Thursday, April 14, 2011

On Knowledge

I went through a sonnet phase when I was fifteen.  I would usually write at least one sonnet a day.  Most of them were contrived and pretty mediocre.  This is without a doubt my favorite one.  My senior year of high school, I entered it in a sonnet contest at Borders and it won second place, so it can't be THAT awful (although come to think of it, some of the poems that placed were THAT awful, so who am I to judge?).  This is Truth trying to make believe she's the next Shakespeare.  Enjoy.

May knowledge stand until the end of time
And ne'er diminish'd be by ignorance!
From basic truths to thought's discourse sublime,
Let precious wisdom ring with permanence!
When knowledge dies, soon follows humankind,
For when we lose our past is naught assur'd,
And biting is the hunger of the mind
Which through all generations has endur'd.
Thus knowledge in accumulation brought
Is treasure richer than the whole world's gold,
And sooner I'd persue these halls of thought
Than precious gems and metals I'd behold.
There is no better place, I must surmise,
Than that most blessed place where knowledge lies!

Saturday, April 2, 2011

QED

This high-concept song is typical of the stuff I wrote when I was in high school, and despite (or perhaps because of) its self-conscious cleverness, comparing the inevitability of a breakup to the elegance of a mathematical proof, it remains one of my all-time favorites.  I've translated the entire song into French (with the help of a friend), and often when I sing it now, I replace the final chorus with the French version.

Do you remember when you loved me, oh, so madly
You promised you would never let me go
I still don't understand why you treated me so badly
But that the time has come to bid farewell I know
I whisper sadly
I told you so

CHORUS:
When I predicted love would make us grieve
You said you had to see it to believe
And as you leave
I'll say "Quod erat demonstrandum"

Do you remember that I cried and wondered how we
Could keep alive this love we had let start
And you held me close and promised in that vow we
Took that night that you would never break my heart
But it seems now we
Have fallen apart

CHORUS

I knew that it would happen
I watched it all unfold
The future didn't matter
When I had you now to hold
I wanted to believe you
When you said it would last
When you were with me I forgot
The sorrows of my past
But fate caught up at last
Quod erat demonstrandum

Do you remember how with sorrow did I know what
Had to happen, disregarding love and will
Now the ties of love that once conjoined us, so cut
Leave an emptiness that only time can fill
I let you go but
I love you still

CHORUS

One more embrace
Before you go
One last embrace
I told you so

Quod erat demonstrandum
Quod erat demonstrandum