William Shakespeare began his comedy Twelfth Night with the line “If music be the food of love, play on!” About a century later, the playwright William Congreve opened his comedy The Mourning Bride with the equally famous line “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast” (almost always misquoted as “the savage beast”).
If music be the food of love, it is also the food of language. Music has charms that teem our tongues, course through our pens, and stream from our keyboards.
I am often asked to be a keynote speaker. I don’t speak to trumpet my accomplishments, blow my own horn, or drum up business for my books. Rather, I come to set the proper key and the proper note and to strike a responsive chord. A keynote speaker delivers a keynote address in which he or she develops the underlying theme of a gathering. The term keynote began with the practice of playing a note before a group, such as a barbershop quartet, started singing a cappella. The note sounded determined the key in which the song would be performed; thus, the term keynote.
Keynote is one word in a symphony of musical metaphors that sing throughout our everyday vocabulary. Aria ready to face the music? Of chorus you are. Many actors experience a touch of stage fright at the moment of going onstage. But, looking out across the orchestra pit, each performer must face the music, as I now ask you to do.
You may feel that there’s too much sax and violins in my writing. You may think me a Johnny-one-note who’s preaching to the choir and doesn’t know his brass from his oboe. But all I can say to that is “Fiddlesticks! I’ve got an upbeat attitude. I’m feeling fit as a fiddle, and I don’t fiddle around or play second fiddle to anybody.”
I’m a one-man band, and I march to the beat of a different drummer. I’m not going to give you a second-string performance or play it by ear or harp on the subject. Rather, I’m an unsung hero who’s going to pull out all the stops and not soft-pedal any aspect of our melodious, mellifluous English language.
Second-string originally meant a set of violin strings kept on hand in case the strings in the instrument broke. When we talk or write about someone soft-pedaling something, we are referring to the soft pedal on a piano that is used to modify the timbre. When we soft-pedal an idea, we moderate and play it down. If, on the other hand, we do the opposite and pull out all the stops, we are like an organist who pulls out all the knobs (stops) in the organ to bring all the pipes into play.
To harp on, meaning “to dwell on the same topic,” is a shortening of the old phrase to harp on one string, which meant “to play one note on a harp string over and over.” A student once wrote, “In the Bible, David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar.” The budding scholar meant lyre, a harp-like instrument played by the ancient Greeks. Lyre bequeaths us the words lyric and lyrical.
I, your unsung hero, will now waltz out of here without missing a beat—not on a sour note but on a high note. Please remember that I’m not just whistling Dixie, and I don’t mean to chime in and harp on this subject to beat the band. Sure, I’m all keyed up and jazzed up, but I’m not here to give you a song and dance or create a cheap soap opera that draws a chorus of boos. In this book, nobody has to pay the piper.
Rather, I’m trying to steal the show and orchestrate an overture so that we can ring in a harmonious relationship, get in tune with each other, and hop on the same bandwagon. Then you’ll sing a different tune, and we can make beautiful music together.
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Next week, my singing partner, Bill Shipper, and I will be making six stops in San Diego, four of them open to the public. We’ll be performing “Dances with Words,” a folk concert about puns and other forms of wordplay. Yes, I’ll be singing — but come anyway! All performances are free and worth every penny. No need to call; just show up. I’d love to meet you.
Wednesday, 9/6, 4:30 pm, University City Branch Library, 4155 Governor Drive; Thursday, 9/7, 7 pm, Coronado Public Library, 640 Orange Avenue; Friday, 9/8, 2:30 pm, LIFE, Mira Costa College; Oceanside campus, Temporary Board Room Trailer (T200) near the police station; Saturday, 9/9, 2:30 pm, Mission Hills-Hillcrest Branch Library, 215 W. Washington St.
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As I watch this generation try to rewrite history, one thing I’m sure of: It will be misspelled and totally lack punctuation.
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There’s no I in team, but there are three in narcissistic.
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I don’t care about spelling. I have Autocorrect in my computer, and for that I am truly grapefruit.