John Cale- Macbeth

Today's literary inspired pop-song comes from John Cale's brilliant Paris 1916 (1973 ) album. Famous for being Welsh and a founding member of the Velvet Underground, Cale has collaborated with the best of them: John Cage, Brian Eno, Patti Smith, The Stooges, Siouxsie and the Bansheees...

Paris 1916 is one my desert album picks (thanks to JD for introducing me to it years back), and it's because the album itself is to literary. On it, Cale references Thomas' "Child's Christmas in Wales," he has a song called Graham Greene, and then there's "Macbeth"

Welcome home Macbeth
It’s been a long long time
And everyone knows you’re here
It’s easy to see they care


Banquo’s been and gone
He’s seen it all before
He took it and then he did walk it
He shook it and then he did rock it


And you know it’s true
You never saw things quite that way
She knew it all
And made you see things all her way
Somebody knows for sure
It’s gotta be me or it’s gotta be you
Come on along and tell me it’s alright
It’s alright by me


Alas for poor Macbeth
He found a shallow grave
But better than a painful death
And quicker than his dying breath

I started teaching my online Shakespeare course this week. I find teaching online a challenge, since so much of my teaching-persona is in the classroom, being improvisational. Teaching Shakespeare online is a special challenge, because you really lose a lot without the real-face-interface. But, I am dedicated to making Shakespeare available and accessible to everyone, and online is a way to do that.

It's also interesting teaching to an entirely different demographic than say, conventional, large state-school undergraduates. This class is through a community college and I have 20 students: 19 of them female, and one male. Most live rurally, are married, and have several children. And I they are finding it more mind-blowingly-difficult to accept men playing female characters on Shakespeare's stage than my 20 year-old students. There are going to be new challenges here.

literary pop: Wuthering Heights

I've decided that the next few entries are going to be about literary-inspired pop music.

First up, Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights." Bush magically renders the narrative into a single song, capturing the all-encompassing passion between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw that eventually destroys them, and all those connected with them.

Here is a live performance, from 1978

Bush herself seems captivated by the tale-- am expressive imp moving through the motions of the Healthcliff and Cathy's haunting relationship.

What I especially enjoy about the song is that she focuses on the "Ghost at the Window" scene of Chapter 3--  which I think is the most chilling. I remember reading it for the first time and being scared. I think I wrote a paper about it somewhere.

....I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten. 'I must stop it, nevertheless!' I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, 'Let me in!' and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear. 'How can I!' I said at length. 'Let me go, if you want me to let you in!' The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer. I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on! 'Begone!' I shouted. 'I'll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.' 'It is twenty years,' mourned the voice: 'twenty years. I've been a waif for twenty years!' Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward. I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright (Chapter 3, Wuthering Heights)

Here's a link to just that scene from the 1992 film . It's worth watching!