![]() ![]() ![]() It’s another version of Dadaism, and the methods also employed at various times by David Bowie and Brian Eno.ĭylan will could likely come up a lot this week as a master of the non sequitur. His methodology is to writing phrases down on bits of paper, stuff them in an old teapot, and when it is time to write a song, pull out the teapot and see what comes out. Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays and Black Grape for example, says he is in the ‘Strawberry Fields school of lyrics’, for that reason. Why? There are many artists influenced by the surrealists and the lyricism of John Lennon, writing words that have no meanings, but sound great. Overall, the potency of the non sequitur is that has has meaninglessness masquerading as meaning and that strangely, can often end up being very musical. Marc Bolan's and Bob Dylan’s examples seem also be partly fuelled by heading towards end of line rhyme, and whether they are plain silly, clever, or both, somehow they remain strangely vivid. John Lennon deliberately wrote such stuff to baffle those who studied the Beatles. They might be surreal, funny, disturbing or pleasing, but why do they happen in song lyrics or poetry? In the lyrical examples above, it might be on purpose. There are plenty of variants, but the magic here is that it’s also a classic non sequitur, from the Latin meaning 'does not follow', the conversational literary device often used for humorous purposes, in which there's no meaning, or at least not any conventional meaning relative to what preceded it, and often creating a splash of tangential absurdity.Īnd so this week, we're all about the non sequitur in song lyrics – words, phrases, or even whole lines that seem to go off at a purposeless departure. But while there's purpose here, there's also entertainment, a bending of the rules into the daftly vivid, and a functional saying is transformed into a colourful, if slightly crazy mnemonic. But it does actually work, at least if you translate no wonder as November, and coffee for breakfast as 31 days and the pedalling grandmother as February with 28 days and 29 in leap years. All the rest have coffee for breakfast, except gran, and she rides a bike." He was always a fan of the silly and surreal. When I was a kid, my dad used to say a rhyme to help remember the number of days in each month: "Thirty days hath September, April, June and no wonder. – Bob Dylan, Buckets of Rain and Simple Twist of Fate "He hears the ticking of the clocks and walks along with a parrot that talks … “ ![]() "Little red wagon, little red bike, I ain't no monkey but I know what I like …" 'Cause it's good for my voice.” – Marc Bolan, T Rex, Children of the Revolution – John Lennon on Beatles' I Am The Walrus Man, you've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.” “Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to comeĬorporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll "It's very rude." The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this but all he said was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" "You should learn not to make personal remarks," Alice said with some severity.
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