit
touched the stars with his fingers and the moon his to win
its light on his face and its silver his prize
the heavens in reach and those stars in his eyes
there were some who believed he was born
to start like a spark some great fire
here was a man it was often heard said
a man with plan for climbing now even higher
only here’s the crying shame. Here’s the part which feels like a sham
this man let go of the stars, let the moon float away
and I know this because I was that man

chorus

there was a man and his heart was wide open
like a door needing no key, like a gift freely given
unconcerned with the risk, unconcerned by the fall
from the podium high, from these ivory walls
there were some who believed he’d been crowned
like some prince in some old fairytale
here was man these same people said
a man with a love so sure it just couldn’t fail
only here’s the trick up the sleeve, here’s the ending no one had planned
‘cause how his heart broke, how his heart cracked and died
and I know this because I was that man

chorus

Throwback Friday #75 Glint (2003/4?)

Another song, written years ago, the tune for which I’ve long since lost, likewise the chords, though when I read these words, the ghost of a melody is playing in some other small room of my inadequate memory palace. This ditty is upbeat and defiant. I was obviously feeling less heart-broken when I wrote this, and imagining for myself some kind of more dynamic trajectory. Looking back on these songs is like looking at a photograph of myself and not really remembering where I was at the time, or what I was doing, or who I was with; a snapshot, yes, but poorly archived. One day perhaps, I’ll return to some of these phantom songs and drag them back into their corporeal form.

glint

i’m like a clock – tick tock – i’m like a clock that got stopped
like a pocket watch, like a pocket watch dropped
and my face got knocked and my hands, my hands kept still
I think it’s killing me, this time to kill

like a rocket-ship – dan dare – i’m a rocket-ship docked
got fins, big fins, but my rocket-ship’s locked
I can’t pull free, my countdown freezed, by gravity
I can see the stars but they can’t see me

chorus
but something in me is coming to be
like the crest of a wave on a listless sea
i’m spreading my wings, i’m leaving this nest
don’t look for me here, I won’t be with the rest
i’m that glint in the sky, hey, you keep the pie
the waiting is done, it’s my turn to fly

like a summer storm – flash bang – like a summer storm soon
got fire, enough fire, I could light up this room
but the horizon’s dark, though the air is charged and my heart’s in sparks
but let the lightening strike, let me make my mark

chorus

like tnt – stand clear – like tnt sticks
got a fuse, a short fuse, got a switch I can flick
my dial’s in the red, I’ve been juiced, I’ve been fed
now it’s my turn to lead ‘cause I won’t be led

chorus

Throwback Friday #59 Holding The Phone (2003?)

I can’t be completely sure when I wrote this song, but you can add it to the pile of similar stuff written following my slow and self-sabotaging exit from one particular relationship. I’m calling these efforts ‘songs’, though there is scant evidence of an actual chorus here, and they’re certainly not poetry. All I can say about this Friday’s example (and the others like it) is, whatever I was feeling at the time, I was feeling it vividly enough to sit down and write something by way of a response, be it a song, or so much dirge, or even a tiny capture of something true.

holding the phone

1

so, you’re phoning again, after all this time?
a bolt from these blues like a neon sign
i’m being real nice like I didn’t even bleed
but you ringing me, it’s like you’re ringing me
between those gentle hands no longer touching me

2
so, you’ll talk about the rain, ‘ain’t this weather grey?’
as just the sound of your voice chases clouds away
but i’m being real cool, like I never felt the heat
because hearing you, nowhere near to you
makes this day more grey even as your warmth comes through.

3
you want to hear how I’ve been? well, yeah I’ve been fine
you want to know what I do these days to pass the time?
I think you want me to lie, well that’s fine by me
as you won’t see these eyes, won’t detect this trace
won’t read the need imprinted on this face

4
i’m asking ‘how about you?’ ‘I can’t complain’ you say,
now isn’t that just great? you and me, we’re doing okay
anyone might mistake there’s nothing left here to break
our conversation clean and our chit-chat bored
my air supply cut by this telephone cord

5
I know it’s nearing the end as our pauses grow
just these few moments from now you’ll say you have to go
I have to go too, i’ve all these things I must do
like disconnect from you and repair the line
unplug this phone and that neon sign

6
we’ve been saying nothing much for nearly half an hour
I decide to say goodbye, my remaining power
you don’t seem phased at all me ending your call
so why ring me now? why ring today?
is there something more you want to say?

7
now this line has gone dead, I say out loud ‘i’m glad’
that’s over and done, and I’m sure, not sad
and in no time you’ll see I’ll no longer be
just sitting here, alone at home
me crying like this, me holding this phone
and in no time you’ll see I’ll no longer be
just sitting here, alone at home
me crying like this, me holding this phone

Throwback Friday #47 The Old Wives Had It Wrong (2003)

I’ve featured a few songs on here, songs accompanied by handy box chord diagrams, having had the discipline to commit their melodies and chords to paper, as well as to memory. Not so with this one, or indeed the many others like it. This song sits in a folder on my desktop as lines denuded of music. I remember writing it though, and I remember about whom I wrote it. I also remember really liking this song, which makes its silence all the more frustrating.

the old wives had it wrong

one day I flew high with a magpie
only found come the ‘morrow
he’d stolen the shine from my heart
‘cause he’d just come to borrow
first he feathered his nest
then he let me go for a song
those old wives, they sure weren’t wrong
one magpie brought me sorrow

once cursed and coerced by a gypsy
I let him woo me with all the sights that he’d seen
envy encouraged me to dance to his tune
sang the songs my gypsy would sing
but i missed who I’d been
became this man inbetween
those old wives, the light had seen
there’s just grass and it’s never more green

made hay with a stray heard him purring
and in my arms his charms basking
he had a hungering only for cream
for the salt from my warm skin
and though from house he made home
he was as happy to roam
those old wives sure knew their thing
leopards cling to their markings

played the fool with a jewel his eyes shining
two diamonds mining the whole of my soul
I burnished him bright with my breath
but my clasp this stone wouldn’t hold
I thought inside I’d seen fire
but a diamond is cold
those old wives they had it told
it may spark but it sure ain’t gold

i’ve tried, cried and died over magpies
over gypsies, over strays, over jewels
and so I say madness is love
if love, from kings, makes an old fool
what use then my heart?
is my hope something cruel?
those old wives sure change the rules
I heard them say that love, in the end, conquers all
what use then my heart?
is my hope something cruel?
those old wives sure change the rules
I heard them say that love, in the end, conquers all

October 2003

Throwback Friday #36 Choosing Kryptonite (2003)

Sometimes when a relationship ends, it doesn’t, and round and round you go together in interminable circles. This song was written in a time of circles, resolutions going broken and broken again.

I thought Choosing Kryptonite made for a suitable, if down-beat choice for January 1st – a day when we’re tempted to draw bold new lines and make solemn righteous promises… often bringing about the very conditions under which we’re going to feel worse about the unfinished business in our lives. The good news is this song is a relic – another one of my heart-felt out-pourings written without irony or much sophistication. Those interminable circles didn’t go round and round forever. The good news is you can make resolutions that stick, even if you have to break them a few thousands times on your way to making a change for the better.

choosing kryptonite

missing you, can’t believe i’m missing you
after all the things I said i’d never do
but i’m here again and it can’t be true
because there’s just no way your foot fits this shoe
but i’m missing you, can’t believe i’m missing you
it’ll end in tears, we always do

trusting you, how can that be right?
after all the grief and the sleepless nights?
but i’m in trouble deep, let the hazard warning light
i’m like superman choosing kryptonite
but i’m trusting you, can’t believe I’m trusting you
you’ll break my heart, you always do

touching you, even with my fingers burned
caresses black with soot, hey, you’d think I’d learned
but i’m like a moth and your like the flame
and like icarus this flight will end the same
but i’m touching you, can’t believe i’m touching you
i’m going to die a death, i’m going to fall for you

kissing you, you’ve re-tied my tongue
my insides in knots and my reserve undone
I can’t catch my breath, heart beat stationary
with this mouth-to-mouth I think you’re killing me
but i’m kissing you, really kissing you
I don’t care it hurts, I think I want it to

loving you makes a fool from me
makes me tweedledum and not tweedledee
I guess i’ll play the clown, supply banana peel
i’ll even laugh at me as these others will
but i’m loving you because I’m in love with you
but play it straight with me, i’ll come straight to you

leaving you, well there’s no surprise
you’re like holding snow, you’re like butterflies,
you can’t be kept ‘cause your love won’t keep
because you love to look, but you’re loathed to leap
but I’m leaving you, can’t believe I’m losing you
I came all this way but you’re still you

September 2003

MFT #9 December Will Be Magic Again (1979)

Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again is one of my favourite things. Here’s why.

In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. Put more simply, our own efforts to apprehend something can skew the outcome, rendering it invalid or void. Something similar happens when we try and apprehend Christmas, seeking to embody the season’s ambience through popular music or ‘Christmassy films’.

Most secular Christmas music is an appalling backfire, the way those pre-decorated straight-out-of-the-box plastic Christmas trees are appalling, in how so very wide of the mark they fall of the sensorial experience they’re straining to (re)produce.

Likely I’m just a po-faced old misery guts, but when I hear Slade or Wizzard or Band Aid or Wham or Mariah Carey, I envision a sort of festive rictus, the grinning tinseled skull of experience excarnated of hope. These ubiquitous songs tell me it must be Christmas again, but it’s never the Christmas I want.

Anyway, I find myself increasingly confused by Christmas, not least because I’m an atheist, but an atheist who went to a very nice Church of England school in a largely picturesque village. I find it near impossible to separate my intellectual position on the subject of the nativity from my nostalgia for all those Christmas assemblies, when my teachers did silly, unexpected things, or handed around chocolates in coloured foil, or we sang carols in the lovely old church up on the hill. The First Noel makes me ache. When it catches me unawares, Silent Night can even make me cry. Guilt soon follows, as I’m aggrieved by my own sentimentality, and for appropriating filmic moments of pathos from a culture I otherwise struggle to understand. Meanwhile, hearing I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day makes me die a bit inside, allergised by its artificiality and deficit of mystery, its unwillingness to admit to all the dark green shadows of winter.

Kate Bush’s ethereal December Will Be Magic Again rarely features on any of those well-worn compilations of ‘Christmas hits’ or Spotify playlists. I’ve never once heard it playing over supermarket speakers as an accompaniment to the sound of huge frozen turkeys clanging into trolleys. I’m certain no one sings along to it in pubs – how could they, given the swooping virtuosity of Kate’s vocal performance and the meltingly indistinct shapes of her lyrics?

Always with the music of Kate Bush, there is a final ‘unknowability’ at the heart of her song-writing. We understand her scheme of words well enough, but something remains abstruse and hidden from us lesser mortals, something intimate and surreal. I feel all of it anyway, as December Will Be Magic Again draws up the hairs on my arms in a quick silvery wave. Yes, there are sleigh-bells, that sonic shorthand for Christmas, but a cold, bright darkness is at work in the heart of this strange song, returning me at once to the chill of the old village church of my school days, with its cold stones and candle light. I feel it again, the thrill of seeing my breath, of the pooling of shadows under the pews, and that small dangerous electricity generated by a whole community of people coming together in some ancient rite of magical thinking, a beautiful seance.

I’ve always found the effect of December Will Be Magic Again to be like someone dialling down the thermostat, ferns of ice unfurling to etch the glass of my windows like elaborate William Morris wallpaper, Kate’s voice doing that, as clean and clear as starlight.

The snow, Kate sings, the snow is coming to cover the muck up, and so it does, this song drifting down from somewhere higher-up to efface the worst of those flashing plastic trees and quieten my misgivings.

Throwback Friday #28 Weak Kneed (2003)

It’s a lesser known fact about me that I’m sometimes known to write a song or two when the mood strikes. That mood used to strike much more often, I think because I didn’t second guess myself as much as I do now. I’m no musician after all, so what gives me the temerity to write music and think musically? Good question! Regardless of my innate abilities or otherwise, song-writing is something I’ve done and continue to do, only now it is usually in the service of some bigger, visual ambition.

Back in the early 2000s, my heart was sore and broken, and I wrote a number of songs as a means to move on from one thing or another. They make for quite a collection now. Weak Kneed is one of those songs from that period, a wistful, melancholy little ditty about unrequited love (of course).

Weak kneed

If life’s a cabaret and all the world’s a song
then meet the guy with two left feet, whose notes are often wrong
and if life is not a song then the world is but a play
but one in which I’m corpsing or drying or pratfalling
or hissing prompt and stalling and forgetting what to say

But I do know how to cheer, how to roll and break a fall
how to jump through hoops if need be, how not to drop the ball
and I guess I’ll walk a tightrope, I could learn the high trapeze
if I thought you might be watching, like me, weak now at the knees

If life’s a circus tent and a carnival of chance
I think I’ll sit this routine out, let the acrobats advance
‘cos you need a winning act for successful vaudeville
and I’m not so great at singing or keeping the plates spinning
or levitating women or topping any bill

but I do know how to cheer, how to roll and break a fall
how to jump through hoops if need be, how not to drop the ball
and I guess I’ll walk a tightrope, I could learn the high trapeze
if I thought you might be watching, like me, weak now at the knees.

If love’s a magic trick, a clever sleight of hand
my magician’s hat is empty, my best performance panned
‘cos they want a bigger flash, more glitter for their buck
but my repertoire is thinning and my face aches from the grinning
and my hopes I am unpinning from the whims of lady luck

If love’s the leading role, I’m in the chorus on the right
I’ve been singing just as loudly, I think my face was out of sight
so I don’t know if you saw, I wasn’t on for long
but Shakespeare I was quoting near the spotlight, and emoting
no claim to fame supposing distinction from the throng

April 2003