Somewhere Ralph Ellison, an African-American writer, described the Blues as an impulse to keep alive painful detail and episodes of raw experience in your consciousness, to touch the roughness, to transcend it, not with philosophical comfort, but to extract tragic, almost comical poetry from it …
In essence, the Blues is the expression of personal suffering in lyrical mode.
The Blues reflects at the same time the angst of life, its pain and the possibility through blatant toughness of spirit to rise above it all.
The Blues is the imaging of the tragic, but offers no solutions, supplies no scapegoat and is limited to the self.
For me, Max Scheler (1874-1928) is a fresh, bracing wind blowing over the arid rocks of empiricism. He was a philosopher at the heart of modernism and became deeply concerned with the “reductive mindset of the positive sciences.” Philosophy for him is “the loving act of participation by the core of the human being in the essence of all things.” He was a spiritual man. Born into an orthodox Jewish home, he became a Catholic in later years, though in the end he found this restrictive in his work. He spent much time as an anti-fascist activist and his work was suppressed by the Nazis after his death.
The philosopher, he says, relates to the world through love. He uses the Greek word agape which is given, tolerant love. The world is approached with wonder and with reverence. Knowledge is built from an affective foundation, possible only for a loving being. This love is “a going beyond oneself, an opening to ever richer meaning.”
Max Scheler
In his life he moved in rarefied intellectual circles comprising of people like Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich and Rainer Maria Rilke. His work was prolific and influential. He examined politics, war, ethics and sociology, to mention a few. The chief influence in his life was the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. In 1928 his health failed him (he had been a heavy smoker) and he died, being spared the horrors of the 1930-40s.
Decades ago I was told that rock lyrics don’t have to make sense as long as they fit the vein-splitting beat comfortably. And yes, I wonder many of the millions listening to Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock (1956) realized that it was actually a short story set to music. How many of the millions realized that the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction (1966) was a criticism of advertising? These are lyrics that make sense. Here are some thoughts on the lyrics of two songs where the lyrics don’t yield to easy (or any!) analysis.
I am a walrus on the Magical Mystery Tour album (1967) by the Beatles has probably puzzled many who have attempted to find meaning in the words. I quote the notes that accompanied the lyrics.
“John Lennon wrote the lyrics for this song as a consequence of receiving a letter from a pupil of Quarry Bank High School (Lennon’s old school) where it was said that a teacher had tried to analyse The Beatles’ lyrics in class. Lennon felt it was funny and decided to write a song that would be very hard to analyse.”
A technique in songs like this is the combination of the strange, even surreal, with the ordinary everyday events: Sitting on a cornflake waiting for the bus to come. Also from the notes on the song: “The walrus was inspired by the poem “The Walrus and The Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll from his book “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” (1871).
The Rolling Stones’ song Walkin’ the dog is a 12-bar blues lyric written by Rufus Thomas (1962) also mixing the extra-ordinary with the ordinary: I asked her mother for 15 cents / to see the elephant jump the fence / jumped so high, touched the sky, didn’t get back ‘till quarter to five. One critic commented on the fact that not hearing all of a lyric in the white-hot delivery and even listening to a line that defies the world as we know it doesn’t matter to listeners – the words just need to sit well in that rhythm. The critic described the phenomenon as “the unspeakable mix”.
Interesting then, to contrast what I like to call the age of the lyric – the 1930s – with what happened from the 1950s onward.
In 1963 pop music undergoes a change. Two songs by the Beatles in particular set the standards for what was to come in the 1960s. The songs are She loves you (August, 1963) and I wanna hold your hand. The “Yeah, yeah, yeah” chorus in She loves you is discussed in the Wikipedia article.
As with many other songs, She loves you is a remarkable song – the melody and the performance. A few thoughts follow.
The song became the best-selling hit of any artist in the UK for 14 years. It received the most airtime.
It begins with the chorus bursting in with fine drum work. The main melody verse is repeated, followed by a bridge, reaching up to second bridge and topped by the chorus again. Interesting that they decided not to have an instrumental in the middle of the song, one of the many innovations in their music.
I find the harmonies striking. I can’t help thinking that they must have added more voice work after the first recording, because in that final memorable chord I would think that there are more than three voices. The sheet music doesn’t even attempt to include the notes. For me it is a jazz chord and, oddly, Lennon didn’t particularly like jazz. Here one sees the mastery of the subtle art of close harmony.
The Wikipedia article on She loves you includes several anecdotes on the song, including Paul’s father complaining of the “Americanism” in “Yeah, yeah, yeah”.
I find it interesting to consider the moments of rhythm variation: “With a love like that ( you know you should be glad)”. This is echoed in the later song You can’t do that: “Because I told you before (oh, you can’t do that)”. This serves enrich the song texture, making it more complex.
Finally, as a teenager, I agreed with my parents that many pop songs were shallow, dependent mostly on some catchy idea, something which could fade quite quickly. I insisted that the Beatles were different. They couldn’t handle that.
Today, sixty years after the Beatles emerged and 53 years after their break-up, not only does their music remain popular, but the number of trios, quartets, quintets and orchestras recording versions of the music keeps growing.
I started WWT with a blog post after my visit to Abbaye de Lerins with Claudie on the 17.6.2012. My niece Dawn had been kind enough to set up the blog perhaps never knowing what it would mean to me in the years to come. It became a forum for me to explore my experiences, thoughts, feelings and opinions. On the 23rd of August that year I examined the issue of people destroying monuments after political change. From September of that year I began with my Korean blogs, having spent a year in South Korea from July, 2007 to July, 2008. I took joy in writing about my South African experiences. It was fun to boast that it was writing from three continents!
I also wrote retrospectively and placed images about my travel in 1972 when I travelled through Europe, a trip that had a profound effect on my life. My ten years in Provence too, has in many ways changed much in my life. This has come to a sad end, but memories through my posts and images remain vivid. There are more than 450 posts.
Since I returned to South Africa in early November, 2021, the posts in WWT have been less on travel and more on my personal interests. I still sift through photographs and the reminiscing brings on fresh writing. My photographs, of course, all tell their own stories. I’d rather not say how many thousands of them there are!
St Paul de Vence. Flying man.
Looking back, I feel dazed. Did I really see that? do that? experience that? Being told about the world (see education) is one thing. Living the reality is something else. It has been inspiring to me, to say the least. To touch the marble blocks that were laid for Augustus’ triumphal monument at La Turbie near Monaco and to realise that Mary and Joseph were young people when this was done (6 B.C.); to view the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero and to realise that this is exactly the spot where Adolf Hitler stood … these are inexpressible moments and my blog posts celebrate a generous range of such times.
That it has been possible at all, amazes me – apart from my first trip in Europe, the Korean education authorities and Claudie herself have made possible what I could never have afforded on my own. Claudie’s role is not limited to money; she is the love that colours all experience.
The blog posts on WWT remain a very special record of my experiences and promote wonder for me, rare in the modern world.
Why are sad songs so popular sometimes? We also love happy songs, but sad songs somehow have a special little niche in our souls.
“The man who plays the mandolino”, a Neapolitan song written by Giuseppe Fanculli and translated by Bergman, was released in 1956, sung by Dean Martin. This song, a kind of character sketch, still touches me after all these years and I find it interesting that, even though I was dizzy about rock ‘n roll at the time, this sad song meant a lot to me as a child.
It is worth looking up the lyrics and, on You Tube, finding the version sung by Dean Martin. Both lyric and the melody make this a memorable song.
Principals of schools didn’t particularly like my approach to teaching because, for me, exams and results were not the top priority. I share with language teachers a project I did with students over many years, usually Grade 11. I called it the “Me” project and it was a type of autobiography that they had to write. I gave them a mark, usually under “Writing”. This project produced some of the richest and most fascinating work I ever looked at as a teacher. Some students dived right in and once one of them even gave me a shoe box of toys she had loved as a small child with her project. I was deeply moved.
I gave them two terms to do the work with a deadline at the beginning of the third term, plus frequent reminders. I also discussed the content of the project for at least two periods and gave them a printed hand-out with suggested lists. Details that helped were, What are your parents’ strong points? How do you get on with your siblings? Do you have an unforgettable day that you have had? Offer reasons for your favourite music. What are your greatest difficulties as a teenager? Of course, they could add as many images, photographs, etc., that they liked. I have no memory of a principal or even a colleague ever asking me “But is it in the syllabus?” I’d rather not imagine what my answer would have been.
Meeting past students years later it was the “Me” project that they remembered. And it would be a valuable time capsule for them as they grew older. At the heart of it they were learning self-knowledge and using language to express it.
My concepts and prejudices about the East have been plenty. My year in South Korea banished a lot of that. Recently, I came across a remarkable collection of poetry by contemporary Chinese women. These poems had been gathered in the early 90s and translated soon after. I would have expected poems political, some for and some against the regime. Julia C. Lin, the American-Chinese academic who translated most of the poems, had worked quite openly with authorities in China, making this venture possible. I am sure that she might have come across some dissenting poems, but for the sake of the anthology kept them from the light.
The poems are accomplished, sensuous, sharply observed with poignant humanity. There are deeply personal poems and many poems celebrate nature. I find the subjects reminding me of Japanese Haiku, but none ventures into that genre. I have read Chinese poems from the earlier centuries and this brought me an awareness of the millennia of poetry writing that inform these contemporary words.
I am an apple
I am an apple.
A small bright red apple.
My smile swings on a child’s face,
My sweetness flows into an old man’s heart,
I satisfy the hunger of a sailor on a long voyage,
I quench the thirst of a traveller in the desert,
I restore the health of a patient who has lost faith,
Will Will Travel 