Title Bout!

A title can say a lot about something. Whether it’s a poem, a song, a book, an album, a piece of art, etc., it has the ability to transfer a bit more clarity (or, perhaps, obscurity) from the artist to the audience.

As I’ve mentioned before, I write poems and songs. It’s very rare, for me, that I have a title before I even have the piece which I’d be calling it. My process of creating a title has a few options:

- The title comes quickly and naturally after the work is complete
- I grab a word, or phrase from the lyrics or poem and name the work that, since I’m a bit stumped
- The work goes without a title for a long period of time (and much to my chagrin) since nothing seems to fit it right.

No matter which way it happens at any particular time, I tend to go in waves on whether I would want a long or short title. A good example of this can be seen in two different songs of mine. Both songs came out of me without much hassle, and by that I mean that I did not have to beat myself up coming up with the chord progression, melody, or lyrics: it was a very fluid creation process.

When the songs were completed, the title came just as easily too. The first one (chronologically) I named “Comfort” which I mention once in the song’s verse (or pre-chorus or what have you. I’m not technically inclined with music). The second one I named “An Ode to Docked Ships and Impossible Voyages.” As you would guess, I never say that at all in the song. Ironically, given the length of the title, the song is actually very short. The title just sort of came out of me due to the lyrics and general vibe of the song.

I just had this debate with one of my friends, but I tend to enjoy long titles for works, as long as it’s not overdone! That last part is important, because if a band, author, or artist always has obscenely long titles, you get irritated having to say them. Even though “An Ode to Docked Ships and Impossible Voyages” is one of my personal favorite titles I’ve created, I will almost certainly call the song “An Ode” if I’m talking about it.

I’m going to put aside the counter-argument of “then why even bother with the long title if it’s only going to be abbreviated” for a moment. To me, even if you call a title something abbreviated, the fact that the work was named something a bit more flourished is interesting to me.

Same goes for short titles too. Sometimes one or two word titles speak more volumes than a whole paragraph can. My love for writing specializing in brevity can attest to my sincerity here.

So since we’re on the subject of titles (how nice of you to bring that up!), I’m going to discuss some of my favorite titles with you:

13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed

This is the title of a song by a band called A Silver Mount Zion (whose band name itself is in constant flux, but I will call them this for the purpose of clarity). It is on an album full of great titles, including the album title itself which, in my opinion, is worthy of inclusion on this list: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms.

So, why do I love 13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed so much? Well, a bit of it stems from a personal love of the number 13, which happens to be the day I was born on. But there’s more to it than that. Background information about the album, and the band, is that A Silver Mt. Zion was, at this point in their career, a band of mostly instrumental music. This album was sparse, having piano, violin, some guitar, and varied other instruments that still allowed for a minimalist, and somewhat defeated vibe.

I always thought this was a great title. But then I heard that this album is rumored to be about the passing of front-man Efrim Menuck’s dog.

That’s already a heart-breaking enough reason to write an entire album. But when you know that bit of trivia (by which I mean no disrespect), the name 13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed means it was written about a dog’s bed.

Go ahead, picture a dog’s bed. Perhaps the image of an oval-shaped pillow with a 4-inch high fabric border pops into your mind. On it sleeps an old dog, which just may be the most beloved and loving image my mind can conjure up. The dog’s eyes are closed, and its breathing is mostly fluid, but allowing for those certain moments of a sudden, large inhalation. The dog is at that point in its life where you know it is old, and that it doesn’t have too much longer to live. In fact, the veterinarian has perhaps already told you that your pet’s cataracts have made him or her blind, and that the cancer seems to be spreading throughout the entire body.

You’re at that extremely rough internal debate of letting your pet live out the rest of its days with you caring for it, or putting the dog to sleep, and allowing him or her to finally be out of pain.

You think about your pet that you love every night as you try to get some sleep. You only want the best for him or her. This pet has been your best friend for so, so many years now.

13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed.

It is, to me, perhaps the most beautiful thing you could ever wish upon the passing of someone, or something, that you love. And to say this in regards to your dying pet dog, well…needless to say it was very difficult for me to write this, to get to the core of the reason I love this so much, without welling up a bit.

And this puts a whole new spin on the album title: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms. For all of us who have lost someone important in our lives, isn’t that just a touching way to describe the way the person, or pet, we love so much comes back into our memory: as gently and cautiously as light “grac[ing]” the corner of a room?

Beautiful.

I Sing the Body Electric

I’m afraid not every one of these reasons are going to live up to that past one. Hell, some of them I just love and I don’t even know why!

I Sing the Body Electric is a good example of a title that I honestly don’t know why I love so much. I may sound like an eight year old by saying it, but I just think it sounds really cool.

A bunch of things come to mind when I think of this title (and yes, one of them is the Twilight Zone episode named the same thing). A body, or someone, being electric means that the person is excited. Walt Whitman could have had a way different idea in mind when he conceived the title, but to me, one of the things it could mean is the great feeling of being overjoyed by something, or someone. The “I” could be whatever, or whoever, makes you feel glad to be alive. The person or thing or event or song or poem or piece of artwork that makes you happy you got to have your chance on this rock hurling through space.

If you read said poem by Walt Whitman, my theory on the title can be somewhat supported: “The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them” happens to be the second line of the poem (engirth is a bit like encircles, FYI gang).

So while you can read into the title to mean those things or people that bring joy into your life, I also just happen to think it’s a really cool title. TUBULAR EVEN!!!!

Strike Up the Band like a Match

Same goes for this title, which comes from a song by Space Marine 17 (SM17 for short). While the individual behind SM17 has explained to me that the song and title were derived from SM17 mocking bands with that “holier than thou” attitude about their music, to me it’s just extremely cleverly written.

“Strike up the band” is a phrase, and a 1940 movie starring Judy Garland. It is a way of saying “begin conducting the band.” And while the idiom may have had its roots with “strike up” being used with an obvious connection to matches, I had never heard the saying “Strike Up the Band like a Match” before I heard the SM17 song (a quick Google search with the phrase in quotes proves to me that I’m not alone).

It’s not that this is a “deep” title to me. It’s just very clever in my opinion. And it’s rare that a title comes across that way to me, which is why I’ve included it in this list.

This title may not seem all that impressive to you, which is a shame since I had to draw the strikethrough in Paint to make it noticeable! It’s the title of a short poem by Richard Brautigan, and I believe seeing the piece in its entirety may help you understand why I like it so much. Just remember, there’s a strikethrough through the 4:

“January 4 3“
I’ve started off with a mistake
but I’ll try to get better
and put the day in good order.

Still don’t see why it’s great? Well, I can’t help you then. But I can explain what I see in it.

Artists generally don’t point at their mistakes. Sure, they may point at their failings, and mistakes they’ve made in the past, but they don’t often point out mistakes in their own artistic medium. Here, Richard Brautigan makes the title of a poem show a mistake. The title of a poem can say a lot about the piece. For instance, The Prelude by William Wordsworth tells the reader “STOP READING ME! I’M A LONG, BORING PIECE OF SHIT!”

Woops, I mean, ummm, the title let you know that to Billy Wordsworth[less! OH SNAP!], this was just his (unnecessarily long) Prelude for the epic poem he planned on writing. But then wait! In the middle, he realizes that The Prelude itself IS an epic poem. The audience has a good smirk, and we move on to making our eyes bleed with more boring Romantic Poetry.

That rant aside, in the Richard Brautigan poem the title is something as simple as mis-writing the date. The poem itself is only three lines long, but in those three lines you see a narrator who’s a bit broken down about his or her imperfections. The narrator is going to “try to get better,” but isn’t making any promises to the reader. The narrator fucked up, and knows he or she did, but shrugs it off the way someone with way too much weight on their shoulders would shrug off a small mistake. The narrator is not embarrassed. It’s almost as if he or she expected to make a mistake, knowing his or her own imperfections.

I think that there’s nothing more intrinsically human than being wrong from time to time. We try, we fail, and we march on. And to me, that’s what this poem is trying to get across. But without that brilliant title, would the poem be as good? If it were called “Mistake” would it work?

I don’t think it would work as well. Why? Because with the 4 being struck out and the 3 next to it, we can see the narrator’s mistake. It was small, but the narrator still doesn’t laugh it off. Just goes about the day saying he or she is going to try his or her best, but who knows if that’s going to amount to jack shit in this messed up world. Plus, isn’t it the little mistakes that end up going through your mind the most? I know that’s true for me.

The Days are Just Packed

This is another title which may seem like nothing special until you see the whole picture. In this case, you need not read the entire bound collection of Calvin and Hobbes comics that go under this name (although you SHOULD!!!), but rather just take a look at the cover:

http://www.amazon.com/Days-are-Just-Packed-Collection/dp/0836217357/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207075647&sr=8-1

For those of you too lazy to click on a link (I know a few), it’ll suffice to know that Calvin and Hobbes are both lying down on a branch up in a tree, eyes closed, with big smiles on their faces.

So the cover art contradicts the title: and that’s EXACTLY the point.

People may look at the book and go “Yeah, packed with what? Doing nothing?!?” And that’s EXACTLY the point.

By every standard which would normally define a day being “packed,” the cover clearly shows that Calvin and Hobbes fail to meet those standards. A day being “just packed” would normally define a day where you have little time to yourself, a day where you’re always running from one place to the next in order to complete some task or another. It would certainly never be defined as a day in which you get to be free, play, and do whatever you would like to do.

And that’s EXACTLY the point the brilliant Bill Watterson has made here, in my humble opinion.

To Calvin and Hobbes the day is packed. And whether they consider what they’re doing to be packed full of hard work or of rest and fun, the fact is they consider it to be just that. It throws away convention, and not from some high-and-mighty art-throne, but rather from a crowd full of inner-children.

Bill Watterson was, in my opinion, one of the greatest artists, writers, and storytellers this world has ever, and will ever know. That’s pretty high praise, I’m aware of that, but I don’t throw around that praise lightly.

I had the pleasure of reading Calvin and Hobbes in the newspapers as a child, and then the honor of reading them once again as an adult. Bill Watterson was able to somehow make you love his work regardless of what age you were, as long as you had one simple part of you in tact: your inner-child.

As long as you can enjoy some of the same things you did as a kid for the same reasons you still do, Calvin and Hobbes will probably appeal to you. It has made me laugh out loud on many occasions, and also made me cry (don’t believe me? Do a Google search for “‘the raccoon story’ Calvin and Hobbes” and see for yourself). Being able to run the entire gamut of human emotions with your artistic output is an amazing feat to accomplish. And Mr. Watterson has indeed accomplished this.

So still, what’s the big deal about The Days are Just Packed? Well, do you remember when your days were “just packed” the same way it is for Calvin and Hobbes on the cover of that collection? I do. There was great simplicity and immense joy in it. And it’s a wonderful way to word that feeling. To call pleasure and contentment things that can “pack” your day is like throwing a giant wrench in the seemingly-unstoppable machine of negative language. Mr. Watterson has reclaimed the phrase to mean whatever the fuck you want it to mean. Go ahead, pack your day full of laughter and friendship. To hell with anyone who opposes you. Go out there and love to your heart’s capacity.

Runners Up

No, that’s not a title. I know I’m probably forgetting a lot of titles that I truly do love, but I know there’s a few that didn’t make the list that I’d like to at least briefly mention:

He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms

Yeah, I know, I mentioned it already. But it’s so amazing! I won’t rehash what I already stated back up near the top of this essay, but needless to say I do find it to be a great, great title.

1×1

Poet E. E. Cummings (yes, it’s supposed to be capitalized) had a great way with words. When it came to defining love, he tried, just like so many artists since the dawn of the human race have tried. I think he quite possibly succeeded with this simple little math equation. To say about the person you love, “we’re wonderful. we’re one times one” is saying a lot. You’re two, but in a sense, you’re one. Math never seemed so poignant to me.

The Amelia Earhart Pancake

Another Richard Brautigan poem:

“The Amelia Earhart Pancake”
I have been unable to find a poem
for this title. I’ve spent years
looking for one and now I’m giving
up.

November 3, 1970

Another great exposé of an artist’s failings. Sometimes our greatest ideas, the ones we cling on to with all our hearts, don’t pan out at all. This poem celebrates that failure as being equally as important as succeeding. And I think that says a lot. Also, how impressive is it to say that much with a title as ridiculous as this one?

It’s a Magical World

It’s the name of the final Calvin and Hobbes collection, and also the first half of one of the most beautiful quotes in the English language: “It’s a Magical World, Hobbes, ol’ Buddy…Let’s go exploring!” Do a Google image search for “last calvin and hobbes comic.” It’s one of the most touching comic strips you’ll ever read.

Well, that’s all I have for titles right now. In case you’re interested, you can go to www.ourtwilightpastime.com and download both of the songs I mentioned above. Go to the music section. “Comfort” is on Terra Firma, and “An Ode to Docked Ships and Impossible Voyages” is on Drunken Sailors.

Keep the love alive, everyone

- Mike