Posts
Merry Christmas to one and all
This is what I'll mostly be listening to this holiday. More details in the next posting. Plus: an evening of seasonal terror in the City of London.
1. All Alone On Christmas Darlene Love (1993)
2. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus The Ronettes (1963)
3. Here Comes Santa Claus Bing Crosby (1945)
4. Poor Old Rudolph The Bellrays (1996)
5. Frosty The Snowman Leon Redbone (1987)
6. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers (1946)
7. Velvet Santa Divide and Kreate (2007)
8. Sock It To Me Santa Bob Seeger & The Last Heard (1966)
9. Christmas Morning Blues Titus Turner (1952)
10. Merry Christmas Little Esther & Johnny Otis (1950)
11. Faraway Christmas Blues Little Esther & Mel Walker with Johnny Otis (1950)
12. Santa Claus, Santa Claus Louis Jordan (1969)
13. You Don't Have To Be A Santa Claus Mills Brothers (1955)
14. Merry Christmas Baby Elvis Presley (1971)
15. River Madeleine Peyroux (2006)
16. Blue Christmas Low (2000)
17. In The Hot Sun Of A Christmas Day Caetano Veloso (1971)
18. Raat Christmas Ki Thi Asha Bhosle (1987)
19. Spotlight On Christmas Rufus Wainwright (2004)
20. So Much Wine The Handsome Family (2001)
21. Merry Christmas From The Family Robert Earl Keen (1994)
22. (I Was) Drunk (On Christmas) Winechuggers (1998)
23. Xmastime For The Jews Darlene Love (2005)
24. Fuck Christmas Eric Idle (2006)
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Back again
I never gave it any thought. Stupidly, I guess. I should have known that it would be quite a different thing going back again. I’d been a second year before, at school and university, too. Somehow, though, I didn’t think about it this time round. Like I said, stupid.
It is different. Quite a lot different. Part-time students — who, like me, are doing the course over two years — are in a tiny minority. Nearly everyone manages it in one — even, in some case, with a full(ish)-time job. I’ve no idea how they do it. None at all.
I remember last year looking at the second year students and wondering what was going on in their heads. What did they think of us new bobs? Were they a little amused by the gaucheness of our questions? Were they just waiting to get it all over with? Were they bored or did they find the second year even more interesting than the first? Was it all much easier for them?
Another thing I didn’t think about was just how much each year’s intake can vary. As ever in life, I knew what I knew, no more. So I guessed that was the way things actually were and would always be. Wrongly.
I should have known this year’s intake would be different. One, I’d been told they were — by one of last year’s students with whom my work brings me into fairly regular contact. As a one-year-only student, she hadn’t actually seen this year’s newbies with her own eyes but she had it on the best of (gossipy) authority that they were, on average, far younger than our year. More her age, in fact, than mine.
Two, I’d heard tell of a previous year’s intake, a few years back, that was infamous in their difference. They threw rubbers at each other in class. Or rather, they threw erasers — they were mostly young Americans. They teased one of their number who happened to have ginger hair. It was, or so I’m told, like being in an American high school sitcom that wasn’t funny.
So what are this year’s intake like? Well, I’ve hardly seen them, truth be told. The way I divided up my work over the two years, I’ve ended up with only six seminars all this term — the first half of Mrs Klein and Bion.
So any observations are necessarily partial as well as inevitably partial. They are younger. There are also more of them than there were last year. There are a lot more English Literature graduates and a few more psychiatrists.
I do find some of their questions a bit gauche — though, thank God, I have the sense to recall some of my own questions from last year, with pain and retrospective embarrassment. They ask more of them, too, than we did. They seem, well, keener somehow. As one of last year’s full-timers said to me: ‘We were a very laidback lot.’ Though rarely late for seminars. Unlike this year’s lot — who have already been told off a couple of times for it.
That aside, they are a lot more organised. They’re sorting out study groups, seminar presentations and dissertation-sharing sessions. They are all-round far more communicative with each other. Last year’s lot generally couldn’t even get it together to look at the course Facebook site. Like, I said, laidback.
This communicativeness, though, was how I came to upset some of them — not deliberately but not quite inadvertently either. They were sending emails to each other several times a day — about organisational issues, kind of. The problem was they were copying them to the whole group, including me. I got fed up with the emails — a good number of which said nothing more than ‘me, too’. So I said something. I don’t think they liked that. But I don’t get any more emails.
And they’ve set up a mooli. Sorry, that’s a radish. I meant a Moodle*. That’s a sharing web thing for academia — in this case, restricted and password protected. I just had a look at it. There was an invite to a crochet circle breakfast — run by a mathematically inclined artist-in-residence. It was yesterday. I missed it.
* Martin’s Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
I never gave it any thought. Stupidly, I guess. I should have known that it would be quite a different thing going back again. I’d been a second year before, at school and university, too. Somehow, though, I didn’t think about it this time round. Like I said, stupid.
It is different. Quite a lot different. Part-time students — who, like me, are doing the course over two years — are in a tiny minority. Nearly everyone manages it in one — even, in some case, with a full(ish)-time job. I’ve no idea how they do it. None at all.
I remember last year looking at the second year students and wondering what was going on in their heads. What did they think of us new bobs? Were they a little amused by the gaucheness of our questions? Were they just waiting to get it all over with? Were they bored or did they find the second year even more interesting than the first? Was it all much easier for them?
Another thing I didn’t think about was just how much each year’s intake can vary. As ever in life, I knew what I knew, no more. So I guessed that was the way things actually were and would always be. Wrongly.
I should have known this year’s intake would be different. One, I’d been told they were — by one of last year’s students with whom my work brings me into fairly regular contact. As a one-year-only student, she hadn’t actually seen this year’s newbies with her own eyes but she had it on the best of (gossipy) authority that they were, on average, far younger than our year. More her age, in fact, than mine.
Two, I’d heard tell of a previous year’s intake, a few years back, that was infamous in their difference. They threw rubbers at each other in class. Or rather, they threw erasers — they were mostly young Americans. They teased one of their number who happened to have ginger hair. It was, or so I’m told, like being in an American high school sitcom that wasn’t funny.
So what are this year’s intake like? Well, I’ve hardly seen them, truth be told. The way I divided up my work over the two years, I’ve ended up with only six seminars all this term — the first half of Mrs Klein and Bion.
So any observations are necessarily partial as well as inevitably partial. They are younger. There are also more of them than there were last year. There are a lot more English Literature graduates and a few more psychiatrists.
I do find some of their questions a bit gauche — though, thank God, I have the sense to recall some of my own questions from last year, with pain and retrospective embarrassment. They ask more of them, too, than we did. They seem, well, keener somehow. As one of last year’s full-timers said to me: ‘We were a very laidback lot.’ Though rarely late for seminars. Unlike this year’s lot — who have already been told off a couple of times for it.
That aside, they are a lot more organised. They’re sorting out study groups, seminar presentations and dissertation-sharing sessions. They are all-round far more communicative with each other. Last year’s lot generally couldn’t even get it together to look at the course Facebook site. Like, I said, laidback.
This communicativeness, though, was how I came to upset some of them — not deliberately but not quite inadvertently either. They were sending emails to each other several times a day — about organisational issues, kind of. The problem was they were copying them to the whole group, including me. I got fed up with the emails — a good number of which said nothing more than ‘me, too’. So I said something. I don’t think they liked that. But I don’t get any more emails.
And they’ve set up a mooli. Sorry, that’s a radish. I meant a Moodle*. That’s a sharing web thing for academia — in this case, restricted and password protected. I just had a look at it. There was an invite to a crochet circle breakfast — run by a mathematically inclined artist-in-residence. It was yesterday. I missed it.
* Martin’s Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
Monday, 10 November 2008
Double body
In my last posting, I put a link in where it said 'my wife'. I thought you might like to be reassured (or disappointed) that it wasn't actually my wife in the picture. They just share a name. The clue was the initials on that woman's badge. For more details, look here.
In my last posting, I put a link in where it said 'my wife'. I thought you might like to be reassured (or disappointed) that it wasn't actually my wife in the picture. They just share a name. The clue was the initials on that woman's badge. For more details, look here.
Friday, 17 October 2008
The me-me meme
Often, though not always, I get my wife to read my postings before I upload them. Our offices are next to each other in the house. I email them to her. She emails back. Such is the modern work-home balance. Such is modern marriage.
My email wasn’t working properly when she sent her response to my last posting. So we had a face-to-face conversation, before breakfast. Such, too, is the modern work-home balance.
She: You know I always really like your blog.* But . . .** I wondered if that posting doesn’t come across a bit self-concerned.
Me: I know what you mean.*** But I’m torn. Some people tell me they like my blog best when it’s personal. Others that they’re more interested in it when it reaches out into the world.
She: That posting, though. Isn’t it a bit too much like those columns in the paper where someone writes about their own life, self-obsessively. It’s all so me-me-me.
Me: But those are the columns you read. I don’t. But you do.
She: Mmmmm.
And so to breakfast.
* A note for anyone ever having a conversation with any writer about their writing. Begin any and every conversation with something like this. Even if it’s a complete lie. Particularly if it’s a complete lie. If you don’t first tell them they’re wonderful, they won’t hear anything you say after that. Particularly if you’re about to tell them it’s rubbish.
If it is rubbish, tell them it needs a little work. Then start on your list of suggested changes. No matter how extensive the list, the writer will still be basking in the glow of that initial praise. Think of it as tickling a dog’s tummy. It works. Every time. I’ve written and I’ve edited. As an editor, I learned all about writers’ vanities. Mine included, of course.
** There’s always a ‘but’ after a sentence which begins ‘You know I always really . . .’
*** Defence is the last resort of offence.
Often, though not always, I get my wife to read my postings before I upload them. Our offices are next to each other in the house. I email them to her. She emails back. Such is the modern work-home balance. Such is modern marriage.
My email wasn’t working properly when she sent her response to my last posting. So we had a face-to-face conversation, before breakfast. Such, too, is the modern work-home balance.
She: You know I always really like your blog.* But . . .** I wondered if that posting doesn’t come across a bit self-concerned.
Me: I know what you mean.*** But I’m torn. Some people tell me they like my blog best when it’s personal. Others that they’re more interested in it when it reaches out into the world.
She: That posting, though. Isn’t it a bit too much like those columns in the paper where someone writes about their own life, self-obsessively. It’s all so me-me-me.
Me: But those are the columns you read. I don’t. But you do.
She: Mmmmm.
And so to breakfast.
* A note for anyone ever having a conversation with any writer about their writing. Begin any and every conversation with something like this. Even if it’s a complete lie. Particularly if it’s a complete lie. If you don’t first tell them they’re wonderful, they won’t hear anything you say after that. Particularly if you’re about to tell them it’s rubbish.
If it is rubbish, tell them it needs a little work. Then start on your list of suggested changes. No matter how extensive the list, the writer will still be basking in the glow of that initial praise. Think of it as tickling a dog’s tummy. It works. Every time. I’ve written and I’ve edited. As an editor, I learned all about writers’ vanities. Mine included, of course.
** There’s always a ‘but’ after a sentence which begins ‘You know I always really . . .’
*** Defence is the last resort of offence.
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Back to school
Summer’s over. Time to return to school. I’ve re-enrolled. I’ve paid my £2000 plus change. I’ve got the schedule. I’ve got a new UCL password. I’ve logged back on to PEP. And I’ve got my exam results.
Ah, the exams. I just looked back at the only posting I made about the exams and see that it was long on atmosphere and emotion but short on facts. Things like the number of exams and where they were done etc. I reckon I’d like to know if I were you. So . . .
I’m doing an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies at UCL. I’m doing it over two years. Most people do it in one. We all have to do the same work, I just get longer to do it in. We have to write two essays (5,500 words), one dissertation (11,000 words) and sit exams — twelve papers over three days, 45 minutes per question.
That’s the entire sum of the written work. Everything else is reading and seminars. I’ve written (and whinged) about the volume of the reading before. I’ll just mention that one of my fellow students decided to weigh the reading before she flew home to Marin County. She’d thought of taking it with her, I guess, for reference. So she checked it in case she got stuck with a hefty overweight surcharge. She would have been. It weighed two stone.
That’s not all the reading. There are no books counted there. Nothing read online or in the library. Just the photocopies of each week’s reading. Two stone. Thirteen kilos. A toddler load.
The exams count for a lot, though — 45 per cent of the marks. I guess it’s a way to stop people cheating. If you don’t get it, you can’t spiel away in the moment. So it’s hard not to take the exams seriously. Obviously, my grades will make no difference at all to my life outside the course. In fact, they’ll count for nothing anywhere outside my own head. Which is the point. I’d be lying — to myself — if I didn’t admit it was important for me to do well. (I’m not after a surprise denouement so I’ll tell you now, I have done well.)
It was very odd, sitting in a room for three hours, scribbling away by hand. I hadn’t written that much by hand that fast for maybe thirty years. I was drained at the end of the three days. I needed a break.
So I took a break. I haven’t done any course reading at all over the summer. The only psychoanalytic stuff I’ve done is some reading for my book about what psychoanalysts have to say about dirty words and I went to a psychoanalytic debate last Friday. It was a real world heavyweight title thing, a drag-down knock-out, bloody affair with a clear points victory to the challenger. It could really turn the game upside the head. I’ll explain more in a future posting.
The people doing the course in one year started a couple of weeks back. Because I did so many units last year — partly by miscalculation — I’ve got very few seminars this year. Just six or seven between now and Christmas.
The first is this Friday, on Melanie Klein — for which I haven’t done the reading. It’s sitting there in a pile on the floor of my office, glaring at me. But I’m ignoring it. It’ll have to wait its turn while I finish my book. That’s what happens, I guess, when you get good grades: confidence. I’ve got more important things to do right now. Melanie Klein can wait.
Summer’s over. Time to return to school. I’ve re-enrolled. I’ve paid my £2000 plus change. I’ve got the schedule. I’ve got a new UCL password. I’ve logged back on to PEP. And I’ve got my exam results.
Ah, the exams. I just looked back at the only posting I made about the exams and see that it was long on atmosphere and emotion but short on facts. Things like the number of exams and where they were done etc. I reckon I’d like to know if I were you. So . . .
I’m doing an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies at UCL. I’m doing it over two years. Most people do it in one. We all have to do the same work, I just get longer to do it in. We have to write two essays (5,500 words), one dissertation (11,000 words) and sit exams — twelve papers over three days, 45 minutes per question.
That’s the entire sum of the written work. Everything else is reading and seminars. I’ve written (and whinged) about the volume of the reading before. I’ll just mention that one of my fellow students decided to weigh the reading before she flew home to Marin County. She’d thought of taking it with her, I guess, for reference. So she checked it in case she got stuck with a hefty overweight surcharge. She would have been. It weighed two stone.
That’s not all the reading. There are no books counted there. Nothing read online or in the library. Just the photocopies of each week’s reading. Two stone. Thirteen kilos. A toddler load.
The exams count for a lot, though — 45 per cent of the marks. I guess it’s a way to stop people cheating. If you don’t get it, you can’t spiel away in the moment. So it’s hard not to take the exams seriously. Obviously, my grades will make no difference at all to my life outside the course. In fact, they’ll count for nothing anywhere outside my own head. Which is the point. I’d be lying — to myself — if I didn’t admit it was important for me to do well. (I’m not after a surprise denouement so I’ll tell you now, I have done well.)
It was very odd, sitting in a room for three hours, scribbling away by hand. I hadn’t written that much by hand that fast for maybe thirty years. I was drained at the end of the three days. I needed a break.
So I took a break. I haven’t done any course reading at all over the summer. The only psychoanalytic stuff I’ve done is some reading for my book about what psychoanalysts have to say about dirty words and I went to a psychoanalytic debate last Friday. It was a real world heavyweight title thing, a drag-down knock-out, bloody affair with a clear points victory to the challenger. It could really turn the game upside the head. I’ll explain more in a future posting.
The people doing the course in one year started a couple of weeks back. Because I did so many units last year — partly by miscalculation — I’ve got very few seminars this year. Just six or seven between now and Christmas.
The first is this Friday, on Melanie Klein — for which I haven’t done the reading. It’s sitting there in a pile on the floor of my office, glaring at me. But I’m ignoring it. It’ll have to wait its turn while I finish my book. That’s what happens, I guess, when you get good grades: confidence. I’ve got more important things to do right now. Melanie Klein can wait.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Jokes and their relation to my unconscious, part three
So what about that woman from northern Hertfordshire and her relationship to Mendelian genetic theory? Again, it’s not really a joke, more a witticism — if one that some people really won’t find at all funny. It’s a limerick — related to me and a roomful of fellow students in New Cross and the early 1970s.
There was a young woman from Tring
Who had an affair with a darkie.
The result of their fling
Was not one but four offspring:
One black, one white and two khaki.
And that’s how genetic inheritance works — in the case of skin colour and other things, though perhaps not everything, my memory fails at this point. Fifty per cent of children will be a mix of their parents stuff and fifty per cent will be a copy of one or other of their parents.
I’d been taught it already at school, as part of O level biology — something to do with clematis plants, I think, or maybe it was aphids, something English country gardenish, anyway, the way things were in education in those days. But it didn’t really stick till one of my university lecturers told us that limerick. Couldn’t really forget it after that, could I? Can’t imagine it being used on a 2008 university psychology course, though, can you?
So what about that woman from northern Hertfordshire and her relationship to Mendelian genetic theory? Again, it’s not really a joke, more a witticism — if one that some people really won’t find at all funny. It’s a limerick — related to me and a roomful of fellow students in New Cross and the early 1970s.
There was a young woman from Tring
Who had an affair with a darkie.
The result of their fling
Was not one but four offspring:
One black, one white and two khaki.
And that’s how genetic inheritance works — in the case of skin colour and other things, though perhaps not everything, my memory fails at this point. Fifty per cent of children will be a mix of their parents stuff and fifty per cent will be a copy of one or other of their parents.
I’d been taught it already at school, as part of O level biology — something to do with clematis plants, I think, or maybe it was aphids, something English country gardenish, anyway, the way things were in education in those days. But it didn’t really stick till one of my university lecturers told us that limerick. Couldn’t really forget it after that, could I? Can’t imagine it being used on a 2008 university psychology course, though, can you?
Monday, 29 September 2008
Sigmund Freud at the funfair
Looking back over recent (and not so recent) postings, I realise I’ve failed to keep some promises. There have been three things I said I was going to write about but didn’t:
* the advantages and disadvantages of making a life-long enemy of Andre Green
* the image Jacques Lacan kept in a cupboard — and only ever showed to a favoured few
* the limerick about the young lady from northern Hertfordshire whose amatory activities offer an accurate exposition of Mendel’s theories on genetic inheritance.
I will get to them, too, starting next week. But first, I’d like to share with you a couple of things that came out of my work on my book about swearing. The first is a story about Freud. The second is a link to a music download. There is a connection between the two.
Freud first. I’ll set the scene. A few weeks more than 99 years ago, Sigmund Freud made his only trip to America. He’d been invited to make a speech at Clark University in Massachusetts. He took some pals with him — Carl Jung from Zurich, Karl Abraham from Berlin and Sandor Ferenczi from Budapest. All three were psychoanalytic ‘sons’ of his — heir apparents with whom he would then fall out and banish. As Oedipus killed his father so Freud killed his sons, leaving his entire kingdom to his virgin daughter.
The four of them spent a few days in New York doing the tourist thing. They walked in Central Park, remarking on the potty-mouthed graffiti on a ‘beautiful marble flight of steps’ — Ferenczi’s words in his paper on obscenity. They took in Chinatown and Coney Island, too. I can’t help but wonder if they had chop suey or sweet and sour pork.
I also can’t help wondering what happened when they headed out to Coney Island. I guess they took a 5th Avenue BMT express out over Brooklyn Bridge but what did they get up to once they arrived at the oceanside resort? Did they head over to West 10th St and check out Luna Park, in the company of its usual 90,000 daily visitors? Did they take its Trip To The Moon, a dream of space travel in a dark theatre? Maybe they went to Dreamland instead, watching a chariot race round its lagoon or its Fighting Flames show — real women and real children being rescued from real fires in pretend houses by make-believe fireman. I can see Freud might have had thoughts about that.
Maybe they took a walk on the beach and saw some Coney Island whitefish — local slang for used condoms left over from the previous night’s sandy adventures. Perhaps they reflected on the name of the place. Coney is an old word, descended from the Latin cunniculus and a close relative of the Spanish conejo . It meant rabbit, a word which originally referred only to the young of the species but which, from the 16th century onwards, edged coney out of the language. Why? Because of the way coney was then pronounced. Which was? You can figure that out by the fact that it originally rhymed with another word for the same animal, bunny. In fact, bunny is probably a rhyming euphemism for coney, consciously created on account of the pronunciation problem — like, say, rollocks .
A similar thing happened in French — connil was replaced by lapin. In Spanish, a Playboy Bunny is a conejita, both a young female rabbit and deliberately close to coño. All those years, I’d thought how strangely innocent Hugh Hefner had been in calling his hostesses Bunny girls. All those years, how wrong I was. Why and how did the pronunciation of coney change? Money and honey didn’t change their sound — something taken rhyming advantage of by both Edward Lear (The Owl And The Pussycat, 1867) and Jesse Stone (Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters’ Money Honey, 1953).
It was the bible that made coney to rhyme with pony. There were lots of coneys in it: rabbits are middle Eastern thing. There were no rabbits in Britain till the Normans brought them over, which is why there is no Old English word for them. The Bible and coney problem was a reading-out-loud problem. Preachers just didn’t like to get up of a Sunday morning and inform their congregation about the habits and lifestyle choices of things whose name sounded just like the name of another thing. Or, to put it the OED way, ‘the desire to avoid certain vulgar associations with the word in the cunny form, may have contributed to the preference for a different pronunciation in reading the Scriptures.’
So what exactly did Freud and his fellow rubberneckers get up to that day in Coney Island. Myself, I like to think they hiked over to Steeplechase Park on West 17th, took a whirl on the mechanical horse race round the Pavilion of Fun, examined themselves in the full-size distorting mirrors and had a disbelieving, Mittel European gawp at what happened as jets of air — they were all over the park — squirted out through gratings and blew women’s dresses up around their hips. Not so much a day of fun by the ocean, then, as the field work for an entire psychoanalytic conference.
And so to the music link. It’s a song by Jackie Wilson and Lavern Baker.
Looking back over recent (and not so recent) postings, I realise I’ve failed to keep some promises. There have been three things I said I was going to write about but didn’t:
* the advantages and disadvantages of making a life-long enemy of Andre Green
* the image Jacques Lacan kept in a cupboard — and only ever showed to a favoured few
* the limerick about the young lady from northern Hertfordshire whose amatory activities offer an accurate exposition of Mendel’s theories on genetic inheritance.
I will get to them, too, starting next week. But first, I’d like to share with you a couple of things that came out of my work on my book about swearing. The first is a story about Freud. The second is a link to a music download. There is a connection between the two.
Freud first. I’ll set the scene. A few weeks more than 99 years ago, Sigmund Freud made his only trip to America. He’d been invited to make a speech at Clark University in Massachusetts. He took some pals with him — Carl Jung from Zurich, Karl Abraham from Berlin and Sandor Ferenczi from Budapest. All three were psychoanalytic ‘sons’ of his — heir apparents with whom he would then fall out and banish. As Oedipus killed his father so Freud killed his sons, leaving his entire kingdom to his virgin daughter.
The four of them spent a few days in New York doing the tourist thing. They walked in Central Park, remarking on the potty-mouthed graffiti on a ‘beautiful marble flight of steps’ — Ferenczi’s words in his paper on obscenity. They took in Chinatown and Coney Island, too. I can’t help but wonder if they had chop suey or sweet and sour pork.
I also can’t help wondering what happened when they headed out to Coney Island. I guess they took a 5th Avenue BMT express out over Brooklyn Bridge but what did they get up to once they arrived at the oceanside resort? Did they head over to West 10th St and check out Luna Park, in the company of its usual 90,000 daily visitors? Did they take its Trip To The Moon, a dream of space travel in a dark theatre? Maybe they went to Dreamland instead, watching a chariot race round its lagoon or its Fighting Flames show — real women and real children being rescued from real fires in pretend houses by make-believe fireman. I can see Freud might have had thoughts about that.
Maybe they took a walk on the beach and saw some Coney Island whitefish — local slang for used condoms left over from the previous night’s sandy adventures. Perhaps they reflected on the name of the place. Coney is an old word, descended from the Latin cunniculus and a close relative of the Spanish conejo . It meant rabbit, a word which originally referred only to the young of the species but which, from the 16th century onwards, edged coney out of the language. Why? Because of the way coney was then pronounced. Which was? You can figure that out by the fact that it originally rhymed with another word for the same animal, bunny. In fact, bunny is probably a rhyming euphemism for coney, consciously created on account of the pronunciation problem — like, say, rollocks .
A similar thing happened in French — connil was replaced by lapin. In Spanish, a Playboy Bunny is a conejita, both a young female rabbit and deliberately close to coño. All those years, I’d thought how strangely innocent Hugh Hefner had been in calling his hostesses Bunny girls. All those years, how wrong I was. Why and how did the pronunciation of coney change? Money and honey didn’t change their sound — something taken rhyming advantage of by both Edward Lear (The Owl And The Pussycat, 1867) and Jesse Stone (Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters’ Money Honey, 1953).
It was the bible that made coney to rhyme with pony. There were lots of coneys in it: rabbits are middle Eastern thing. There were no rabbits in Britain till the Normans brought them over, which is why there is no Old English word for them. The Bible and coney problem was a reading-out-loud problem. Preachers just didn’t like to get up of a Sunday morning and inform their congregation about the habits and lifestyle choices of things whose name sounded just like the name of another thing. Or, to put it the OED way, ‘the desire to avoid certain vulgar associations with the word in the cunny form, may have contributed to the preference for a different pronunciation in reading the Scriptures.’
So what exactly did Freud and his fellow rubberneckers get up to that day in Coney Island. Myself, I like to think they hiked over to Steeplechase Park on West 17th, took a whirl on the mechanical horse race round the Pavilion of Fun, examined themselves in the full-size distorting mirrors and had a disbelieving, Mittel European gawp at what happened as jets of air — they were all over the park — squirted out through gratings and blew women’s dresses up around their hips. Not so much a day of fun by the ocean, then, as the field work for an entire psychoanalytic conference.
And so to the music link. It’s a song by Jackie Wilson and Lavern Baker.
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