The Windy City Quartet at Mammoth Cave –Sold Out Show- Part 3

The Grand Ave Tour had been an impressive few hours of sights, spectacles and sounds, but the closer we drew to the main event the emptier my stomach felt.

My three friends, Ben, Bocheng, and Mikey, and I were scheduled to perform an underground performance as a quartet in front of the 80 others in our tour group. The only reason this was considered underground by any measure was that we were, in fact, a couple of hundred feet under the ground in Mammoth Caves. The forthcoming show had all the elements of being a wondrous one. The setting was perfect, the audience was large and excited, the promoter, our tour guide, was setting the stage. The sole problem lay in the small fact that not one of the four of the performers knew how to sing a note.

As a result of that and the fact that no two of us knew the lyrics to the same song, we figured that the performance couldn't be pretty. Yet, we were continually reminded of how pretty it should be every 15 of the following minutes as the tour guide would promote the upcoming show.

"I know this part of the cave is difficult to climb, folks, but we have quite a surprise for you later in the tour," he winked in our direction. We didn't wink, we just cleared our throats.

Our discomfort was tangible. I could see it exude from the others and I'm positive they could see it from me. To describe the looming performance as fear-inducing would be to fall just short. We were ascending a giant roller coaster as we climbed up through the cave. Ahead lie what promised to be a steep and very fast drop.

Our fear of follow-through was only amplified by our tour guide's continual reminder of the upcoming surprise as to be the consolation or even the purpose of the lengthy battle against these miles of caverns. Never in my life, even when it was due to me, had my actions ever been promoted this frequently and enthusiastically. 'Why should it now?' I asked apostrophically.

"What did we get ourselves into?" Mike asked the rest of us, "Are we going to sing?" Each of us individually had great hesitation, but together, as a whole, we just couldn't decide NOT to do it. So, forward we went as the last hour of the journey melted into a prolonged amalgam of angst and impatience. Here we were in the most carefully carved cavern system with both backbone and epochs of persistence and we trembled with restless steps. Upon walking into the next room it was clear to see why; our feelings had been given measurable weight.

"Here we have what is called the New York Hippodrome" the tour guide bellowed to the lot of us, "This is one of the largest rooms in all the caverns. It is 250 feet in width, 300 feet in length and 85 feet high. The sound here is wonderful enough, with natural acoustics, that cave owner George Morrison would have opera performances in this room for visitors from the east coast. Thousands would come from afar to watch performances in this room by some of the greatest voices of the day. You, my guests, have the same delight."

He looked over toward us, "Are you gentlemen ready?"

To see the response of us and our audience follow this blog or catch up a couple of days when I post the last part of this steamy memoir.

The Windy City Quartet at Mammoth Cave –Sold Out Show- Part 1

The four of us arrived at Mammoth Caves on a Friday.  The air was chipper and the wind cut through our jackets.  Though it was November, it was the beginning of the month, and something about heading in the direction of south gave us a deceptive sense of warmth.  We hadn’t prepared for the late Kentucky autumn.  Yet below ground, under our parked car, lay the longest cave system in the word where the temperature, regardless of time of day, season of the year or of the year itself was always a consistent 54°. 

We reared to get below the damp and chilly ground and into the damp and chilly caverns.  Ben, Mike, Bocheng and I had signed up for two different tours. We would save the lantern tour for the second day as we figured to begin our exploration of the National Park/World Heritage Site with a lengthy and general historical tour with a large tour group.

We pushed into one of the two buses that took us to a manmade entrance. Our tour guide, a young college student from nearby Bowling Green gave us a bit of information about the tour in a southern drawl.

“While we hope to have a light and cheery tour, I am obliged to remind you of the precautions we must take to ensure the safety, welfare and satisfaction of everyone else on the tour,” Bocheng looked at Michael and Michael looked at Ben and Ben looked at me and together we all smirked. “We’ve merged two tours together today, and due to the large size of our tour group, we have to be especially courteous to others and respectful to the cave. I hope you can manage this.”

We hoped so too.  Stay tuned for part two of this tale where we find out if the four of us were able to manage courteously and respect.

One Needs No Hyphens To Boogie

This month, I will set my sails upon course to solve an enigmatic mystery that has endlessly perplexed many. I will engage in a thorough examination of the phrase: "One needs no hyphens to boogie". The origins and etymology of this common yet occult phrase are widely unknown. In fact, it has been theorized that the phrase, today, is spoken and understood antithetically of what it used to mean thousands of years ago. The questions surrounding this popular phrase are many; the answers are sparse. I will toil hard to try and sort out some of the fact from the fiction. I will engage in a careful and complex examination of the aura surrounding this very intriguing maxim. Hopefully, we will find and answer without losing any of our phrase's romanticism.*

Breaking it down:

My first step was to examine the most important words in this aphorism. Hyphens are written English conventions to connect or separate compound words, names and syllables. The origin of the word "hyphen" comes from the late Latin word: Huphen, defining the sign added to compound words. Yet, it was not used in the English language until the turn of the 17th century when it was used for the purpose of describing the placement of two words together. From the etymological analysis we can infer that our phrase manifested itself only after that because there was no antecedent to the word. Furthermore, "Hyphen" originally indicated how two or more words were to be sung together as one. Could this help unlock our phrase's meaning? For better answers I turned to examine the word "Boogie".

Boogie, as a verb, means to dance energetically, especially to rock music. This type of movement, or dance, originated from the 1920's style of rhythmic flow. It was similar to the free flowing movements of the Charleston dance, however, with fewer leg kicks. We can see that our phrase, (or at the very least, the evolved form) came into being in the 20th century. In its archaic form (WWI era), "boogie" may have been easily antedated with "foxtrot". However, there are no documented publications that claim that the foxtrot requires no hyphens. Even before the Great World War, colloquial spoken forms of our phrase may have used "cavort" in place of boogie, but again, there is no documentation of its use. Finally, theories that claim "cut a rug" was used interchangeably with "boogie" have been proven false by the innate truth that hyphens are indeed necessary to cut rugs.

Experimentation:

Because the etymological research did not yield very concrete answers to our questions, I took to experimentation. I chose "One requires hyphens to boogie" as my null hypothesis and "One requires no hyphens to boogie" as my alternative hypothesis. Yet, I faced a giant problem. I had my hypothesis test all set up. I had gone to the fabric and supplies store and purchased all essential tools for my research. I had beakers, test tubes, baking soda, food coloring, papier-mâché**, buttons of various size and color, a box half-full of brown, green and yellow crayons, I even had gotten permission from my mother to use the stove-top lighter I found in the kitchen drawer. Yet, with all this preparation, I still faced a looming woe. Palm to forehead, upset with myself, I sighed in realization that I HAD NO HYPHENS. To prove my null hypothesis incorrect, I was scientifically required to have truckload of hyphens. So I went to work. For days, using the drawing paper and scissors, crayons and lighter, wax paper and cups and cups of coffee I created an epic pile of hyphens. To be absolutely sure of my scientific methods, the only corners I cut we those of the hyphens themselves.

Now I had all the hyphens I needed, but I had no idea how to use them. I decided to ask Jeeves. During my search, I was shocked to find two horrors. 1. Jeeves is no longer available to answer my questions (I hope he was able to retire early to a seaside hammock where he wouldn't have to answer another question in his life***) and 2. There is no information on the use of hyphens in dance; only in grammar. Pushing my woes of horror 1 aside to another day when I had less on my plate, I contemplated horror #2. I supposed that I would have to put all my hyphens to good use. I pinched my nose, clenched my teeth, shut my eyes, and jumped into the proverbial fire ahead. For the next sixteen hours I tried every possible use of hyphenation I could think of. I danced upon hyphens taped to the ground. I wore hyphens on my clothes. I even consumed hyphens while boogieing. Moreover, I played music which had hyphens in its title, in its lyrics, in its harmony. I boogied upon hyphens, within hyphens, around hyphens, about hyphens; I tried hyphens with every single preposition available. I shouted hyphenated words aloud whilst boogieing. That seemed to help my boogieing the most, but by no means did any of my experiments seem to prove that hyphens were essential to boogieing. After test and trial, I finally concluded that my alternative hypothesis was true. One requires no hyphens to boogie. In hindsight, I should have simply tested the alternative hypothesis first. All I had to do was to turn on some Avril Lavigne and boogie. Because I tested my null hypothesis first, I broke a small box of beakers, spilled some vinegar and accidentally ate seven crayons. Eh.

Philosophical approach:

Finally believing that our phrase, in every form of its literal sense, was true, I decided that the final step was to philosophically examine its deeper meaning. "What could it mean?", I asked myself while straining my eyes for deeper reflection in the mirror, "what does it mean to be able to boogie without need for hyphen?" I knew that the answers would not come easily. Do hyphens complicate or simplify dance? Do individual freedoms require nothing more than the individual herself? Do songs without hyphens make for more exciting dance? Could it simply be that if one takes days to craft countless hyphens that the fun is taken out of the following dance? Did someone learn this in the 1920's and give his knowledge as a helpful hint to a friend? I had initially thought that this phrase meant that swift hip and knee movements were constricted by hyphens. But now, after hours of experimentation, the phrase meant so much more to me, but I wasn't sure exactly how to qualify the feeling.

In the end I realized the true meaning of the phrase was exactly the antithesis of what I had had done. One needs no hyphens to boogie means that it is completely unnecessary to examine, exhaust over and exact answer from things of this nature. We are able to move independently of the supposed rules and restrictions that govern. In fact, the only laws that govern aren't the ones that Jeeves will help us with or ones that beakers and Bunsen burners will yield, no, the restrictions placed upon us are merely those of our own accord and imagination. We must move with our greatest flexibility, with our greatest creativity to find our own answers.

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* Or mine.
** Papier-mâché requires hyphen.
*** Other than, "Would you like a lime with that, sir?"