{"id":571,"date":"2009-06-19T22:03:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T02:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/?p=571"},"modified":"2009-06-19T22:06:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T02:06:05","slug":"are-my-tastes-hopelessly-prolish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/?p=571","title":{"rendered":"Are My Tastes Hopelessly Proletarian?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>, Orwell twice quotes a song popular among the proles of his imagined future, &#8220;composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator&#8221;. He calls it &#8220;dreadful rubbish&#8221; and a &#8220;driveling song&#8221;, but it seems to me that it would fit right in to the Great American Songbook. Of course, we cannot judge the music, but I have certainly heard worse words. Here are the lyrics, with the proletarian (Cockney) mispronunciations edited out:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It was only a hopeless fancy,<br \/>\nIt passed like an April day,<br \/>\nBut a look and a word and the dreams they stirred<br \/>\nThey have stolen my heart away!<\/p>\n<p>They say that time heals all things,<br \/>\nThey say you can always forget;<br \/>\nBut the smiles and the tears across the years<br \/>\nThey twist my heartstrings yet!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"right\">(George Orwell, <em>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>, II.iv and II.x)<\/p>\n<p>It is not deep, but other than the awkward rhythm of the fifth line, I don&#8217;t see anything embarrassingly wrong with it. Do I need a taste-bud transplant?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell twice quotes a song popular among the proles of his imagined future, &#8220;composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator&#8221;. He calls it &#8220;dreadful rubbish&#8221; and a &#8220;driveling song&#8221;, but it seems to me that it would fit right in to the Great American Songbook. Of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-what-ive-been-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}