Even though the song and tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel!” is a late 19th century/early 20th century labor song supposedly originated by the textile workers of London, England, almost every American child has heard it as a nursery rhyme and can sing at least one variation of it. One version of a stanza that I particularly like, because of the vivid visual imagery, is:
All around the Mulberry Bush,The monkey chased the weasel.The monkey stopped to pull up his socks. Pop! goes the weasel.
This song is more fun when you don’t know that
1) The Mulberry Bush was reportedly a tavern near the textile mills in London;
2) It has been suggested that monkey was a derogatory name given to the poor textile workers;
3) The weasel was a measuring device on the yarn spinning machine that measured out the exact length of yarn needed to fill a spool;
4) Pop, was the sound the weasel made when the yarn reached the correct length; and
5) The textile worker had to be ready to shut down the spinner immediately when the weasel popped or he/she would be in deep trouble with the mill manager for wasting yarn. Pulling up ones’ socks is a totally unnecessary action, and a huge distraction from the important task at hand.
I think it is funnier to visualize a real monkey literally chasing a real weasel around a mulberry bush, and the monkey stops to pull up his socks (What monkey would be wearing socks?) At this point, the weasel pops up on his hind legs and starts laughing at the monkey.
If you read my post, “Hallelujah, I Heard the Piano Playing!” you know that on a recent Sunday, I “heard” the piano playing in church for the first time in more than a year. Via my cross-sensory perceptions, I “see” a piano making music via sinusoidal waves on an oscilloscope screen or via the towers of “tree lights” on an amplifier mixing board. If the music is familiar, I can almost always recognize the tune. I can then either sing the words or hum the tune. Since my voice is a human voice making those sounds, I can “hear” those sounds.
The Saturday afternoon following my experience with the church piano, I had another encounter with a piano. I had spent most of the morning on my computer cleaning up my ever increasing accumulation of emails and several blog posts on which I had been working. I wanted to take a break so I sat down in my lounger and turned on the television fo find some sports programming. The sports programming that afternoon was very sparse. The French Open women’s final had been completed very early in the morning due to Serena Williams’ masterful play, her very quick defeat of Maria Sharapova and the six hour time difference between Paris and the east coast of the United States. That particular Saturday afternoon was a dreadful weather day for much of the eastern half of the United States. All outdoor sports in that half of the country were rained out. In addition, in early summer, there are no indoor sports events. So there was nothing in the way of interesting sports on the television.
My second and third choices of afternoon entertainment would have been cooking shows or DIY shows. Unfortunately, all of the shows on the food and DIY networks were reruns that I had already watched. There were no good movies on the television that day. We didn’t have a Netflix video because I had just put DVD #5 of the Prisoner series in the return mail so that I would get #6 quickly.
To fill in the void of having none of my normal available entertainment choices, I found what looked like a very interesting concert on the local public television station. It was a concert by a group of five musicians based in Colorado called the Five Piano Men. It wasn’t what one might think it would be. It was not five people playing five different pianos. It began with one man playing a piano and one man playing a regular cello. I “saw” the piano music and I “felt” the vibrations of the cello. Unfortunately, I couldn’t identify the particular piece they were playing.
After that opening number they introduced the other three members of their group. For their first number as a group, the first pianist stayed at the piano keyboard. The original celloist grabbed an electronic cello, and the newly introduced members of the group grabbed regular cellos. They began playing Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G Minor. I “saw” the piano music and I felt at least three different types of vibrations from the cellos.
When the Chopin piece was finished, the group gathered around the grand piano on the stage to “play” the one piano. However, it was not the typical sense of playing a piano. The individual who seemed to be the primary keyboardist sat at the keyboard. An overhead camera showed what every member of the group was doing. Two members were “playing” drums on the sound board of the piano with their hands. The final two members began plucking the piano strings with their fingers or using violin bow strings to “play” individual piano strings or small groups of strings. After making what I assumed was their warm-up noises, they started playing the easily identifiable opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Short-short-short-Long! Short-short-short-Long!
After they finished the first movement, they were joined by the Colorado Youth Orchestra, with strings, wind instruments and percussion, playing the remainder of the symphony. Part way through the third movement, I was subject to sensory overload! Not only was I really actually seeing how the music was being played and really hearing part of the music, I was “seeing” several instrumental sounds and “feeling” vibrations from at least five different instruments. I was hearing, seeing and feeling Beethoven’s 5th, when suddenly “Pop!” went the weasel! I had to turn off the television and go back to the safety of my computer for the remainder of the afternoon.
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