Ears I’ve done, held tight against my head with Elastoplast in my babyhood. My hair’s wildness has been explored. As has my right hand, crucified by Dupuytren’s contracture. My Roman nose. How about my mouth?
How shy I’ve become. Mouths are intimate. Mine has kissed and whispered sweet nothings in its time. For the moment there is nothing bad to say and badness is a rich source of humour. There’s nothing funny about:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss
Might it even be pretty? Not weighed down with sandbags like my eyes. Ahh, here’s a mort of laughter: might I have been endowed with a woman’s mouth? Would it look better lipsticked? Those novels I’ve written where disadvantaged women rise triumphant - suppressed impulses?
Away with adolescent fancies. Through that same mouth has passed sarcasm, social solecisms and sesquipedalian slander. On the positive side it’s an orifice shaped for: “Now. Now that the sun has veiled his light...” Dryden, set to music by Purcell. It’s not all androgyny.
Is the mouth the most significant single identifier? At 10 metres does it proclaim RR? Does it smile a lot? Only others can tell. I’d like to think it’s regularly turned down in a moue of disapproval because that seems more dignified.
Mind you I wouldn’t be without it. Where would the wine go?
Just sparked off a memory of French master at Bradford Grammar School, Mr Twelves (Douzy) with his frequent utterance of "Fermé la bouche!"
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: Alas, the verb takes the plural imperative and you'll no doubt think it crass of me to bring this up. Alas, too, your formulaic defence ("I knew you'd respond.") won't work on this occasion since you've gone to the trouble of attaching an accent to the final e of the participle, suggesting that it wasn't simply a typo.
ReplyDeleteYour reminder of M. Douze filled me with gloom. By BGS standards he was one of the better teachers; he even tried a little play-acting and my French wasn't all that bad. Even so, compared with the French teachers I met in later years, he was woefully uninspiring. Do you think Father ever realised that the fees he paid for were so badly misspent?
RR - It's a while since I've used my questionable French knowledge - of course I knew that, but on this occasion responded to the sound in my head of the acute accent. M. D. insisted on giving us all "Christian" names - mine was Vincent which is not an easy one to pronounce properly in French. I agree with you, he had a way of drilling it in with endless chanting of verb endings in the different tenses, they still ring in my ears.
ReplyDeleteSir Roderick Smiles-a-lot,
ReplyDeleteI do like it when you two talk about childhood. Grammar School! And tweak each other as well...
Doubtless your readers shall be on tenterhooks waiting for the next body part.
That upper lip seems to be crying out for a moustache, RR. Has it ever had one?
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: I was René and I'm grateful for that. At least 20% of learning French involves coming to terms with the French r. Even now my skill is intermittent.
ReplyDeleteMarly: Do I really? Smile a lot? That's not how it feels inside.
As to your prurient curiosity I must disappoint you. That member, that emblem of masculinity, that source of boasting (or reason for hiding shame), that thing of moods and of stature, that tool of reproduction eventually becomes only uni-useful in later life. Kingsley Amis wrote a novel about the presence and absence of its close anatomical neighbour and it may have inhibited my interest in singing for several decades. Applying my imagination there would be like buying a one-way ticket to the Dark Ages.
Avus: Cultivating unnecessary hair seems pervese; like trying to reverse Darwin's theory. Besides mine emerges gingery (probably grey-gingery by now) and I fear it would affect my writing style. In that sense I imagine Samson in reverse.
Thank you. Humorous piece, with a self-deprecating slant ... your bouche deserves to be treated with respect. And I'm sure you do, even if it more often than not expresses an expression of one not prone to levity; unless the levity be a form of rebellion - as I suspect it would be in your case. Am I wrong or am I right? (To quote the Singing Detective).
ReplyDeleteYou make me laugh, I can't help it. It looks like you have a thinking person's mouth, bursting with something to say.
ReplyDeleteKay Cooke: I think the photo is uncharacteristic; I get the impression my lips are most often parted, that my nostrils are under-used because of breathing problems in my youth.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a terrible sonnet about the symptoms -
This other voice, this interruptive jolt
This inarticulate explosive bray
This unwarned auditory thunderbolt...
- during a period when I was much addicted to polysyllablic verse. Three lines are enough to remind me I don't use the Delete key enough.
As to levity I will admit to facetiousness, it's almost a default state. Being serious is so risky, a mere step away from solemnity; far better to be a merchant of bad jokes.
Colette: I ask for nothing more in life than to make you laugh, blogging's greatest reward. I on the other hand read your blog for its humanity - that despite your liberal arts background you are not blinkered ("I especially liked working in the Department of Mathematics.")
Journalists usually know a little about quite a lot; we are followers of Autolycus, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Learning electronics during national service in the RAF revealed those wonderful transitions whereby aspects of the physical world may be expressed as equations. I followed this up in a random way over the years and found myself talking to a distant relative who had been professor of mathematics at Oxbridge. Talk lasted an hour and a half. I wasn't trying to deceive him, merely behave intelligently in his company. At the end he asked where I'd been taught maths and I was forced to say "Nowhere - I left school at fifteen."
It was quite like reading your "You make me laugh." A benison you might say.