My January 28 post "Assorted syncs: Finnegans Wake, Kubla Khan, dayholes" twice mentions Xanadu -- quoting the opening lines of Coleridge's Kubla Khan and then mentioning John Man's book about the historical city of Xanadu -- and then quotes some rap lyrics ("Feel the Fiyaaaah" by Metro Boomin and A$AP Rocky) about everyone needing new shoes. William Wright's January 29 post "Needing new shoes to roller skate in Xanadu" puts Xanadu and new shoes together with the 1980 movie Xanadu, which is about roller skating. The "new shoes" everyone needs, he concludes, are roller skates:
Why does everyone in the family need new shoes? Well, that is what you wear in Xanadu, apparently, so if you want to go, you need to get a pair of new shoes, specifically shoes with wheels attached to them.
A brand new pair of roller skates? There's a song about that:
The brand new roller skates are paired with a brand new key. This ties in with William's description of a scene in Xanadu which
involved a locked green door, which came up recently in WJT's blog. In the clip, the actor goes up to what appears to be an abandoned building and attempts to open the green door, but obviously can't. Undeterred, he still looks for a way in, and eventually finds one . . . . This also reminded me of WJT's restaurant, which was abandoned, and even though he found it locked and closed up, he was still determined to try and find a way in.
The reference is to my January 23 post "The Green Door finally closes." In that post, I repeatedly emphasize that because the green door is now locked, I now need a key to get into the abandoned restaurant. Actually, I'll probably end up just climbing in, like the character in Xanadu, but in that post I emphasized the need for a key -- a new key for this new lock -- and the original post ended by expressing the hope that the person who locked up the restaurant might have hidden the key somewhere nearby where I could find it.
These lines from "Brand New Key" also got my attention:
I ride my bike, I roller-skate, don't drive no car
Don't go too fast, but I go pretty far
For somebody who don't drive
I've been all around the world
This ties in with my last post, "Hearts of gold, new shoes, dirty paws, and walking on air." This featured a music video for the song "Dirty Paws" consisting of a montage of scenes from the 2013 movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In the video, we see the Ben Stiller character traveling all over the world. We see him riding a bike, skateboarding, running, and being a passenger on various forms of transport, but never once do we see him driving a car.
That post juxtaposes hearts of gold with new shoes and dirty paws. In Shakespeare's most famous (only?) use of the expression "heart of gold," dirty shoes are nearby:
The King’s a bawcock, and a heart of gold,
A lad of life, an imp of fame;
Of parents good, of fist most valiant.
I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string
I love the lovely bully.
Note added: "Brand New Key" is originally a Melanie Safka song, of course, but I posted the Dollyrots version here because it suited my mood better. Here are the front and back covers of the album it's from:
A white rabbit on the front, and a black rabbit on the back -- fitting right in with one of William Wright's themes. The black rabbit is even a disembodied head, like this picture William posted in "Speech problems: Dream 3 of 3":
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I've just discovered that Melanie Safka, who wrote and first performed "Brand New Key," died on January 23, 2024, just days before this post.
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