A very intense adaptation, Greg .
Well, I guess. But I wouldn't call it that. An "adaptation".
That makes it sound like something. Whereas it wasn't anything.
It was a conniption.
That is, it was not the result of any desire to write an "adaptation".
Or anything else.
And I am certainly not going to try to perfect it.
Or justify it. Or explicate it.
It took a second to write.
Which is more attention than it deserves.
I will however mention a few of the careening emotions
that
caused it, or
went into it.
But just mention them. And just a few. Out of very many.
And very elliptically. Telegraphically. (Because I don't really
want to do this at all...)
(But first:
One connection that you won't get at all
was Teratogen mentioning Bowie.
I was going to respond to that thread, but figured I'd listen
to some Bowie first before I did. And when I did that,
then I realized that I probably won't ever be able to recover
any the state of mind that I used to be in when I was really into Bowie.
Because I was totally into Bowie.
I used to judge people solely by their reaction to him.
I took every girl I went with to see "The Man Who Fell To Earth".
Because that was the story of my life, in a way.
Bowie's genius was music, orchestration, and chord changes.
I don't think anyone has ever accused him of being particularly
profound or precious with his lyrics.
But I can relate to that. His cut-up techniques and ad hoc lyrics,
- always totally subordinate to the emotion, to the moment,
-always seemed to me to be just right for what he was trying to say.
Certainly Cohen, too, often seems to be trying to reach
for things beyond his grasp, - reaching for the totally
ineffable. But Cohen somehow always managed to
nail it down into finely honed words anyway.
Cohen could never say, for example,
---"busting up my brains for the words".
Even though he obviously was.
And that can be regarded as a cop-out.
If you're in a certain state of mind.
And when I post things like that conniption of mine,
that's the state of mind I was trying to remember.
The state of mind in which perfecting words is a sin
against the truth of the moment.
)
~~
Now, obviously, whatever it was that caused my conniption,
--was some kind of rage.
Rage is, in fact, pretty much the only thing I ever feel anymore.
Pretty much continuously.
In this case the immediate instigation was Bush's recent comparison
of Iraq to Vietnam.
(What poped into my head that very instant was, in fact:
"The Man Who Sold the World". (--who, incidentally,
was Satan - with his temptations of Christ))
This tactic - had a lot to due with Kerry's defeat.
And it threw me back to the late 1960s. (Hence "Susanne"
- which is often the first thing I think of when I think back to then.)
Which is exactly what Bush (& Rove) intended it to do.
To throw old people back into that fantastically decrepit state of mind.
Because their intention is not just to rouse up old hawks to their cause.
It's to rouse up old hawks and doves alike, in order to re-create
all the noise and chaos of the '60s. Because that's what got Nixon
elected. (on a platform of "law and order". Or in this case
it's the concept of a "war on terror". absolutely fantastic.).
You know, all the songs in the 1960s were anti-war songs.
And those that did not mention the war at all, were the most
subversive of all.
Because war is the other guy's game.
They have to trick you into thinking it's your game.
Like Bernard C. Cohen said, power isn't in controlling what people think.
It's in controlling what they think about.
But you know they can get to anyone.
And when they break you down, into a rage,
then they've won. They've raped the innocence.
And taking a song like "Susanne", the most innocent of all,
and raping it the way I did, is simply a direct expression
of what I happen to be feeling that they are doing.
Raping the memory.
Not learning the proper lessons of the '60s.
Being disconnected from the acts of murder they order.
But apart from that, which I know is not at all clear, (sorry)
(and all the other things that I haven't mentioned - Christiane Amanpour's
"God's Warriors", --
"Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jim's in this town
And all the politicians makin' crazy sounds
And everybody puttin' everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds" - Lou Reed
etc...
----really the most direct "inspiration" (--if it can be called that)
for what I was trying to do with "Susanne" was, of course,
Owen's "Greater Love". Which very greately affected me back then.
And I have often thought of it together with "Susanne"
(--like Simon & Garfunkel's amalgam "Scarborough Fair/Canticle":
---Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather
---(war bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions)
---Parsely, sage, rosemary & thyme
---(generals order their soldiers to kill)
---And to gather it all in a bunch of heather
---(and to fight for a cause theyve long ago forgotten)
---Then she'll be a true love of mine )
Greater Love - by Wilfred Owen
Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.
Your voice sings not so soft,-
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,-
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.
.