oilpiers wrote:John A Arkansawyer wrote:one belt loop wrote:Most of them are actually too long for a tshirt and way WAY too long for a bumpersticker, unless you truncate.
Right on. Cooley writes aphorisms, not slogans.
WTF. This thread sucks because for some reason some of these quotes are too "enlightening" to be on a shirt or bumper sticker? That is what I see from that response, and it makes absolutely no sense to me. "But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating". Slogan, aphorism, whatever you want to call it, don't tell me this would not make a great t-shirt.I would take out the but.
Sorry. I didn't mean it as a value judgement. Maybe I should have said, "Cooley writes sayings, not slogans." That sounds better, anyway. What I was trying to say--it's hard to be brief, isn't it?--was that, yes, most Cooleyisms in particular are a little too long to use for a t-shirt or a bumper sticker. It's hard to write a slogan. It's a specialized skill. I sure don't have it--see how I caused confusion trying to be brief? And he writes those sayings one after another. "Gravity's Gone" is a great example:
You'll never lose your mind as long as your heart always reminds you where you left it
And don't ever let them make you feel like saying what you want is unbecoming
If you were supposed to watch your mouth all the time I doubt your eyes would be above it
That's three in a row right there. Just drop the "And" from the second line.
And there's "A Ghost to Most":
Saving everybody takes a man on a mission with a swagger that can set the world at ease
Some believe it's God's own hand on the trigger and the other dumping water in the streets
Talking tough is easy when it's other people's evil and you're judging what they do or don't believe
It seems to me you'd have to have a hole in your own to point a finger at somebody else's sheet
The prize one there is line three, but all four of them are worthy.
It's a weird way to write a song--I don't know anyone else who does it that way--and I think it's great. I wish I could do it. It just produces lines that are a little long for a t-shirt. Not always. I think everyone and every place has a 72, so "This Highway's Mean" works even as a bumper sticker. "Tell me how to tell when I've had enough" might make a good t-shirt, but it's a little long for my tastes. So is "Life ain't nothing but a blending up of all the ups and downs" but I'd wear that one any way. (Given to Fly hit the jackpot with "My other car is Carl Perkins' Cadillac"--I'd put that one on my truck.) "Nervous hands can't lie" is a little mysterious out of context, but that's okay. "Good ideas always start with a full glass"--'nuff said.
When Cooley says, "Nobody ever told me half the things I'm telling you. Even if they had I'd have had the same look that you do," I feel like he's given us the key right there. He's giving us the best advice he's got, and good goddam advice it is, too, but that doesn't guarantee we'll get it.
