Sail

This is another of those one-thing-leads-to-another then another where you end up out in the woods.

There I was patiently watching a video on starting petunias from seed. (It all has to do with the mixture you start with) And in the background a woman is singing softly a recognizable tune. It's a cover of "Latch" but the faint lyrics are not what I know.

And I think now here is a song that would be popular with the kids to interpret into ASL. Sure enough there are a dozen of them. The interpreters all do poorly.

While the song that I know is actually "La La Latch," same melody, but its lyrics are more harsh. Depending on the cover, a woman or a man is singing to the original "Latch" except with more energy and telling her significant other that they covers their ears, turns up the radio, and goes "La la la la" whenever the other one speaks.

Also popular with kids interpreting into ASL and all of them do poorly. They all get lost in the lyrics, lost in their interpretations and lose the song. Through a dozen videos I never did see a single "border" for the original, and never saw any "silver lining" in the second derived song.

None of the signers show the song and express the antipathy so well as the K-Pop dance studio. They cover their ears in the right place, and they show dropping their jaws for "stop talking" and they move with the beat throughout.

W-a-a-a-a-a-y down the list of results I saw this teenage boy just learning a song that now is a few years old, "Sail" by AWOL Nation. Chosen because it is so slow, no doubt.

All his signs are correct. If he were to put a sail on his boat then he'd be showing the sign for "show" and not a sailboat. Best, I suppose, for the boat not to have a sail.

And this caused me to look for another favorite video featuring this same song. I showed this here before. It shows an exceedingly thin French young man who walks into a swept studio. The camera is at floor level and it goes past all the trash, paper, broken bottles and such that were swept to the side. The guy comes in, sets his beatbox on a chair, kicks away a bit of trash, and goes through his yoga-like routine twisting his legs around in impossible configurations while doing handstands.

And the whole time you're going, "Man, there sure is a lot of strange athleticism in the world."

Also watched AOL Nation live and that is less interesting than the recording. Still, I'm ever impressed how art that is finished point for one artist becomes the starting point for other artists. Each song is like a coloring book. People do such varied things with other people's music. What artist could guess their music would become the theme song for some politician's campaign?