Monthly Archives: June 2016

Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven (1845)

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The Raven is a nar­ra­tive poem by Edgar Allan Poe, pub­lished in 1845, famous for its dra­mat­ic, Goth­ic qual­i­ty. The scene is set from the begin­ning: the unnamed nar­ra­tor is in a lone­ly apart­ment on a “bleak Decem­ber” night, with lit­tle more than a dying fire to light the room, when he hears an eerie tap­ping from out­side his cham­ber door. Into the dark­ness he whis­pers, “Lenore,” hop­ing his lost love has come back, but all that could be heard was “an echo [that] mur­mured back the word ‘Lenore!’ ”. The tap­ping per­sist­ing, he opens the win­dow where­upon the mys­te­ri­ous raven enters the room and perch­es atop a sculp­tured bust above his door.

The man asks the raven for his name, and sur­pris­ing­ly it answers, croak­ing “Nev­er­more.” The man knows that the bird does not speak from rea­son, but has been taught by “some unhap­py mas­ter,” and that the word “nev­er­more” is its only response. Thus, he asks a series of ques­tions, all elic­it­ing the stock response at the end of each stan­za.

Poe was very inter­est­ed in express­ing melan­choly in poet­ic form. As he wrote in Graham’s Mag­a­zine in 1846: “Of all melan­choly top­ics, what, accord­ing to the uni­ver­sal under­stand­ing of mankind, is the most melan­choly?” – the answer, of course, Death. And when is Death most poet­i­cal? “When it most close­ly allies itself to beau­ty: the death, then, of a beau­ti­ful woman is, unques­tion­ably, the most poet­i­cal top­ic in the world”. Hence, the poem is about the despair of a bereaved lover, and Poe’s use of the raven — that bird of ill-omen – does lit­tle to sug­gest that a hap­py out­come is forth­com­ing! Per­haps the raven stands for the narrator’s sub­con­scious as he strug­gles with the con­cepts of death and final­i­ty.

There is a lilt­ing rhythm in play; it’s melod­ic as well as dra­mat­ic (and since you ask, it’s in trocha­ic octame­ter, with eight stressed-unstressed two-syl­la­ble feet per lines). There is fre­quent use of inter­nal rhyme, and much rep­e­ti­tion of rhyming around the “or” sound (Lenore, door, lore, nev­er­more).

Who bet­ter to nar­rate this great poem than the prince of hor­ror him­self, Vin­cent Price? Here he is in won­der­ful Goth­ic form, nar­rat­ing, indeed act­ing, this dark classic…superb.

Edgar Allan Poe
Music

The Who’s Substitute (1966)

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Lon­don in the Six­ties was, famous­ly, “swing­ing”, with much of the music and fash­ion influ­enced by the Mod sub­cul­ture. Mods had their roots in the Lon­don of the late Fifties where a small group of fash­ion­able young guns came to be known as mod­ernists because of their pen­chant for mod­ern jazz. By the Six­ties, the move­ment had become the dom­i­nant, and now plu­ral­ist, cul­tur­al force of the times, had broad­ened its hori­zons, and had accu­mu­lat­ed cer­tain iden­ti­fy­ing sym­bols such as the tai­lored suit, the Par­ka, and the motor scoot­er. Mod music, mean­while, had become a diverse mix of soul, R&B, ska, and blues-root­ed British rock.

The ear­ly six­ties had seen a clash of this new cul­ture with the so-called “rock­ers”, a rival sub­cul­ture cen­tred on motor­cy­cling, leather and 1950s rock and roll, which led to the infa­mous South Coast brawls of “mods and rock­ers”, and the ensu­ing “moral pan­ic” of the Estab­lish­ment. But by the mid-six­ties, British rock bands, such as the Small Faces and the Who, were adopt­ing mod fash­ion and atti­tude.

This week, I give you a sub­lime dose of mod sound in the form of the Who’s Sub­sti­tute. Nat­ty threads, swanky atti­tude, and above all a killer song from the band’s one true song­writer, gui­tarist Pete Town­shend. Town­shend wrote the song hav­ing being inspired by a line in Smokey Robinson’s Tracks of my Tears: “Although she may be cute, She’s just a sub­sti­tute”.

The song has a great bassline, amply sup­plied by John Ent­whis­tle and assist­ed on drums by ami­able loon Kei­th Moon, gui­tar chops cour­tesy of Town­shend and a suit­ably louche vocal from Roger Dal­trey. The lyrics are clev­er­ly wrought, though it’s no sur­prise that the line “I look all white but my dad was black” was altered for the more racial­ly sen­si­tive Amer­i­can mar­ket (to “I try walk­ing for­ward but my feet walk back”, which was pre­sum­ably thrown togeth­er at the last minute to cries of “yeah, that’ll do”).

What­ev­er, the fin­ished prod­uct is a great exam­ple of styl­ish mod sound from the orig­i­nal “cool Britannia”…enjoy!

You think we look pret­ty good togeth­er
You think my shoes are made of leather

But I’m a sub­sti­tute for anoth­er guy
I look pret­ty tall but my heels are high
The sim­ple things you see are all com­pli­cat­ed
I look pret­ty young, but I’m just back-dat­ed, yeah

Sub­sti­tute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plas­tic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-look­ing suit is real­ly made out of sack

I was born with a plas­tic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was fac­ing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those croc­o­dile tears are what you cry
It’s a gen­uine prob­lem, you won’t try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Sub­sti­tute me for him
Sub­sti­tute my coke for gin
Sub­sti­tute you for my mum
At least I’ll get my wash­ing done

But I’m a sub­sti­tute for anoth­er guy
I look pret­ty tall but my heels are high
The sim­ple things you see are all com­pli­cat­ed
I look pret­ty young, but I’m just back­dat­ed, yeah

I was born with a plas­tic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was fac­ing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those croc­o­dile tears are what you cry
It’s a gen­uine prob­lem, you won’t try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Sub­sti­tute me for him
Sub­sti­tute my coke for gin
Sub­sti­tute you for my mum
At least I’ll get my wash­ing done

Sub­sti­tute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plas­tic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-look­ing suit is real­ly made out of sack

The Who in 1966

 

Art

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942)

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If I ever get to Chica­go, one of the first things on my list will be to see the icon­ic mas­ter­piece of Amer­i­can art that is Edward Hopper’s oil on can­vas, Nighthawks, housed at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. It has been there ever since the Insti­tute bought the piece from the artist, for the sum of $3000, just a few months after its com­ple­tion in 1942.

The pic­ture shows a late-night, sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed down­town din­er, some­where in New York. Many peo­ple have spec­u­lat­ed and tried to work out where the din­er actu­al­ly was but it is far more like­ly to be a com­pos­ite of var­i­ous joints from around the artist’s home patch of Green­wich Vil­lage, Man­hat­tan, cob­bled togeth­er in Hopper’s imag­i­na­tion.

Hop­per and his wife Jo kept metic­u­lous notes about his work, and they pro­vide a rare glimpse into this oft-uncon­sid­ered aspect of the artist’s life: the plan­ning and thought behind a planned work. This excerpt, in Jo’s hand­writ­ing, describes Nighthawks:

“Night + bril­liant inte­ri­or of cheap restau­rant. Bright items: cher­ry wood counter + tops of sur­round­ing stools; light on met­al tanks at rear right; bril­liant streak of jade green tiles 3/4 across canvas–at base of glass of win­dow curv­ing at cor­ner. Light walls, dull yel­low ocre [sic] door into kitchen right.

Very good look­ing blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eat­ing sand­wich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) hold­ing cig­a­rette. Oth­er fig­ure dark sin­is­ter back–at left. Light side walk out­side pale green­ish. Dark­ish red brick hous­es oppo­site. Sign across top of restau­rant, dark–Phillies 5c cig­ar. Pic­ture of cig­ar. Out­side of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceil­ing inside shop against dark of out­side street–at edge of stretch of top of win­dow”

The pic­ture was clear­ly not thrown togeth­er, and indeed for all this atten­tion to detail, the fin­ished art­work adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It exudes a sense of lone­li­ness, of sep­a­ra­tion, of eery silence and thus dis­qui­et. Who are these peo­ple? What sto­ries of qui­et des­per­a­tion (since we some­how sus­pect that the pro­tag­o­nists are not of a hap­py and sta­ble dis­po­si­tion) have brought them to this late-night ren­dezvous? Nighthawks allows the viewer’s imag­i­na­tion to fill in the blanks.

 

Edward Hop­per 1941