December 2, 2019

The Man In the Moon is a Lady









photo by Styrous®









As I experiment with abstract photographic images I see various subjects in them and quite often there are musical connections I make; that's the fun of visual and especially musical abstraction, experimentation and chance operation

After studying this image for some time, the expression, The Man In the Moon, entered my mind; it refers to any of several pareidolic images of a human face, head or body that certain traditions recognize in the disc of the full moon. The images are composed of the dark areas of the lunar maria, or "seas" and the lighter highlands of the lunar surface.   
       
Then the song, The Man In the Moon is a Lady (link below), sung by Beatrice Arthur in the 1966 Broadway musical, Mame, started running around my mind.      


Beatrice Arthur as Vera Charles in Mame


It's a totally wacky little tune but it's the kind that tends to stick in the mind and the lyrics (link below) are silly but I've been fond of it for decades. 

In 2013, Australian director, Brenda Clarke, did a short film using a faster tempo on piano version of the song with Leon Clarke and Annalisa Lucca dancing; it can be seen on the Australian Maid Productions site (link below). It's a lot of fun to watch.            

As I studied this image I decided to research the song title to see if it had any prior instances; lo and behold I found one. In 1960 Floyd Robinson recorded a song titled, The Man In The Moon Is A Lady (link below). It's a bouncy little tune that is a blend of early rock 'n' roll, country and comedy. I have no idea if the writers of Mame heard it and were influenced by it.       

Robinson was an American country singer, born in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1959 he also wrote, The Little Space Girl, for Jesse Lee Turner (link below). It is in the same vein as Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley (link below) with the feeling of  I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash. The common thread of all the songs is they are silly with squeaky voices representing the aliens in question and it's great fun to listen to them.
     
      
     
        
Viewfinder links:       
     
Exquisite Little Things 2         
The Man in the Moon Is a Lady lyrics      
     
Net links:       
   
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages/The Man in the Moon       
       
YouTube links:       
       
   
A view of the moon taken Dec. 7, 1992, by NASA's Galileo spacecraft as it traveled to explore the Jupiter system. The distinct bright ray crater at the bottom of the image is the Tycho impact basin.         
         

       
       
       Ya gotta have a sense of humor!

     
        
Styrous® ~ Monday, December 2, 2019               
       

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