You favorite Sherlockian song.

What's your favorite Sherlockian song?

I don't expect it to have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes. Sadly, most songs with a direct association to Sherlock Holmes are pretty poor -- Sherlock is not a guy who's work has inspired much singing. You can pull up a few fair ditties with an indirect relationship to Holmes . . . that "Aunt Clara" thing that an early Irregular foisted upon his fellows, "The Madame's Song" from The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Gerry Rafferty's haunting Baker Street . . . but a real, down-to-detection Sherlock Holmes song? If you've got one good enough to be called "favorite," I'd sure like to hear about it.

So, let's take this another direction . . . what's your favorite song that has no direct connection to Sherlock Holmes that you personally associate with your life as a Sherlockian every time you hear it?

One of those, I've got.

Nobody's Fool by Kenny Loggins. The theme song from a movie that produced little else of a memorable nature, Caddyshack II. As a connoisseur of soundtrack albums, I couldn't even bring myself to pick up the whole album to that movie -- just the 45 single of that theme. And in 1988, when it came out, that was all I really needed. But why the Sherlockian impact, you might ask?

Because six months after that the song hit the charts, I found myself in a place where I was really pondering my Sherlockian existence. There had been a certain little falling-out between a certain Holmes-related country club of sorts and myself, and feeling a little disillusioned about the society of some Sherlockians at that point, I did what I always do when the fringes of fandom get frazzling -- go back to the source. Or "back to the shack," as the lyrics to Nobody's Fool go, "nothing suits me better than that." Because nothing has ever suited me better than the Canon of Sherlock Holmes.

The kids these days have their "mind-palaces," book Holmes had his "brain-attic," I had my Sherlock-shack, whenever I heard that song. "If time has taught me anything, got to learn to be the ball," the song's Zen wisdom continues, "and I can't keep from laughing at it all."

Because at some point in any fandom fuss, you really have to remember to take a few steps back and laugh a bit at how silly it is when it gets too serious. But that isn't the only place Nobody's Fool goes that my brain takes as a part of Sherlockian life. There's another part of it that goes from Zen to practically a sorcerous invocation:

"Winds of wild insanity, blow with me tonight!"

Now, if you've ever gone far enough down the creativity rabbit hole, you've probably had a reader or two question whether your brain is quite completely in tune with the real world on occasion. And those are the times when things really get fun. When the winds of wild insanity blow with a Sherlockian storm, we get some of our best stuff. There's a certain randomness to the lyrics of Nobody's Fool that could apply to many things. But when it comes to "My hallucination may come as some surprise," I like to slide the idea of a historically existing Sherlock Holmes into that slot.

I'm sure one could delve deeply into my psyche and find a lot more of the buttons that song pushes, but I think I've navel-gazed long enough for this particular blog entry.

Nobody's Fool was Kenny Loggins' last top ten hit, the wind-up of a great run of movie tunes, none of which were Sherlock Holmes movies. Which is really too bad, as I'd liked to have seen what Kenny would have done with a Sherlock song. Heck, I'd like to see what anyone would do with a Sherlock song good enough to hit the charts! In the meantime, we shall all just to have our own personal Sherlockian themes.

Hope yours is a good one!