Story Starters: Shadows on a Wall

A number of things I’ve come across in the last week have reminded me — at a time (yes) when I really should be concerned with ending a story — just how little it takes to start one. In particular, they’ve reminded me of the way in which implied story lines radiate forwards and backwards, starting from a single moment captured in a painting or photograph.

First, there was my post of the other day, about Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus painting and the W.H. Auden poem which sprang from it. What makes this a “story” as opposed to a conventional landscape is the precise instant crystallized in that tiny little area of the bottom right corner. We can imagine what must have led to that moment: the construction of the wings, the warnings from Daedalus, the over-confident youth rising and rising and rising toward the sun. We can see some other things happening during it, of course, and imagine other things which we can’t actually see (such as Daedalus, watching horrified from a shoreline). And we can guess about the moments to follow, from the immediate (the long, panic-stricken but then silent sinking of a feathered figure to the bottom of the sea) to the more remote (the wasteland of Daedalus’s life to come).

Then along came some posts over the last few days on the writing in the water blog. The innkeeper there, marta, recently acquired a scanner; she’s begun to post old family photos, taking off from each to ruminate about the stories it tells, fails to tell, or tells incompletely — and the stories it might have told instead (if the world and the people in it were different).

So while I was thinking about these things, it occurred to me that visual “moments” aren’t the only ones from which stories might branch, forward and back. Musical ones can work that way, too.

I don’t mean obvious story songs — shaggy-dog stories or Broadway show tunes, for instance (the latter of which can be associated with specific points within the show’s plot). No, what I’m getting at is songs, especially short ones, whose lyrics suggest with a quick few brushstrokes more — sometimes much more — than the words themselves say.

Like marta’s (or anyone’s) snapshots, like Fall of Icarus-style paintings, these songs fall into a category we might call “shadows on the wall.” A shadow is not the thing it represents, of course; but our eyes have been trained to see in certain shadowy shapes, or portions of shapes, the corresponding fully-fleshed 3D objects projected, darkly, on the wall. In the same way, shadow-on-the-wall story starters — images and songs — mark the edges of a plotline or a relationship, and let our minds fill in the gaps.

At the time these (not exactly earth-shaking) revelations came to me, I was in the car; in the CD player was Carly Simon’s Torch album of old standard, reworked, and brand-new songs of blues, heartbreak, and wish fulfillment. Just starting up then, in fact, was a perfect shadow-on-the-wall song: “What Shall We Do with the Child?”

Even before we hear the first word, we know some things to expect. The title gives some of them away, of course. This song must have something to do with a boy or girl, probably very young, who presents some kind of dilemma for some people — probably a couple. (We don’t know the nature of the dilemma. Maybe the kid is just a chronic misbehaver, a delinquent in the making?)

Then there’s the promise inherent in what we already know of Simon’s voice — an amazing, idiosyncratic instrument capable of layering multiple emotional levels upon almost any lyric. What plaintive or angry or joyful twists might that voice put on a song with such a title? (Probably not joyful, though — not on this album.)

So let’s find out. Here’s the first half (roughly) of the song (corresponding lyrics immediately beneath the audio player):

I know I’m not what you wanted
Not what you had in mind
And I didn’t come close
To the mark you’d set
For the girl you’d planned to find
Though we often laughed together
You’ve never seen me cry
We shared but idle words
And a casual goodbye

And what shall we do with the child
Who’s got your eyes
My hair
And your smile
Reminding me that we fell in love
But just for a little while

So the story begins to fill in, shadowy and nuanced. Simon’s voice sounds wounded and confused, but from the very first lines of the lyric we sense something else about her: there’s a little (?) bit of the Scorpio in this woman, sarcasm and bitterness draped like a shroud around her shoulders while she claims (albeit rightly, apparently) to have been wronged. She’s not defenseless. She’s got a bite to her.

It’s not hard to imagine the guy at the other end of the phone line (or perhaps just the other end of the psychic connection). He’s a cad, oh yes, a coward to boot. He’s thinking he knows, Jesus, he knows. He just doesn’t want to hear this woman’s bathetic claims on him any longer. He doesn’t have the damnedest idea what to do with the child, and there’s no “we” anyway. It’s her problem, not his!

And then of course (of course) there’s the child in question, who seems largely absent (despite the title, despite the woman’s words) from the concerns of either parent. To the extent that she’s discussed in anything like detail, she’s being used by the mother as a weapon: You know, she’s got features that look like both of us… Of course you don’t know that — you’ve never even seen her, have you?

Let’s go on to the rest of the song:

You never asked about the girl you never knew
And while she was sleeping in my arms
She never asked about you
Without you seems the only way
But time has passed and now
She’ll soon be asking questions
And she’ll ask about you
And how
Shall I say to the child
Who’s got your eyes, my hair, and your smile
Reminding me that we fell in love
But just for a little while
What shall we do with the child
Who’s got your eyes, my hair, and your smile

At last the heartsickness comes out. It’s not just you and me, it’s her, our daughter! The mother isn’t seriously even asking for the father’s help; she’s simply desperate: I don’t know what to do, help me, help me…!

As with pictorial shadow-on-the-wall story starters, the above isn’t the only possible way for the story in this song to play out. “In an infinite universe, all things are possible.” But the words, and the music, and Carly Simon’s anguished vocal, and what we know about men and women — all of it swirls together to cast a fluid shadow on our imaginations. We can’t help finding story; in fact, the way our brains are wired, we practically demand it… from even the smallest evidence.