On Adele Song Skyfall

You may have my number, You can take my name, But you'll never have my heart...
Adele, Skyfall lyrics, released October 5, 2012

It is not the habit of the Oracle of Ottawa to comment much on contemporary culture. Especially contemporary pop music. Compared to when the Oracle of Ottawa was fab, present day pop music is a very dry desert. It has reached a point in the last few years that the Oracle of Ottawa has shunned pop music listening completely. But at times just to make an attempt to be optimistic the Oracle of Ottawa makes an effort to salvage something of today's culture and its music only to be sickened and shunned when I hear the first bars of the latest Justin Beiber "hit". The Oracle of Ottawa as a native born Canadian apologizes on behalf of Canada and my lost countrymen.

Really...There is only one James Bond

 It was a week ago today, a Sunday night, when after enjoying a wonderful three square dinner in a small Ontario town, that I first heard the song Skyfall as performed by Adele. It was playing out on to the street from the restaurant I had just left. It sounded so James Bond of the sixties, that it literally stopped me in my tracks! And the lyrics were just brilliant, pure poetry, the hardest kind; small words with less than two syllables. The Oracle of Ottawa doesn't stop for just any set of words.

But, as they say in Hollywood: the shit gets deeper. I experienced that very rare, what I have come to call, the full neuronal rush. I was a kid again back in the sixties in Pembroke Ontario. I could smell that smell. The smell of air conditioned air mixed with the smell of popcorn and the real butter that you used to be able to get standard. All of you readers that lived at that time know that early air conditioning was pretty leaky and had that distinctive odor that is just no longer in existence. Not to mention independent flashy theaters with names like the "Centre", with the huge extravagant lithographed posters that beckoned you into the world of your deepest imagination, with every guaranty of total satisfaction. 

I remembered my parents as they looked then; young and beautiful. And for my mother especially, a new James Bond movie was an event. You didn't go to see it in jeans and running shoes. You made every attempt to dress and look like a woman that James would find alluring and attractive. Now mixing this in with the mundane task of arranging a baby sitter for the Oracle of Ottawa and his four siblings it was all quiet a feat of logistics. The Oracle of Ottawa longed for the day when he would be able to take a drop dead gorgeous woman to a James Bond movie. But into the seventies and eighties old school class withered away fast like it never existed...

What is the magic of James Bond? What does he symbolize? Well the Oracle of Ottawa doesn't have to reflect long on this question. James Bond is archtype. James Bond is the modern knight errant, and unlike the character of Cervantes, one that has not been overcome by the world but rather the sole protector of it. The one lone force that stands between anarchy, chaos and all that is true and good of what we know as Western Civilization. Our protector against all forces and evil deadly.  

 It appears that Adele has touched a deep chord in modern culture. She has done a great job and has created a new "standard" which is quiet a feat for a woman of only twenty four years. And it appears to be catching...(Thank God)