Carpenter Joke, ricercar a 6

Have you heard the one about the carpenter?*  There is a famous saying about a man and his wood, which is hewn and worked with a hammer.  That doesn't sound like a good one but I can assure you it works quite well in retirement homes inside Poughkeepsie, NY.  The crowds over there love a good carpenter saw.  They especially like the ones about the most famous carpenter of all:  Jesus Christ.

Now that sounds like a cruel sort of joke, like the time you got a sandwich at the corner shop and found a pubic hair curled up in some of the lettuce.  You got all excited about the possible message the former owner of the hair and maker of the sandwich was telling you.  Then you realised with horror it was not a nubile young lady making sandwiches.   It was a dude and you most emphatically are NOT into dudes (unless you are, then reverse the gender of the story).  Bringing Jesus in on a story like that will certainly create a stir but sit down and I will assure you all will be forgiven when the tale is told.

I hope my febrile story of jokes, carpenters, saws, pubic hairs and so forth don't detract from my message.  Your fever at the offense I've posed is only a symptom of a larger problem with ideas.  Namely, that ideas don't exist and the can't be quantified.  Take as an example, my story about the carpenter.  What is he like?  What does he do besides carpentry?  What is a star tail?  Why is his name Jesus Christ?    Why does the Wildman play on the dock of the bay?  What is the captain's breath? You see how the idea can't be quantified or nailed down with any certainty.

Ideas are like snakes that swallow themselves, they slither around inside your head and waggle their rattled tails in your brain.  They are like snakes that shit themselves out and slather the inside of your head with their rattled tales of juicy brains   You may not like the metaphor of the endless cycle of question and answer, leading to another question that keeps you up at night.  I care not.  Another famous snake mentioned in conjunction with carpenters from the middle east is the Serpent, or Devil.  I hesitate to bring him up because that also causes conniption fits from the sorts of people who get upset over details like who ate the apple first, even though it wasn't an apple at all.  The Serpent, or the Devil, is in the details here and like all ideas and details can't be quantified.  If only all metaphors of knowledge were as clear cut as "apple" and "not apple".

We continue this ridiculous ride as a guitar riff going off on a tangent from octave to octave.  The ideas bounce one from the other and topple to form new shapes.  You start with an energetic tonic as a note in music, which plays to the tonic quality of muscles, which stretches and contracts as a brisk, refreshing tonic drink, muttering and forming a sing-song tonic language like Cantonese, ending perhaps on tonic syllable which either stresses or unstresses the quality of the paragraph.

These tonic notes and heated feverish snake scrabblings are more like an opera than an actual guitar riff, now that I think about it.  The conceit of a space guitar jazz opera is not new, only the implementation in regards to using carpenter jokes and making demented references to Jesus Christ and the Devil. Referencing Jesus Christ and the Devil is not new by any stretch of the imagination, either.  That is a tale as old as time/ true as it can be/ Don't let the sun go down on me/ Jesus Christ Superstar.

That was a bit much in the last paragraph, but this is our swan song, the cedilla, with a slight return.  We won't mention the paperclip that holds this sheaf together for that would gratuitous and self-serving.  The author and the musician always struggles to jump back to the tonic point to end in a catharsis.  The resolution we seek in each piece is created by the tension of the intro and building paragraphs.  As long as we end up where we began the whole piece of furniture will be well-rounded and pleasing to the eye.  If not, take a seat and have a cup of tea while playing idly with a paperclip.  That helps a little.

*Today's words selected by Loyal Reader Lason Strike:  carpenter, joke, fever, snake, guitar, opera.  Discarded: paperclip.

If you would like to contribute ideas or prompts, feel free to do so in the comments.