So, I gots me some enthusiasm.

Now that I have a kid, I spend a lot more time in the car, driving around on four wheels, than I did before. Apparently, it's not advisable to just bungee-cord a nine-month old into the milk crate bolted to the back of your 2004 Derbi Boulevard 125 and scoot around, even if he does kind of like the wind in his hair. So since I'm following all the proper rules of the road and there's no need to call child-endangerment because I was just kidding around, there, about the scooter, and he's got the approved car seat and all, I have time to listen to a few CDs when I'm driving the kid from here to there.

I like to burn my own mixes because I'm not that big a fan of the radio. Honestly, I'm one of those old crusts who thinks there hasn't been much good pop music done since Stevie Winwood left Traffic, so there's not a lot for me to listen to.

Anyway, one of the mixes I made to entertain myself as I drove Daddy's Taxi to and fro is called "Speak English, Mick!" after that line of Whoopi Goldberg's in JUMPIN' JACK FLASH where she's trying to figure out the lyrics to the song by playing it over and over. Man, talk about a little too much 1986, huh? Literally two seconds on google with "jumpin jack flash" + "lyrics" would give Whoopi the words and help her figure out the coded message to save Jonathan Pryce and it's a ten minute movie and done.

Basically, it's a long mix of songs I like precisely because the lyrics don't make any sense. I had the bad luck to end up an English major as an undergrad, concentrating in the American Literary Renaissance. Hawthorne, Melville, those guys? Lots of allegory, symbols, metaphor. I loved it, don't get me wrong, but it makes me the sort of reader who loves dense storytelling and the sort of writer who makes things a little complicated just to show off, you know? So when I'm going to Babies R Us to get larger-sized, orthodontally-correct pacifiers, I like to listen to weird pop stuff that doesn't make any sense just to occupy the three-pound nerve bundle that is my grey matter while I drive.

The first song on the mix is Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" from her solo album Belladonna. You put in "edge of seventeen" + "lyrics" into the ol' Google, and you get 46,000 hits, so I'm pretty sure we're not violating anybody's anything here, but just in case: All song lyrics are property and copyright their respective owners. All lyrics provided for educational and language learning purposes only.

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Whoo... whoo... whoo...
Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Ooo baby... ooo... said ooo

OK, this isn't so bad. A little repetition and scene-setting. A little taste on the tongue. Dove's probably a symbol of peace or well-being or the spirit or some New Age stuff of some kind. You saw how Stevie dressed in 1981, right?

And the days go by
Like a strand in the wind
In the web that is my own
I begin again
Said to my friend, baby
Nothin' else mattered

Yeah, yeah. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I read Walden once, too, Stevie.

He was no more than a baby then
Well he seemed broken hearted
Something within him
But the moment that I first laid
Eyes on him all alone
On the edge of seventeen

Huh. That seems like a pretty straight-forward MILF scenario, I'm thinking. But how does that play into the dove symbol? Too soon to tell.

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Whoo... whoo... whoo...
Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Ooo baby... ooo... said ooo

I know; you just said that. I mean, I know it's the chorus, what with this being a song, and all, but this isn't adding to the scene. More cowbell, please.

I went today; maybe I will go again
Tomorrow
And the music there it was hauntingly
Familiar
And I see you doing
What I try to do for me
With the words from a poet.
And the voice from a choir
And a melody; nothing else mattered

Is she talking about her dove-boy? I can't tell. It's pretty and evocative, though.

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Whoo... whoo... whoo...
Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Ooo baby... ooo... said ooo

Easy, Stevie; I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like you. Except once my pants are on, I make gold records. I gotta have more cowbell.

The clouds never expect it
When it rains
But the sea changes colors
But the sea
Does not change
And so with the slow, graceful flow
Of age
I went forth with an age-old
Desire to please
On the edge of seventeen

I know it's probably just me, but I am getting a huge Mrs.-Robinson-just-watched-Rutger-Hauer's-death-scene-from-Blade-Runner vibe from this bit. The unchanging clouds of the sky (the realm of the dove, natch) and the timeless sea juxtaposed with the feeling of mortality. OK; I'm interested in seeing where the rest of this goes.

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Whoo... whoo... whoo...
Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Ooo baby... ooo... said ooo

I'm telling you, you're gonna want that cowbell.

When suddenly
There was no one left standing
In the hall
In a flood of tears
That no one really ever heard fall at all
Oh I went searchin' for an answer
Up the stairs and down the hall
Not to find an answer
Just to hear the call
Of a nightbird singing
Come away, come away...

This one's just nutty. This stanza is what qualifies the song for "Speak English, Mick!" OK, so the dove-boy is gone; whether he's merely left Her Royal MILF-iness for the cheerleader, or it's a spirit symbol and he's actually died, you can't go searching for an answer while simultaneously not trying to find an answer. It just doesn't make any sense. And the flying bird symbol is not a dove anymore but a nightbird? I'm lost in the metaphor.

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Whoo... whoo... whoo...
Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Ooo baby... ooo... said ooo

I gotta fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.

Well, I hear you in the morning
And I hear you
At nightfall
Sometime to be near you
Is to be unable to hear you
My love
I'm a few years older than you

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song
Sounds like she's singing
Ooo baby... ooo... said ooo

So, yeah, that's fun, and all, but in the end a little maddening. There's not a lot of payoff. Stevie might as well have called this song "Shit happens (Reprise)." Lots of tension and then just sort of a dreamy dismissal. Huh. But I'm back from the Babies R Us store and the boy is in his activity center, throwing switches and hitting buttons and generally just bouncing around, so, me, remembering that I'm not Whoopi Goldberg in 1986, and that I have access to a Library-at-Alexandria-esque repository of human knowledge sitting right there on my desk, I google up FleetwoodMac.net and get a wiki-style interpretation of the song, which leaves out any sort of Mrs. Robinson scenario and instead name-checks Tom Petty, John Lennon, Lindsey Buckingham, and Stevie's dying Uncle John. Sort of loses all its magic, I'm thinking, when you can just google up the answers like that, that a dreamy gypsy-woman song from 1981 has a solution like a mid-level trigonometry equation.

Sometimes, it's better not to know.