Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Schlumbergera seedling no. 042

Eleven more Schlumbergeras to name and then we'll be done.1 Be strong.

Only one bloom on seedling 042A, and I only got two photos: one before the petals had fully opened --


-- and one the next day (further down in the post).

Our name candidates this time are It's Oh So Quiet, Mary Tyler Moore, and Retreating Light.

It's Oh So Quiet is a song from 1951, originally performed by Betty Hutton,


and covered by Björk in 1995 on the album Post:2


Before this post, I was only aware of the Björk version,3 and although I had seen in the CD liner notes4 that she hadn't actually written the song herself, I didn't actually believe that she hadn't written it herself. It's perfect for her.

Mary Tyler Moore is Mary Tyler Moore. Come on. You know who Mary Tyler Moore is.

Retreating Light is the title of a poem by Louise Glück, from her book The Wild Iris, which I've mentioned on PATSP before (1, 2). It is reproduced here, for anyone who might be interested (and it's only 32 lines long; you have time).5


So this is kind of an impossible choice to make; they all seem perfect in one way or another, and they're all exactly the same number of characters to type. But since a choice has to be made, I'll drop Retreating Light on the grounds that it's a bit abstract, and also vaguely depressing, and I'll lose It's Oh So Quiet because the song is very loud-soft-loud-soft, whereas the seedling is not really loud at all.

Which leaves us 042A Mary Tyler Moore, and that seems only appropriate considering she's the blog's patron saint or whatever. I mean, you should have expected it would win as soon as you saw the finalists.

-

1 (The bud I mentioned on seedling 352 still hasn't dropped, as of 1 June, but I still think it's going to before it opens.)
2 Point of interest: the video won the 1996 MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography, and was nominated for six others.
3 (and to be honest I find Hutton's version kind of grating; it's the vocals, not the band)
4 (Paper included with physical CDs that contained the copyright information and performance/writing credits. Liner notes would also sometimes include lyrics, though only for bands that didn't need them. If the singer was really mumbly or screamy, you'd just have to guess at the words, as there was no internet to look things up on yet.)
5 I should possibly note that the poem I like best from The Wild Iris is not "Retreating Light," but either "Witchgrass" or the "Vespers" on p. 37.


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