Miscellany, again: British reserve and British humor; English singularity; An exercise in Coltranian verticularity; In justification of a nobody with a blog

British reserve and British humor 

Britain is per capita the world's funniest country. I see no point in substantiating a proposition so inarguable as that, but because I'm a dreadful political-science sort, I am compelled to venture some theory to account for it. I don't dispute the cliche that Britain is a reserved society, and I wonder if that may make a foundation for this theory: in an otherwise-staid society like Britain's, humor is a permissible outlet. No sin or disgrace or folly in laughter, or in producing laughter. And if that humor is more cerebral then it's better than permissible, it's elevated. So it may be that British reserve and British humor are cause and effect. 

English singularity 

Among the many peculiarities of English is this: for as long as there has been a language identifiable as English, English has been a written or anyway a writable language. If it wasn't often written in those earliest times, English was at least writable, in a phonetic alphabet, and from the first. 

English is an insular development of the language and dialects of those Germanic tribesmen who migrated from the Continent to the British Isles about the time of the Fall of Rome, and among those people a phonetic alphabet had been adopted from not too long after Christ, called the "futhark", so that English was a writable language with a phonetic alphabet from the very first.  

The special and singular case of "read" and "write" might conceivably bear on this: English is alone among Western European languages in that "write" does not derive from the Latin "scribere", per the American Heritage Dictionary, and per that dictionary English is nearly alone among Western European languages in that "read" does not derive from the Latin "legere". "Read" and "write" are Old, Saxon English, not Latinate and not answered in our Germanic cousin-tongues. But then, English has been written for as long as it's been spoken, so that at no time would reading and writing have been novel or alien concepts in English, never imports demanding imported names.   

That English has been written for as long as it's been spoken may or may not account for some part of the prolific and extraordinary development of English -- the English vocabulary for instance is double the vocabulary of the world's second-largest language -- but English is a singular language among the civilizations of the world and of history, and whatever it is that accounts for English singularity must itself be fairly singular.

And another thing, while I'm about it: England is not a very old country and America is not so very much younger than the Old Country. There is no England before the Fall of Rome, and the first English colonies in America come only a millennium thereafter, and all of seven centuries after the advent of England as a unitary realm. England's not so old and America's not so much younger.

  

An exercise in Coltranian verticularity  

This extraordinary solo is as imaginative and inventive and artful and athletic a "vertical" improvisation as any in a century of jazz. The fellow who can play scales like that, can dispense with melodies. It's John Coltrane's tenor saxophone solo on a televised performance of Miles Davis' "So What" from New York in 1959, and it's a tour de force throughout. 

I've played saxophone, and tenor saxophone, and yet I can only guess at what I hear at 3:40-41. I notice the trombonist to the side looks up with a start on hearing it, and the next fellow over smirks, and I expect it'd have sounded that much more startling live or on a crisper recording. Coltrane plays two ascending scales ranging about the length of the horn, very low to very high, with such uncommon velocity that the sound practically crackles. He comes close to those same scales elsewhere in the solo, but without the peculiar effect at 3:40. I can only guess that Coltrane is moving so far, so fast, and with such a meticulous articulation, that the product is a sound unproducible to a lesser saxophonist.  

Coltrane does manage some truly fine riffs among the scales -- passages more melodic or "lyrical" than harmonic or "vertical" -- and his scales are such that they substitute for melody, but "So What" is modal and expansive and its "head" or chorus has no melody to speak of, so that Coltrane's accustomed scales-playing is just the thing. I imagine a transcription of that solo might look something like the Manhattan skyline: jagged ups and downs. In any event a solo like that isn't inspiration for a saxophonist, so much as an unanswerable argument for his retirement from saxophony.   

In justification of a nobody with a blog

I beg the dear reader's pardon for this unbecoming own-horn-blowing, but I've apprehended that my current-events bona fides need registering publicly, and that they'll go unregistered if not by me. My formal training and certification are in political science, from a university of 25,000 in a national capital and rated in that time the best in its country for political science, which rating was my solitary consideration in choosing the school. I've followed American politics and government like my life depends on it for a quarter of a century, from an age when I ought to have cared more about school dances than Iowa caucuses. I wrote on politics and government and history and war professionally for half a decade in the biggest paper east of Quebec, and unpaid for a couple years before, then there's this blog which I've kept up since '05, which in Internet Time is Before the Flood.  

And for what it's worth I was born into a political family, who had run for office and served in government and campaigned for candidates and counted votes and studied political science and staffed for a future secretary-general of NATO and knew the representatives and met the prime minister. So hate my ever-living guts if you will, for the God-Bless-the-USA-Unreconstructed-Redneck-American-Triumphalist-Peasants-Party militant that I assuredly am, but please don't suppose I don't have a clue.