28 January 2010. Sun, pool returns to blue... sky and gull...
Moryak. The Russian sailor. A type, with all attendent folklore (especially in a continent-sized nation that went to war to find a port.) Black Sea or Leningrad (shown here)--the telnyashka, cut with narrow stripes--and a mariner's neck... Sailor's song...
Becomes an R&B knockoff, a la Bill Haley, sometime in Putin's gilded age. As with all else, a television platform, with wide-eyed blond and her sailor guy--a rather effiminate penguin-in-wetsuit fellow with floppy fins. None of this makes much sense, but then, neither does the song...
Нам бы, нам бы, нам бы, нам бы всем на дно.
Там бы, там бы, там бы, там бы пить вино.
Там под океаном
Мы трезвы или пьяны -
Не видно все равно.
Let's a, let's a, let's a, let's a head for the bottom
Drink some wine down there
Down under the sea
Whether we're sober or drunk--
It's not at all clear, and it's all the same...
(Whereas Rock Around the Clock, of course remains a model of cultural probity...)
A descent, yes, but of another sort... Brecht, whirling in a watery grave...
* * *
(Note: A search under "песня матрос" got us here--which, on second try, has disappeared, or there'd be a link. Okay then, все равно... "It's all the same..." )
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