"...are they not in thy book?" -Psalm 56 (King James, just to get fancy)
When I came home from my freshman year of college, I lost someone. This was not a person I knew exceptionally well, but I knew him better than I knew most other people on this planet. He was a musical prodigy, an avid believer in a Right Answer, and his most definitive quality, in my memory, was a reckless love for everyone around him. But I didn't know him well.
He was killed in a car crash, and I found out, oddly enough, just before I had a plaster mold made of the upper half of my face. I keep that mold on my desk. Remind me to write later about Death Masks.
He and his family were Agnostic, and his mother was unsure of how to hold his memorial service. They ended up using our high school theater for the service, and having the viewing was at a funeral parlor in the town across the river. I remember both being jam-packed, and the viewing had a line out the door, not unlike a concert, which was somehow fitting.
At the memorial service, his best friend gave a musical eulogy. This guy was another prodigy, another person who spoke in music, so you can see how they got along. This guy got up there, said a few words, took out his saxophone, and then just started playing. And I think it was the saddest thing I've heard in my life, and even though I hadn't known the guy who died well, in that moment, I could see what it was like for this surviving prodigy to lose one of the only other people in the world who spoke the same musical language he did.
We've been losing Best Friends and Loved Ones since time began, though, and lamenting (as in, making sound that expresses that loss) seems to be one of our truest, cross-cultural ways of mourning. As with this prodigy, it's often non-verbal - compare that saxophone eulogy to the Irish tradition of Keening. There are poets, musicians, and other writers who've attempted to capture it verbally though, and this is where I need your help. I'd like to collect as many of these lamentations as possible. Here's some of what I have so far, to give you an idea:
"What is this sleep that holds you now?
You are lost in the dark, and cannot hear me."
-The Epic of Gilgamesh
"No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never."
-King Lear
So post comments with lamentations - they don't have to be as classical as these two, but I'm just feeling very epic at the moment. I'm actually sort of trying to find contemporary ones as well. I'll post back later in the week with the artistic endeavor, when it is (hopefully!) complete.
As a sidenote, the Greeks made a distinction in types of lamenting, apparently: there was "threnos," which was a formalized song, and "goos," which was a straightforward wail. Muses sing threnoi, while nymphs just goos all over the place.
ReplyDeleteSeeing as the saxophone lament was jazz, I think it's beyond the Greek distinction.
I disagree. Jazz "goos" - think of "wailing on the sax."
ReplyDeleteHow about that great american howl of lamentation, the blues?
Blind Willie Johnson's 1927 "Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground," a wordless moan lamenting the death of Christ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNj2BXW852g
Blind Willie Johnson died of malaria after sleeping out for weeks on a wet pallet in the ashes of his burned out house.
"Motherless Children have a Hard Time" by the same.
"your wife or husband may be good to you
when mother is dead
they'll be good to you
mother's dead
a wife or a husband may be good to you,
but, better than nothing has proved untrue
nobody treats you like mother will when, when mother is dead"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9MLrjSR4f8
Willie McTell, "Cooling Board"
"said I walked up to where they throwing dirt in Ella's face
wanted to jump into her grave and take her place
I realize I won't see my girl again
swear to God I loved her
she was my only friend"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u8oJdxD-rU
Ida Cox:
"Daddy oh daddy : won't you answer me please
All day I stood by your coffin : trying to give my poor heart ease
I rubbed my hands over your head : and whispered in your ear
And I wonder if you know : that your mama's near"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppS7lYZdgnY
I would love to see a post on epitaphs.
Oh and Neil Young's Album "Tonight's the Night." I can only describe the album as a haunting, barely comprehensible shriek of panic and loss. Just total madness and sloppiness. His close friend and guitarist both ODed in the same month. The insert reads "I'm sorry, you don't know these people. This means nothing to you."
ReplyDeleteI really suggest you read this article: http://thrasherswheat.org/tnfy/ttnlinernotes.html
""Don't Be Denied", the song for Danny develops into a terrible, deep-reaching event. The playing is awful but the emotion is great Neil is incapable of putting any structure into his guitar-playing instead, he comes across as a man possessed, hair flying, pounding his guitar, jumping and screaming: "Oh friend of mine, don't be denied, don't be denied, don't be denied." Confused, he comes up to the microphone and begins to talk gently: "You buy a newspaper on the street in the morning, and you open it at page two straightaway because you can't read page one....photos of all the people....now I'm in the desert....The Americans are there. Let's think about the desert this evening. In the desert there's a lion, some people are standing on one side on the lion and some on the other. Everybody knows what I'm talking about, so everybody can draw their own conclusions. We're going to play a song, ladies and gentlemen, to try to cheer ourselves up. It wasn't very good in the desert was it? I didn't like it much there anyway"... The end of 'Helpless' was a duet betweem Neil and Nils who joined in on accordian half way through the song and added his melancholy voice to Neil's. In a trance they played and sang for minutes on end 'Helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless'. And how helpless he looked sitting there, his hair hanging in his face, his voice suffocating, stamping and shaking on his stool, knocking the microphone in his fury and fear."
Young included a cryptic article in Dutch (translated in the above) "because I didn't understand any of it myself, and when someone is so sickened and fucked up as I was then, everything's in Dutch anyway."
I'll give you three, the rest are on youtube if you're interested:
"Tired Eyes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws-lfVW7ckg
"Borrowed Tune" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8wNEehKJYA&feature=related
"Let's Go Downtown" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veZ4l0Asmms&feature=related
Michael O'Sullivan was my great friend, but I don't ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral, to sit at the front, and hear what was said. Maybe say a few things yourself.
ReplyDeleteMichael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I'd congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.
—Jackie O'Shea, Waking Ned Devine