how not to finish

Going in and out of so many conversations might make you sit back and wonder, for a second, if these individual fragments actually mean anything. Why, really, are you talking to anyone if the dynamics of this situation are such that no conversation lasts longer than a few minutes. Where are the deep, hours long explorations of personal philosophy? The deep examinations of motivations and passions? With time, I assure you, that will come, but you need to establish a reason for it. And, sometimes, something left unfinished is more beautiful and more intriguing than the most complete masterpiece.

Does this look like a man who couldn't finish a symphony if he really wanted to?

Take, for instance, Mozart’s Requiem Mass without any of the completions (personally, I’m partial to Levin’s). The ending is hauntingly abrupt considering the emotional torment and bizarre circumstances behind the creation of the piece. As unfinished works go, however, I’m quite enamored of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, generally referred to has his Eighth. Schubert only completed the orchestration for two full movements, though a full piano score for a scherzo remains as well. The odd thing about this particular unfinished piece is that it was not interrupted by Schubert’s death. Rather, he seems to have just moved on to other things for the rest of his life (six years). A number of theories suggest that Schubert did, in fact, sketch a full fourth movement, which then became part of the incidental music for Rosamunde. However, the evidence is slim, and largely based on the fact that both are in B minor.

Still, even though it’s never been finished, the piece has become, since it was first performed in 1865, one of Schubert’s most popular. So if you find yourself listening to a young woman’s lament over the emptiness of so many unfinished conversations, you can say something along these lines: “Honestly, I’m always fighting to not let those half finished conversations depress me. Rather, I think about how unique, challenging, and exciting the conversation that did happen actually was. It’s like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. I could dwell on how much I wish he had finished it, or I can revel in the beauty of what he did leave us, and know that we’re all richer for it.”

A bit highfalutin? Maybe a little overwrought? Well, sometimes you need to go to extremes in order to fend off the dangers of existential ennui.

the devil in the details

In any case, it’s about time for another drink and, slightly disenchanted as you are with the crowd’s reception of your Daniel Boone bit, you might as well move along. Standing at the bar, you hear a conversation starting just to your right wherein two gentlemen are discussing the stories behind the names of various sports teams. One of them hypothesizes that the New Jersey Devils are likely so named because New Jersey is something of a hellhole. Oh, so very funny, but a gentleman never allows false facts to be bandied about, and certainly never allows a fine state such as New Jersey to be disparaged.

Maybe not so scary here, but I wouldn't mess with it in a dark alley...which are common in Jersey

What these ruffians apparently do not know is that the Devils are named after New Jersey’s official state monster, though no such position actually exists. There is a legend, running back to at least the 1800s of a flying biped with cloven hooves that haunts the pine barrens of New Jersey. The creature is credited with all kinds of mischievous shenanigans from killing live stock, to giving Napoleon’s older brother Joseph a scare while he was out hunting one day (he had an estate in Jersey). Commodore Stephen Decatur even claimed to have hit it with a cannonball to no effect. Any way you cut it, it’s an odd story.

“Sorry, lads, but couldn’t help but notice you talking about the Devils, and where the name came from.” Don’t worry if they give you a snide look of “well, what’s it to you, bub?” Remember, you’re fighting the good fight. “Turns out, the team is named after an old legend about the pine barrens, and this mythical creature…or cryptid, that lives there. You know, bat wings, cloven hooves, maybe breathes fire, that sortof thing. I guess it’s Jersey’s twist on the Jackalope.”

Yes, that will do nicely. If they seem like good, but misguided fellows, have a drink with them. If not, well, you’ve done what you set out to do. Grab your drink, and get back out there.

out in the boonedocks

Now that everyone knows a bit more about 18th century British science, it’s time to switch gears. Let’s stick with the 18th century just to maintain a semblance of conversational order. However, we’re going to jump the pond in just a second. Remember, keep it composed:

“Now, Henry Cavendish, admittedly, accomplished a hell of a lot while sitting in his basement for most of his adult life, but I prefer my historical characters with a bit more…vim and vigor. Take Daniel Boone, for instance, the guy was Clint Eastwood plus John Wayne mixed with a little bit of Kevin Costner if he had just stopped after Dances with Wolves.”

Boone didn't actually use this musket, but he probably had one just like it.

There are, however, a few things you should know about Mr. Boone as you tread into some of the territory that he helped add to this United States. Now, we could just stick with an exploration of a man who became a legend in his own time. He was captured by the Shawnee during the Revolutionary War, and, instead of being killed or turned over to the British, he was eventually adopted by the tribe, though I’m not sure if he had the help of a sympathetic canine. We could also discuss the fact that you can still find his name carved into rocks and trees in Western Kentucky, parts of Tennessee, and who knows where else. In any case, there’s a lot you could say about the man, but, this situation calls for a bit of levity.

Turns out Davey Crockett wasn't the only American hero killing himself some bears.

Luckily for you, the nice young woman on your left just volunteered the fact that she wouldn’t much have liked being Boone’s wife on account of his moving his family farther and farther west throughout his life. Go with this “Oddly enough, Boone might have agreed with you there. As it turns out, there was a hidden motive behind a large portion of the man’s moves: the US government kept invalidating his land claims. That’s right, the great frontiersman and homesteader kept frontiering because he needed to find a home the government would let him keep.”

Probably would have been better with a pun, but you can’t have everything.

world on his shoulders

As sometimes happens, the chat you were having about poems and poets led to a dispersal of the crowd. Some folks just don’t know what to do with themselves when literary criticism raises it’s head. No matter, a new circle has coalesced and the conversation has wound its way through to The Biggest Loser. Naturally enough, that has partygoers hypothesizing on the weight of various people and objects, from Kirstie Alley to the Washington Monument. There have been quite a few witty comparisons dropped here and there, and one fellow has decided that the weight of the host’s ego may well rival that of the Earth. Well well, you might, in this comment, see a point at which to drop a bit of proverbial knowledge.

Don't mess with this guy. He's a scientist.

It just so happens that the Earth was weighed for the first time in the 1700s by a recluse called Henry Cavendish. The Cavendishes were a rather impressive bunch. Not only was Henry’s grandfather the Duke of Devonshire, but his family is responsible for three centuries worth of patronage for British science, and for a not insignificant number of scientific achievements. Henry discovered hydrogen, though he called it “inflammable air,” and a member of his family would later establish the world renown Cavendish Labs.

But enough about that, I mentioned him weighing the world. The story actually starts with Cavendish realizing that Mason and Dixon’s measurements for their line (yes, that one) were slightly off, and he hypothesized that their plumb lines were being pulled out of whack by the Allegheny mountains. So, under his direction, a couple of fellows from the Royal Society went up to a mountain in Scotland called Schiehallion and measured how much the mountain distorted the drop of their plumb line from various sides. With that information in hand, they made an estimate as to the density of the mountain, and through it, that of the Earth, along with it’s weight. However, Cavendish didn’t think their work was up to snuff. He continued to play with the idea, and, at the age 67, he started a set of experiments that wound up providing the measure of the gravitational constant, G. Not bad for a man that spent all day in his basement playing with bunson burners, ey? So, let’s see…

Careful, now, don't shrug.

“Good luck finding a scale large enough to measure that. Though, I guess we could play Henry Cavendish and measure the weight of his ego based on its effect on others in the room? Might take a bit of watching, but we could probably get pretty close, especially if he keeps talking to Jean-Claude over there. The two of them together could probably tip an elephant.”

Ok, so you didn’t really get through all the intricacies of Cavendish’s achievement, but you did a very nice job.

the mightiest penn

Beware of people in turtlenecks, as they like to talk at length about narrow subjects.

My advice to you, at this point, is to shift away from Eliot, Pound, and The Wasteland as quickly as you can. While everyone enjoys a good yarn about poetry, broaching the topic leaves you open to two equally serious threats 1) everyone gets quite depressed thinking about how sad the poem is or 2) one of your co-conversationalists stands a decent chance of being an expert on it, or some related piece, and will take this as an excuse to discourse for the next hour. Either situation would be quite the buzzkill.

So how to pivot to something more salubrious for the general path of your conversational endeavors? Well, in order that you not create too distracting a schism between the conversation that was and that upon which you are about to embark, why don’t we stick within the realm of poetry, but shift forward a few years to the work of one Robert Penn Warren. Warren’s legacy is a bit different that of Eliot.

To start with, Warren was the US Poet Laureate from 1944-1945. Then, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958. He waited a couple of years and then won it again in 1979. If that was all there was to say about the man, it would be quite a lot – and I didn’t even mention the fact that he was a Rhodes Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow. For all of his accomplishments in the world of poetry, Warren isn’t regularly remembered primarily as a poet. Rather than seeing that as a knock against his work (which some critics might say does not hold up in against the lens of history), it is likely a function of the unbelievable success of his masterpiece, a novel called All the King’s Men.

Different story about the King's men.

But how to bridge from one to the next? Let’s have a go: “TS Eliot may be one of my favorite poets, but I’ve got to give some serious respect to Robert Penn Warren. He’s the only person to ever win Pulitzer Prizes for both poetry and fiction. The crazy thing is, almost no one I know has even read his poetry. Maybe that means it doesn’t stand up against time, or just that All the King’s Men was so important as to eventually overshadow everything else he did. Still, that’s a strange legacy.”

That should about do it for now. Still talking literature, but a bit less of a downer.