Master Blueprints # 35: "Sitting with a Girl Named Nancy in a Garden Feelin’ Kinda Lazy”

(Personal reflections inspired by Bob Dylan songs)

Song: “Handy Dandy”
Album: Under the Red Sky
Release Date: September 1990

Life and lyrics have converged often in these Music and Memory writeups, but rarely in the way that they did this past week. I’d been listening to Bob Dylan’s 27^th studio album, Under the Red Sky searching for inspiration in the music and words, as I always do.  The album, which is dedicated to Dylan’s then four-year-old daughter, “Gabby Goo Goo” (Desiree Gabrielle Dylan), is chockfull of nursery-rhyme-like lyrics, which is all fine and ‘dandy’, particularly seeing as this theme would ultimately lead to my talking points this week.  However, I initially ran into detours (hence the lengthy gap between entries) which can be attributed to the strong likelihood that Under the Red Sky will not go down in history as anywhere near one of Bob Dylan’s best efforts.  Relatively speaking, it’s a somewhat disjointed product, lacking cohesion.  You get the sense that if just a little more attention was given to one aspect or another, that a much clearer artistic statement would have emerged.  And so, early on I was struggling to make the type of connection that I needed to make to write something related to it that was compelling.

But as with virtually all of Bob Dylan’s projects, there’s an aura to Under the Red Sky that inevitably peaks your curiosity and draws you in.  In this case, that process started for me when I picked up on occasional bizarre lyrics sprinkled in among much more standard fare (for nursery rhymes). Soon those lyrics were jumping out at me left and right, including “Wiggle till you vomit fire” in the opening track “Wiggle Wiggle” (which was universally slammed by critics upon release); as well as “One day the man in the moon went home and the river went dry” in the impressive title track; and finally “Handy dandy, if every bone in his body were broken he would never admit it” in this week’s Master Blueprint “Handy Dandy” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrsAuzI0hU ) .  A persuasive viewpoint was settling in my mind that one should never think that a nursery rhyme needs to be sugarcoated.  After making these inroads, I persisted, and soon enough the wheels began to churn as my own childhood wonderments seeped in. 

Typically, I will pull my talking points together for a blog entry as I listen to the music in my car or in my mind’s eye while jogging or hiking.  This time, however, my most inspiring moments came literally in my own backyard.  Why didn’t I optimize on this locale before?  Ok, let me explain: There’s a Zen-like location in my backyard that is like no other place for me.  It’s by our fish/frog pond (complete with waterfall), which I built about 14 years ago.  In that spot I can sit and zorb out for hours on end, without a need for reading material or company.  I just glance around and take in my surroundings. 

The pond itself is the most tranquil element of this pastoral backyard world, replete with koi and goldfish, as well as green frogs, who make their way to this oasis from nearby wetlands every year (this year, at least 8 have settled in around the edges).  An abundance of wildflowers has thrived in and around the pond too, including burweed; a type of wetland reed grass that daughter Charlotte transplanted from a local stream not long after the pond was built.  And mayapple, which in May springs up from the ground, mimicking a cluster of Lilliputian palm trees. 

The original intent of designing the pond was not so much for koi as it was to have a place where Charlotte, as well as my son Peter and their friends could deposit creatures that were collected from nearby streams, including dragonfly nymphs and mayfly nymphs, as well as mussels, crayfish, catfish, slugs, and I’m sure a handful of other creatures that are slipping my mind.  As the kids have grown older, this activity has faded, but just the sight of the pond brings back those memories for all of us.  And just this spring, as I was cleaning out the pond of debris after a tough winter, I spotted a hellgrammite (a dobsonfly nymph) which is the sign of a healthy, balanced biome, and a sign that perhaps some of those transplanted creatures decided their once new home was a perfect place for decedents. 

The pond is about 40 feet from the back door.  To connect the two, I came up with a patio design in the shape of a river network, which has the effect (for me anyway) of the waterfall pouring into that real pond, then ‘continuing’ onto the patio which ‘flows’ as flagstone from a small pond shape to a river shape to a large pond shape to the back door.  In the middle of the backyard, just beyond the patio is a firepit, which we also built; a cast iron ring within a brick ring… the latter separating the blaze from the crowd.  Stately oaks and maples, as well as white and red pine, crown much of this, and tucked within them is another memory for the kids; a treehouse, which was the first thing I built in the yard, and which amazingly remains standing.  It’s one of my proudest achievements in terms of the use of my hands to build something, but that’s a story for another time.

Anyhow, I’m sitting in this home-haven-location earlier in the week, this time with my wife Nancy, enjoying a peaceful end to a long day when the lyrics to (arguably) the best song on Under the Red Sky, “Handy Dandy” popped into my head.  Those lyrics are in the title of this entry, but I’ll repeat here for the sheer enjoyment of doing so: “Sitting with a girl named Nancy in a garden feelin’ kinda lazy”.  It was fleeting at first, this synergistic thought, but it did not take long for a domino effect to kick in.  I went back to the song and started listening with more intent.  “Handy Dandy” has been dissected by several very insightful souls on the web ( https://www.expectingrain.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=64707 ).  They see lines of lyrics that reference the Sermon on the Mount, and lines that are confessional, among other factoids.  I’m not going to attempt to add to those discussion points here.  What I will hone in on, however is the fairytale element, because, first off, this appears to be the central concept of the album, and secondly, the fairytale angle is at the core of why I got that lightbulb moment in my backyard.

This summer has been an unusually active one for wildlife in our backyard.  Along with the fish, frogs, and hellgrammites, a bear loped through in the late spring (in turn, having to contend with the no-win predicament of a stare-down with Nancy).  Both red shouldered hawks and barred owls have decided to call the forest immediately behind and adjacent to our home…their home as well.  The call of the pileated woodpecker has echoed around us and we occasionally spot them darting between the trees like an alien spaceship.  There have been voles, moles, shrews, and flying squirrels, along with bats, opossum and deer. There have been dragonflies and butterflies by the dozens, as well as katydid, cicada, treefrogs, garter snakes, and a woodchuck the size of a racoon (not good for the garden).  And of course, there have been a broad range of birds in both variety and abundance: Hummingbirds, jays, cardinals, goldfinch, doves, robins, chickadees, nuthatch, titmice, oriole, flicker, bunting, waxwing, wren, and kingbirds to name a few.  Chipmunks scurry about at my feet.  Red and Grey Squirrels challenge me to a staring match. 

Yes, this backyard summer has had its share of moments where I’ve felt an affiliation with Dr. Doolittle, St. Anthony, and…. the Scroobius Pip. 

The Scroobius Pip?  What manner of beast is this?  I’m glad you ask.  The Scroobius Pip is a character from an Edward Lear poem of the same name that may have had the greatest effect on me as a child when it comes to nursery rhymes.  In the poem, the Scroobius Pip is the Pied Piper of the entire animal world ( http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/pw/pip.html ).  He’s a bizarre looking chimera-of-a-dude who gains the fascination of all the earth’s creatures through imitation.  He does this by inheriting the best body part of each of them (much like a platypus).  The poem starts “The Scroobiusb Pip went out one day, when the grass was green, and the sky was grey”.  When the animals ask if he’s bird, beast, fish, or insect, he answers in riddle and rhyme: “Chippetty Flip; Flippety Chip; My only name is the Scroobius Pip”. 

When I was a boy I loved the wild world of animals, from okapi, to tapir, to aardvark, to platypus, and was for the most part very serious about this passion.  The Scroobius Pip was one way to add a little bizarre fun and imagination to the mix.  It’s an important piece of the pie for any child who gets in deep with any subject matter, be it dinosaurs, cars, dolls, whatever.  And the more edge there is to that piece of the pie, the better.  That edge can be witty, bizarre, scary, even a little dark.  Without it, children’s stories – heck all stories for that matter – can ring hollow.

Bob Dylan of course, understands this.  In fact, I’d go much further and say that he’s done a helluva of an amazing job bringing that angle back into all his songs, particularly those that played out on his fantastic series of albums that followed Under the Red Sky. Perhaps this album was a pivot; an attempt to bring back some of his old self.  I hear all sorts of old and new Dylan on Under the Red Sky now. I hear “Quinn the Eskimo”, “Senor”, “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”, “Tweedledee and Tweedledum”, “Jokerman” and “Tempest”.  As with all those brilliant tunes (several of which I have written about already), Dylan adds a human touch to songs on Under the Red Sky, most notably “Handy Dandy”. Case in point, his stuttering of the line “Boy you’re t-talkin’ crazy”.  It’s intentional (he does the same thing on alternate takes that he does on the studio version).  It’s fun.  Indeed, it’s almost childlike in its delivery.

Back to my back yard.  I suppose I’ve created an adult fantasy world; a carryover of my childhood.  It’s where I allow my younger self to take over, assisted by a flurry of wildlife this year, large and small, winged and slithering, climbing and tunneling, swimming and hopping, chirping and hooting.  The Scroobius Pip would feel comfortable in such a locale.  So too, I think, would Bob Dylan.

Riddle Me This!

- Pete