[See the note at the end of this post for info about the above song.]
From whiskey river:
Falling
Long before daybreak
none of the birds yet awake
rain comes down with the sound
of a huge wind rushing
through the valley trees
it comes down around us
all at the same time
and beyond it there is nothing
it falls without hearing itself
without knowing
there is anyone here
without seeing where it is
or where it is going
like a moment of great
happiness of our own
that we cannot remember
coasting with the lights off
(W. S. Merwin [source])
…and:
It is this admirable, this immortal, instinctive sense of beauty that leads us to look upon the spectacle of this world as a glimpse, a correspondence with heaven. Our unquenchable thirst for all that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the liveliest proof of our immortality. It is both by poetry and through poetry, by music and through music, that the soul dimly descries the splendors beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings tears to our eyes, those tears are not a proof of overabundant joy: they bear witness rather to an impatient melancholy, a clamant demand by our nerves, our nature, exiled in imperfection, which would fain enter into immediate possession, while still on this earth, of a revealed paradise.
(Charles Baudelaire [source; the above is the version at whiskey river, a somewhat different translation])
Not from whiskey river:
Scrim
I sit here in a shelter behind the words
Of what I’m writing, looking out as if
Through a dim curtain of rain, that keeps me in here.The words are like a scrim upon a page,
Obscuring what might be there beyond the scrim.
I can dimly see there’s something or someone there.But I can’t tell if it’s God, or one of his angels,
Or the past, or future, or who it is I love,
My mother or father lost, or my lost sister,Or my wife lost when I was too late to get there,
I only know that there’s something, or somebody, there.
Tell me your name. How was it that I knew you?
(David Ferry [source])
…and:
Still, the intention is to make sense, not to discredit. It’s true that things aren’t always what they seem, but what they seem is always part of what they are. The man on the subway platform looking at the woman with her nose in a book is a critic: he is trying to figure out whether she is really reading, and hasn’t noticed him, or is just pretending to be reading, and, if she is just pretending to be reading, whether that is because she hopes he won’t approach her or because she calculates that he will. If he does approach her, though, on the theory that she is just pretending to be reading, the first thing he will say is, “What are you reading?” Appearance, mystique, aura, reputation: these are all aspects of the things that interest us, and they are as real as anything else. It is good not to be fooled, but there is a difference between being disenthralled and being disillusioned. Criticism that denies the subject its surface appeal is unsuccessful criticism, and if something doesn’t seem more interesting after it has been taken apart, then it wasn’t worth taking apart. The last word — though only the last word — should be one of appreciation.
(Louis Menand, on historical criticism [source])
Finally… the music behind the video at the top of this post is Jim Lowe’s 1956 hit, “Green Door,” which managed to get all the way up to the top of the US charts in a year which also featured Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Don’t Be Cruel.” (Wikipedia says it sat at #1 on the Billboard Top 100 Singles for three weeks — sandwiched in between those two. Elvis must have taken the month off.) It also became a big hit in the UK, for Frankie Vaughan, and has been been covered by a wide variety of performers (not all of them honky-tonk, rockabilly, and throwback acts) like Shakin’ Stevens, The Cramps, and Crystal Gayle.
Considering it’s a funny little nothin’ of a song, it has quite a Wikipedia entry… including the information that it supposedly inspired the 1972 “porn chic” film Behind the Green Door.
Here are the lyrics:
Green Door
(by Bob Davie and Marvin Moore;
performance by Jim Lowe and the High-Fives)(“tick-tock” sound throughout)
Midnight, one more night without sleepin’
Watchin’ till the mornin’ comes creepin’
Green door, what’s that secret you’re keepin’?There’s an old piano
And they play it hot behind the green door
Don’t know what they’re doin’
But they laugh a lot behind the green door
Wish they’d let me in
So I could find out what’s behind the green doorKnocked once, tried to tell them I’d been there
Door slammed, hospitality’s thin there
Wonder just what’s goin’ on in thereSaw an eyeball peepin’
Through a smoky cloud behind the green door
When I said “Joe sent me”
Someone laughed out loud behind the green door
All I want to do is join the happy crowd behind the green door[instrumental break]
Midnight, one more night without sleepin’
Watchin’ till the mornin’ comes creepin’
Green door, what’s that secret you’re keepin’?Green door, what’s that secret you’re keepin’?
Green door!!
And just for grins, here’s Fozzie Bear on The Muppet Show in 1980 (episode 422):
marta says
I like the idea of the rain rushing down without knowing where it is going or that anyone is watching.
I’m going to have to think about that criticism bit.
The Querulous Squirrel says
I like the idea of sitting behind the words on the page like behind a scrim, one that hinders clarity of what one knows and is trying to express and one that obscures the meaning of one’s own words, or the author’s, with us ever trying to clarify and clarify and understand and interpret, and still, there is always the scrim between the reader and the writer and the writer and his subject, the writer and himself.
Froog says
Ah, for me the ‘Green Door’ inevitably calls to mind Kevin Turvey, an early Rik Mayall creation – an angry, manic Birmingham youth who was a roving reporter producing stream-of-consciousness ‘investigations’ of everyday subjects for an early ’80s BBC2 sketch show called A Kick Up The 80s (he was also, occasionally, a punk poet, and supposedly the leader of a band with the rather wonderful name ’20th Century Coyote’). They later made a ‘documentary’ special about him called….. ‘Behind The Green Door’. My childhood (well, my teenage years) comes rushing back to me!
fg says
“…exiled in imperfection…”
How beautiful.
I often think that if people knew themselves too well they might be frightened. Conversely for some invention and manipulation is reassurance.
Having a lovely summer. Remembering myself a little and getting to know others. But not to the point of fright, to the point of dreams. This week I languish in beautiful imperfection.
PS. Thanks for the poem – so enjoyed.
Jill says
JES, you will probably think this is idle flattery, but I am once again amazed by the synchronicity of your choices in this post. I don’t know how you manage to find these wonderfully connected bits of art, but I’m glad you do.
I’m sure you know that Merwin was named U.S. Poet Laureate recently, which makes me happy. And I learned a new word today from this post: clamant. It’s pronounced just like “claimant”, so that could get a little confusing to the uninformed, if said out loud. Thanks for the lovely poems.
John says
marta: Yeah, that quote about criticism took me several reads and a great deal of looking off into the distance. Personally, I think the key sentence is the next-to-last one: “Criticism that denies the subject its surface appeal is unsuccessful criticism, and if something doesn’t seem more interesting after it has been taken apart, then it wasn’t worth taking apart.”
Squirrel: Yes! The hard part — Lord knows I haven’t mastered it, not even close — is to move the words past translucency, till they’re almost transparent and the meaning flows without stumbling (or calling attention to the medium conveying it).
Froog: While researching the song for this post, I came across a not-that-old article at The Guardian site, claiming that the original green door behind which all the fun was happening was an entrance to a lesbian bar in London, called The Gateways. The author seems pretty sure, all other evidence to the contrary, that only he has grasped the door’s true identity.
I know of Rik Mayall but not his Kevin Turvey persona. Looks to be some YouTubery with which to plug that gap.
(And I also see, thanks to that IMDB link of yours, that he appeared briefly in a film on both your and my best-of lists, American Werewolf in London, as “2nd chess player.” Will coincidences never cease…?)
fg: In college, I had an ongoing debate with a professor, Mrs. R. (upon whom I probably had a crush), about personas. I kept insisting that it irked me, the way everyone seemed to think I was so “nice.” I wasn’t nice, I said. I had this really ugly true self, and if only, they, all, knew…
Mrs. R. finally told me to prove it — that if my exterior falsely portrayed me as a Jekyll-only sort, for once I needed to show somebody my Mr. Hyde. She added that this was one area where one’s own opinion doesn’t really count: if you are the only person in the world who thinks you are [fill-in-the-blank], well, then, you’re not [fill-in-the-blank].
Whatever else this dialogue proved, it proved that I’m not very good at winning debates.
Sounds like you’re having a summer of escape. Good for you!
Jill: Every now and then in my posts you’ll find a word or phrase underscored with a dashed red line. (In this post, “clamant” qualified.) If you hover your mouse cursor over one of these words, a little pop-up title explains the underscored bit. I try not to overdo this, because it’s a little pedantic/condescending and seems to imply, “I know you don’t know what this means, o reader, so let me help you…” I just hate that someone might be inconvenienced by confusion in reading one of my posts. But there are those much more common cases — as with “clamant” — where I myself was completely baffled by a proper noun, or a phrase in a language other than English, etc. So I try to save someone the research distraction.
All of which said, yeah — “clamant” completely brought me up short. (I was happy to find an alternative translation, as indicated in that quotation’s “source” note.)
All: always very glad to know you’re enjoying this stuff!