Popcorn Songs

Skimming my friends' blogosphere, I found the idea of the 'Text Remix'. Not all the ideas are new, but it's still fun to connect them to the word remix. I just had to try it!

One of the key elements of the remix, is that multiple sources are sampled and combined into the new expression. That's where the talent lies: finding personal connections between disparate sources, giving them juxtaposition, layering them and presenting them.

My effort here isn't personal enough, because the connections are not something you can go find on demand (as I just tried to do). They must be discovered serendipitously, remembered, and brought to the cutting room later.

I take as sources: Shakespeare's sonnet 125, the Star Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance. I find sonnet 125 a bitter piece, and it comes through in the remix.


Were't aught to me I bore the canopy
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
With liberty and justice for all
Would take my oblation, poor but free

Have I not seen dwellers
Give proof through the night
Through the perilous fight

Have I not seen dwellers
Forgo simple savour
Lose all and more

Have I not seen dwellers
Pitiful thrivers
Laid great bases for eternity

So proudly we hail'd
Great bases for eternity
And in their gazing spent

Were't aught to me I bore the canopy
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
And the Republic for which it stands
O'er the land of the free