PONDER!

So, nursery rhymes. First made famous by serial killers and the Riddler, they can be pretty fucked up.

The best known nursery rhyme is "Baby, don't touch that, you'll get HIV", but a close second is Row Row Row your Boat. And I intend to discuss that here today.

"Row, Row, Row your boat" This first stanza is typically melancholic, if not down right angry as it is sung. This is largely due to it's nature as a command, however unlike baa baa black sheep, this is not about slavery, as slaves cannot own property, and the line is not "Row MY boat"


"Gently down the stream" Here is where the melody tends to get lighter, as the imagery is evocative of a calm stream in the English countryside at some point between the wars. It harkens back to a time that may not have existed at all.

"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily" A sense of profound jollity, that loses it's meaning in repetition. Perhaps reminding us that that aforementioned lost Arcadia is truly lost. The tune descends with the repetition. Spiralling towards the chilling finalé

"Life is but a dream" This is what elevates the piece above mere mother goosery. A childrens song would compare life to a dream as a simile, to say that life is so lovely, not dissimlar to a dream. But no, the authot has decided to remind us once more of the impermanance of all things. Life is but a dream, and all dreams must end. We awaken when we see the world as it is. The past is an ideal, the future a promise never to be fulfilled. And at the end, all we are left with is the now. We must take pleasure in it, the rowing, for it is all that truly IS. The fact the song is sung as a round only serves to further enhance the Manhattan-esque experience of time as instants, unconnected by causality, an ever shifting presence.

Or perhaps the author was as fond of rowing as wordsworth was of daffodils i.e. annoyingly so.

Fight the Powah.