Re: GG: the piano is hung from the chandelier

[Tim Conway <tpconway@ozemail.com.au>]

Hello Junichi and f-miners,

>  ...writing as a virtuosic display.  At any event I have not yet 
>  requested the orchestra to file to the balcony while for three 
>  glorious minutes the piano is hung decorously from the chandelier.

Dammit, chaps. Why is it left to me to answer this intriguing question 
properly? Where is Kristen I when we all need her (Hello K -- you might 
be saying the same about me; I hope to be replying soon)? Why should it 
be left to me to explain GG's phrasing and thereby expose my wicked and 
debauched childhood and adolesence? Why hasn't Alun bared his soul to the 
world? Oh well, here goes.

With due deference to the replies I have seen so far, all of which are 
erudite and I've no doubt accurate within their bounds, I have to say 
that when I first, several years ago, read the passage from GGR quoted by 
Junichi it made me laugh for two reasons. First, it was one of the few 
Gouldian sentences I could understand at the first -- or, indeed, any -- 
reading. Second, it was funny (and therefore even more understandable) 
because it was clear (to me, anyway) that GG was referring to a joke or 
poem that was common in the circles I grew up in; it amazed me that 
Gould, having grown up in completely different circumstances, should have 
known the same joke or poem.

I say 'joke or poem' because memory has dimmed over the years and I 
cannot now remember the full details. (I hasten to add that I only ever 
knew some of the details anyway.) What I can remember, however, is that 
at boarding school and university the phrase 'swinging from the 
chandeliers', which derived from the joke or poem, indicated wild 
goings-on of a sexual nature. It implied an impossibly orgiastic 
situation with more-than-willing female attendees: there being no room 
left at floor-level left for coital activities, recourse was had to the 
chandeliers. Of such are schoolboy and male undergrad dreams made.

I hope I have been sufficiently circumspect in the foregoing.

One poem from which the chandelier phrase possibly derives is called 
Eskimo Nell. It has, I believe, several hundred stanzas, all of them rude 
but highly descriptive. It has no single author but seems to have been 
added to by others over the years, none of them spinsters of a delicate 
nature. I always assumed it to be English but it could well have 
originated in the USA or Canada. Another possibility is the poem The Good 
Ship Venus, which is equally 18+ and lengthy. I have no doubt that the 
full ur-texts of these gems can be found somewhere on the Net. If anyone 
unearths them, please do not tell me about it.

The joke, if joke there was, probably derived from the poem.

My reading of GG's phrase, therefore, was that he was humourously 
suggesting that a true cadenza was an onanistic display by the performer, 
all the better if done while swinging from the chandelier with the 
orchestra in the best position for a good voyeuristic view, or perve as 
it is called in England. I thought that interpretation more indicative of 
Gould's private nature and sense of humour than any amount of dressing up 
as other people with funny accents. Now I know someone is going to 
shatter that interpretation.

Of course, I may be wrong. I may be like Mr Jones who went to see a 
psychiatrist. The shrink showed Mr Jones a Rorschach ink blot and asked 
what it showed. 'It's a female breast' said Jones. The shrink showed him 
another ink blot. Jones said that was a naked woman. After getting 
similar replies to fifteen different ink blots the shrink announced, 
'Your problem, Mr Jones, is that you are sex mad'. Jones was indignant. 
'Me? Me sex mad? How dare you say that! You're the one with all the dirty 
pictures.' Maybe chandeliers are related to ink blots. Regards to all, 
especially Junichi

Tim
<tpconway@ozemail.com.au>