eighty.two

song lyrics : aural epiphanies pt.2

i like washing dishes. i think it's one of the most pleasant of all household chores. this doesn't mean i wash every plate, cup and spoon immediately after use though. oh no. in fact to do so would be counterproductive to the cause. so please don't be alarmed if you happen to wander into my kitchen and find dishes piled so high that they resemble some kind of post modern art interpretation of mount kilimanjaro.

why do i enjoy washing dishes? because it's guilt-free brain time. i use the moments spent making dirty things clean to think about the ways i need to imitate this process in other areas of my life, or i meditate, or i write a mental grocery list, or i just daydream. lovely. and sometimes i don't want to think and so i hit play on my itunes and enjoy my music library.

yesterday was an itunes day, an etta james day. she's my favourite female singer of all time, and please believe that i know every ad lib [even the moans] to almost every one of her songs. a song that i don't know so well though is all the way down, and this is mainly because the beat is do damn funky that i find myself getting into the toe-tapping, as opposed to listening to the lyrics. but yesterday it was as if the lyrics jumped out of the song and punched me in my eardrums on some you need to hear this! steez. and as soon as i begun listening, i heard these words:

#benny the albino / says don't be a wino / try these here flakes / they've got what it takes / to make you a star / and change who you are /all the way down#

i'm sorry....Hwhat?

first i started trippin' on the strange narcotic theme. i know etta used to take them, but why is she singing to me about drugs? then i realised that the whole song is about drugs. oh lawd, how did i not spot this before?

but after a few seconds something else became much more pressing. who the hell is benny? is he real? he must be real. i mean, who sings about an imaginary albino? who sits in a songwriting session, looking for a rhyme with wino and proclaims "albino!"? no one! so benny must exist. benny is real, and he's an albino, and he was pushing them kellogg's and selling false hopes and fake dreams to the chirruns circa 1960.

where are you now, benny? by golly, i'd love to meet you.