As a young child, there were things I would see that I desperately wanted to learn to do, but simply couldn't figure them out. One such thing came back to me today with The Lost Art of Whistling Loudly with your Fingers. Much like the video supplied, I'd spend so much time almost losing consciousness trying to achieve what I'd seen in old films. I still couldn't understand from the written instructions in the article, but the video explained the lip thing better to me. The teeth must be completely covered. I still haven't whistled, but it felt better and felt like something would happen eventually, than what I'd previously tried to do in my youth (or even just with those written instructions today). I'd always wanted to learn simply how to whistle as a child as well and that I practiced and practiced and can do that now. I will most certainly whistle along in the Rammstein songs that include it or the Spaghetti Western tunes of Ennio Morricone; such as For A Few Dollars More and Farewell to Cheyenne. My parental grandmother could sing the alphabet backwards with an enticing little ditty. It was magical and fascinating and I had to learn it. I remember spending hours trying to accomplish that until I could. Tried to find something online, but they're all slow and boring. My grandmothers version was the best. It sounded like some fast speaking country auctioneer was about to get started on selling and item mixed with bluegrass music. I've recorded myself singing her wonderful and entertaining version. Click to listen >> ABC's Backwards After I had read about women learning to freedive in order to swim the English Channel, I knew that's what I wanted to do. Not the swimming the English Channel bit, nor swimming any vast expanse of water; simply the freediving part. It's where you learn to hold your breath for long periods of time so that you can stay under the water longer, without the need of scuba gear. My dad was into scuba diving at the time, had his gear and was certified. I was too young and the gear was too heavy and I wouldn't be allowed to go through certification until I was in my late teens. I was only eight. He did take his gear if we went to a beach somewhere, but mostly it was used in the local swimming pool. "I'm running tests", he would say and while I'm sure he was testing to make sure everything worked alright, he was also really just playing and using his toy in the only water freely accessible near here. I wanted to be under the water so badly and not constantly come up for breath and since scuba gear was out of the question I started to train myself in freediving. At the pool, I'd train and in my bathtub at home I'd train. Constantly staying under the water longer and longer until I'd gotten up to almost six minutes. It took over a year to accomplish that. I was basically biding my time until I was old enough to go with dad to learn to scuba, plus I felt I'd have an extra aquatic skillset under my belt. It was a win-win. Then I saw the film Mermaids and was ecstatic that the youngest daughter, Kate, was freediving in her bathtub and at the pool as well. It was like seeing myself on screen! Christina Ricci was cuter than me, but we both had a similar complexion and dark hair. Her character adored the water and didn't want to be out of it, spent all the time she could at the pool, then was learning to freedive and spending her time in the tub training. My middle name is Katherine, and Kate is a form of that. Only, as I said, I didn't want to swim the English Channel, even though that's where I'd first read about freediving. Then the pool closed when I was thirteen and dad stopped scuba diving, so I knew that, through him, I'd never learn to scuba. The dream fizzled and faded and I stopped training in the tub. The entire initial reason was to sort of pre-train and tide me over until I started scuba lessons, the added bonus of having an extra skill set was secondary. It just seemed all for naught at that point. I could retrain now, but all of that work is gone. I can't hold my breath under for even a minute (though it's close), much less six, besides mentioning that the top mark to achieve is actually 22 minutes (and 22 seconds, but whose counting seconds really). Which moves me on to The Charleston. I watched a lot of old films when I was growing up, because that's predominantly what was playing on the telly. The old black and white films with the fancy hairstyles and great outfits and people whistling through their fingers to get peoples attention and hail taxi cabs. The ones with the great and now forgotten Trans-Atlantic speech. The kids sounding like some sort of twinkly bot kids that didn't sound like any kids I knew who always went to bed at what seemed like 2 in the afternoon. The one's where people kiss and fall in love and it all seems too perfect to be true, because it is, life is always more messy than most of those films. (Don't get me wrong there are some gritty, raw, and pretty real black and white films out there, but most of those didn't get played on the telly when I was growing up). So, we have It's A Wonderful Life. It was a Christmas staple in my house, as we'd watch it every year. Within the past decade I learned that a friend of mine didn't also grow up watching this every year. Her family, chose instead, White Christmas, and she was completely enamoured by Bing Crosby. My family did not like Bing Crosby, so we didn't listen to his music or see his films, and I just personally always found him creepy, even before I knew he was a bad person. I suppose if I'm going to choose a child abuser I'm always going to choose Joan Crawford over Bing Crosby every time, but I digress. (I hate that she abused her children, I don't condone that, but remove that knowledge and she was pretty fabulous if also a bit trashy - kind of like our wee cat Marzipan, fabulous but street smarts skanky). So, no White Christmas for us and it seems alien and strange to me that her Christmas tradition varies so differently from mine. Now I have a new and recent friend who absolutely abhors Jimmy Stewart. Now, I can't watch a film with him in it and not think about her and how much she hates him. (I watched The Shop Around the Corner before Christmas & again finding this clip, it's all I could think about) It seems irrational like my avoidance and distaste of Gene Wilder. She doesn't know why she dislikes him, she just can't stand him. Same with me and Wilder. Anyway, my whole family loved Jimmy Stewart. Even my maternal grandmother. But then she was born in 1909 and watched his films when they first hit the theatres. I remember staying with her once and it was just me and not The Sister. She'd been having problems with her eyes and had just seen a doctor and was to wear those mega sun blocking shades when out of doors and sleep somewhere without a lot of light. So on that trip she was going to sleep on the pull out sofa in the basement in the Barbie Room. The whole area was called The Barbie Room, though really all of the Barbie stuff, I shoved into the small walk-in closet to play in there. Felt safer. So, we had a sleep over. She wore some satiny pyjama's with cropped pants in a light pink and I wore my pyjama's whatever they were. The bed was already pulled out and we hung out like the best of girl friends chatting away through the early part of the night. What did we talk about? Everything she would have been interested in when she was much younger; a teen into her twenties. I knew all sorts of things and we could actually carry on good conversation. We discussed all the big film stars of her day, like they were also the big ones of my day. I had my favourites, she had hers and she found no fault or judgement in my choices. We both gushed over Jimmy Stewart because he was attractive and we liked him as an actor and discussed all his movies. It was surreal and wonderful all at the same time and is a fond memory for me. So getting back to It's A Wonderful Life. I was talking to her about it and saying that I loved the dance sequence in the film. She's the one that told me it was The Charleston and she used to dance it. I told her I had trouble with the dance, but didn't articulate correctly and she just said to let loose and it'll come to me, as it wasn't really difficult. It isn't difficult and I could dance The Charleston by that age, I was ten or there abouts, though I'd had to practice the whole keeping the ball of my foot on the ground but letting it move freely. No, the part I had trouble with was at mark 1:15 in the following video, where Stewart is doing the knee portion of The Charleston. For some reason as a young kid, and I suppose because the film was in black and white and his knee area is so dark, I was convinced that he was actually crossing his knees. And I couldn't figure out how in the hell he was doing this and making it look so seamless. It was a spot of great bother for me through my childhood and I practiced this magical knee switching dance move countless times and couldn't figure out how he was doing it.
So, while we all still like the film, it fell out of fashion for us to watch it every single year. We also used to always watch the very, very long Jesus of Nazareth every year leading up to Easter. That one is only good because of all the people in it, like James Mason, Laurence Olivier, Anne Bancroft, etc. I think my mom watched it for the religious aspect, as well as the actors, but I just liked the great actors and their portrayals. That fell out of fashion too and we stopped bringing out that tape to watch sometime in my mid teens. Skip to my mid to late twenties and it's the first time I'm watching It's A Wonderful Life since I was about fifteen, and the first time really, really watching it and not just letting it play since I was about twelve. I take particular notice of the dance scene when it comes on and when Stewart starts doing that particular bit, my mouth drops open. I rewind and watch a few times to make sure of what I'm seeing. "Man, I was fucking stupid!" I yell at the TV. That man's not crossing his knees, he's just knocking them together and running his hands over them. I felt stupid and elated all at once. Stupid for never seeing or realizing it before and thinking it was something far more difficult than it really was, and elated that I could finally lay that bother to rest. I immediately set it to play again and jumped off the couch and knocked my knees in rhythm and swiped my hands back and forth and thus, that part of The Charleston was complete. I'd finally learned all I needed to learn from that dance, about twenty years after I'd started learning it.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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