#Isn't it a Pity

[lisamarie-vee]

[harrisonstories]

George Harrison: Isn’t It a Pity.

Alan Freeman: How we break each other’s hearts.

George: That’s about me. I’m breaking everybody’s heart.

Freeman: In what way, George?

George: [laughs] I don’t know. Any way you care to mention.

"My album coming up is like Mrs. Dale’s Diary, and it’s like me kneeling in front of the priest and saying, 'OK, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I did this and I done that and I done that and I done that,' But I’ll do that. I don’t need Woman’s Own magazine or Rolling Stone or any of those other journalists who think they’ve caught me doing this or doing that or gettin’ a divorce or being a loony or whatever. No – they can’t catch me ‘cause I caught myself before they ever knew it. I know. I know what I’m doing. And I know when I’m mad. And I know when I’m havin’ a divorce. And I know when I’m breakin’ up my marriage. And I know when I’m not. And I know when I’m happy. And even if I am breakin’ up my marriage, I know all the good points to it, and all the bad points to it, and it’s none of their business anyway, and even if it is wait ‘til my record ‘cause I’ll tell ya from my point of view – I don’t need your twisted point of view to tell me." - George Harrison, Rock Around the World with Alan Freeman (18 Oct. 1974) [x]

"When I first met him he said, 'I don't want you to think you've discovered something about me I don't know. I'm not claiming to be this or that or anything. People think they've found you out when I'm not hiding anything.'" - Olivia Harrison, Living in the Material World (2011)

"[George] was a witness to his actions. He always said, ‘People think they’ve found me or found something out about me. It’s like that I don’t know. I know when I’m bad. I know.’ Nobody suffers more than yourself, right? Than one’s self when you know you’re not being true, and he TORMENTED himself, you know, I think, a lot. But he was a curious guy, and he just wanted to have all the experiences and hope he could get back in time for the big exit." - Olivia Harrison, BBC Radio 4 (21 Nov. 2020)

[the-flying-tora]

Watch "George Harrison - "Isn't It A Pity (Version 1)" (Lyrics)" on YouTube

Yes, it is.

[ilovedig]

Hi! Was curious what made you more certain recently that McHarrison was for sure a thing?

So it started with this picture

Ringo took it, and in the caption he literally says "caught ya!"

Geo's collar seems to have been recently pulled forward, and the bottom of Paul's shirt looks recently pulled out.

It also looks like Paul quickly stood up when he heard someone coming but was previously in the same position as George.

It might mean nothing but god does it look damning.

And then I started looking at other things I had written off more carefully. All the photos and gifs and videos. Them writing "In Spite of All The Danger" together, and the fact that Paul was still hitchhiking with Geo alone even once John was in the picture.

Not to mention the amount of songs Paul wrote with titles taken from lines in George's songs. The two most painfully obvious ones being "Too Many People" from "Isn't It A Pity," and "Let Me Roll It" from "I'd Have You Anytime." Now why Paul thought a song written with, about and for Bob Dylan had anything to do with him, I'm not sure. But, it's the exact words from the song.

Then I saw this poem. It's called "Rocking On!" and I'm assuming most people think it's about John, but it's very clearly not.

I want to smell your underarm odour want to drink your ice cream soda Reminisce about our childhood What we did in deepest wildwood Let's remember fifties cars And hanging out in late-night bars Want to give your back a rub Then jump into a toamy tub Laugh at all your High School jokes One two many Scotch and Cokes Want to stroke your furry kitten Don't be shy you won't be bitten When we've seen the babies doze off Let me see you take your clothes off When this world is dead and gone We will still be Rocking On!

First off it's very clearly about a male, and a male in the Beatles. But it's more about childhood than it is songwriting, and it's about things children do, like go exploring in the woods. John and Paul just didn't know each other at that age.

Not to mention, the car thing was Geo's THING. He was a HUGE car person and was constantly at races. Geo's interest in cars is one of the things that defined him as he got older. So to specifically comment on that makes it seem obvious it's about George.

And then you read the words and they're GRAPHIC. Rivaling "Savoy Truffle," frankly.

So it wasn't just a crush, it was clearly a THING. They were clearly together, in some way shape or form.

So yeah that was kinda my thought process. Hope it makes you think.

[soulmusicsongs]

Isn't It A Pity - The Three Degrees (Isn't It A Pity, 1972)

[harrisonarchive]

George Harrison, New York City, 30 October 1970 (photo by Tim Boxer); George's early draft of the Harrisong "Isn't It A Pity."

“‘Isn’t It A Pity’ is about whenever a relationship hits a down point — instead of whatever other people do (like breaking each other’s jaws) I wrote a song. It was a chance to realize that if I felt somebody had let me down, then there’s a good chance I was letting someone else down. We all tend to break each other’s hearts, taking and not giving back — isn’t it a pity.” - George Harrison, I Me Mine

Q: “What’s the history behind ‘Isn’t It A Pity’?” George Harrison: “It was done in 1970 on All Things Must Pass but I wrote it during about ’69 some time. It was probably an argument with the wife [Pattie Boyd] [laughter] or something like that! Love and a laugh!” - Goldmine, 27 November 1992

Q: “What was the inspiration for ‘Isn't It A Pity’?” George Harrison: “It’s just an observation of how society and myself were or are. We take each other for granted - and forget to give back. That was really all it was about.” - Billboard, 30 December 2000

“‘Isn't It A Pity’ is a masterpiece.” - Tom Petty, Rolling Stone, 17 January 2002

“I think the basic thread that runs through [his music] is his guitar playing and his sentiment, which veers towards a person questioning their existence and also somebody with a sense of humor... And also, there's a longing, especially, like in the song 'Isn't It a Pity.' He really meant that. He used to feel so bad when bad things would happen. I think the ultimate was a couple of months before he died was 9/11. He was so disappointed and so heartbroken, like everyone else.” - Olivia Harrison, spinner dot com, June 2009 (x)

[rastronomicals]

6:15 AM EST February 3, 2024:

Galaxie 500 - "Isn't It A Pity" From the album On Fire (1989)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: Dream Pop

[enbybugs]

I know everyone agrees, mostly because Paul said so that "Too Many People" is about John. And everyone also agrees the same for "Let Me Roll It"

Thing is...they're both lyrics in songs on All Things Must Pass.

I'd Have You Anytime:

Let me in here, I know I've been here Let me into your heart Let me know you, let me show you Let me roll it to you

Isn't it a Pity:

Some things take so long but how do I explain When not too many people Can see we're all the same And because of all their tears Their eyes can't hope to see The beauty that surrounds them Isn't it a pity

If the things that make the songs about John aren't coincidences, then these aren't either.

The world does not revolve around McLennon.

[chaotic-carnifex]

No hold on I'm gonna make an extra post about this:

I wouldn't choose to be alloromantic

If I were given the choice to either remain aro or become alloro again, I would choose aromanticism.

And I think a lot of people need to hear that.

[ouroborosorder]

girls band cry revolutionizing the depiction of female friendships by having three women whose friendship is unironically built entirely on the fact that they're comfortable being assholes to each other

[c6jpg]

FREMINET ❖ SILENCE OF THE DEPTHS

Put on your helmet and let the silence of the ocean engulf your woes. All that's left is the poetry of the myriad currents, winding their way past Beryl Conches and Romaritime Flowers.

[emmerrr]

far and away my favourite thing about tsc was the direct parallels we got between neil and jean now that we've been allowed inside jean's head as well.

we have neil who's almost frighteningly self-sufficient; getting to grips with his surroundings when he moves to psu as soon as possible by going for long solo runs, not waiting for his teammates after he's done at the stadium, going shopping on his own for stuff on foot and only buying what he can carry back by himself, hitchhiking back from columbia -- the fact that he could have asked coach or any of his upperclassmen to come and get him not even occuring to him. but through forced proximity, he gets to know them more, and he gets to like them, and they become the people that he would do anything for, that he fought so hard to stay with.

on the other hand we have jean, whose time in the nest has had the adverse effect; he's never alone, he's hardly ever off-campus, and he's never had the kind of freedoms that you'd usually be afforded at college. the idea of living off-campus is horrifying to him, the idea of having his own room is unheard of to him -- and unsettling enough for him to want jeremy to move in there with him. jeremy shows him the way to the court but he's too disoriented to follow along properly because he's not used to being out in a city like this. for years he hasn't been allowed a life outside of exy and the nest, so he doesn't know how to be out in the world. he has no idea how to navigate it. he sees exy as his only purpose, so anything that doesn't seem to serve this goal is meaningless and egregious to him.

...but then there's jeremy, and cat, and laila.

idk, just, something something neil didn't realise how lonely he was until he met the foxes, and jean was painfully aware of how lonely he was despite being stuck with the ravens all of the time, and is now getting the chance to learn that it doesn't have to be like that with the trojans.

[marlynnofmany]

Singing and Other Noises

If you have to clean the bathroom on a multi-species spaceship, you can at least take the opportunity to annoy your coworkers with some high volume space shanties. The acoustics of most bathrooms I’ve been in are great, and this one was no exception.

“If you find snacks in high places, adhesive eyes making faces…” I sang, passing the sanitation wand over the floor. “Someone gives thanks to the void, and knives to the droid … Then you might have some humans onboard, onboard, you might have some humans onboard!”

Paint laughed in the hallway. “I don’t think anyone would miss the fact that we have a human onboard.” When I leaned out to grin at her, she continued, “You’re very loud.”

“This is the perfect place to sing!” I said, leaning back and switching to a different song. “You’ll hear us singing loud and proud, in halls and hulls and ventilation chutes. You’ll know us by our range and joy, and we sing better than you!” It echoed nicely.

Paint was shaking her lizardy head. “Are there any quiet human songs?”

“Oh sure,” I said, looking for spots I’d missed. “Calm melodies for a relaxing afternoon, lullabies to soothe babies to sleep, plenty of those. They’re just not as fun. I like the ones where you can really feel your lungs vibrate, you know?”

Paint was giving me that cocked-head look that said she wasn’t entirely sure what I was talking about, but didn’t feel like saying so. “Right. I think that one made the floor vibrate too.”

“Oh, you should meet an opera singer. They can shatter glass.”

“What!” Paint stepped closer, switching her tail. “You are making that up.”

“No, really!” I said. “It’s very impressive. A rare talent for sure.” I got to my feet and emptied the sanitation wand into the trash chute. “My voice is nothing special. Pretty good, I like to think, but no kind of superstar. Still, singing is fun.”

Paint seemed to be having trouble coming up with a compliment. “Your voice is very… clear? Low? Is that a good thing?”

“I like to think so.” I put the wand away and washed my hands. “I can sing the low notes easier than high, which is great, because I enjoy them more. I think that makes me an alto? Contralto? Something like that. Not a soprano, at any rate.”

Even with her orange scales, Paint’s expression was a distinct mask of polite blankness. She nodded, hands clasped together.

“Not much for singing, I take it?” I asked.

Paint exhaled and dropped her hands. “I just don’t see the appeal,” she admitted. “It’s only talking! In a distorted voice!”

I switched off the light and joined her in the hall with a head bob of agreement. “Yeah, I suppose it is. Some of it’s fast and good to dance to, though.”

She pointed at me in excitement. “The dancing does make sense! That’s fun! But I just cannot understand the noises that go with it.”

I shrugged. “Eh, don’t worry too much about it. There’s bound to be lots of things that any given species does that makes no sense to others.”

“Like those shiny rocks you insisted on keeping?”

“Hey, that’s not just me,” I protested. “Zhee and Trrili both wanted some too. And you’ve still got those smelly seed-things that you liked so much.”

Paint raised her snout in pride. “They remain beautiful. Coals, Eggskin, and Captain Sunlight will agree with me!”

“And those are all the Heatseekers on the ship, which is exactly my point.”

A high-pitched noise that I’d been barely aware of grew louder, drifting down the hallway all faint and screechy. I had no idea what it was, and judging by Paint’s expression, neither did she.

“Is that metal scraping?” I wondered.

“I don’t think so,” Paint said.

The sound continued, changing in tone like an alien violin. I turned in place, trying to locate it. “Is that music?”

Paint rubbed her earhole. “It’s unpleasant.”

“C’mon, let’s make sure it’s not actually a problem of some kind.”

“Yes,” Paint said with a sigh. “Ignoring a mechanical failure because we passed it off as horrible music is not something I want on my record.”

I started off down the hallway. “I think it’s this way.”

Ready as I was for a long and mysterious hunt for the quiet shrieking, I was almost disappointed to find it coming from the third door we reached. This was the door to Coals and Trrili’s translation workroom. It was shut. I hesitated over the opening panel, then knocked instead.

The noise stopped.

When the door slid open, it was to a vision of exoskeletoned nightmares, shiny black and red, with pincher arms, mandibles, and a pair of antennae angled into a very irritated expression.

“Hi Trrili,” I said. “Everything okay in there?”

Paint added, “We heard a noise—”

The door shut in our faces. After a moment, the screechy serenade resumed.

I blinked. “Rude.”

Paint had her hands over her earholes. “What is it??”

“Probably not a machine failure,” I said, wincing as the noise approached nails-on-chalkboard levels. “Let’s go ask Zhee.”

We walked very quickly away, and found Zhee outside the kitchen talking to Eggskin. The sound was faint here, but still audible.

“Hey Zhee,” I said cheerfully. “Can you tell us what in the seven spherical black holes Trrili is doing right now?”

Zhee threw his own purple pincher arms in the air. “Butchering a classic,” he exclaimed. “I’ve told her that she’s got the middle part backwards, but she insists it’s a regional variant!”

I glanced at Eggskin, who was just shaking their scaly head. “So it is music, then.”

Zhee folded his pinchers with a flare of antennae. “There’s a skreeking competition at Basal Station,” he said. “She’s under the impression that the judges there will enjoy regional variants that are wrong.”

“I see,” I said, wondering if I should ask the obvious question.

Paint beat me to it. “What’s skreeking?”

“Leg-singing,” Zhee said. “You know.” He moved a hind leg in a way that made a brief screech.

I knew I was staring, but it was either that or burst out laughing, and that was rarely complimentary. You’d think I’d get used to discovering ways that my alien crewmates resembled Earth animals, but you’d be very wrong.

Paint let out a gusty sigh. “I don’t understand that kind of singing either,” she said. “This makes even less sense than the other one!”

“Remember, there’s always dancing,” I told her. “And if it makes you feel better, I have no idea how to dance to the noise Trrili’s making.”

Zhee hissed quietly. “No one could dance to that. Not without tripping over every other limb.”

Eggskin spoke up. “Well, I’m certainly not going to try. Would you three like to help me settle on the primary meal for tonight’s dinner?”

I smiled. “Oh, I’m sure we won’t disagree on anything there.”

~~~

Keen eyes might recognize the shanty lyrics from a couple older posts. I even used one song in The First Time Traveler to Survive, which is a different storyverse entirely, but it's too much fun to leave there. I'm going to say humans invented it twice, and no one's going to stop me!

Anyways, this is the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

honestly critical role has never been more relatable than Caduceus/Taliesin in the Rumblecusp arc

being put in an environment where you SHOULD thrive, only to fail comically at literally any given opportunity and discovering for the first time that you have some surprising capacity for resentment for something you love that you've built your whole identity on

also I know Caduceus is dumb as rocks in an education sense but those investigation checks they kept having to make felt like they SHOULD be wisdom checks at this point (because common fucking sense would tell you to just hand your shit to someone else once you notice you lose possessions every night) so watching him spectacularly fail every single one of those felt exactly like my life feels right now. Like I should know all the ways to prevent this and yet every day I fail again at the same task right out the gate

the absolute resignation this is all met with. like even for Caduceus that was a level of nonreaction I never thought possible. not a zen unbotheredness, just complete defeat. there is so much frustration underneath the surface and yet such a complete lack of energy to try and fight it, truly only going through a pandemic and/or a real weird mental health funk can breed the vibe of "help. it's again."

also, as someone who doesn't really give a shit about sex, like Caduceus, and prides themselves on their eloquence, like Taliesin, I've never seen myself so clearly represented as i have in the character and the player's combined struggle against the horny-twelve-year-olds energy of this cast

I too have experienced the "i see you giggling over something i said that wasn't even that much of an innuendo but i'm just gonna keep talk- oh no yeah no what i've said now is just a much bigger innuendo" so many times

and then you try and choose your words more carefully. because that's like, the one thing you're good at. and discover that a) once the giggles get going, it doesn't fucking matter and b) there's now not one synonym left in your brain that's not an open invitation

and now you're somehow the least invested in the joke but the most embarrassed by it

"how much of your brain is just innuendo???" the number of times i've wanted to ask people that

the deep disappointment when Travis joined into the madness

living vicariously through the mumbled asides of "all of you. it's all of you" "it's nonstop!"

also watching your group make a TERRIBLE plan but being unable to come up with a better one, so instead of poking holes in it until all your friends hate you you just quietly watch the catastrophe happen, and pray you'll have enough restraint left by the end of it to not say "i could've told you so" out loud