{"id":2500,"date":"2014-01-20T06:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=2500"},"modified":"2014-01-19T15:48:33","modified_gmt":"2014-01-19T23:48:33","slug":"chap-2-the-tape-searching-for-xoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=2500","title":{"rendered":"Chap. 2 The Tape \u2013 Searching for Xoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Writer’s note: if you missed Chapter 1 you can find it in our archives at the right. \u00a0Our free subscription will send our blog to your email every Monday morning.)<\/em><\/p>\n

by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n

\"shell\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With my thumb and forefinger I fished the shell casing out from the bottom of my shirt pocket and held it in the sunlight coming through my windshield as I sped down Interstate 5 on my way home.\u00a0 It was the last tangible reminder of my now deceased best friend, given to me after the service by his sister.\u00a0 The crack of the military rifles still echoed in my ear \u2013 a resounding period at the end of his life sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod dammit Don, why didn\u2019t you take better care of yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n

He answered, \u201cDidn\u2019t we always say that \u2018life was too long\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a joke!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it?\u201d<\/p>\n

I drove in silence for the next three hours, although it wasn\u2019t exactly silent, in fact my mind was filled with a thousand memories \u2013 it was actually quite noisy in there.\u00a0 I shouldn\u2019t call classical music \u2018noise\u2019, but he loved the song Nessun Dorma, <\/i>we listened to it together as the hair on our arms would stand on end.\u00a0 Now, as I drive in the vast openness of central California, that melody was haunting me as an ear worm.<\/p>\n

Being a rather unsophisticated fan of opera, I would later learn that the song is from the opera, Turandot<\/i>, by Puccini, \"Pavarotti\"<\/a>which ironically, or not, is about solving riddles.\u00a0 It features an unknown prince, a bitchy princess as well as some torture and beheadings.\u00a0 Pretty much like operas today, only now they\u2019re prefaced with \u2018soap\u2019.\u00a0 While Nesun Dorma<\/i> sounds like a beautifully majestic love song, the lyrics and the storyline in the opera are actually quite menacing.\u00a0 For those not familiar with the song, and even those who are and enjoy a good aria, I\u2019ve attached a link to the 3-minute video of Pavarotti\u2019s offering in 1994 \u2013 you may have to copy and paste it into your browser – it’s worth it!<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rTFUM4Uh_6Y<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/i>I wondered what all this had to do with anything <\/i>(as you may be wondering yourself!).\u00a0 The Tape<\/i> was already in the car\u2019s cassette player so I just punched \u2018Play\u2019.\u00a0 No longer trying to figure out what was being said, I listened more broadly to the rhythm, the pulse of it.\u00a0 What I heard for the first time was what clearly sounded like changes in the language being used.\u00a0 It was still all\u00a0 unintelligible, but it now seemed clear that the language being used was changing several time throughout the 90-minute tape.<\/p>\n

I heard a number of words and phrases repeated throughout the first several minutes. <\/i>\u00a0One such phrase was Eviatem non Cawhoea.<\/i> I\u2019m sure the spelling here isn\u2019t correct as I just wrote it down phonetically . . . while I was driving.\u00a0 Of course it meant nothing to me, but I thought about a colleague, Matt, with whom I used to teach and who now was a professor of language at nearby Chapman University, who just might be able to help.<\/p>\n

Matt tilted his head towards the cassette player in his office, narrowed his eyes and was motionless as he listened to The Tape<\/i>.\u00a0 As the cassette wheels spun I watched his eyes furtively shift, widen then frown.\u00a0 I silently pointed to the tape, as if to make him listen harder when the Eviatem non Cawhoea<\/i> part was coming up for the second time.\u00a0 After it was spoken I clicked off the tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose words are repeated several times in the first few minutes\u201d I told him, \u201cAny idea what it is?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe\u201d, he responded as he turned to the bookshelf behind him and ran his index finger along a row of old books until he found what he was looking for.\u00a0 He pulled it from the shelf and gingerly laid it on his desk and turned to the page as noted in the Table of Contents.<\/p>\n

Pointing at the page he said, \u201cYes, here it is right here, it is in fact . . . gibberish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh thank you esteemed professor of language, I knew you could solve this mystery. \u00a0Seriously, does any of it make any<\/em> sense to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cActually some of it does.\u00a0 The phrase, Iviatim non Cahuilla<\/i>, which is repeated several time probably refers to the Iviatim<\/i> or Ivia<\/i> language of an ancient Indian tribe, related to the Aztecs; they\u2019re actually indigenous to the deserts here in Southern California.\u00a0 Cahuilla,<\/i>\u00a0(pronounced\u00a0kah-wee-ah)\u00a0was the name for Iviatim<\/i> that was used by the missionaries and ranchero owners.\u00a0 It was the Spanish first, then the Mexicans that took over their land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did they change the name?\u00a0 Can you translate any more of it; do you think it tells us why they changed the name?<\/p>\n

\u201cHold on with the questions for a minute.\u00a0 I\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t translate anything more, that language is nearly extinct; there are probably less than 50 people in the world that can still speak it.\u00a0 Fortunately for you most of them are out in the Palm Springs area.\u00a0 Someone out there may be able to answer your questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks Matt, any ideas on how I would go about finding any of the 50 people that still speak this language?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you\u2019re probably not going to find them sitting around the pool at the Marriott sipping a Pina Colada, but I think I can point you in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would learn later that Matt actually knew exactly where to send me, and he knew why the name was changed, but he had his reasons for not being the one to give me the answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Writer’s note: if you missed Chapter 1 you can find it in our archives at the right. \u00a0Our free subscription will send our blog to your email every Monday morning.) by Bob Sparrow \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With my thumb and forefinger I … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1262],"tags":[1289,1286,1288,1292,1291,1287,540,1274,1265,1290,1285],"class_list":["post-2500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-tape","tag-cahuilla","tag-chapman-university","tag-inviatim","tag-marriott","tag-mexicans","tag-nesun-dorma","tag-palm-springs","tag-pavarotti","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-spanish","tag-turandot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/shell.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-Ek","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2500"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2506,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions\/2506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}