Sunday, January 16, 2005

Use It or Lose It

Last week on a radio show called The Next Big Thing Erin McKean, "activist lexicographer," presented John Linnell (of TMBG) with an assignment. She gave him three words that she thought were in danger of dying out and being removed from the dictionary, and requested that he write a song using them. The words were contrecoup, craniosophic and limerent. On the latest show, Linnell came back with the song. I think it's just incredibly cool that he does things like that, and I even enjoyed the song.
you know what's wrong with me
you know phrenology
you saw my injury
you can tell just by looking at my skull

contrecoup on the rebound
contrecoup hurt me again
and the second was worse by far than the first
'cause it made me limerent

when my head was hit
I bounced away from it
or as someone who is craniosophic would say
the brain went the opposite way

contrecoup on the rebound
contrecoup hurt me again
and the second was worse by far than the first
cause the first just left me feeling inert
but the contrecoup woke my feelings for you
and it left me limerent
You probably have to hear it, though. Listen to the segment of the show where he sings it here. The original assignment of the task is here. (RealAudio links, about 6 minutes long.)

Update: Thanks to Aliste, you can now get this as an mp3 (2.2 MB). I also corrected "unnerved" to "inert."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi—I came here via livejournal (where I'm "aliste"). Just wanted to say that I believe it's "feeling inert" rather than "feeling unnerved."

Tandava said...

Now that you mention it, I do hear it that way. Good catch. And thanks for making the mp3 of it.