Dogs with Wings
Learned is a weekly newsletter about words and language, written by me (
I love when artists are able to play with the language we use to create a new idea out of an old one. Which is where this week's excerpt comes from - Tom Petty's re-working of the idiom"when pigs fly" into something...different.
A couple of years later, in 1994, Tom Petty released his landmark Wildflowers album which contained the track, It's Good to Be King. Although a much more sincere and sentimental song than Swine Flew, Petty subverts the flying pigs trope in a different way - he gets rid of the pigs.
Yeah, I'll be king when dogs get wings
Can I help it if I still dream time to time
I kind of love that. Something about changing pig to dog brings a new sense of wistfulness to the phrase. Originally, the use of pigs flying to mean something that would never, or could never happen was contained in the phrase, "Pigs fly with their tails forward." In other words, not only was it improbable, it was being done wrong. Dogs, on the other hand, are loyal, hard-working, and faithful.
Consider it this way: To be a flying pig is to be a pig who has managed to do something impossible but to be a flying dog is to be forever chasing something or someone who has left you behind.
The variance between those two ideas - the pig and the dog - culminates, for me, with Porco Rosso. Porco is a man, a pilot, whose boorish actions result in his literal transformation into a pig. Yet it is in his pig-headed loyalty and dogged devotion to his love where he finds redemption. To Porco, a pig flying is nothing to remark upon, but the grace with which he does so is everything: "a pig that doesn't fly is nothing but a pig." I dig that.
How about you? Do you use the phrase "when pigs fly?" Let me know what you think in the comments.
Thanks for reading!