Bloomsday, 1904 – 2004
I meant to make this a new “Top Five” entry, with the songs I listened to first, once I was behind the wheel again. But I got distracted. Sorry.
The good news is that if you go to Google.com and type “condoleezza fabulous” the number one hit is a link to A Gammon’s hilarious piece from the early days of The Herald.
Today is 16 June, and I feel as though I might as well be chained to this uncomfortable chair. This is the last time this day will come and I shall do anything but what I want. That’s my promise, Andy.
I remember we used to say we were getting a late start. Well, mine has been later than I thought. But I’m living it. Now.
Three Songs:
Come Here — Kath Bloom
This is from Before Sunrise. It is played in a listening booth at the Viennese record shop. It’s folky. The girl plays it for the guy.
If that description is inadequate, it will give you an idea of how hard it has been for me to find the song. I am simply too sleepy to flesh that out. I finally ripped the song from some Deutschlander’s blog over the wknd.
I cannot say enough good about the movie and the song. Though I didn’t listen to it over and over, –as I usually do with a favorite, — I place it here because the movie is set on the date June 16, the morning after their one night spent walking and talking around Vienna. Yes, it is entirely talking. Talk that embraces everything they see and experience.
I loved The Bourne Identity and the idea that I will find true love with the same ease with which I will find that I have a Swiss Bank Account, and that I am a deep-cover mole. But to turn Edmund Kean’s deathbed witticism… Living on the run is easy, communicating is hard…
The date of the characters’ parting is director Richard Linklater’s nod to Bloomsday, June 16, 1904, when a man, Leopold Bloom (who never existed) wandered the streets of Dublin, trying to avoid dwelling on various painful thoughts (of his son, long dead, of his inadequate career, and his cuckoldry).
I shudder to think what would have happened had Joyce not decided, at the last minute, to title the book Ulysseys. I suppose he could have given the secret away had he written it in verse, beginning:
“Tell me again, Muse, I didn’t quite catch what you were saying,
About that guy, the one who creeped you out at the Steak Escape . . .”
Dirty Blvd — Lou Reed
From the Perfect Night: Live in London album, where in the middle of the song everything but that ridiculous guitar of his gets quiet and he intones (maybe thatÂs a word for what Lou does, cuz it ain’t singing):
You ever had rage in your heart
You ever had some rage in your heart?
You ever had rage in your heart?
every, ever had rage in your heart? . . .
But he isn’t angry.
Or, perhaps he is angry, but with a sadness in the voice that wishes the body did not feel anger. All his better songs have this quality.
Everyday is Like Sunday — 10,000 Maniacs
Covering The Smiths is to be avoided in general, and especially if you’re not British, teen, and it’s 1988. Otherwise, itÂs too much fun to imagine Morrissey on Top of the Pops, wearing (fake)thick glasses and a hearing aid from the fifties. It is sometimes saddening, –for those who are Bristish, teenaged, and in 1988, — that Morrissey’s Âdisability chic” never caught on. And I am sometimes sad for them.
But I actually prefer this version for it’s speediness and urgency. I know what Sundays feel like, I don’t really need Morrissey’s voice to make it bleak. And Natalie, –though again not the purest definition of “singing”, — she can and does more with her voice so that the song sounds like a friendly commiseration, rather than a soporific.
Okay.
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