Ch ... Ch ... Ch .. Changes

Told you things might be different, didn't I?*

This journal style may not hold, but, frankly, LJ's other options were just not 'me' -- these days, anyway. If I could just move some of these blocks around to a less kooky arrangement, I think I'd stick with it, but ... .

An off-shore system has brought rain and much cooler temps to our little bit of heaven (?) -- it almost feels like winter, compared to the high 90s of a fortnight ago. Current conditions kept me indoors all day, hacking away at a volunteer project that I actually got to work (to this point -- so far, so good). I've written before about how I like to use free software (open, free, whatever -- I just want to save money on things I can mess around with). Roughly two years ago, I spent like a whole day downloading OpenOffice -- I really didn't know what for, I just wanted to try it. I mainly messed with the word processor and the drawing program, the latter with little success. But today I got Draw to work good at what it's good for -- logos. The jury's still out on how well I managed managing databases. We'll see (gulp!).

Saw good friends at the local books-a-bazillion -- always nice. Also saw where 'Layla' has written a book! Cool. I'm talking about the lady who married George Harrison in, like, the 60s, and then became the inspiration for Eric Clapton's Layla and Other Love Songs two-platter collaboration with Duane Allman and some friends. You don't need me to describe this LP to you, do you? It's on everyone's "all-time rock fave album" list. From the first chords of "Bell Bottom Blues" to the chirping effect fading the album out at "Thorn Tree in the Garden," this LP spoke immediately to its time so clearly that no one who heard it when it came out could ever forget it. They may have hated it, but they could not forget it.

It seems ol' Clap had fallen head over whatever for his best friend's super-cutey wife, and couldn't quite bring himself (at least at first -- so goes the story, as I recall) to take it further. He found this coffee-table book sitting around at a friend's house while so emotionally distraught he was nearly suicidal, and it inspired him to write (or at least get started on) the famous songs that were eventually featured on the LP. Evidently, the book's text was some English translation of the Persian story known as Layla and Majnun.

The original Persian adaptation of this very old Arabic tale was written (as a poem, I think) by the Sufi mystic Nizami. Some warlord had just conquered Nizami's hometown, and he wrote the story in hopes of winning the new khan over. I don't know if it worked or not. But it is considered a classic of Persian literature, and it's supposedly laced with mystical overtones. It's also just a really strange, but strangely affecting, story about a boy (Majnun) who falls hopelessly in love at first sight with a girl (Layla) at the local Koran school on the first day of class in what would have been, like, the first grade. He never touches the girl (who loves him, too) or anything, but her big shot dad eventually gets so ticked at Majnun mooning over his daughter that he puts her into seclusion -- for life. Majnun eventually grows up a bit, enough to wander off into the desert to live as a hermit -- also for life. Sounds like the end of the story, right? Not by a long shot. Get a good translation. If you like to be told a classic tale, you won't put it down.

I'm mentioning all this for a reason. Translating these things into a foreign culture, not to mention the culture's language, is no mean feat. And it should not be taken lightly. Another very famous classic of this same genre has not been able to bridge the cultural divide -- to its complete misunderstanding.

Next time -- Rumi, and the Divan-i-Shams.

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*What was different was the LJ theme. I went from a default format with some "I'm No Eisenstaedt" userpic liftouts as thumbnail art to LJ's "Flexible Squares" theme with a "denim" color format. I also added a title -- Still Alive and Well, which I explained in a later post. I also used a few tourist-type photos I made then with a "pencil-sketch" effect added for the art. Also, see Pattie Boyd's memoir Wonderful Tonight (referenced in the post)  for a fuller account of their mutual discovery of the Layla and Majnun story. It's a good 'read'.


LJ orig.: 09/01/07