Marjorie
Liner notes
I wanted to write about Marjorie Rice, one of recreational maths's biggest success stories -- a San Diego fifty-something with no formal mathematical training who sneakily read her son's Scientific American while nobody was around, and got hooked on one of Martin Gardner's geometry problems. Someone had written in to say 'you said there were only nine ways to tessellate the plane with pentagons, here's a tenth' and Rice thought 'well, if there are ten, maybe there are eleven.' She found the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth and the fourteenth. Someone else got the 15th and another scientist eventually proved that was all of them. I loved the image of her working furtively in the kitchen and wondered what the neighbours would have thought. This song is also notable because I threw in a diminished chord, like a proper musician. I enjoyed the details in this -- Frigidaire is a lovely word. I also like the thematic way the chorus tessellates with the verse.Marjorie's acting suspiciously innocent
She takes forever to answer the door
Tirelessly working on some sort of document
Hurriedly hides it away in a drawer
San Diego's suburban conservative
Neighbourhood counter-intelligence guys
Weigh up the evidence, sum up the score:
She might be a Soviet spy
Marjorie must be aware of the whispers
The scuttlebutt, gossip and lies
But she keeps on painting pentagonal pictures
Endless arrangements of butterflies*Rice initially got interested in the pentagons problem because she wanted to create Escher-like pictures of nature. There are some pictured here.
Endless arrangements of honeybees
She says it's only the patterns that fascinate me
It's only the colours and patterns that matter to
Marjorie's showing eccentric behaviour
Every few weeks as the mailman departs
She runs up the driveway embracing an envelope
Clutching it close to her heart
San Diego's suburban conservative
Agony columnist readers surmise
She's been ensnared by some sort of lothario
Preying on other men's wives
Marjorie must be aware of the whispers
The scuttlebutt, gossip and lies
But she keeps on painting pentagonal pictures
Endless arrangements of butterflies
Endless arrangements of honeybees
She says it's only the patterns that satisfy me
It's only the art and the patterns that matter to
Marjorie's acting distracted and diffident
Groceries piling up next to the Frigidaire
Picks up a paintbrush and looks to the distance
Sitting upright in a ladderback chair
San Diego's suburban conservative
Well-meaning medical experts conclude
She's showing symptoms of substance dependency
That's why she's looking subdued
Marjorie must be aware of the whispers
The scuttlebutt *People keep asking me what 'scuttlebutt' means. It's a kind of gossip., gossips and lies
But she keeps on drawing... details on diagrams
Endless progressions of polygons
New variations on vertices
She says it's only the patterns that captivate me
It's only the maths and the patterns that matter to
Marjorie