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Featured Review > Jonathan Eig > Ken Nordine
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(page four)
He has stacks of these poems, most of them beginning with the same first line, "Maybe the moment." It's an exercise
he uses to help fall asleep at night. He lies in bed rhyming.
Maybe the moment
Curves up and around
And heads for the hills
Where eyebrows are found
You feel that you're safe
But something is wet
Looks like your eyebrows
Are leaking sweat
Maybe the moment has you thinking Ken Nordine is a fellow with too much time on his hands, but this does not appear to be the
case. In fact, his phone never stops ringing. He is already offered more commercial work than he knows what to do
with. He can be heard as the voice behind commercials for Levi-Strauss, the Chicago Blackhawks ("Cold Steel on Ice"),
Pacific Bell, Friendly's Ice Cream and Las Vegas. "The commercials have enabled me to do writing, and I love to write,"
he says. Some of Nordine's friends who are full-time musicians have wondered why Nordine didn't devote himself full-time
to music. They wonder how he manages to straddle the worlds of commerce and art.
"The Bible says you can serve God and mammon," he says. "Mammon probably refers to the commerce of everyday life. The
truth is, people miss commercials if they're not on. And fortunately, they're harmless. They won't hurt anybody now
that they've taken cigarette ads off. I love commercials. When you think about it, you've got committees of lawyers
and writers all trying to persuade and not alienate, which is a difficult course. The commercial is an art form. You
try to persuade people to your point of view and do it differently each time."
If he sounds as if he's justifying, don't be misled. Nordine takes this kind of fresh, naive view on almost every subject.
He sees the world differently, as if he were seeing almost everything for the first time. "Everything is incredibly strange,
when you think about it," he says. "Mother Theresa and Hitler were born on the same day. That doesn't make astrology
look very good." Nordine was born in Iowa and grew up in Chicago. He has three sons and nine grandchildren. At 75,
he shows no signs of slowing down. His computer is jammed with unfinished projects.&nbs; Even a quick glance at the menu provokes
curiosity, with files named Beauty is in the Behearing, Alka Seltzer Transfer and Where's the Plumber ("The plumber was supposed to
come that day," he explains). His is a fountain that frequently overflows, sometimes on the radio, sometimes on recordings,
sometimes into thin air, which is perhaps for the best.
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