Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply (Joel Mabus)

Subject: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply
From: John Hardly
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 04:01 PM

I posted this Joel Mabus poem on the mudcat some time ago. I can NEVER get the search to work on this forum. Can somebody please find the posting of Joel Mabus' "Fiddler's Reply"?

thanks,

J

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply
From: Brendy
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 04:39 PM

I can't find it neither...

Click on your own user name, and flick down through your posts... You might find it that way...

B.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 04:54 PM

Thanks for trying, B. I found it, as you suggested, by weeding through my 4000 posts.

I'd love to know:

1. Why the search doesn't find it
2. Why it wasn't added to the lyrics page (it has three other Mabus songs).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply
From: Brendy
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 05:03 PM

Those are questions for the Gods, John... Us mere mortals can only strive to exist on this plane... ;-)

Glad you found it...

B.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 05:09 PM

The search index hasn't been updated beyond (I think) 2005; a big system failure required resources to be deployed elsewhere. Usually the best way to find a thread on a song is to put part or all of the title in the Filter Box and set the Age to all; apart from anything it's faster than searching.

As to why the song wasn't added, perhaps noone (from the DT) found it; I didn't find the title using filter on either Fiddler or Reply ( or Mabus for that matter). If it was buried in a thread without adding a Lyr Add prefix it may not have been noticed.

I was going to look through your posts as the alternative, but 4000 put me off (I scanned about a 1000 and gave up), glad you persevered!

Mick

Subject: Lyr Add: THE FIDDLER'S REPLY (Joel Mabus)
From: John Hardly
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 04:47 PM

When nobody replied to this, I could have sworn I'd posted my own transcription. Apparently not, so here it is...

THE FIDDLER'S REPLY
Joel Mabus

It's a question that I've heard before
And all that I can say to that is -- no sir!
No sir!

I have played a tune in the dark on the porch of a prairie farm –
Summer rain coming down so straight
You could set your chair right there on the edge of the porch
And keep bone dry.
Such straight regular rain, they say, is good for the crop.
Good for tunes too, I say,
Deep in the night, listening to the corn.

And I remember a tune one winter afternoon up north, fiddling after chores.
The sun staring in through a wet kitchen window –
All ice outside, all steam inside.
My chair tips back; the wood stove snaps loudly,
Popping irregular time to the steppy tunes,
Flannel and coffee, biscuits and boots.

I've played tunes on a fine spring evening at the town hall dance
Where everybody shows,
Joking with the caller, shaking off winter,
Stretching limbs, swapping partners for neighbors.
Good healthy tempos break the first real sweat.
Long lines forward and back and -- Look! Outside!
The sun's still up on a fine green evening !

And then there is a tune I know that plays just like a cold November morning.
Sober. Inside, looking out.
A gray air that wants chords unresolved –
Turning into the mist like so many leaves, riven and broken,
Returning from sky to earth after fall --The undeniable fall -- calls them home.

I have played tunes -- not songs.
Not voiceable, obvious word-infested songs -- but tunes,
Each tune a puzzle, each one a box with its own proud secret.
Each its own smile sweetly shown -- each tune is a lesson pondered.
Pattern -- at once familiar yet unique --Like snow crystals -- like footprints –
Like the way the world is
right
now.

That's what a tune is, and, no sir.
No sir.
They don't all sound the same to me.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply (Joel Mabus)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 08:49 AM

Nice!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply (Joel Mabus)
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 01:01 PM

Ummm... so what was the question?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply (Joel Mabus)
From: GUEST,BanjoRay
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:56 AM

Don't all these tunes sound the same?
Terrible question, great answer.
Ray

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Fiddler's Reply (Joel Mabus)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 17 Jan 09 - 01:26 PM

John Hardly originally posted THE FIDDLER'S REPLY in the thread called BS: Poems that speak to you.

Our "Lyrics & Knowledge Search" seems to be repaired now. (Is that why Mudcat was down for about 24 hours?) That's how I found it, anyway.