My last post, "Sly St(all)one" was about a dream in which First Blood, the first Rambo movie, was mentioned. The Rambo character was named after Arthur Rimbaud, the idea being that Rambo's time in Vietnam had been "a season in hell," which is the title of one of Rimbaud's major works. Knowing I had posted about Rimbaud multiple times before, I searched the blog for his name. The first result was, somewhat surprisingly, last June's "Feuilles-oh, sauvez la vie moi," which, though it does include my verse translation of a few lines from A Season in Hell, is primarily about the 1973 Art Garfunkel song from which the post takes its name.
In a comment on the "Sly St(all)one" post, Debbie brought up the Earth, Wind & Fire song "In the Stone," which I then looked up. Seeing that it was released in my birth year of 1979, I had the random thought, "Hey, maybe it was released on the exact same day I was born!" I checked, and it wasn't, but the hunch was specific enough that I proceeded to google albums released on 15 march 1979. The first result was Fate for Breakfast by none other than Art Garfunkel. (Some additional digging turned up two more albums that were released on the day I was born: Half Machine Lip Moves by Chrome and There's Always Me by Ray Price.)
The "Sly St(all)one" post, which has now led me to Art Garfunkel by two different routes, also discusses Bill Wright's "Rose Stone . . . a 30-pound red stone." Not sure why I thought it necessary to mention its weight and color, since the only thing that was relevant to the post was the name Rose Stone itself. Anyway, according to Wikipedia, the name Garfunkel ultimately derives from the word carbuncle, which it characterizes as "an archaic term for a number of red gemstones."
Fate for Breakfast includes the track "Sail on a Rainbow." In "What shall we do with the drinking salesman late in the morning?" -- which, before "Sly St(all)one" was my only post to mention the name Rambo -- I mention both that Rambo is named after Rimbaud and that Rimbaud sounds like rainbow. That post also prominently features sailors, so we have both elements of "Sail on a Rainbow."
Incidentally, the title of the present post as an allusion to "A Simple Desultory Philippic" from the Simon and Garfunkel album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Rose Stone -- Sly Stone's sister and bandmate, whose name is what occasioned my mention of Bill's red stone -- was born Rosemary Stewart.
Note added: To the meaning of carbuncle mentioned above, etymonline adds that it was "also the name of a semi-mythical gem from the East Indies formerly believed to be capable of shining in the dark." Sounds like Gazelem.
5 comments:
I left two comments on your Sly Stallone post before then seeing that you posted this. In this post, you mentioned how odd it was that you refer to both the color and the weight of the Stone.
In my comments (again, written before I read this), I had also noted that reference, but specifically noticed that you had left out the other dimension associated with the Stone, which is its diameter at 8 inches.
Anyway, that reference and omission seemed like a tie to the men in my dream giving that missing diameter with their hand gesture, which then ultimately inspired the crystal density sleuthing I conducted this morning and laid out in that second comment.
Garnet, the type of red stone to which “carbuncle” most commonly refers, also has a suitable specific gravity for the Rose Stone dimensions.
The lowest density Garnet would be a little heavy at ~35 pounds, but I guess it's in the ballpark. In your other post, I had mentioned I stumbled across another Tourmaline which gives us the Red color: Rubellite. Being of the same family as Dravite, it gives us the same 30 pounds.
It doesn't really have a connection to carbuncle, though.
In full transparency, the issue with any of these crystals or stones as possible candidates for the Rose Stone is their brittleness. This is a problem. The Palantiri of Tolkien's stories were decidedly not brittle at all. We have the example of Wormtongue throwing the Orthanc Stone down from the tower and impacting the stairs. The stairs got the worst of it, and there was no damage or blemish to the Palantir at all. It was basically indestructible. A real crystal of the type we've identified would have chipped and shattered in that event.
If we imagine these Stones as having priceless information on them, and are also the means of critical communication and travel, we can't have anything as potentially breakable as regular crystal. Doubly so since it appears that having the surface of the Stones free from blemish is important in how they work.
I'm not a chemist, but maybe there is some process that could have been applied to the Stones during their creation to negate the brittleness. Or perhaps the "crystals" themselves are of composition not known to us. In the end, these things were just "magical" in Tolkien's writing and you don't have to think about real-life problems like brittleness to make them plausible, like we do.
Just placing this comment here because it has to do with Red Stones. I can't remember if I have had this thought before and/ or it has come up, but it was a very specific hunch that occurred this morning as part of all of this, and it turned out correct (which again, for all I know may because I've thought it before and just don't remember).
In writing this comments about the Rose Stone, I had the story of The Matrix come to mind, specifically Neo being offered the Red or Blue Pills by Morpheus. In thinking of the scene, I had the very specific thought that Red Pill has something to do with the Rose Stone symbolically, and not just in a the obvious way, but in its name.
I looked up the meaning of Pill on Etymonline, and bingo, hunch confirmed. Pill, it turns out, is from the latin Pilula, which literally means "Little Ball". So, Red pill gives us "Red Little Ball", which would be a direct tie to the Rose Stone since these Stones have been specifically been called Balls in many other contexts.
I looked up the scene where Morpheus is offering the Pills. He says this is Neo's "Last Chance" (perhaps a nod to the "Last Call" theme?) and there is no turning back. He tells Neo that if he takes the Red Pill "you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes". He further asserts that by offering the Red Pill, he is offering "the truth, nothing more". Also a nod to what I believe is on the Rose Stone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4
Revisiting "Carbuncle", I did a search on Carbuncles and Tourmalines to see if there was any crossover, and thus a tie between Rubellite and the Carbuncle/ Garfunkel you made.
There is one. Several sites that are dedicated to crystals mention that in the Middle-ages, Rubellite was often called Carbuncle, along with all other red gemstones. There just wasn't much distinction between red gemstones. It was only later that such distinctions were made, and Rubellite was distinguished from Carbuncle. For example, here is a quote from one site:
'Purple and red to pink rubellite was probably the first tourmaline variety to receive some recognition. Till they were correctly identified, red gemstones such as ruby, spinel, garnet, and rubellite, were all grouped under the term “carbuncle”.'
It's something at least.
I have another interesting thing involving red stones and Rubellite ...
In my search of Rubellite I stumbled across a gem called "Caesar's Ruby". This obviously caught my attention given the recent syncs of Caesar and Cassius.
Caesar's Ruby is a famous gem that apparently is not a Ruby at all - it is Rubellite. Here is a link to one site on it:
https://gem-a.com/gem-hub/caesars-ruby-rubellite-tourmaline/
Hilariously, the Rubellite is in the form of a Raspberry! And this, of course, takes us right back to Space Balls (obviously), since Lone Starr is clearly the only man who would dare give Dark Helmet a Raspberry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcArnepkhv0
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