Do you ever talk to yourself? Ever have those conversations where you get quite cross with yourself? To the point where you’re not sure which part of you is entitled to be cross and which part should be contrite?
I woke up in one of those moods today, so I went on a fast thinking walk, as Winnie the Pooh would call it, so see if I could sort out my head.
“It’s true,” I said to myself. “I’m in a funk.”
“A what?” I replied.
“A funk.”
“That’s what I thought I said,” I said. “What exactly do I mean by that?”
“Hmm, good question,” I retorted. “I’m not actually sure. Shall I have a look?”
“Alright then,” I agreed. “If I think I’ve got time.”
And before I knew it I was home and feeling breezy and ready to find out how the word funk came to mean a bad smell and a bad mood and some badass jazz. The healing power of walking, eh! It boosts cardiovascular health, aids in weight management and strengthens bones and muscles, it says here. Never mind your 10,000 steps; according to the NHS, we’re doing fine if we can average just over 20 minutes a day of brisk walking. Today I did half an hour, so I’m 10 minutes in credit. Well, until you take into account the lack of walking I’ve done for the previous two months.
As well as the physical benefits, walking releases happy hormones and lowers stressy ones, makes you feel more energetic and good about yourself, helps you get a good night’s sleep and makes you more creative. I don’t know why I don’t do it every day.
Well, I do. I tell myself I don’t have time. A spurious argument, I know. And I can hear all the dog owners out there saying, “See! If you had a dog…” But then, if I had to walk a dog twice a day, I wouldn’t have time to write 100 Reasons Not To Get A Dog, would I? And then where would we all be?
What’s that? Oh, yes, funk. So before James Brown ever mentioned the word, my mum and dad went on their honeymoon to Spain and found themselves at a bullfight. As the action got bloody, they walked out, heckled as they left, and years later my mum told me about the experience and said sneeringly how the toreros would run and hide in their “funk holes” whenever the bull looked like having a go back.
I’m not fluent in Spanish but I’m pretty sure ‘funk hole’ isn’t part of the Iberian vernacular, so I looked it up and found that it was a WWI term for a place of refuge. It came from the expression ‘blue funk’, meaning a state of fear. But there the trail goes cold. We can only assume it had something to do with the smells you give off when you’re really scared.
From the 1600s ‘funk’ was used to mean a bad smell. This originally came from the Latin for smoke, via some French manipulation, so it was more a bad smell in the choking smoky inn sense than the bins sense (or possibly the incense sense). But it evolved to mean a musty, earthy smell, and that’s what prompted the early jazz musicians to apply it to their music that got you up and sweating.
None of which really explains why I told myself I was in a funk this morning, but then so many of the things I say to myself are beyond explanation.
