Slicer's Slivers of Being

"We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it..." (Part 1)

Lockdown hasn't been easy. Going to work in healthcare to face COVID-19 up close and personal has been tough for many. Death has been dangling over us like the sword of Damocles. Many of us have tried to make the best of it at home with loved ones, reading more, playing games (even inventing some), watching movies together, dressing up for "restaurant meals" at home. Some have had to don PPE, some have been sent home from work for their own physical or mental health protection.

Nevertheless, whether at home or at work, the (dark) humour of some Richard O'Brien lyrics from Rocky Horror have been what many have felt:

"The Sword of Damocles is hangin' over my head
And I've got the feelin' someone's gonna be cuttin' the thread
Oh! Woe is me! My life is a misery
Oh! And can't you see
That I'm at the start of a pretty big downer.
I woke up this mornin' with a start when I fell out of bed (that ain't no crime)
And left from my dream it was a feelin' of un-nameable dread (that ain't no crime)
My high is low, I'm dressed up with no place to go!
And all I know
Is I'm at the start of a pretty big downer."

In Cicero’s version of the classical moral fable of Damocles, Dionysius II was a king who once ruled over the city of Syracuse in Sicily during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. Dionysius, although rich and powerful, failed to find happiness. His tyrrannical rule made him many enemies, and he was consumed by fear of being assassinated. He wouldn't trust anyone but his daughters with a razor to trim his beard. Short of meeting Sweeney Todd, who amongst us before 2020 would have thought that fear of death would prevent a trip to the barbers? Yet here we are in these days of "lockdown haircuts", some of them hilarious.

Anyway, in the fable, a courtier named Damocles commented how wonderful, luxurious and enviable Dionysius' life was. Dionysius took offence and suggested Damocles shared the royal experience. He set him on a golden couch and had him waited upon by servants. He had succulent cuts of meat set before him. Damocles was loving it until he noticed that Dionysius had hung a sharp sword over his head, held there by just a single strand of horsehair. From then on, the courtier’s fear for his life made it impossible for him to enjoy the decadent excesses of royal life, and he asked to be relieved of the experience.

For some, life under lockdown has felt a little like that; for some, sadly, the sword has fallen. The threat and fear take a toll, even if we ourselves escape having to pay one to cross the Styx. The toll may be paid in terms of mental health. We need a good and weighty tune for the times, weightier stuff than the fluff but fun Rocky Horror song -  maybe one where "The harmonicas play the skeleton keys".

What a joy it is in this context to have a new bluesy original song drop today from the Mighty Zim! (The observant among you will have spotted the Dylan source in the title of this blog post). The visual aid accompanying "False Prophet" intriguingly is a skeleton in a top hat, whose shadow is that of an executed man, and who carries a syringe, poised to give a shot of whatever it contains - some kind of reddish liquid... or is the red colour a reflection/consequence of the red "Rough and Rowdy Ways"?  The song title seems to be from the main character's assertion in it, made 3 times, that "I ain't no false prophet".

At this time there are many false prophets out there, some with seeming (if discredited) credentials - and no end of conspiracy theories ranging from "Deep State" plans, claims that Bill Gates patented SARS-CoV-2 and seeks to become rich by selling a vaccine we don't need, to it being virus deliberately manufactured by the Chinese to bring down the West (spectacular, and entirely predictable, own goal then!), to COVID-19 being due to 5G technology. It seems some are happy to believe all these mutually conflicting notions at the same time, and peddle them on the internet. When misinformation is taken down by (belatedly) responsible online agencies, these deluded folk yell "There! See?! Deep State at work!"

On this new Dylan song, the 1st person main character seems to have a struggle to get folk to trust him over competing prophetic voices.

In the absence of a set of official lyrics yet on bobdylan.com, here's a set which sounds mostly correct to me (alternative to my ear is presented in brackets), sourced from Far Out Magazine:

"Another day that don’t end
Another ship goin’ out
Another day of anger, bitterness, and doubt
I know how it happened
I saw it begin
I opened my heart to the world and the world came in

Hello Mary Lou
Hello Miss Pearl
My fleet-footed guides from the underworld
No stars in the sky shine brighter than you
You girls mean business and I do too

Well I’m the enemy of treason
Enemy of strife
Enemy of the unlived meaningless life
I ain’t no false prophet
I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely can go

I’m first among equals
Second to none
Last of the best
You can bury the rest
Bury ’em naked with their silver and gold
Put them six feet under and pray for their souls

What are you lookin’ at
There’s nothing to see
Just a cool breeze that’s encircling me
Let’s go for a walk in the garden
So far and so wide
We can sit in the shade by the fountain-side

I search the world over
For the Holy Grail
I sing songs of love
I sing songs of betrayal
Don’t care what I drink
Don’t care what I eat
I climbed the mountains of swords on my bare feet

You don’t know me darlin’
You never would guess
I’m nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
I ain’t no false prophet
I just said what I said
I’m just here to bring vengeance on somebody’s head

Put out your hand
There’s nothing to hold
Open your mouth
I’ll stuff it with gold
Oh you poor devil look up if you will
The city of God is there on the hill

Hello stranger
A long goodbye
You ruled the land
But so do I
You lost your mule (or You lusty old mule)
You got a poison brain
I’ll marry you to a ball and chain

You know darlin’
The kind of life that I live
When your smile meets my smile something’s got to give
I ain’t no false prophet
No I’m nobody’s bride
Can’t remember when I was born
And I forgot when I died"

Like many of Dylan's lyrics before, these will send his fans scurrying to interpret them - and, like his previous lyrics, they may well bear multiple interpretations and/or meanings. That's the nature of genius art. Yet some Dylan songs are only thinly veiled and perhaps we just need a skeleton key to unlock them - a key which unlocks many other of his songs as well. In part 2 of this blog, I'll indulge myself (and you if you let me) with my own interpretation. Feel free to drop by.

In the meantime it is natural, like Damocles, to want a return to "normal life" and have the threat of COVID-19 taken away. When lockdown is relaxed, and certainly before it is, let's behave responsibly. Let's not create a situation where it's thought or said of us, in the words of Frank N Furter at the end of the Rocky Horror song, "Well, really, that's no way to behave on your first day out!"

"What Do You Think I'd See...

...If I could walk away from me?"

I'm just back from a weekend spent with a community that I'm part of. It's really an extended family, where you don't yet know all your relatives really well. Our political views vary, our religious views vary, and our ages vary considerably, but we're committed to getting on as a community. After a weekend drinking more coffee than I probably should (including with a world-renowned astrophysicist), doing a bit more walking than I'm used to (with a guy who's been to the top of Everest), and sitting down to eat some modest but adequate food with them, I know a few folk a bit better. One part of the weekend which helped was the Angels' Share session, tho sadly this was more metaphorical than actual. (If, as was the case with me, you don't know what the Angels' Share is, you need to a trip to a good Distillery). My respect for some of these people has grown, and I've benefited from spending a bit of time thinking about how I should spend some of my time, money and energies. I've heard some great music - not the throwaway kind, but the stuff that moves you deep down; and challenges you to think, maybe even behave, a little differently. 

 

The weekend unsettled me. I blame Doug. (Or I might blame Steve cos Steve brought Doug). Doug's a big Scotsman - a Scottish Nationalist, actually, but we'll forgive him that. He used to front a band called Candy Says. Now, I like to know where bands get their names from and, when I don't know, I can't resist speculating. I did ask Doug so that I wouldn't have to speculate, but he claimed it's too long ago to remember. Maybe he just wanted me to use my imagination. Candy Says is an old song by the Velvet Underground. It's pretty meditative, melancholic in fact. Stripped back, with exposed, quivering vocals. Vulnerable. Candy Says is kinda the less well known sibling of Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side. However, its vocals aren't provided by Reed but by another Doug, Doug Yule. Candy came from out on the island. And started off life as Jimmy. She was part of the Warhol Factory scene - one of those Andy Warhol made "famous for 15 minutes." Something tells me Holly wasn't the only one who plucked her eyebrows on the way.


Candy was one of the Warhol "Superstars." Of course they were superstars simply because he filmed them and declared them to be. So what was a Scottish Presbyterian minister doing naming his band after a '60s/'70s transgender actress, and whatever she said? I haven't found out (yet). But the song lyrics did provide me with a couple of interesting couplets, which coincidently tied in with some of what Doug had to say. 

 

"Candy says I hate the big decisions
that cause endless revisions in my mind...

...What do you think I'd see
If I could walk away from me?"

What would it look like if we began to step away from our own comfortable same old same old? What would we see when the focus is less on us or our own needs? What if the music in church more accurately reflected how people are feeling when life has ripped out the bottom of their soul? What if it met people in their grief, distress and doubt, rather than trying to brush over that distress with the warm fuzzies? Since we claim to believe in a God who not only understands our distress but volunteered to identify with us by experiencing it, I'd argue that it's vital that we don't try to bluff or kid ourselves, or portray to others, that a life of faith isn't full of gritty reality, pain, doubt, injustice, and, for some, misery. Perhaps that's why Les Miserables has a strong appeal to the spirit. It's certainly why the Blues and Spirituals intersect. They reflect the messiness of real life. 

I also blame Philip, who is quite an authority on Irish history. He presented important factual information, illustrated by powerful anecdotes. He covered the Somme, and the Easter Rising and challenged those of us who are middle class to recognise how working class loyalists have been marginalised and left feeling forgotten, robbed of identity. Perhaps we need to walk away from our own comfort zones in order to see the distress felt by others. In my own church we've done that with those of a nationalist aspiration much more than we have with loyalists.

 

Like many Old Testament books, the book of Jeremiah has plenty of blues within it. Spanning a period in which the Israelites were taken captive into an foreign country, and involving much brutality and loss of life, is it any wonder that many African Americans identify with the notion of Babylon? Doug spent some time demonstrating from that book that we shouldn't rush straight from suffering to hope. First we need to acknowledge the suffering, and feelings of helplessness. We're also supposed to engage with it - one of the reasons faith can't be a private exercise, as some either assume it is or would like to make it. Jeremiah contains some strong stuff - which is often not touched on in church sermons. Difficult passages, which Doug didn't duck [What alliteration :-)], including the role of God when evil pays a visit. The text is designed to be wrestled with, not to be cherry-picked from - whether by evangelical atheists to present God as a monster, or by misguided Christians who wish to skip the tricky stuff and rush to put on the rose-tinted specs. Hope is real but there can be generations of slaughter, genocide even, before it's realised. There are multiple voices in the text of Jeremiah (and elsewhere in the Old Testament). If it was an easy text, it would come with a ladybird symbol on the cover. It's designed for more longevity than that. Noddy's Guide is for Toyland. This ain't Toyland.

 

Doug pointed us to St James' church in Piccadilly, London, which, until 2nd February, has an art installation entitled "Flight" by Arabella Dorman. This is what the congregation gathered under to sing their traditional carols over the romantic festive period.

What has an upturned inflatable boat with dangling life jackets got to do with the Christmas narrative? If you need me to answer that, you need to go read it again. It's much easier to cosy up in front of the fire and sing "See amid the winter snow" with its dubious, if familiar, imagery, or restrict the force of Christmas to a couple of days in the year (it's over now isn't it?), or absorb distortions of the account popularised up and down the country in school nativity plays, if we're permitted to have them. 

 

Of course, it's not just school nativity plays or some carols which may be dodgy advertisements for Christianity. People are too, all year 'round. We're all work in progress, and we need to be open to (in Candy's terminology) revisions of the mind. As regards how Christians have failed to live up to how we should be, apologies. Be patient with us. One of the songs I was introduced to at the weekend is this haunting number by American alternative rock band the innocence mission.

 

"Hang my head low, so low. 
Don't see me only as I am but 
see me how I long to be. 

Shining like a flowering tree
under a gray Pennsylvania sky.
Look for me as you go by.
Hang my head low, so low.
Every burden shall be lifted.
Every stone upon your back slide into the sea.
It's me for you and you for me."

It was played during Communion. It's an acknowledgement that we're not how we should be, and things generally aren't, but that there is real promise. For Christians (and for Jews) that promise is a Big Deal. It's definitive - of relationship, particularly relationship with God. We each have value, independently from our abilities, achievements or failures. This is not a remote God who's waiting for our lives to run their course before beating us with a big stick, nor a God who is blind to the failings of 'organised religion.' Equally he is not a God who is deaf to the cries for justice by those who have been violated, oppressed, or brutalised. Instead, a God who wishes things to be better than they are, and wants to us to partner with him in making it that way... a father who's out for the best interests of his children. However, the timeframes within which he operates may not be the ones we think are best. Yet, ultimately he is for us, and desires us to be for him, because that's how family should be. He could be intervening all the time, but that would be treating us like kindergarten. He has a plan, and he's invited us to implement it, has provided the necessary tools, and even allows us to get creative as to how we use them. No plan B. (He doesn't need one). But we still mess up our bedroom floor in the interim. Trouble is the soldiers aren't green plastic, or pixelated ones in Call of Duty. As I've said, this isn't Toyland. 

 

So here's to better living - less me-orientated, more for the common good; less 'our nation'-orientated and more toward global good. This takes courage. How about nationhood, national identity and economic growth as means to an end rather than the ends themselves? Here's to better listening and, when we speak, let's not finish each other's sentences. Sometimes maybe we shouldn't rush to finish our own. And here's to better music, and art generally, in church - joy and pain acknowledged side by side. As one of the teenagers launched into a song yesterday that had pretty much the same guitar intro as Wild Thing by the Troggs, I thought we were beginning to get a little balance restored, and then I remembered the tag-line "you make everything groovy." Maybe eventually, but definitely not right now. In the meantime maybe we do need to take a walk on the wild side... and stay there a while. Much of the weekend was more about asking questions than providing prescribed answers; about starting sentences and lines of enquiry and letting them sit for a while rather than rushing to finish them. However, thanks to Patricia, I also was given some useful answers in pure maths - specifically on why some infinities are different than others, countably different in fact. Go figure.

A Slice of Mud, Honey.

I'm sure you've heard of Mississippi Mud Pie. Even a sliver is pretty indulgent. Well here's a different kind of Mississippi mud, straight from the delta. If you're looking for some dirty blues guitar, and/or a 21st Century update on Dylan's Masters of War, or commentary on Western business dealings with Saudi Arabia, Big Pharma's (or the coffee industry's!) exploitation of those in developing nations, nutritionist quacks or unrighteous doctors selling things that'll never cure your ills (a different kind of selling your soul to the legend of Robert Johnson at the crossroads, in fact one much closer to reality than that legend), or if you just feel some righteous indignation at folk who benefit on a smaller scale from the harm done to others, have some 20-something Joanne Shaw Taylor.  Something deep within us cries out for justice and retribution - that people should reap what they sow (or Karma, as in the song). I aspire to an even higher form of justice - redemptive justice - where what has been done wrong is put right, clearing the path for mercy.
 
An end to bloodshed, war, arms dealing, exploitation, oppression; and people whose names are mud. Bring it on.... em.... Honey.

All I Want For Christmas (part 18)

"...is no more sorrow, no grief and no pain."

 

All I Want For Christmas (part 16)

...is a stockingful of blues.



So here's some stuffin' for yer stockin'