It's a quote from Buck Owens. Back in the 1990s there was a brief article about him in the local paper (either the Lake County News-Herald or the Cleveland Plain Dealer; my parents subscribed to both). It had a photo of him with the quote printed in bold beneath it. Here's a reconstruction:
I don't know much about Buck Owens, but I know what I like, and I decided that this -- the highlighting of the content-free quote, the look on his face, the way the guy was dressed -- was just about the best thing the News-Herald (or possibly Plain Dealer) had ever published. Well, except for that even more quotable one about the guy who ate 25 eggs every day "for complex psychological reasons."
"I know [insert vague statement], no doubt. I'm not really sure how I feel about it" became a catchphrase in my family and circle of friends, and a very versatile one. I pioneered that. I'm not really sure how I feel about it.
That was a long time ago. Why was it in my head when I woke up this morning? I know there must have been some reason, no doubt. . . . Anyway, I tried my best to track down the original article on the Internet but, unsurprisingly, failed. I did find the photo, though -- from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, into which he was inducted in 1996, so I suppose that was the occasion for the article.
Later in the morning, I checked some blogs and found a new post by William Wright: "Sync-fairies and writing again," in which he describes how his syncs have been interfacing with mine (including, most strikingly, a persistent delusion that he himself is literally a drowning boy in an Itladian-type scenario). He introduces these reflections with this:
In that Sync-fest post, the Jaredite-UFO-saucer points he was making weren't the only thing that caught my attention. He devotes significant space to this concept of a 'Drowning Boy'. This stood out to me for reasons I will explain below, before transitioning into some open thoughts on these syncs and how I feel about them (preview: I am not sure how I feel).
Precognition? Telepathy? Synchronicity? Just a very common turn of phrase which may not actually have been pioneered by Buck Owens? I know it must be one of those things, no doubt. . . .
William Wright mentions at one point becoming rather distressed by the invasion of the sync fairies into his life, and that playing a role in his decision to stop blogging. I know of at least two other cases in which readers of this blog have ended up with psychological issues with a little help from my friends. Is it irresponsible of me to share all this stuff so openly? I was bred en bawn in a brier-patch, but for those less accustomed to high strangeness it can be rather shattering.
One of Buck Owens's hit songs, I learned today, was called "Ruby (Are You Mad)." That, combined with the idea of hard-to-articulate feelings, made me think of this famous question posed by the late Charles Manson. Whatever you think of him -- murderer, patsy, spook, or something else -- he was undeniably a gifted orator.
Well? Do you?
5 comments:
That's a good quotation.
I don't know much about Buck Owens either, I first heard about him in this song that mentions him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMSWrsk8Wlo
Kevin, another line in that song just before the Buck Owens mention is "statues wearing high heels". The statue got itself high?
Wm, the discussion of (sync) fairies together with "Are you mad?" and psychological issues ("madness" in Britain) is itself a sync with a key plot point in Susanna Clarke's very British novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Light spoiler alert: do the sync fairies talk to anyone else but the mad?
One more sync from the post and the comments: two decades ago my wife and I were friends with Kevin and Ruby Franke for about a year. They later had a very successful YouTube channel, which perhaps is what attracted an aggressive madwoman therapist to drive them apart and become business partners with Ruby. This woman Jodi and Ruby were arrested in Utah a couple of months ago for abuse of two of the latter's children (rationalized at the time as intense and loving discipline). The ongoing drama continues to have legs in the Utah news.
On first reading both this and Mr. Wright's post, I felt very awkward, having assisted in the "drowning" thread. One of my own lesser hangups is how others react to and are affected by my actions, despite being well aware that's impossible to know entirely, let alone control, especially within the internet's public square (rectangle? y'know, screen dimensions... bleh, bad pun). When posting I try to keep focus on the known or most likely audience, which is still no guarantee, so I hit at least a small level of trepidation with most comments I make.
This current situation has left me pensive, but not enough to really discourage. Having spent over a year "following" the fairies now, I believe they are Good beings, meaning well even if they need to use our deep-seated aspects to advance things for whatever higher purpose they serve; this idea of perceived-bad actions being done for Good reasons is something I've been wrestling with for a while. (Hmm, how does working the syncs affect them? Can/do they know how we'll react? That's the kind of destiny/free-will/time intersection where I have few words beyond "I don't know".)
Looking at Regina Spektor's "The Call", I believe the very next line after those Mr. Wright quoted is important here. Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light. I'm gonna keep following for however long this sync stuff continues.
(Oh, and on Manson's quote... I didn't know what to expect, but I expected that the least!)
Uuhhhhh... I finished that comment too soon.
Yesterday, reading Wiki's page about that Baten Kaitos game, I dimly noted its title having some connection to a star. Thinking about the Spektor lyric now, I went back to that page and followed the relevant sentence's link, which redirects to Zeta Ceti, a binary star in the Cetus constellation. Yeah, Cetus, the sea monster or whale -- and Baten Kaitos is Zeta Ceti's traditional name, 'derived from the Arabic batn qaytus "belly of the sea monster"'.
I further note its apparent magnitude of 3.742 and its estimated mass of 2.34 times the Sun. And looking at the page for Cetus itself, two of its bordering constellations are Eridanus (as in Galahad) and Sculptor, and its location in Chinese astronomy is notable too.
PS: Ben's comment has reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. "We're all mad here."
Whoops, forgot to add: 17-18 years of owning that game, and the whole time I'd thought its name was Japanese! Bah! (*laughs*)
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