'A cup of kindness yet'

Someone once said that whether auld acquaintances should be forgot really depends on what kind of old acquaintances you have.

On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, “Auld Lang Syne” gets ritualized or loving attention that is denied the composition about auld acquaintances the other 363 days.

“It is a song, after all, about reflecting on the march of time, and thinking about how much is forgotten and lost, and the importance of celebrating and remembering that which we can while we are still able. Importantly, the rhetorical question ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot?’ is not directly answered in the original poem,” says my favorite music critic.

“It's a song that can be both reflective and introspective and celebratory and extroverted.”

The music critic, who has thought a lot about this old song, says there are contradictory forces dueling within the text. Billy Crystal’s character jokes in “When Harry Met Sally” that no one knows what the words mean, but that’s not exactly true.

Since Robert Burns wrote down the lines in 1788, the title and signature phrase has been a steady reminder “for the sake of old times.”

“The poem points out the tension between the passage of time that sweeps away what came before, and our desire to preserve those things from our past that we cherish even in the awareness that much of it we already have thoughtlessly forgotten. That a song usually sung as a triumphant celebration at the beginning of a new year is so backwards looking and painfully nostalgic is one of those enduring ironies to life that is more meaningful perhaps because it is unexamined.“

My favorite critic grew up hearing “Auld Lang Syne” so it didn’t surprise me years ago when he started paying special attention to it, learned to pick it on the guitar and examine what makes some interpretations better than others.

All I know is that I think of my twin brother—the music critic’s uncle—and others dearly departed, when I hear a version that includes the middle verses.

The English translation of that section is something like: “We two have run about the hills, And picked the daisies fine; But we’ve wandered many a weary foot, since auld lang syne. We two have paddled in the stream, From morning sun till dine; But seas between us broad have roared, since auld lang syne.”

My favorite music critic argues that the finest version of the song he knows of is this one, performed by Jo Stafford on her 1957 album “Jo Stafford Sings: Songs of Scotland.”

“This is an absolute gem of a rendition of the tune that dials up the pensive reflection of the song, with Stafford giving a heartfelt vocal. I also love Paul Weston's chart—heavy on the strings, but with interesting harmonic choices, and the flavor of a Celtic harp to remind us of the Scottish roots of the song. I often catch myself listening to it throughout the year to remember the message at the core of the song. “